The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

by Natasha Pulley

  As soon as he’d gone to see the other actors, she took off the harness, picked up her bag, and slipped down the back stairs, fast. All she had to do was disappear. Going out the front door, by the ticket office, would be much easier than going out the back where everyone could see her.

  She was only halfway down the stairs when someone caught the back of her collar.

  ‘Where in the world are you going?’ Ayame said in his bright way. However good he was at being a girl, he was very, very strong, and now she was nastily aware that he was a head taller than her. ‘Back in here.’

  ‘I just felt a bit faint. I thought I’d get some water from the bar—’

  ‘I’ll fetch it for you.’ He hadn’t let go of her collar. ‘You’ve no time. Get dressed.’

  She pulled, and heard the stitching in her dress creak. ‘Just to get a bit of air that isn’t full of actors—’

  He smacked her ear, hard. ‘You’re being hysterical. Don’t be nervous. In you go.’ He all but threw her up a couple of stairs.

  She spun around and realised firstly that she was going to have to charge past him, and secondly that it wasn’t going to work. She might get to the bottom of the stairs, but then he’d be after her, and he was fit. Even if she got to the foyer, nobody would think anything of seeing an actor box a set girl’s ears.

  She banged him aside with her shoulder. He caught her by her hair just as she reached the bar. The smell of hot wood and paper from the corridor vanished, replaced right on the threshold by caramel nuts, wood polish, and brandy vapour. It was so close to the main doors that she tried to wrench away, but it hurt too much.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Ayame said, still jolly. ‘Back you come.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Hello,’ said a cultured voice. ‘What’s this?’

  A gentleman was watching them. He was dressed in Western clothes, gorgeous ones, his hands sunk easily into his pockets and his shoulder against the wall. Even with Ayame’s fist clamped through her hair, Takiko thought he looked familiar: she’d seen him in the newspapers. He was one of those famous wealthy bachelors the society pages loved to gossip about. Southern-bronze, good looking, still young but not very.

  ‘Just a lazy girl, sir; don’t worry,’ Ayame smiled. Takiko tried to twist, but he clamped his hand tighter through her hair. She banged her elbow into his ribs and heard herself make a stupid helpless squeaking noise when he twisted her arm up too high behind her back.

  Nobody except the gentleman was paying any attention. The bar was full of more men in lovely clothes, and there were two geisha with them – real, expensive, older geisha. A few people glanced over, but no one showed any more interest than that. Ayame pulled her back towards the stairs.

  ‘Wait. Miss – it is you,’ the gentleman said suddenly, as if they knew each other and he was delighted to see her again. ‘I haven’t seen you for years! You wouldn’t mind letting me borrow her?’ he said to Ayame. ‘I’m sure you can find someone else to do whatever she does.’

  Takiko thought Ayame would say no, but the gentleman was watching him hard and suddenly the air was heavier than before. Ayame knew that if he annoyed the scion of a noble house it would stop people like Kuroda coming here. Any chance of royal patronage would be snuffed out. That was very definite. But he didn’t know for sure that Takiko meant to report anyone.

  Ayame let go of her hair. The gentleman inclined his head to ask Ayame why he was still here. Ayame vanished back into the corridor.Takiko couldn’t believe it at first. Then her mother’s voice pointed out that things which were too good to be true generally weren’t. She turned slowly back to the gentleman and wondered what he expected, in return for rescue.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the gentleman. ‘I’ve seen you in the paper; you’re the actress, aren’t you?’

  Takiko rubbed the back of her head. Her scalp hurt. ‘How do you know that? I’ve barely been on stage.’

  ‘They all seem to think it’s very edgy and exciting to have a woman on the stage at all.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes. I’ve seen you in the paper as well, but I don’t think I … yeah. Listen, I didn’t mean to have to be rescued like a little twerp; you don’t have to calm me down or make friends. I’ll let you get on.’ She started to edge away.

  ‘I can see that, but I only did it so you could rescue me. Kuroda’s going to spend this whole thing yelling in my ear unless I find someone else to sit with.’ He looked awkward. ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘I’m not a prostitute,’ she half snapped.

