The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  He was silent, looking down at the sheet of dark blue paper.

  ‘Is that all?’ Mary asked at last.

  ‘Not all. No. He says of course of course I should have my work before I marry. Is the custom. But I have no work. But then he says (it is not giri for us in Japan to express love so strongly, but he is so ancient, you know) he loves me so much, so very much, he forgive I have not yet chosen my work, and his wish is to see me marry next year.’

  There was another silence. Mary sat still, staring at the floor.

  The next thing she knew was that he had crossed the room and was standing beside her. She felt, rather than saw, his hand steal out from the great blue sleeve of his robe, and then she felt a tress of her hair lifted.

  ‘So beautiful,’ she heard, and the note in his voice was deep and singing. ‘Black like that stuff on ancient cooking sauce-pan.’

  ‘Oh Yasu . . .’ Mary choked, almost laughing, almost crying. ‘Soot, we call that.’

  ‘Sooot,’ he murmured, while his hand crept to the back of her neck and she felt the whole mass part, and fall like a veil on either side of her down-bent face. ‘Now I see most beautiful part of you. Behind of neck.’

  But this was too much for Torford and seventeen years of the culture of the West of Wonder. Mary began to shake hysterically.

  ‘You laugh, Mairly? You laugh when I tell you behind of your neck is so beautiful?’

  ‘No – no – of course it isn’t that – I’m glad, Yasu love . . . that is, I mean, it’s not the way to say it – the word’s wrong . . .’ She wiped her streaming eyes. ‘It’s back of neck . . . or nape, if you want to be really correct.’

  ‘Ah. Language difficulties once again.’ He looked at her consideringly. ‘You laugh but you cry also, Mairly. And I, too. You call me “love”.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she said steadily. ‘We often use it in England. It’s just friendly. I say it to people in the shop sometimes.’

  ‘Yes of course, of course.’ Yasuhiro’s eyes had their diamond sparkle. ‘Now we will go for a walk on that Heef, Mairly. It’s a good evening. Come, go.’

  ‘(Heath, Yasu. And nice evening.) All right – I’ll just get my coat – it’s cold.’

  ‘And I put on my jack-ette. Surprise for people to see ceremonial robe walking on Heef.’

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t it be.’

  She did not think, while flinging on her coat. She did not cover with a scarf the hair he had called ‘So beautiful’. She did not want to waste one second of the time that might be spent with him. That Japanese girl was thousands and thousands of miles away, at the other side of the world. But Mary Davis was going for a walk with him this minute, and by all the tribal traditions of Torford that gave Mary Davis the advantage.

  He was waiting for her in the hall, wearing a white shirt, jeans, and his expensive coat.

  ‘You know, Mairly,’ he said meditatively, as they went down the steps, ‘in Japan we don’t often say that word “love”.’

  No, thought Mary, I bet you don’t. She made a vague responsive sound. Then she said, feeling a desire to turn the conversation: ‘You know, Yasu, your English is good. I mean you do still have trouble with some sounds, but – your – you can express yourself.’

  ‘Ah. Can say what is in my heart.’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘Not all,’ he answered, with a return to gloom. ‘But I shall tell you, Mairly. In Tokyo are still some old houses. Beautiful. Poor places but beautiful. Little, small. In one of these houses lives Mr Richard Cumber-ledge, and he is a lush.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Drink too much saki. Also too much whiskey. American whiskey. Used to be a novel-ist in England, sixty, nearly seventy years gone, now, and was much admire. Says he was friend of many famous writers. Thomas Hardy. He is now old, old, almost ancient as Great-grandfather, but used to teach English at Tokyo University where I studied for my degree, but now has small little pupils to teach in one room – few? – yes, few.’

  ‘Oh, that’s where you were . . . I was wondering.’

  ‘Why you were wondering, Mairly? It is quite natural ordinary circumstance me being at Tokyo University.’

  ‘No. Oh dear. I meant: I thought “Where was Yasu at – which university was Yasu at?”’

  ‘Ah. Understand. Yes, I was there three years. But sent away.’ He smiled wickedly. ‘They did not like what the acts I do. With the Tate No Kai.’

