The Yellow Houses

  The letter concluded with those sentences which in Japanese express the deepest veneration.

  ‘He knows well that I shall speak for him. I also know that, for all his dutifulness, he will have his way,’ the Admiral muttered. ‘Now, for the photograph.’

  But it was sealed with that detestable Western invention, a transparent ribbon smeared on one side with some sort of glue, which ancient fingers find so difficult to unfasten. The Admiral clapped his hands sharply, and at once a screen at the far end of the room slid aside, and there entered a thickset man in a dark robe, who approached with bent head. He bowed almost double with hands crossed over his breast, then looked up enquiringly. The Admiral held out the parcel.

  ‘Remove the outer paper.’

  The body-servant had the Sellotape off in an instant, and unwrapped the parcel, revealing a second wrapping of white paper pattered with gold stars, which he also removed. He did not glance at the contents.

  The Admiral held out his hand and the man approached and handed him a coloured photograph on a grey mount, then resumed his submissive position.

  The Admiral studied the picture. His gaze, through the pebble-lenses enlarging his eyes so that a semblance of youth was restored to his marvellous face, moved steadily and slowly over the photograph, taking in the hint of dimples at the mouth corners, the rounded chin, and the strong throat rising from the soft line of the blue robe.

  ‘It is there in the eyes,’ he muttered at length. ‘Mind. Not the demon-curse of learning, no. Will and obstinacy, perhaps, rather than pure Mind. But it is there. Victory will be his. No easy victory. But victory, because the woman-qualities are strongest. See!’ – suddenly holding out the photograph to the servant. ‘The Western one whom the pride and flower of our House wishes to marry.’

  Jizo drew in a hissing breath as he took the photograph and subjected it to a stare, ravenous with a curiosity of which no trace appeared on his broad, battered face.

  ‘What does my faithful one think of the lady’s honourable face?’ demanded the Admiral at length. ‘Speak from human feelings.’

  ‘Western lady in dress of Nippon. Pleasing. A great honour for the lady,’ was the stolid answer.

  As no sound or movement came from the figure seated on the dais, he ventured in a moment to put the photograph down at his master’s feet, then said, in as soft and coaxing a tone as his hoarse voice could manage, ‘Will the very honourable one be pleased to eat now? The hour grows late, and perhaps the very honourable one is a little wearied by the consideration of these important matters, and in need of strength.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I will eat now. Cause these –’ he held out the packet and photograph – ‘to be taken to the honourable mistress-san.’

  For he had noticed the thirsty glance that his daughter-in-law had cast at parcel and letter.

  On Hampstead Heath the evening walks and the three-hour-long arguments went on.

  Mary felt that deadlock, stony and immovable, had been reached.

  Yasuhiro’s English had improved during these weeks spent in forcing out, in a foreign tongue, his strongest feelings. The mispronunciations and errors that had touched her, because of their childishness, had ceased. This hurt her, but she would not let herself tell him so. The tougher he thinks I am, the better, she thought.

  ‘You want sons, I suppose?’ he demanded one evening. ‘Yes of course you do. Then you make a bargain with me. I give you sons, you agree that I support Mishima and Shield Society.’

  ‘I’m not making any bargains, Yasu,’ she said tiredly, ‘and you can’t promise to give me – or anyone – sons. It hasn’t been found out how to.’

  ‘Ancient methods in Japan often successful.’

  ‘They may be. They aren’t being tried on me. Does your family believe in them?’

  ‘Oh I never discuss such. Servants’ talk. But old nurses say they know. Honourable Great-grandfather’s old servant say you have a pleasing face – I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Big deal,’ snapped Mary, and was punished for her pertness by having to give an explanation.

  ‘All in my family please with your face. They say typical woman-face,’ he said next.

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose that’s a bit of good news. (We could do with some, at least I could.) Have you written to Dad?’

  ‘Have here.’ He touched the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Can I see it? Not now, silly. When we get home. I’m not a cat – I can’t see in the dark.’

  ‘Is all sealed up and stamped. Also, I don’t wish you to see. Important subject between men.’

