The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  The next instant he was looking down at the top of a black, bowed head, as Yasuhiro knelt before him with hidden face.

  ‘Here – I say – get up – this won’t do, son!’

  But Yasuhiro was up before the embarrassed sentence had finished, colour in his own face.

  ‘Heart-thoughts go over me like Hokusai wave. Now I go, Mr Dad. Bye-bye. I shall now tell Mary.’

  A smile like the rising sun itself, and he was gone.

  *

  I lose face, Yasuhiro was thinking as, his telephone call made, he leant back in the car rushing towards London. I, a member, the last male member, of the family descended from a second cousin of the Divine Emperor in the reign of the first English Elizabeth (holy cow, what a name) knelt to a slightly-less-than-peasant minor official. It is fortunate that no one saw me or knows of the loss of face except the man himself.

  He stopped the car outside the gates of the Prince Charles Hospital, where flowers were being displayed to tempt visitors, and suggested to the vendors that they should sell him their entire stock and deliver it to Mr Davis in Hardy Crescent in return for fifteen pounds. The offer was refused with incredulity and demands to know who he thought he was. The chauffeur was smiling, and Yasuhiro resumed his journey, with the loss of face unrepaired.

  And yet, he thought, my heart sings like a bird set free.

  29

  Sylvie again

  Mary’s views on weddings chimed in perfect tune with those of the less advanced women’s magazines: the importance of The Dress, the temporary unimportance of the bridegroom (all he had to do was to be there, and on time); the details of the reception; a white wedding, of course – every minute point and custom which the sociologists and psychiatrists and feminists are knowledgeable or contemptuous about.

  Only at the threshold of the bedroom did her imagination become vague, and her thoughts begin to march in the clinical order directed by the educationalists of her generation. She was informed, but incurious. Love had neatly stepped in over the heads of the technical experts and, in his ancient way, bound his bandage over her thoughts and her young senses. What no one had prepared her for, when the time came, was the mutual, laughing sweetness.

  They ought to tell you, she was to think to the end of her life. Really they ought.

  When Mrs Cadman, happening to encounter Yasuhiro in the hall at Rowena Road, excitedly suggested that the large front room would be plenty big enough if Yasuhiro and Mr Grant just shifted the couch into the hall, he was silent for a moment.

  ‘I had thought,’ he began at last, ‘to hire a room at some hotel.’

  ‘Oh you don’t want to do that, wasting your money – it’ll be no trouble. I shall enjoy it. Miss Wayne was only saying to me this morning, it’ll liven us up.’

  Yasuhiro’s impulse was to demand what-the-hell business it was of Miss Wayne’s? – a figure encountered by himself occasionally on the stairs, and of which he retained only the dim impression that it was female and advanced in years. Now, apparently, this vague entity was arranging the celebrations for his betrothal. However, he said courteously: ‘I hope that Honourable Miss Wayne will come to drink champagne with other welcome guests. But, Mrs Cadman––’

  ‘Now, I don’t want to hear another word about it! That’s settled!’ cried Mrs Cadman, showing symptoms of that apparent mental unbalance which overtakes women when weddings, christenings or funerals are being arranged, and sweeping him aside as if he were a spider. ‘We’ll have the big room and I’ll make one of my cakes – it’s for Mothering Sunday, really, but it won’t matter for once – I’ve got the recipe somewhere, and there’s that cut-price place in Dartmouth Street, you can get your champers there, that’ll save you a bit, you don’t want to bankrupt yourself before you start – who’s coming?’

  ‘Flowers,’ was the gloomy answer.

  ‘Flowers? Who’s he?’

  ‘Flowers from a flower merchant. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers. I shall order. At this time dahlias most beautiful. Also early chry-san-the-mums. Can be so arranged to mean rejoicing.’

  ‘Well, that’ll look lovely, I’m sure . . .’

  Yasuhiro was about to add that rejoicing could be as well expressed by a single spray of almond blossom, but refrained.

