by Meira Chand
‘We’ll make it, Casey.’ He said the words over and over again, willing them through him and out of his body into the swelling water.
‘Make it ... Casey ...’
They were under the open archway that led from the lounge to the entrance hall. He saw the stairs from the corner of his eye.
‘Casey ... Casey ...’ He willed the words again.
The floor was under him, and then the stairs. He pulled Akiko after him from the water. They lay like drowned rats on the steps. Daniel’s body was heavy, and inert, but his head smarted with relief. It was over. He had done it. Done it.
‘Casey,’ he said, and touched the girl beside him.
From upstairs he heard, far away, the frightened crying of the children. And the faint note through it all of Hiroshi’s voice repeating insistently.
‘Toshio’s wet himself.’
9
At the moment he saw the surge descending, Arthur Wilcox retreated quickly some way up the stairs. His heart jumped about like a stone in his chest. In the candlelight he saw a great mountain of foam hit the window, and within it the prow of the boat, driving down upon the house. Then the night split upon an immense noise as the glass was blasted to smithereens in a savage spasm of water. Huge and dark, the prow of the boat drove into the lounge flinging Kyo from the piano like a pile of matchsticks. He heard her scream. Her limbs thrashed about in the torrent, disappearing, thrown upwards, and disappearing again. Water swirled up about Arthur. He grabbed the banisters, the room was suddenly dark, the sea gushed about him, he smelled its strong rank smell. Flashing his torch about he strained his eyes into the turmoil before him.
‘Kyo.’ The word tore out of him.
Kyo. It burst in him, dissolving time. At that moment in a single image he saw his life, in the calcified smile of Maud Bingham’s old teeth suspended, inane and futile, in a glass beside her bed.
Kyo.
He plunged in. The water hit him, cold and angry, full of yeasty curdle. He struck out firmly, and found the water easing, the great wave over, the spume settling like scum upon the swelling surface. He made out in the darkness Daniel, swimming, dragging with him the girl, Akiko.
‘Kyo.’ He spluttered the word into the water. She did not answer, just floated there before him. In the darkness he made out only the pale aqueous form of her face. He clutched at her, pulling her to him. His hands felt the coarse strands of her wet hair. Holding her firmly he started swimming slowly back towards the stairs. The water pushed against him buoyantly. Someone was shining a torch; a point of light danced about him. He saw a crystallised plum on a paper plate float past on a sudden swell. Cigarette butts and chocolate wrappers, cream crackers and a beer can rose on the murky tide. Arthur pushed it all aside. He could feel the floor beneath him now; he stood up and dragged Kyo from the water. Nate Cooper put down his torch and helped pull her onto the safety of the stairs.
‘Oh God,’ said Nate. He bent to shake Daniel and Akiko, slumped on the steps above them. ‘You kids okay?’
‘There’s a boat in your lounge. It rammed the glass in that surge,’ said Arthur, kneeling to Kyo.
‘God,’ Nate Cooper repeated.
Akiko opened her eyes. Against her was the hard awkward shape of the stairs, cutting under her neck. Her head ached and thumped, and she felt nauseous. In the dimness she saw Daniel’s head beside her. He stirred as she watched and raised his face, his hair sodden and dripping over his brow.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. She nodded, and tried to sit up. Her head swam.
‘We had quite a ducking there. Thank God I got hold of you.’ He put out a hand and gripped her wrist. ‘I’ll never let you escape me, you’ll see.’
There was torchlight from above, and behind it appeared Eva, Dennis and Hartley, all relieved at the sight of the group on the stairs.
‘Thank the Lord. I hardly dare come and look.’ Eva sat down on a step and bending put her arms about the wet Akiko.
‘Are you all right? We were all terrified.’
‘We’ve got a boat in the lounge,’ Nate shouted up to Dennis and Hartley.
‘The eye of the fleet, no doubt,’ joked Dennis. Nate gave a half-hearted laugh.