  ‘Considering I’m half the “important subject”. . .’ Mary broke off, turning away to stare angrily over the dim, sparkling valley full of London. In a moment, her control regained, she turned to him. ‘And there’s another thing, Yasu. I haven’t mentioned it before because I thought we’d better get the other thing settled first . . . What about your work, job I mean? What are you going to do?’

  He did not answer at once. Then he said slowly, ‘My family, you know, Mairly,’ he said slowly, ‘have much much money. Factory, machines (what is called ‘plant’, love.) Land, too. True money, this. Unaffected by stock market.’

  ‘That’s useful,’ she said dryly. At the moment this confirmation of Mrs Cadman’s hopes did not excite her at all. ‘But we’ll have to have some of our own, won’t we? – If we ever do get married, that is.’

  ‘We marry, love. Great argument, great battle. But in the end at last, we marry.’

  ‘. . . and I don’t suppose you’ll want me to work,’ she plodded on.

  ‘Of course, of course. You will work. Become shokaba no hana (office flower – which we call girl working in office). Make tea for directors, never rise above humble position, sometimes made to clean out office loo.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Mairly, Mairly!’ He caught her to him in a hug. ‘Where is English joke-sense? I am joking with you. You think my wife work? Never never no never. Arrange house, manage servants, look after old parents sitting in shade. And Great-grandfather leave me all his money. Arranged,’ he ended calmly. ‘Much, he said to me.’

  ‘Oh. Then you’ll have a . . . private income?’

  ‘Very private and secret. Not even tell you.’

  ‘I don’t want to know, thanks, so long as you give me enough to manage on decently. That does make a difference. But I should think you’d want to work at something. What will you do with yourself all day, while I’m putting that charming moxa powder on the children when they play up?’

  Nothing had driven home to her more sharply the utter alienness of his country’s customs than what he had told her of small children, adored throughout Japan, who were sometimes punished for extra naughtiness by placing on the skin a pinch of a powdered, burning herb called moxa.

  ‘I have told you, Mairly, only certain old-fashion families do this, uninfluenced at all at all by the West . . . What should I do with myself? Study, read, go for walk, see lovely interesting world, eat delicious food arranged by good wife. And write, of course, of course.’ He turned, and smiled at her.

  ‘But that wouldn’t be work, love.’

  ‘Why should I work? I am not a peasant.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ she muttered, and a silence fell.

  They walked on side by side, over the young grass, under the starlit sky, through the air scented with spring. She did not know what he was thinking; she was wishing she was peacefully engaged to an English boy, with a steady job in an office or a bank, or even studying medicine; and a dear little single-diamond ring; and Dad pleased; and the wedding presents, and perhaps even a house . . .

  No, a house would be out of their range. (It was, nowadays.) And she loved Yasu. She loved Yasu.

  He’s raving dotty about some things, she thought resignedly, as they swung together down the hill, but I’m not. And I’m getting to know him better every day, in spite of all the arguing. And in a way – though it’s a bit much, I must say he
’s what they call a challenge.

  ‘Why do you laugh, Mairly?’

  ‘I was just thinking of you as a challenge, love.’

  ‘Explain, please. The word is unfamiliar.’

  ‘Well – you’re very different from me, and – and it’s as if I had to kind of face up to something, and defeat-conquer it – sort of.’

  ‘A fight.’ He nodded, after a pause. ‘Like two samurai. Respect each their courage but fight until one is killed. Yes, I understand.’

  ‘No one’s getting killed. You do . . . exaggerate, love.’

  ‘It was a met-a-phor-ical saying. You are a challenge to me, as well, yes. Will you call me Shirjin, when we are wife and husband, love?’ and he caught her hand and swung it as they walked.

  ‘Depends what it means,’ cautiously.

  ‘Means “master”. Japanese wife have the custom to say this.’

  ‘I should laugh, Yasu.’

  ‘Laugh? Why laugh? Not a joke.’

  ‘No, it isn’t a joke . . . but we’re friends, Yasu. You don’t call a friend “master”.’

  Mary was silent as they turned their steps towards home.