  ‘I know,’ he said. He bowed, just as low as he would have to a lady of his own rank. It made her hesitate. It wasn’t how men behaved when they expected things. ‘I’m Keita Mori.’

  ‘Takiko,’ she said, and paused, because she knew he was only going to say pardon when she said Pepperharrow, and she didn’t want to explain to yet another person that actually she was a bit foreign but yes she did talk properly thanks, and yes, that was probably why she was ugly. ‘Pepperharrow.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Miss Pepperharrow,’ he said, and didn’t even stumble over the pronunciation. He had a British accent in English. ‘Would you…?’She meant to say no, and get out, but he looked nearly as helpless as she must have a minute ago. ‘All right.’

  Takiko tried to stay sceptical, because there must be another shoe about to drop.

  She always remembered how he’d seemed on that first afternoon, sitting in the auditorium in a sunbeam. It was a strange quality, but Mori distinctly didn’t belong in a place with steam engines. If you had taken away his modern clothes and put him in courtly black, he could have come straight from the council at the old palace in Kyoto – the sort of man you might have found, once, on one of the fabulous gilded bridges with their vaulted roofs, and who the ladies watched in the mirror water while they pretended to look at a convenient heron.

  ‘I’ve never seen you here before,’ she said. He was even giving her a good amount of space, sitting fully an arm’s length away. ‘Are you a fan of kabuki?’

  ‘I hate kabuki,’ he confessed. He looked guilty about admitting it, but not confident enough in his own ability to lie to say anything else. ‘The dances always look a lot like a cat trying to wrestle a sock puppet; I’ve never really understood. But this is what Countess Kuroda wanted to do, so, here we are.’ He paused. Two rows down from them, Count Kuroda was still talking hopefully about the sumo. ‘What was all that, by the way? With that man before.’

  ‘He’s the theatre master,’ she explained. ‘We don’t have a licence to perform this play, and he doesn’t like me, so he gave me the title role. I think he wants to report me to the censor’s office and have me disbarred from the Guild. That would mean a lifetime acting ban. So I thought I’d duck out, then go to the censor’s office myself and get him disbarred.’

  Mori laughed. ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘And then I thought I’d threaten to disbar all of them unless they make me a gift of a controlling share in the company.’ She pressed on the sore place on the back of her head again. ‘I’ve lost patience with sewing.’

  He thought about it. ‘How are you going to stop them all beating you up behind the bins?’

  ‘If they do that, I’ll shut the theatre.’

  He smiled again. There wasn’t even a flicker of disapproval in him. He glanced towards the stage a few seconds before the announcer arrived.

  ‘I’m afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s been a last-minute change of casting—’

  ‘Get the fuck on with it!’ Kuroda called. He had a klaxon voice. Beside him, his beautiful wife winced. Takiko recognised them both from the papers. They were ten times more vivid in real life. The Countess was wearing a green dress that was probably worth about what Takiko earned in fifteen years.

  ‘—but the performance will begin in a very few minutes!’ the announcer said hysterically.

  ‘Believe it when I see it, mate!’ Kuroda shouted.

  Mori had bought some candied nuts for them to share
. Takiko threw a walnut at Kuroda’s head. ‘Hey. You. Be quiet. They’re doing their best.’

  Kuroda swung round and started to say something, but then he saw Mori, who was laughing, and started laughing too. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She had a stupid suffusion of belonging and tried to squash it down. If you let yourself believe you belonged with people like this, you drowned, because they were sirens and they breathed another element. Mori must have noticed she’d stopped smiling too quickly, because he was watching her. She had to look away. There was too much song in his eyes.

  That evening, after she had watched the suited men from the censor’s office serve up an official Guild revocation of Ayame’s name, Mori bought her a bottle of champagne. Kuroda came along too, and the Countess, and all their brightly coloured friends. Kuroda shook up the bottle so that the bubbles poured everywhere. Mori touched their glasses together with a quiet low cheers. Kuroda whooped. He had, far from disapproving when Mori explained what she’d done, thought it was funny.