‘What happened up there? Gerry and the kids okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Your windows stood up to it all. Nothing broke. We just had a scare. What a scare. Those poor kids are terrified, they’ll never get over tonight. And Annette’s a goner. She’s worse than the kids,’ Hartley told them.
Nate Cooper picked up the torch Arthur Wilcox had placed upon a stair and swung it about the wet tatters of his home. The sound of the flood made soft lapping noises about the clumps of stoic furniture that awaited fate in silent dignity, like overstuffed matrons, straight-faced through a risque joke. A few paper plates, left by the orphans upon the table, now floated as the pale flat leaves of lotus would upon a night-time lake. Nate Cooper groaned to himself again.
‘Dr Kraig,’ Arthur called out in an anxious voice. He had Kyo laid out flat on her stomach across an extra wide step of the stairs. Eva came down to him.
‘I’ve been trying to give her some artificial respiration, but there is no response. She went under the water, and as you can see, cut her head too,’ Arthur said worriedly. Eva bent down to Kyo, turning her over, picking up a limp wet hand.
‘She’s dead,’ she whispered. ‘Quite dead.’
The words broke in Akiko, filling her mind. The feeling swelled and bloomed and burst, pushing for release. She began to sob, great scoops of sound leaving her in an obsessive rhythm, unstoppable. And each sound was a rent in the past.
Akiko, sometimes I like to hope you think of me. She hacked it to bits with her cries.
Mother. Mother. The word was stretched tighter than skin on a drum. It shattered within her to fragments.
The black watery grave of the house, the grey dim ceilings and stairs above, the brown murky sea below; all pressed up in a dark passage through her. It was the night, it was the past, and all the future still held and had lost. Her body trembled with some terrible, shapeless thing that was neither hatred nor love.
‘Mother.’ She sobbed it out at last, staring down at the silent form on the steps below, staring at her mother. Kyo’s hand lay, palm upwards on the wet carpet, her fingers cupped in an empty shape.
‘Mother.’ And again and again. Cutting it loose from her flesh.
Then Daniel was there, shaking her gently. ‘Akiko.’
Her tears were free and easy now.
‘It’s over.’ Daniel turned her away.
10
She did not open the door immediately. She had lain down on the bed in the room for a rest, for all the activities had tired her out. Maud Bingham sat up and rubbed her eyes, feeling much better. The candle still burned on the chest of drawers, where she had placed it when she came in. Slowly she got off the bed, and her mind was at once full of it all again. They had no idea where she was. She remembered Geraldine’s voice again, calling desperately. Mother ... Mother... Maud Bingham giggled. There did not seem as much noise now outside, the wind appeared to have abated. In the room the candle flickered and gleamed on mahogany gloss.
‘Horace,’ she said, for she thought she saw him standing there, but when she looked there was nothing. Just the curve of the old whatnot that had once belonged to her mother. She had given it to Geraldine as a wedding present. Horace had been most upset at the pale silhouette left on the wall after it went. He insisted they redecorate immediately.
And she remembered then. Of course, Horace would be in the garden, pruning the roses. She hobbled to the glass door that led onto the balcony, and pushed her frail weight against it. Outside the wind was cool and blew hard upon her. It ripped the hat from her head immediately and sent it spinning into the air, spinning and spinning.
The balcony was long and appeared to stretch around the house. She took a step forward, hesitant in the dark, and trod on the skirt of her dress. It pulled off her shoulders a
gain, rain slapped lightly about her face.
‘A little rain will be good for the roses, Horace.’ She held onto the rail of the balcony. The fur ruffled at her neck, its hair blew into her mouth.
‘Horace.’ She pulled herself along the balcony. Her mind was a honeycomb in which thoughts and pictures buzzed in and out like a swarm of bees. She stopped, holding her head between her hands, for suddenly it ached and rang with confusion. She could not remember why she stood here, why she must deceive them, and who were they. Why was Horace not here beside her? Why must he prune roses in the dark, and where was she anyway? There was a lake below the balcony, stretching out as far as she could see, without beginning or end. Like the great lake Biwa near Kyoto, where she and Horace had sometimes stayed. She remembered the large wood-beamed hotel, and tea on the lawns at the edge of the lake. Horace had always enjoyed the boating. She recalled him helping her into a boat from the landing stage near the lawn.