  She was weary of the unending argument. She had assembled all her reasons, backed by some of her strongest feelings; and they had seemed to her unanswerable in their truth and strength, and he had ignored them, merely saying, over and over again, that glory and honour were necessary.

  26

  Invited visitor

  The ink was the blackest Wilfred had ever seen. And his name on the large blue envelope seemed formed, rather than written. Formed, he thought. More like a drawing. Even makes ‘Davis’ look important. Now who is it, I wonder? Mary’s Yasu. I bet. What’s he on about? Hope it isn’t . . .

  ‘Good God,’ he observed in a moment, and lifted his eyes from the page, and looked helplessly around his peaceful room.

  Most honoured Mr Dad-Davis,

  I want very truly and sincerely to marry (become the husband) to your only daughter Mary Patricia Davis. I am twenty years, only son of formerly noble Japanese family now ashamed to confess to you manufacturing those coloured televisions. My great-grandfather, Admiral Kouei-fei Tasu, has more than ninety years and has leave me all his stocks and shares, much of them. Mary wishes truly and sincerely to marry me but is making her mind (like old-fashion English bed. Colloquial.) Some differences in opinion. If this happen, I shall be true honoured if you kindly agree to come away with us, Mary and myself, to Japan. Live in our house. A large place, and the garden much spoken of for peacefulness and beauty, even disgraceful tourists knocking on the door with cameras. Anxiously I await for your honourable answer.

  I send you respectful greetings.

  Yasuhiro Tasu

  Well, thought Wilfred dazedly, well . . . couldn’t be put better, could it? And asking me to go, too. All those miles and miles away. Never heard anything like it. I shouldn’t lose her. But Japan! Last place I ever . . . really, it’s quite bowled me over, that it has.

  He hastily drank some tea, then sat staring uneasily at the letter while his thoughts whirled on.

  ’Course, nothing’s what you might call settled yet. Might all blow over. Young people. Change their minds.

  There was a tap on his door, and he went across the room and opened it.

  Mr Taverner was there, holding out a telegram.

  Its allright dad love I want to

  marry him so please say yes

  Love Mary.

  Her and her telegrams!

  Wilfred was still in his Marks and Spencer dressing-gown, and it was nearly eleven o’clock; but he pulled the girdle tighter and, holding the telegram and the handsome, important-looking letter in front of him as if they were about to explode, he hurried through the sunlight and the silence, across the hall under the gaze of Kichijoten (slightly quizzical – was that the word? – this morning), and rapped at the kitchen door. Mr Taverner’s voice called ‘Hullo!’ and he went in.

  Mr Taverner was alone, finishing breakfast with The Times and a large old pewter coffee pot.

  ‘Hullo – I’m idling – come and idle too. Telegram not bad news?’ he added, his tone changing, as he leant forward to pull up the chair onto which Wilfred almost sank. ‘You look rather shaken.’

  ‘Nothing really wrong, thanks – only a bit of a shock, as you might say. Just you read these,’ and he held out the telegram and the letter.

  ‘From Mary’s Japanese friend? I wondered, when I saw it this morning . . . I know you’ll forgive me; elderly bachelors tend to become inquisitive.’

  His eyes travelled down the letter, then turned to the telegram.

  ‘Well,’ he pronounced, ‘all very dignified and filial, isn’t it? Couldn’t be handsomer . . . but apart from the tone, which is Japanese traditional, the important bits are “some differences in opinion” and “kindly agree to come away with us” – don’t you feel that?’

  ‘Exactly. Exactly so, Mr Taverner,’ Wilfred said, using a little phrase that had often served its turn in his Town Hall days. He felt grateful. ‘I knew you’d understand. I’m not really worried about Mary, she’s so sensible . . . only sometimes I feel she’s a bit too sensible, if you know what I mean. If there’s anything in her that isn’t sensible, p’raps it’s got to come out, and falling for this Japanese boy is how it shows – if you take my meaning . . . I’ve never got over that running away to London. Fairly stunned me, that did.’

  ‘What an unusually good father you are,’ Mr Taverner observed unemphatically, and Wilfred looked down.

  ‘Don’t know about that,’ he said rather surlily. ‘I’ve tried to be . . . That I can say. I’ll have to see him, of course. Won’t I?’