  Hundreds of flowers were what would be necessary to impress upon the coarse minds of the guests the honour and the position – even now, in Japan’s Age of Degradation – of the Tasu family. If he suggested a spray of almond blossom – even though it was flown across the world from a land over which spring was now trailing her green cloak – they would only think that his family had not the money to buy more. It’s a mournful situation, he thought in English, to have no taste; and he looked even more courteously at Mrs Cadman.

  It was Monday morning, just after lunch, and Mary now came down the stairs, dressed for work in blue trousers and sweater under her dark green coat. The trousers were a gesture of defiance. Yasuhiro said that Japanese women of good family averted their eyes from them, and Mrs Levy said Mary had not the figure for them.

  Mary thought it prudent to lay in reserves of self-will against the future and continued to wear them.

  ‘Ah, here’s Mary, she’ll decide everything,’ exclaimed Mrs Cadman.

  Mary and Yasuhiro had hardly stopped talking to one another since the previous morning, but they had not yet reached the engagement party.

  ‘What’ve I got to decide?’ she said. ‘Want to walk me to the bus, love?’ to Yasuhiro, who unsmilingly inclined his head.

  ‘Your engagement party, girl, wake up!’ Mrs Cadman was enjoying being carried away.

  ‘Oh well . . . I thought we’d get the wedding settled first.’ Mary glanced at Yasuhiro, smiling, and he flashed back a polite smile and her heart sank. He’s going to have his way, she thought.

  ‘We have Japanese cere-mony,’ Yasuhiro was announcing as he and Mary set off down the road.

  ‘Yasu! Every girl in England chooses what kind of a wedding she’ll have – and the dress and everything! It’s the custom . . .’

  ‘The custom in Japan is wedding held at the family house of the man. And only low, un-traditional girl wears Western dress. Of course of course all will be Japanese.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t the custom over here.’

  ‘You look so pretty – nice in Japanese wedding dress, Mairly, ornaments in the hair that you like; and you have white dress same as English girl, only better shape. Japanese girls also wear white on wedding day.’ He paused. ‘But all white, only white . . .’

  ‘I haven’t said a word to Mrs Levy yet, blast it. She’ll never stop going on about it.’

  ‘. . . in Japan, white is death-colour.’

  ‘What!’ Mary stopped and stood staring. ‘Well, that’s cheerful, I must say.’

  ‘Death colour, yes. White robe and sash means death of the bride to the family of her father.’

  Mrs Levy’s reception of Mary when she came on duty at one o’clock had never been warm, and since her assistant’s fall into dreaminess and absent-mindedness, it had become fretful. The idea that Mary might one day leave only occurred to Mrs Levy to the accompaniment of scoffing inward laughter.

  ‘Ach, Mary – there you are. I think you are not coming. It’s five minutes past one.’

  ‘Is it?’ Mary glanced at the clock on a shelf. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, it’s better to be on time than sorry. But modern girls all the same.’

  ‘But I bet not many of them are going to marry a rich Japanese boy.’

  Mary spoke unhurriedly, with her back to Mrs Levy, while she was hanging up her coat. Silence followed, and she did not look round.

  She slipped on her working overall and turned, deliberately. Disappointingly, Mrs Levy was not sitting staring with her mouth open, but had returned to the account book in which she was entering figures.

  ‘You vish you vere,’ she said at last in a dry tone. She did not look up.

  ‘Well, I am.’

&n
bsp; ‘A joke I can enjoy, but lies are different. When I finish this column, I go off to lunch with my daughter. She has a new au pair, German girl, very good housewife.’ She bent over the book again.

  ‘But it’s true, Mrs Levy. I am going to marry him.’

  Mrs Levy compressed her lips and shook her head and continued to add up new pence.

  ‘All right, then. He’s coming here to fetch me this evening––’

  Mrs Levy put down the pencil.

  ‘I shall be with my daughter at the cinema, as you know, Mary, because I haf told you ve go to see Fiddler on the Roof, seventh time. Today you are vorse than usual.’

  ‘– and I hope you’ll come to our engagement party.’ Mary felt a sudden pity for the shreds of rusty hair and the scored sallow old face. ‘I don’t know the date yet––’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘– but we’ll be sending out the invitations.’

  ‘Thank you. That I will wait for, an invitation. On a card printed with your name, I suppose? Ha!’