  ‘To Kali the Destroyer!’

  She laughed, embarrassed and happy at the same time, and lonely despite it all. That was the trouble with the floating world that artists and geisha and actors made. You sat on a raft on clear water, snatching glimpses of a life that wasn’t yours. There was a sort of grace you had to learn, one that let you see it all and dive down for a few minutes, but then come back up and watch the tide go out without feeling resentful. She wasn’t very good at it.

  In fact Mori came back every Saturday, with all his friends. Then more wealthy people followed, and then, one day, the princesses. Partly because she loved it and partly because she was scared of getting above herself now she had money, Takiko still lived in the little room in the playhouse attic, but it wasn’t a place where you could make tea for a princess. With an unhappy, dragging reluctance, she started to look for houses. She could buy one outright. She ought to have been ecstatic – she could hear her mother’s voice saying so – but she didn’t want to go. The attic was never quiet, voices always filtered up, and sometimes someone hurried in to ask about costumes or switching roles, and it meant there was never the awful, dead silence that would hang over a detached house with a fine garden somewhere proper. She was lonely enough as it was, among all the reassuring theatre sounds. She’d go mad without them. She said as much one evening to Mori, who didn’t care where he drank his tea as long as it was warm. He was sitting in front of her tiny stove, his back propped against a broken mannequin.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get someone to buy the east wing at Yoruji. I don’t need all the space and it bloody echoes.’

  ‘You can’t break up that lovely house.’

  ‘I can, I’m spiting the Duke. He wants me to marry some Shirakawa idiot for the family.’ He cut his eyes away, annoyed. She’d never worked out how his family worked, but as far as she could tell, samurai houses were more like big companies than normal families. They had employees and board members and directors. The Duke of Choshu was the director of House Mori. She had no idea what Keita was. Something high up, but still answerable to the Duke, sometimes in vague, obscure ways to do with property deeds and taxation, sometimes in sharp, specific ones. Like marriage. ‘If he doesn’t back off I’ll chop it into holiday apartments for American tourists.’

  He didn’t ask if she would take it. Instead he poured them both some more tea and wondered aloud if it was giving in to actual robbery to pay the half yen at the bar downstairs for two biscuits.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said. She swallowed, then ordered herself not to be such a bloody coward. ‘Do you want to get married as well? I can’t repay you for everything you’ve done, but I can save you from the Shirakawa idiot.’

  He lifted his eyes slowly. They were southern black mirrors. ‘That’s a lot, Pepper. You … the Duke would never give you full status in the family, he’d treat you like my mistress. It wouldn’t be an upward step for you, more of a side shuffle.’

  ‘I don’t want advancement, I want to help you. I wouldn’t have the theatre if you hadn’t come when you did; I wouldn’t have anything. I owe you this. I’d be honoured to fight off the Duke for you, if you’ll let me.’ She smiled, because he looked a fraction better persuaded at that, like she’d thought he might. He was among the youngest of that last generation of real samurai. Someone being kind to him was puzzling; someone who wanted to have a good fight was normal.

  He looked down, then smiled too. ‘Thank you.’

  ELEVEN

  Yokohama, 18th December 1888

  Beyond the red gate, the way to Yoruji zigzagged up through gardens and gingko groves. All the way up, the house appeared in odd disjointed sections. It had a small tower, like a real temple, and when Thaniel said so, Mori nodded; the place was a deconsecrated monastery. They passed tiny pockets of perfect gardens, all arranged around pools that shone red and yellow with the reflections of the trees, which bent over them curiously. Thaniel just made out a stone bridge. All the pools steamed.

  And then suddenly, there was a riot of jasmine. It was brilliant white after the autumn yellow of the gingkos, and there was so much of it that it looked unnatural, sprawling over the trees and eating other shrubs, and clawing right up the front of the house. The scent of it was a bit shocking, a wall of sweetness. Thaniel wanted to get away from it. The bone-white flowers, blooming and falling everywhere, looked waxy and false, like someone had drained them of all their real colour and pumped them full of formaldehyde to make them last.

  A full staff had come out to greet them.