  ‘That . . . Shield Society. Did you belong to it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Mairly. With all my human feelings and giri. And have my degree. Myself and three friends. The student-riots, and authorities consider Shield Society upset – disturb – angrify –’

  ‘Make them angry?’

  ‘Yes, yes, the Americans. So myself and friends sent away from university. But I have degree, so if I want to work in unworthy office, any firm in Japan please to have me. From Tokyo University, you see.’

  ‘You’re lucky, then,’ Mary said firmly, not approving of this smugness. ‘Lots of the girls at my school had brothers and boyfriends who got good degrees but can’t get jobs.’

  They were walking under trees already showing a shadowy fullness of buds. The air smelt of dead leaves and of spring.

  ‘I think perhaps Mr Cumber-ledge was not a friend of Thomas Hardy,’ Yasu said meditatively in a minute, ‘because once he said to me he was also friend of Oscar Wilde and sit with him in coffee bar called Royal. But Mr Cumber-ledge would have been small small boy when Oscar Wilde sitting in that bar. I learn from Mr Cumber-ledge many English idioms. “Those disgraceful dogs.” He often said about them . . . here is the Heef. Run, Mairly!’

  Side by side they raced off, across the grass towards the dark hill rising against the afterglow.

  Mary soon fell behind, panting, for Yasuhiro ran like a deer. She could just distinguish his smiling face through the twilight as she climbed breathlessly to the summit. He was holding out his hands to her.

  ‘I like to hear you say that word love to me, Mairly,’ he said, as her hands came up to meet his and he pulled her to his side. ‘I hope – yes, hope – that you will say it many times often.’

  23

  Ride in a hired car

  ‘You don’t quite understand, Mrs Cornforth, if you don’t mind me saying so. The fact is –’

  ‘Yes?’ Katherine said encouragingly. (Her voice kind of, well, woos you is the only way I can put it, thought Wilfred.) After a pause in which he did not reply she hurried on: ‘Oh I do understand, Mr Davis. I am good about people. I do know what makes them tick. Please let me have that – God knows it’s about all I have got, and even that I’m not allowed to use,’ she ended, sounding almost bitter.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything offensive or – or unkind, you know that. I only meant, well, I suppose most fathers aren’t downright afraid of their daughters, and I am afraid of Mary. Not that she’s ever done anything really wrong, you understand me, except that running away – that did shake me, I don’t mind telling you. Sometimes I think I’ll never get over it. With her mother not gone six months. But –’

  ‘That’s love,’ pronounced Katherine, ‘– being afraid.’

  She lent forward and lifted the heavy brass tongs and carefully fitted a fragment of coal into a red cave. ‘When one loves, one is afraid.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that’s so, Mrs Cornforth. But I can’t help feeling it oughtn’t to be.’

  ‘Oh!’ Katherine laughed. ‘If we get onto “oughts” we’ll be in deep water . . . not that I’d mind for once.’ She turned to him quickly, and he noticed how her eyes shone. ‘Does it ever strike you that life here is – well – just a bit dull?’ and she laughed again. ‘Shallow water, in fact?’

  Wilfred did not quite like her laughter.

  ‘Dull?’ he repeated, shocked into vehemence. ‘No it does not, Mrs Cornforth. Peace, perfect peace is what I’d call it, speaking frankly.’

  ‘And isn’t that a wee bit dull?’ she teased, leaning b
ack in her chair. ‘I’d like . . .’ she paused, and her eyes slid round at him while her lovely head remained motionless, her red-brown hair flowing in the sunlight like a nimbus, ‘a . . . challenge, now and then. Something to get my teeth into, in fact. But don’t mind me. I’m only being naughty. I was a tigress in one of my incarnations, I expect, and I miss the taste of blood.’

  He was silent. A blast of Torford’s east wind, coming across twenty miles from the icy sea, sprang at the drawing-room windows and rattled them.

  ‘I’ve often wondered about your fires, you know,’ he said next. ‘Aren’t we in a smokeless zone?’

  ‘Oh, Felicity and I leave all that kind of thing to Laf. So boring.’

  ‘But how does he – I mean, if we are in a smokeless zone?’

