The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  At last, after a pause in which they stared unwinkingly at one another (Mary dreamily, and Yasuhiro with haughty reluctance) she said: ‘The only place’ – and the words came in a rush, because she felt they implied a judgement of him – ‘that you . . . could stand – would like – is the hotel in the station. In Liverpool Street station. But it’s expensive,’ she ended, remembering the solemn reference to Prices which Mrs Levy had uttered when concluding her detailed recommendation of the Great Eastern as a hotel in which a successful career-woman (such as Mary might one day become) could with safety dine alone at the age of, say, fifty-six.

  ‘Ah,’ said Yasuhiro. ‘No good. I spent all my pounds.’ He held up the flowers and smiled. ‘Hotels, if good, are expensive.’

  That was the instant when Mary’s heart went through the motion known as turning over. Oh, proud eyes and shining young teeth, and delicate face all laughter-creases and small-boy sweetness! Good grief, I’m done for, she thought, staring helplessly.

  ‘Oh . . . well, there’s the Canton, that’s Chinese, a little way down the street,’ she muttered; ‘that’s quite clean.’

  ‘I don’t like places to be “quite”,’ said Yasuhiro. ‘I like clean, clean.’ He sounded disdainful and moved the flowers again, to the other side of his chest. ‘And not Chinese.’

  ‘I meant, clean enough.’ Mary was beginning to recover her composure. ‘I don’t know . . . how clean you like places to be.’

  ‘Perfect clean.’

  ‘Well, the Canton certainly isn’t perfectly clean. But it’s . . . clean enough for me. I’ve been there.’ She smiled politely; with an effort, for she felt too peculiar to want to smile.

  His eyes seemed to be searching – her face, her hair, the blue overall she wore over her dress . . . Looking to see if I’m clean? she wondered, and colour came into her face. She looked down suddenly.

  ‘Thank you. I go there.’ He smiled again, socially this time, not so sweetly; turned, and, with his armload of flowers, was gone.

  The heavy way that Mary sat down on Mrs Levy’s chair could fairly be called collapsing.

  She sat, staring out into the busy sunlit street where he had disappeared; and though, for the remainder of a dream-like afternoon, habit kept her working mechanically, she never ceased going over, again and again, every word that they had exchanged. Their remarks had been ordinary, but had sounded peculiar, as if both had been thinking about other things while uttering them (but then, of course, he had been using a foreign language).

  She turned her head restlessly; she could see his eyes as clearly as she could see that scarf on the counter; and she continued to dream, in a kind of sweet unhappiness mingled with her usual common sense: I ought to have got straight up and followed him. Offered to show him the way to the Canton. Don’t be crazy. What’s the matter with you? A boy you’ve seen once, for five minutes?

  Four days later, she was ‘no better’, as she described her state to herself. She was haunted all day and most of the night by his face.

  She was beginning to wonder if she ought to see a . . . a psychiatrist or a doctor or something . . . only fancy telling anyone! . . . when Mr Grant, encountering her one morning in the hall, beckoned her along the passage that led into his little conservatory.

  ‘Just wanted you to see these,’ he began modestly, indicating a dozen white hyacinths, each more than a foot tall and shining in the warm earth-scented air like strangely shaped moons native to some remote planet. ‘Nice, eh?’

  ‘Beautiful, Mr Grant,’ Mary said dreamily. Her thoughts, straying and uncontrollable since four days ago, wandered on to Sylvie’s observation that Mr Grant was arter her. It seemed twenty years since Sylvie had said that, or that she had thought of Sylvie.

  ‘And I thought I’d have a word with you,’ Mr Grant went on, ‘about the new lodger. Came last night. Rather unusual, he is. Some kind of a foreigner. Japanese, I’d say.’

  Mary felt faint.

  ‘Now there’s no need to be upset,’ Mr Grant soothed. ‘You’re thinking about the war . . .’

  Mary was not thinking about the war.

  ‘Is . . . he . . . nice?’ she asked, just audibly.

  ‘I wouldn’t say “nice” – not that I mean he seems unpleasant in any way, Mary – but . . . proud, I’d say, if you was to ask me. (Stuck-up, Mrs Cadman will have it.) Knows his own value – or thinks he does. Not one of your slap on the back all friends together sort – and very well dressed.’