  There were twenty at least, maids and stewards, and several serious men with plain suits and swords. Thaniel couldn’t take any of it in properly. He felt like he was trying to swallow a piece of glass.

  Married. Mori was married. But of course he bloody was. He was forty-four and he was from a major samurai house; it would have been a miracle if he’d managed not to be. And it was hardly a surprise that Mori hadn’t mentioned her. She was official, legal business. Mori had about as much reason to mention a wife as he did to mention property tax or the acreage of the estate. It had nothing whatever to do with Thaniel, and it was none of his business. He still felt like she’d taken a hammer to his ribs.

  He was damned if he was going to say a word about it. He came across as a whiny little prick enough of the time as it was.

  An expressionless steward in a plain black kimono said a very formal good afternoon and asked them to follow him into the house, up irregular flights of steps and around steep corners. Thaniel walked feeling more and more disjointed.

  Yoruji was an unsettling place.

  Parts of it were very old, the wood dark with decades of varnish, and parts had plainly just been rebuilt, still bright and smelling of cedar. No corner quite led in the direction it should have, and, because the winter sky was so dim, the lamps were lit. The corridors took you suddenly outside onto gravel paths, even onto stepping stones over pools with water so deep and pristine they shone an eerie turquoise, then plunged back into the gloom again. Occasionally there was an odd mismatched section of wall where there had used to be different doorways, wainscoted around now, but the lintels were still there. The house was hardly more than a shell; the walls were almost all paper and wood, not integral to the structure, and easy to take down and switch about.

  And even though the corridors were empty, he had a strong, weird feeling that they were being watched. He could feel eyes on him at every single turn, and all the time they were walking, he could have sworn that unseen people were always vanishing just around the next corner, a split second out of view. He shifted his shoulders. Stupid. It was just an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar logic. Mori had told him, on the journey, that Japanese buildings would feel strange at first.

  Everything smelled of jasmine.

  The steward took them to a wing that overlooked the sea and the lighthouse on its crooked rock. There were two neat rooms there side by side, with broad sliding doors that led outside. Thaniel c
ouldn’t see much beyond them but sky, but Six shot out.

  The steward managed, despite being completely proper, to emanate disapproval at the idea of having foreigners in the house. If they would kindly not cross about in the corridor too much after ten at night, he said, the ladies upstairs would be grateful to be spared the noise of the floor.

  ‘It is creaky, isn’t it,’ Thaniel said, to say something that wasn’t to do with Mrs Pepperharrow, or with that scritch over the back of his scalp that insisted there were people peering at them from inside the walls.

  The steward gave him an antarctic look. ‘Of course. It is a nightingale floor.’

  ‘Were you afraid he might get about the house unattended?’ Mori said, a laugh just under his voice.

  The steward bowed minutely. ‘I shall return shortly with the Baron’s clothes.’

  ‘I can just wear a jacket. Suzuki—’

  ‘I’m certain the foreign gentleman would enjoy taking a photograph of the Baron in proper attire with the Baroness’s clever new apparatus.’

  The Baroness. Thaniel tried to smile. ‘The foreign gentleman would enjoy that a great deal.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Suzuki. He glided away over the squeaking boards, making no effort whatever to seem gracious in victory. He looked surprisingly young when he passed into a sunbeam, but even so, he left behind an impression of dust.

  ‘He’s something,’ Thaniel said. English sounded savage after a break.

  Mori looked at him hard. ‘You are a traitor, and if you take a photograph of me, I will make you eat it.’

  ‘Kimono are nice,’ Thaniel protested. He wanted to say, does everyone call her the Baroness.

  ‘Morris dancers’ costumes are nice,’ Mori said. He turned away to the other room. The dividing wall was only paper and there must have been a bright window on the far side, because Thaniel saw his shadow through the panes. It was hard to tell if it was actually Mori’s own room, or if Suzuki had expressed his disapproval of extraneous foreigners by abandoning him in a guest room. ‘This is why the Americans steam-roll us in treaty agreements; we all look like little dressed-up dolls. Imagine turning up to major international negotiations in ribbons and bells.’