  After this exchange, Mary settled to work on innumerable details involving the arrangement and display of small plastic and base metal souvenirs, outrageously overpriced, and valueless but for the harmless associations they awoke in the minds of those who brought them home. Mrs Levy shut the book with a snap, locked it away, and put on her smart black coat and hat and went off to meet her daughter.

  Mary stood by the counter, idly watching her employer cross the street. Why should she go on working? Dear old Dad would manage to pay for the engagement party, and even squeeze out something for clothes. He had some money now he’d sold the house.

  She sat down: to have a serious think, with the cigarette whose occasional smoking had caused raised eyebrows and a reference to his hero (‘Mishima was very against this habit. Weakens the body’). Mary had retorted ‘So what’, and continued to smoke. She stared absently out past the bright, blowing dresses, at the strolling crowds touched, even in the City, by the golden languor of this unusually beautiful autumn.

  The first thing was to fix the wedding date.

  Here or – or in Japan?

  Terror suddenly seized her. Ten thousand miles away, on the other side of the world, and strange; stranger than anything seen on television because it was real. Because real people lived there and worked, and ate, and had babies, and died. But in another way – a foreign, strange, utterly alien way. And she was going to live there.

  But I’ll have Dad. The thought was like sudden warmth in the air of deadly cold. If he wasn’t coming . . . Never had she banished a thought because it was too frightening to face. She did so now.

  They walked through the damp, leaf-scented darkness. London growled quietly to itself and glowed and sparkled in its vast valley.

  ‘You understand, Mary,’ Yasu said, presently. ‘I decide. I must stay in England to finish my studies. You notice how I have improve in my words?’

  ‘Yes, love, you’ve improved all right.’

  ‘I was – suppose – to come for one year. It would please Honoured Great-grandfather if I did this, seeming to him firm in my intentions like the unbending rock. And you, Mary, are the flowing water that winds around it, changing shape because of the rock shape.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He glanced at her sideways, and smiled. He was developing a taste for English humour.

  Mary was thinking about the simile. He was going to use all his formidable will to turn her into water or a bowing willow or something, and she intended to remain Mary – either Davis or Tasu, honourable san or not. She was going to stay Mary. And he knows it, she thought.

  ‘Yes – if you stay on for the year that’ll mean February,’ she said. ‘When did you think of us getting married?’

  Her tone was casual but she did not feel casual. This was the moment.

  ‘Soon soon, quickly,’ was the flattering answer. ‘After February perhaps when the cherry blossom comes.’

  ‘April,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘And – and here or in Japan?’

  ‘In Japan, Mary, of course of course. Dark iris, twilight flowing water –’ and his arm swept round her body and drew her to him as they walked. ‘This will please my family so much. Truly, is absolutely im-possible to have a disgraceful English marriage ceremony. So ugly. It would un-doubtedly offend the ancestors,’ he added in a lower tone.

  ‘April, then,’ Mary said firmly, thinking it prudent to ignore the last part of his sentence. ‘Early or late?’

  ‘Depends upon two circum-stances. When is the cherry blossom here? And what are prog-nos-tica-tions. (I learnt this word yesterday, in thinking and planning for our ceremony.) Prognostications, yes – of the astrologers.’

  ‘Cripes! Astrologers, now. What on earth have they got to do with it?’

  ‘We must have a fortunate date, love. Otherwise bad situation.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s all right. I can see that.’

  Mary, growing up in an age which denies faith yet thirstily needs its morning-paper ration of magic as it needs tranquillizers, swallowed the astrologers with hardly a gulp. ‘Early April, then?’

  ‘Yes. The tenth day of April, if the astrologers say this is fortunate.’

  ‘April the tenth,’ she repeated.

  Then Yasuhiro paused. They were under a great maple tree, whose pale, dying leaves faintly reflected the glare in the sky over London. His arms drew her close.

  ‘British kiss,’ murmured Yasuhiro. ‘Date of our marriage.’

  The kiss was given and taken.

  ‘You like that, Mairly?’ he asked, drawing away from her a little.

  ‘Oh yes – sweet – little celebration –’ she gasped. ‘Oh Yasu, I do love you. I do, I do.’ She stopped, ashamed.