  ‘Not . . . not in . . . in native costume, of course?’ That was utterly crazy, of course.

  ‘Oh no, a long grey overcoat. Quite Western-style. Cost a packet, I bet,’ said Mr Grant. ‘Came here Monday evening – just after you got in, it was. Had we got a clean room to let? Well, Mrs Cadman wasn’t too pleased about “clean”. But there was young Sylvia’s, just decorated, and going begging. Mrs Cadman did ask for references; he came out with it at once. “You can write to the Japanese Embassy,” he says, and writes out the address (I checked that in the phone book and it was all fair and above board). Mrs C. wrote off straight away; and yesterday morning, second post, express, if you please, comes a letter from some bloke with a name a yard long. Oh yes, Mr Tasu belonged to a family well known to the Embassy and they could swear for him – vouch, it said – funny word. I have heard it, but never seen it written before. So he moved in last night. Paid a month in advance. Insisted on it. Very polite, too, only not friendly. Quite young. Early twenties, I’d say. Here to learn English.’ Mr Grant shook his head. ‘But we’ll have to see how it goes. Pearl Harbor. You just never know.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me, Mr Grant.’ Mary spoke steadily. ‘The hyacinths are lovely.’

  And she ran upstairs and locked her door and sat down on her bed and began to laugh. She shook her hair over her eyes and rocked with delicious laughter.

  Last night, she thought, while I was lying awake seeing his face, he was downstairs in Sylvie’s room. He followed me.

  He had followed her.

  *

  That afternoon, Mrs Levy had to rebuke her assistant for dreaminess and customer-ignoring. And when two Korean tourists came in, Mary deeply blushed.

  ‘Your face went red, Mary,’ said Mrs Levy severely, when the girls had wandered out without buying. ‘Vy? I know, I know. You remember the atomic bomb and you feel it all your fault. All students and young people the same. Such nonsense. And this is bad for tourism. They don’t like it.’

  ‘It wasn’t the atomic bomb. I never think about it,’ Mary stammered, coming out of her dream.

  ‘The Japanese a very go-ahead people – “going places”, as ve say. And vy you didn’t say “Good afternoon, can I help you?” in Japanese? I vos vaiting.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Levy – I forgot. But they weren’t –’ Mary actually swallowed ‘– Japanese – I don’t think so, anyway.’

  ‘Of course Japanese. Mary! Your face gone red again! Vot the matter with you this afternoon?’

  Mary went back into her dream world, pursued by Hamburg in the ’20s and all the other scenes and characters of Mrs Levy’s set pieces, including the unfortunate Gretl Tuber.

  So numerous and varied had been Gretl’s misfortunes that Mary had once followed the account of a peculiarly distressing event by asking: ‘Did she die?’

  ‘Die!’ Mrs Levy had exclaimed indignantly. ‘Of course not. She is dead now, because if she still alive she ninety-seven. But die! Of course she did not die. She do very well. Marry a rich man. This very morning I haf a letter from her granddaughter. Has a lofely home in Brighton.’

  Mary travelled back to Parliament Hill Fields longing, yet fearing, to see him. As she approached number 20 through the dusk, her eyes seemed to be running ahead of her to see if a light shone in Sylvie’s room.

  Oh! She nearly stopped, but compelled herself to walk slowly on to the gate.

  The curtains were not drawn. The room was lit through a large, pearl-coloured shade; there was an unfamiliar glow everywhere f
rom what seemed hundreds of flowers, and at the table he sat, in white shirt and jeans, chin supported in his palms, reading.

  It took the strongest effort of will Mary had ever made in her life not to linger.

  She made herself walk briskly up the steps and feel for her key. An instinct – deep, and very strong, and not easy to name – directed her not to hang round mooning.

  19

  Coffee

  ‘Good evening.’

  He stood still, not pushing the gate open, just standing, and looking down at her. He was some six inches higher than she was. His expression was impassive – without the intent, dreaming stare of that first time.

  ‘We . . . meet . . . before. In that shop where the dresses are,’ he went on.

  ‘Yes.’