‘Horace.’ For she saw him at last. There again on the lake in the boat. She leaned over the balcony and she could see him quite clearly below, smiling, stretching his arm up to help her down.
She leaned further out to grasp his hand. She must reach it, she must get to him. Then the buzzing in her head would stop. And there was this feeling that she must get away, must get to Horace, where no one could touch her. Only there would she be entirely free.
‘Horace. Horace.’ She felt the touch of his fingertips.
But she was falling. Falling. The wind rushed about her, blowing the musty old fox into her mouth again.
‘Horace. Horace.’
But it did not matter, for she knew he would catch her. Already she saw him open his arms.
‘Horace.’
11
In Nate Cooper’s hidy-hole the bodies of sleeping children covered the floor. The adults sat about, some dozing fitfully, others unable to sleep shifted positions restlessly, or talked quietly together. The candles had burnt to stumps but still filled the room with a warm light, the walls moved with shadows. The flames of the candles reflected small bright eyes on the glass sunroof but the blinds were drawn at the windows, the night was shut away. They had all relaxed, the typhoon was dying. Outside the wind was a low and melancholy sound, moaning its own sudden death. The storm had passed. In the Coopers’ hidy-hole they waited for the morning.
In their bedroom on the floor below, Geraldine Cooper sobbed and sobbed.
‘Mother. Mother. Oh Nate. Poor Mother.’
‘I know, honey. I know.’ Nate Cooper comforted her as best he could. ‘We’ll find her in the morning, honey. There is no way we can dredge downstairs now. No way.’
In his mind he began the task of totting up the expense of all the damage. He would have liked to get out his calculator. But he decided it might be best to wait until Geraldine stopped her sobbing. It could not be long.
12. Saturday
They found Maud Bingham in the morning, face down in the slushy remains of the flood. With the turn of the tide the sea retreated, leaving behind ankle-deep watery mud. People emerged and were seen in rubber boots, inspecting the state of their properties. Large patches of sea were still trapped upon land and lay like pieces of jigsaw, brimming with the sky. Within them the passage of clouds was recorded. The day was washed and cool, its colours sharp and damp and delicate, restored anew.
In the Coopers’ garden the lawn was still water-logged behind the broken wall. The bulk of a large green and white boat was wedged half in and half out of a patio window. Its splintered keel was encrusted with barnacles, its hatch smashed against the top of the window, a fishing net trailing over its side. In the bedraggled, swampy lounge its bows rode high upon the grand piano, a dark and grotesque intrusion.
Maud Bingham lay outside on the lawn, in a foot of gravy-coloured water, her body sodden with mud. The red velvet gown and below it her nightdress made an emulsified blanket about her. The fox at her neck was a slimy rope. A hat of black satin taffeta was retrieved floating near the wall. But under the mud caking Maud Bingham’s skin there appeared to be a gentle smile. They carried her to the porch.
‘Oh Mother ... Poor Mother.’ Geraldine Cooper fell on her knees and took her mother’s head upon her lap, rocking it there like a child. Standing near her Nate Cooper observed the filthy gown, the fox, and the hat placed beside Maud Bingham.
‘Don’t grieve so, honey. It had to be some time. Looks to me like the old girl deceived us all and took off in a grand old fling. I reckon she went as she wanted to.’ Nate Cooper spoke with an air of detachment to the serenity of the morning.
‘Oh, you unfeeling man. How can you say such things?’ Geraldine glared with reddened eyes, and looked back in distress at her mother and the remains of the centenary dress.
But already her mind was absorbing the shock and extending itself to rituals. The hat had been her black funeral hat. A replacement would have to be quickly bought. The dress, though, was an irreplaceable loss, and it was doubtful if it would dry clean. But if it did not, thought Geraldine, there should be no problem in taking a pattern to make a replica of the gown. And then pulled herself up sharply, shocked to find such thoughts in her mind before her mother’s body. Tears filled her eyes again.