  ‘Of course. You’ll ask him up here?’

  ‘You don’t think – go down there myself?’

  ‘Well, in your position I wouldn’t. Let him come to you. He’ll expect to, anyway. You’ll “lose face”, as his people say, if you go to London. His sense of family duty and respect will be satisfied if he comes here. Very important, to them. They are the most extraordinary race, I do believe, on the face of this planet. They have some glorious qualities – courage, devotion, passion. No cosiness: beauty and honour before everything. Hence their ruddy uncomfortable houses and customs.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a staggerer – going off to live in Japan at my time of life. All that bowing and kneeling, and never a decent cup of tea again. It’s all very well for you to laugh, Mr Taverner. I’m not tea-mad, but don’t they put scent in it or something?’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t, though there is a naturally scented kind. You could get your Mrs Wheeby to send you out a supply of Tetley’s every three months or so.’

  ‘I suppose . . . Yes, I’ll have to see him. I wish I knew a bit more about the Japanese.’

  ‘The important thing is whether he can love. The power of loving isn’t confined to any one nation, fortunately.’

  There was a pause. Wilfred was looking down at the letter.

  ‘Above all,’ Mr Taverner repeated, ‘the power to love.’

  He sat quite still. The sunlight reflected back from the whitish-yellow walls seemed to hover about him in concentrated radiance. His hands were motionless. A mysterious picture, delicate and small and clear, appeared suddenly in Wilfred’s inward eye: a pale, remote, seated Buddha, the corners of his lips lifted in the faintest of smiles.

  ‘Mr Taverner –’ Wilfred hesitated ‘– do you think that power – the power to love, I mean – can be learnt? Like you would a language, so to speak?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it can, thank God. But one has also to realize that some people haven’t the capacity to learn, and that is a mystery.’

  ‘And of course we can’t tell about this boy,’ said Wilfred, tapping the letter.

  Mr Taverner shrugged. If he can love, it’ll be like a volcano.’

  ‘That’ll suit Mary. (Don’t know how I know that, Mr Taverner, I just do.) She’s a deep one.’

  ‘
The volcano and the lake . . . it sounds like a poem. I notice you haven’t said anything about Great-grandfather’s stocks and shares.’

  ‘They’ll be useful. I’m not denying it. And if he was a student living on a grant, I would feel different, I admit. But I know, and I’m sure you know, money’s no use without two people – getting on.’

  His sentiments, so difficult to express, collapsed primly into the final words, and Mr Taverner laughed.

  ‘I feel they do “get on” – that’s what’s drawing them. I also feel they’ll hold – in spite of these differences of opinion.’

  ‘Then you think I should – give my consent, Mr Taverner?’

  A shrug. ‘Oh my dear man, you must know I can’t say anything of that sort. It’s up to you.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Wilfred sighed. ‘What Pat would have said to my ending my days in Japan, I don’t know . . . Besides, the fact is I’m quite contented here with all of you, specially now I know Mary’s probably going to be settled. All right for her, she’s young.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re happy with us.’

  The tone was gently dismissive and Wilfred went away at once with a murmur of ‘Well, thank you, Mr Taverner, that’s cleared my mind a bit.’ He had a faint sensation as if the interview had been closed and a door had been quietly shut.

  There had been a shadow growing in the Yellow House for some time, and Wilfred had refused to look at it or think about it.

  Gradually Mrs Cornforth’s moods had come to be linked with this unease – those moods of excitement which were the cause of the occasional flash from Mr Taverner’s eyes. Lately the moods had been quieter: fewer stories about the raffish group in the town whose company she frequented; more evenings on which she was to be found in the long drawing room, doing nothing, sitting by the window staring at the pale, boarded-up, empty house opposite, or looking listlessly into the fire. She wore almost every day a favourite dress: full-skirted, of yellow cotton printed with flame-coloured flowers, announcing that she adored it and would wear it until it fell to shreds. And as the air grew warmer and the birds more frenzied in their singing, and the leaves opened into their myriad shapes, her personality seemed to grow. Silent, or relating some tale, how her eyes shone!