  Mary’s voice was calm but it was almost a whisper. She noticed the alien accent, the strange faint indrawn breath on certain words. She swallowed.

  ‘You had – a lot of flowers.’

  ‘Oh yes. I like flowers.’ She saw the faintest nervous movement in his neck as he too swallowed . . . and suddenly she wanted to catch at his arm and give it a little friendly swing. After all, he wouldn’t have come to live here unless . . .

  ‘Come, go,’ he said quickly. ‘Must not stand in the snow,’ and he opened the gate and ran up the steps ahead of her. ‘Bad, rain, snow . . .’ he called without turning round.

  Mary went up after him, thinking manners, and so dazed that she did not look where she was going. She slipped. But before she could fall, an arm, feeling more like a steel band than an arm, shot out and gripped her and steadied her.

  ‘You don’t fall,’ said Yasuhiro, smiling. ‘I – save you.’ The arm shot away again.

  ‘Thanks . . . I’ll just . . . get my key.’

  She was trying to keep her common sense. But I don’t know a thing about him was her distracted thought as she felt in her purse. The dream-prince of jet and ivory had faded; and her strongest wish was to run away and hide. I bet the Embassy doesn’t know what he’s like at home, she thought.

  Her hand was shaking, and she had difficulty in inserting the key. In a moment he said: ‘You would like I help you? Take my key!’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Mary said, rather surlily as the door opened.

  They went in side by side, though she had a distinct impression of his starting to push ahead of her and then falling back. She turned to go upstairs – and he was looking at her.

  ‘Cheerio,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Sayonara,’ he said, all smiling mockery, then turned and strode down to the basement.

  Mary went upstairs to her attic on shaking legs, saying to herself don’t be so dotty, don’t be so dotty.

  She sat on the bed, frowning, as she unlaced her boots. I liked it better when I could just look at him, she decided. He was smashing then.

  What was he now?

  Suddenly, she hurled a boot across the room. The thud was followed by a sharper, smaller sound: a knock on her door. She sat still – but her eyes slid round.

  ‘Yes – what do you want? Who is it?’ she called at last.

  ‘I am here. Yasuhiro Tasu,’ answered the alien voice.

  She got up slowly and went across the room and opened the door.

  He was standing there, straight and slim, with a quite different expression from the mocking one of ten minutes ago.

  ‘Will you,’ he began at once, ‘will you come to have – a-coffee-with-me? In my room?’

  Mary experienced a fortifying sense of being in command of the situation, this time.

  ‘Thanks. When I’ve had my supper,’ she said, and she did not smile because she did not feel like smiling. Nevertheless, smile or no smile, her acceptance came out before she could stop it. ‘In half an hour. OK?’

  ‘OK I have all ready,’ and he did smile, causing Mary’s fortifications to crumble.

  He ran downstairs, and she tried not to think that his smile indicated triumph.

  Usually, she enjoyed cooking her supper and took her time over it. This evening, she felt compelled to hurry, and had to decide what she should wear – not that she had much choice; but what’s the use anyway? she thought sulkily . . . whatever I turn up in, I bet he’s seen hundreds of girls who look smashing.

  But she did give her hair an extra brushing, so that when she presented herself, rather late, at his door, it was raying out around her face like a black silk cloud charged with electricity. She had also renewed the pink paint on her mouth. Her top was patterned with bright psychedelic colours that would have dimmed a personality far stronger than hers; her skirt was neither long nor short, and black.

  ‘You come. Good,’ exclaimed her host, flinging open the door in a manner suggesting that he had been standing just behind it. ‘Come. Go in.’

  Mary looked curiously round. ‘I say, it does look different!’ she said, anxious that no silences should fall. ‘I . . . I had a friend used to live here.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’ he snapped.

  Mary did not answer. ‘I say, it looks smashing . . . all the flowers. And you’ve got a new lampshade – three new lampshades,’ glancing up at the newly whitened ceiling. ‘Of course, it’s just been decorated. Doesn’t it make a difference!’

  ‘Boyfriend was sleep here?’ he repeated, still standing by the open door and scowling.

  Mary liked this.

  ‘No, a girl,’ she replied demurely.