From the window of the bedroom Eva watched the ambulance draw up at the gates. It had come for Sister Elaine; she turned to the bed and smiled. Early that morning the police had been out scouring the neighbourhood, assessing the damage. They found the wreck of the orphanage and worried, came looking for Eva and the children. They soon found them at the Coopers’, and sent a man back to the main police station in Kobe to send word to the orphanage in Osaka, and to the hospital for Sister Elaine. The ambulance had not taken long to arrive. The policeman returned with a message that the orphanage bus had left from Osaka, to take the children back there.
‘The ambulance is here. Now you’ll soon feel more comfortable. Later today, when I get to Osaka, I intend to speak to the Mother Superior. I shall suggest a long holiday to convalesce. You should return for a while to Ireland, I think.’
‘But not for too long,’ urged Sister Elaine. ‘I do want to be back for the Christmas events. I have decided to make a new Christmas manger with the children.’
‘I doubt if we shall be in our own home this year. The damage is terrible. There was a landslide too, a great sea of mud was washed into the house, and more trees came down. What a narrow escape we had. The damage sounds much too bad to go back. No, I should think they will hurry through the last phases of the plans and start instead with the new building. In the meanwhile we shall have to move to Osaka. A bus is already on its way for us all from there,’ Eva told Sister Elaine.
‘It has been the most terrible night. And yet not without great purpose for me. The ways of the Lord are indeed strange. But I shall be all right now, Dr Kraig, I know it.’ Sister Elaine sighed peacefully.
Two men with a stretcher entered the room, behind them Jiro and Kenichi and several other children. They were still dressed in Geraldine’s bright sweaters and crowded round the bed.
‘Mrs Cooper gave us paper and pencils. We made you get well cards to take to the hospital.’ Kenichi pushed himself forward to take charge of the proceedings.
‘There wasn’t enough paper for us all, so several of us made each card and signed it.’ He thrust the pile into her hands.
‘Well, if that wasn’t just what I needed to get me better,’ smiled Sister Elaine.
‘Will you be back soon?’ Jiro asked.
‘I really don’t know at this moment. But I shall try.’
‘We’ll write,’ Kenichi promised for them all. The others nodded behind him.
The men lifted Sister Elaine onto the stretcher and folded a blanket about her.
‘You can have my rabbit if you like.’ Kimiko held up the damp, bedraggled blue remains.
‘Thank you, but I’m sure he would not like the hospital. He’ll be happier with you.’ Sister Elaine waved from the door.
; The lounge was out of bounds, a marshy disaster. The children waited upstairs in the hidy-hole for the bus to arrive. A few of the older ones had been allowed down to the landing on the floor below. There Annette Rouleau sat huddled on the orange sofa, her make-up smeared and worn, her expression exhausted. At the sight of the children she drew back sullenly and stared without a word, puffing in short stabs on her last black Russian cigarette. The children settled on the last step of the landing and watched her silently.
‘Do you feel better?’ Mariko asked politely.
‘Have your stomach pains gone?’ said Yumiko.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Annette answered icily and immediately looked away, ignoring them. Mariko and Yuniko exchanged a glance under raised eyebrows. They shrugged and began to make comments about the past night. Annette drummed her fingers impatiently, waiting for the orphanage bus that would drop her, Dennis and Hartley back in Kobe on the way to Osaka. Hartley’s parked car was a battered and waterlogged wreck.
In the hidy-hole Yoshiko Mori and Eiko Kubo attempted to keep the smaller girls and boys occupied. Eiko’s cheeks were still a healthy red, undisturbed by the night, but Yoshiko was drained and white. Eiko looked at her worriedly.
‘Why don’t you sit down, I can manage here.’
‘No, no. I’m quite all right,’ Yoshiko answered.
‘I can manage very well without you. I don’t need you here,’ Eiko replied.
‘Well, really ...’ Yoshiko said, affronted.
‘I mean ... I only meant ... I’m worried about you, that’s all,’ Eiko said hastily, flustered.