  ‘So I do love you, Mairly. For life-long. As the Pine of Takasago. And here’s another present for you. You shall choose the date of this British engagement party.’

  *

  Mary decided to invite Mrs Wheeby, Mrs Levy, her father’s three friends at the Yellow House, and – if she could find her – Sylvie.

  When she showed the list –which included all the other tenants – to Yasuhiro, his only remark was: ‘I shall send an es-pecial invitation to your father.’

  ‘But of course he’s coming, Yasu! Not ask Dad! What an idea!’

  ‘But if I send to him person-ally, from me myself, and say the party will be without him a waterless desert, it will please him. Also it is my duty as future son. Giri demands.’

  Whether the old peasant comes or not, it will be a waterless desert, he was thinking – in English now. But I’ll order six bottles of their whisky. And we’ll have saki – ‘a foreign custom’. Peasants and tourists like that. How beautiful I could make this party if I were at home! But I must bow my head, like the young pine to the storm. May I not break! For he was beginning to feel swellingly cross.

  ‘Whisky!’ said Mary, on hearing of this intention. ‘You’ll have everybody drunk – not but what old Grant won’t like it, and Dad won’t mind.’

  ‘Mr Grant won’t like the whisky?’

  ‘No, I meant he will like it (your English is lots better, love, but still not quite how we talk) – and cripes, we don’t want six bottles, two’ll be plenty.’

  ‘Then I supply a long table, food from a shop, and flowers, flowers, cover in flowers,’ he snapped. ‘Hide and conceal that room.’

  ‘Oh all right – but Mrs Cadman was going to make her special cake––’

  ‘We’ll put it away behind a flower vase,’ almost shouted Yasuhiro, and Mary decided to change the subject.

  Asked if she happened to know Sylvie’s address, Mrs Cadman put a considering finger on her chin.

  ‘I know you said she lived somewhere near,’ Mary suggested.

  ‘Now, where was it? She did tell me, when she took the room. Unless it was all lies, of course. Bel something. Belfast? (No, that’s Ireland.) Belsize? Can’t be. That’s over Hampstead Way. Belmont! That’s it. Fourteen Belmont Street. It’s round
Queen’s Crescent way, off Kentish Town Road, and the house is next to a fried fish shop.’

  Mr Grant, who could be relied upon to come up with useful information, only needed half a minute’s thought to produce the name and address of a local printer who, struggling with advancing bankruptcy, was prepared to undertake small jobs; and before she set out to find Belmont Street, Mary handed in at his shop the invitation, beautifully scripted on a sheet of his blue writing paper by Yasuhiro.

  Mr Wilfred Davis

  requests the pleasure of

  your company at an

  Engagement Party

  to be held at 20 Rowena Road, Parliament Hill Fields, NW5 on December 1st from 2.30 and onwards to celebrate the engagement of his only daughter Mary Patricia Davis to Mr Yasuhiro Tasu, only son of Mr and Mrs C. H. Tasu of Tokyo, Japan.

  Round Queen’s Crescent was what Mary thought of as an awful part. The small streets of early Victorian villas were in all the squalor of demolition: the inhabitants would not in any case have thought of putting their rubbish anywhere but in their front gardens, where the few dying bushes of laurel occasionally gave shelter to a powerful, immaculately groomed motorcycle.

  However, there was a more cheerful sight, a group of small shops with fine cabbages glowing in the window of one, and (striking sign of progress) fluttering outside another a rackful of pornographic magazines which, ten years earlier, would have been cowering under the counter. Was this Belmont Street, looking little changed from forty years ago? And there was the fried fish shop. But next to it, number 14 was only a white gap strewn with crumbling plaster and the miscellaneous rubbish of years. Blow, thought Mary. As though there wasn’t enough to do, and I’ve only got half an hour. I’ll try the fried fish shop.A stoutish young woman was banging about behind the counter, in a smell of stale fat, fish and synthetic scent. Mary was opening her mouth to say ‘Sorry to trouble you but do you happen––’ when she stopped, staring. The greenish hair, though worn now in the shortest of spiky cuts; the eyes that matched it; the long nose . . .