  ‘Coffee.’ He pointed to the most beautiful cups, saucers and coffee pot she had ever seen, arranged on Mrs Cadman’s dreary little table. ‘Sit.’

  Mary giggled as she took one of the two armchairs.

  ‘Why do you laugh?’ he demanded, without looking up, as he began to fill the kettle behind a bamboo screen (and that’s new, Mary thought).

  She looked round – at the tulips and daffodils and irises, and the transformed room; and the black head that she could see behind the tracery of the screen. And suddenly she was full of enjoyment and mischief.

  ‘Because that’s what we say to dogs: sit, when we want them to be quiet.’

  He came out from behind the screen with a jar of instant coffee, and sank into a kneeling pose in front of the coffee cups – looking strikingly graceful as he poured the extract into the pot – then added boiling water, and lifted his eyes and looked at her. Extraordinary sensations went down her back.

  ‘You help me, please?’ He was standing with the coffee pot held before him.

  ‘To make the coffee, you mean? But –’

  ‘No. No.’ An impatient shake of the head. ‘To speak English. Will you help me.’ It was a statement rather than a request.

  ‘All right.’

  Mary’s tone was neither pleasant nor forthcoming. If that was all he wanted her for, to help him with his English . . . the enjoyment, the mischief, wavered, sank.

  ‘Thank you. I have no friend in England,’ he announced. ‘So thank you. You tell me when I make wrong.’

  ‘Speak wrongly,’ she muttered.

  He set down the coffee pot carefully and knelt beside Mary, leaning back on his heels.

  ‘I speak – no – act – behave too quick,’ he said, softening his voice into a kind of liquid, caressing coo. ‘I talk – speak you like a dog. I ask you help me. Too quick. Rude. Not Japanese. I am sorry.’ And he looked fully at her, and smiled.

  Spoken pleadingly, with the weight of a thousand years of tradition behind them, and by a speaker with such eyes and smile, Mary found the halting sentences irresistible. She also felt, because of his ignorance of English and his funny mistakes, as she would have felt towards a little boy whom she could pity and instruct.

  She was wrong. Yasuhiro was no little boy. But her illusion helped the moment to pass smoothly.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said quickly, crimsoning. ‘My name’s Mary Davis.’

  ‘Mahry.’ He pronounced it with a curious little lift, like an H in the word. ‘You like black, Mahry?’

  ‘No, white, please. Just a dro
p of cold’ll do.’

  He seemed to gather the meaning of the colloquial sentence, and in a moment a stout bottle of Gold Top was sharing the board with the exquisite cups and saucers; and having discovered that neither took sugar, Mary and Tasu were sitting before the little heater (drunk on North Sea gas) and Mary was wondering what to say next.

  ‘Mahry,’ he said at last, meditatively. ‘Hard to say, so hard for Japanese. So I don’t try to say Mahry. I do not want to be angry with your name. So I say “Mairly”. More easy for me. You like?’

  It’s funny, she thought, I’d almost sooner be upstairs thinking about him than be here with him.

  ‘Good,’ with the manner of one who has settled something. ‘Now I tell you . . . You know Mishima? Great Japanese samurai – hero.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ she said cheerfully. And neither did she hear much of Tasu’s impassioned account, being occupied with listening to the sound of his voice and dreamily thinking, over and over again, I do not want to be angry with your name.

  20

  At the Anstruthers’

  In a clear sloping hand, Mrs Wheeby wrote to Wilfred: She was very sorry to hear of the elder Mr Davis’s passing away, but Wilfred must remember that he had had a good long life and had been, so she had heard, quite a grandad to the children in his road. She and Cousin Fred would be pleased if Wilfred would come and spend the day with them when the weather was more settled. ‘Though I must confess,’ concluded Mrs Wheeby – in writing slightly shaky after covering nearly four pages – ‘well-warmed as I am in my new home, I do not mind the wind. In fact I like to picture it blowing across the sea.’

  And she was his affectionate friend, Edith M. Wheeby.

  Affectionate, eh? Good old Wheeby, thought Wilfred.

  Affectionate? Well, I suppose you might say I feel the same about her, and he put the letter into a folder.