  ‘Laf’s all right, dear Mr Davis. Never worry about Laf. With his wit and his detachment and his charity and his cool, nothing’s likely to upset him – you keep your anxiety for that daughter of yours . . . trendy little girl, taking up with a Japanese!’

  He became aware that he was bathing in a gentle warmth that did not come from the fire, and that it was troubling, because with it went a sensation as if someone or something were murmuring within him: Beware! Don’t! Look out! He lifted his eyes and met the full gaze of Mrs Cornforth’s fixed upon his own. A slight smile curved her mouth.

  There had been silence for some time after her last mocking sentence, and now Wilfred felt how long that silence had been and how – the word sprang into his mind and bloomed there, like some brilliant flower – sweet. But always there was that voice murmuring No! Don’t! Beware!

  Katherine did not speak. It’s as if her eyes were kissing me, he thought, and the warning voice deepened and turned to an iron command: Look up, look beyond! He made his eyes leave hers, and let them be drawn to the windows whence poured down a brilliant, unmoving light. There, in the deep blue, towered one dazzling golden-white cloud – sculptured, impregnable.

  ‘Well,’ Katherine said, getting up gracefully, ‘I’m going to play the piano,’ and she made an indolent movement of her long arms. ‘Do try not to fuss, dear Mr Davis. Why the hell don’t you telephone your Mary?’

  A little later he heard the distant notes of the piano. Katherine playing Vivaldi rather badly on the whole, Mr Taverner called these sessions.

  Wilfred looked vaguely at the window. The great cloud had dissolved, the sky was full of flying shreds of grey, and the hard light and the east wind poured against the panes. The voice in his head or heart or spirit was silent now, but he thought: That was funny. Narrow escape. Don’t want to spoil things here . . . besides, at my age! And . . . I don’t really like her. Kindness itself, of course, but I don’t.

  It was a discovery.

  This was a Saturday afternoon. Silence, sweetened by the distant notes of the piano, was in the Yellow House. But Wilfred could almost feel the vigour of the awakening spring rushing through the streets beyond the clear panes and their faded curtains: the Torford Wanderers, splashed and scarlet-faced, were racing through the biting air across the churned mud of their home ground; the first tennis players of the season were gradually turning from bluish-white to a healthier pink in their scanty skirts or shorts; even a few bathers were wading out through the icy foam of the high tide whence that wind was coming. And lovers at every table, he thought, in all the coffee shops.

  I’ll go for a walk. See if the primroses are out in Fredaswood, he decided.

  Visitors to Torford interested in local history assumed, wrongly, that the wood on the hill had been a grove sacred to the goddess Freya. But the truth, though less interesting, was not unromantic. A merchant successful in groceries, who had bought the land in 1778, had given it to his daughter, who had died young in childbed.

  An hour later, Wilfred was walking, as briskly as the marshy ground would allow, along a grassy ride in this wood, between swaying saplings of birch and maple.

  He paused, and stooped. There were the primroses, pale greenish-yellow in their nest of crinkled leaves, sheltered from the wind by a low, mossy bank. He picked a small bunch and carefully wrapped their stems in a polythene bag brought for this purpose, to protect them from the warmth of his hand.

  With this, his enthusiasm for the walk declined; he began to feel chilly, and was relieved to see coming towards him, as he emerged onto the road, the bus that would have him in the town in twenty minutes. Good to feel the seat under him and the padded back supporting his shoulders.

  If I’d been alive two hundred years ago, I’d have been plodding through that wind on Shanks’s mare, he thought, watching the dazzling new green of the thorn hedges stream by; funny how when you think about the past you always assume you’d have been comfortable . . . most people were damned uncomfortable. But used to it, I suppose . . .

  He enjoyed his walk, in spite of the wind, arriving home in a double glow of warmed blood and approving conscience, and able to report to his friends on the state of the buds in Fredaswood, over the high tea to which he was invited in the kitchen.

  ‘The dripping toast is dead, long live Gentleman’s Relish,’ observed Mr Taverner, whose turn it was to deal with the bread. ‘Shall I mention cucumber? I shall not. The year goes on quite fast enough as it is. Katherine dear! That jar. Can’t we have the little grey one?’

  ‘Oh you are an old – I don’t know what you are, Laf. I like it. It’s the last thing poor Olivia made before she killed herself.’

  Katherine paused, with the primroses suspended above a black pottery jar of a shape deliberately irregular and aggressive; its handles were formed of the clay pinched out into two shapeless protuberances, and the base was adorned with a purplish-red blotch low down on one side.

  ‘Exactly. It looks like just that. Do put it away, love.’

  ‘Laf,’ Miss Dollette murmured.

  ‘The grey is better,’ Katherine muttered in her turn, opening the cupboard where the vases were kept. ‘You’re right – as usual. But she was my friend . . .’

  ‘Ha! The front door. Wilfred, will you go?’

  Wilfred had hardly heard the conversation, warmth and food after copious inhalation of icy air having produced drowsiness, and he went across the hall, past Kichijoten glowing in the late light, thinking of nothing at all.

  It was a shock to open the door to Mary.

  ‘Hullo, Dad.’ (How pale – and she looked older! And no suitcase!)

  ‘Hullo, love! Well, this is a pleasant surprise, on a cold Saturday evening. Come in, out of that awful old wind . . . everything all right?’ he could not keep himself from adding, as she followed him into the house.

  ‘Perfectly, thanks,’ she answered steadily, then put her arm round his neck and drew his face close and kissed him. Unhurriedly – as she had not kissed him for a long time – as if she were renewing something long-loved and familiar.

  ‘I just thought I’d like to see you,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you know it’s a treat for me, dear.’ Why had she glanced at the statue of Kichijoten, then looked away, with that sudden hardening of expression? ‘Had your tea?’

  ‘No. I left the shop at half past, as usual, and I was just crossing the road when I thought – “There’s that five-forty, I could be with Dad in just over the hour.” So I went straight over to the station, and here I am.’

  Her determined smile accompanying the words served as a greeting to the three sitting at the tea table. A place was unfussily made for her, with pleased words of welcome, and Wilfred reflected upon the advantages of living with people he thought of as belonging to a higher walk of life.

  The fact was particularly advantageous on occasions when there was concealed anxiety, or, as he now suspected, some kind of a crisis in a beloved life. The pleasant social tide swept over all secrets. It could not heal, but at least it made the moments easier. Even Mrs Wheeby would have thoroughly investigated Mary’s unexpected arrival and her reasons, while as for Sheila and Joan – the very air seemed picked bare as he imagined their c
ries and questions and comments.

  Only Mrs Cornforth’s shining eyes slid round mischievously from time to time to Mary’s face, and he liked her none the better for it. He was proud of Mary. She kept up a quiet but unfailing flow of the smallest of talk – the weather, London, her journey, her job; even a mildly amusing picture of Mrs Levy was presented, with a background of Hamburg. He had not suspected that his child could entertain an audience. But he did not know that both love and fancy had been aroused from their sleep by a Prince who was also a Poet.

  After tea, the others tactfully went about their own affairs, and he suggested to Mary that they should go up to his room.

  They settled themselves beside the fire, somewhat dimmed by the light of the setting sun, which streamed into the room. The peace rose softly about Wilfred, but could not surround him completely because of the expression in Mary’s eyes.

  ‘How’s business going, love?’ he asked at last, using a euphemism; his father had always said ‘work’.

  Mary roused herself from a silent staring into the fire. ‘Oh all right, I suppose.’ Pause. ‘I ought really to get something better paid, but I don’t know – she suits me and I like the work and –’ She broke off, looked down, and was silent again.

  How difficult it is to love – wisely and unselfishly to love! The thought passed vaguely through the father’s mind as he too gazed downwards. How difficult.

  ‘I can’t think how you manage at all, love – in London, on about seven pounds a week.’

  ‘Nearly eleven, Dad, with what you give me and what’s in my account. I don’t eat all I’d like to, that’s all.’

  ‘But that’s – awful, love!’ he exclaimed. ‘What your mother would have said I don’t know. Not eat enough! I thought you looked thinner.’

  ‘It’s always good to lose weight,’ she said austerely.

  ‘I could easily manage a bit more, you know.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Dad, thanks all the same. It’s easy managing if you just stay at home evenings.’

  The tone was quiet, but it was bitter, and it disturbed him.