‘Pollitt,’ put in the young man. ‘Mr and Mrs Pollitt,’ and Mrs Levy was just saying had they been married long and was there any other family, when the door was opened by an elderly man.
Mrs Levy’s eye rushed past him and swept over the hall. Wilfred had opened the door because no one, in the uproar over the buffet and the flowers, had heard the refined ding-dong of the bell.
‘Good evening. Do come in. Mrs Levy, is it? I’m Mary’s father.’
‘I am glad to meet you, yes glad.’ Mrs Levy extended a black-gloved hand from the sleeve of a mink jacket (Nephew Maurice was in the fur trade). ‘I haf heard much about you from Mary.’
‘Nice things, I hope . . . Hullo there!’ to Sylvie. ‘Nice to see you again . . . Hullo,’ shaking hands with the young man.
‘I gotta go upstairs,’ Sylvie announced, dragging at her green kiss-curl.
‘It’s her condition,’ confided Chris to Wilfred.
‘I go vith you,’ and Mrs Levy put a hand on Sylvie’s arm. ‘Another woman is good at such times.’ It would also give Mrs Levy a chance to inspect the upper storey.
‘Here – she ain’t goin’ to have it now,’ protested young Pollitt. ‘Leastways, I hope not . . . You can manage, can’t you, Sylvie?’
‘Ach! This is Sylvie?’ The hand darted back as Mrs Levy stared.
‘Bet you’ve heard about me from Mary, too,’ Sylvie grinned.
‘It’s different now. You are wife and mother-to-be,’ said Mrs Levy recovering. ‘Ve must all be young once. I myself, in Hamburg––’
Here Sylvie broke away to hurry upstairs, waved on by the flustered Wilfred; and he led Mrs Levy to the big front room, leaving Chris to await his wife. An attempt to help Mrs Levy take off the jacket was resisted.
‘I keep this on. Chilly these autumn evenings,’ said Mrs Levy firmly.
Mary stood chatting to Mr Bailey, wishing that it was an ordinary engagement party, with just a few bunches of flowers, and food prepared by an understanding mum, and an ordinary, nice, shy young man for a fiancé. It was too much: too many flowers, too much food and drink and – and too much foreignness. It embarrassed her, and she still had, at the back of her mind, the memory of that conversation with Yasuhiro two days ago, when he had given her the necklace. It haunted her uncomfortably.
‘Oh Yasu – it’s – it’s beautiful. Thank you a million times, love. And – I haven’t a thing, really, to give you. Not like this . . .’
‘What thing do you like best in all the world, Mairly love? (Presently, later on, it will be our son.) But tell me now – what you like most?’
She lifted her eyes, and looked at him. But he shook his head impatiently.
‘Not me – not me. Of course I know that. I mean, what do you like for yourself?’ There followed a pause while she thought. Then she gave a conscious little laugh.
‘Oh. My own way, I s’pose.’
‘Then, one day, you give me your own way, Mary. That will be my present from you.’
And, in spite of the necklace, and his face close to her own, her instant thought had been: not if I know it.
But then she saw between the flowers the face of Yasuhiro, grave and courteous, as he listened to Mrs Cadman, and all other feelings were swept away in the glow and glory of the fact: we’re going to be married.
‘Mary love –’
She turned, at once the competent young hostess.
‘– here’s Mrs Levy.’
‘Hullo, Mrs Levy. I’m glad you could come.’
Mrs Levy responded by starting back six inches with her eyes fixed on Mary’s neck.
‘Gott im Himmel, Mary, those are fire opals!’
‘Yes, pretty, aren’t they –?’
‘My cousin Harry works in Hatton Garden, taught me how to distinguish––’
‘– they’re my engagement present from Yasu. Like my ring?’ She held out a hand, where a great stone glowed. ‘They don’t have them in Japan, really, but he knew I’d like one . . . to . . . show to people. It matches.’
‘So I see,’ said Mrs Levy dryly. ‘Vell, Mary, I make a mistake. You are engaged, and you zeem to be a very lucky girl. I say zeem because it’s only sensible to look ahead like a sophisticated woman . . . yes, sophisticated . . . What a show of flowers! While you were about it, you should haf take a really nice room at the Westchester Hotel. It’s in Holborn; new hotel. You can get––’
‘Mrs Cadman very kindly said we could have this one, and I didn’t want a lot of fuss with waiters and things. Mrs Cadman! Here’s Mrs Levy – you know, you’ve talked to her on the phone.’
‘Und vere is the boyfriend?’ Mrs Levy acknowledged the introduction with a brief smile, as her eye sped unerringly to where Yasuhiro stood, now solitary, beside the salmon on its silver dish.
‘I’ll take you over,’ said Mary, more than willing to hand Mrs Levy to one capable of dealing with her.
‘We have met before,’ announced Mrs Levy, fixing Yasuhiro with her eye. ‘You come in to see the place vere Mary works.’
‘Yes, it was so,’ said he, sweetly. ‘Good evening, Mrs Levy. I am honoured that you come to our party.’
‘I nearly didn’t come – what’s your name – didn’t catch it –’
‘Yasuhiro Tasu,’ with a smiling bow.
‘I was invited at last moment to another party, very smart, Golders Green, friends of my daughter. I almost don’t come. She has a beautiful home, standing one and a half acres of ground, worth thousands.’
Yasuhiro’s eyes were expressionless as a lizard’s. His mouth curved in the gentlest of attentive smiles.
‘I have not visited Golders Green. But seen the name on Underground stations. It is in the open country?’
‘Oh no, not isolated at all, very good communications and every amenity you could vish for. I don’t suppose you and Mary haf any chance of getting home of your own, not for years und years? Terrible price places are –’
‘We shall live in the house of my family. Near Tokyo.’
Mrs Levy’s eyes glittered with pleasure. ‘Oh vot a mistake! Oh I am so sorry! Such a bad start, living with relations! Vy not save your money? Get a mortgage.’
Yasuhiro looked down for a moment; he saw in his mind’s eye the ancient wooden walls and the roof of grey-blue tiles, tilted like a smile on the lips of some wise old man; the harmonious tint of the golden reed curtains, and the pale straw-paper of sliding shutters; the long, low, modest yet regal place that had held his family for three hundred years.
‘It’s the custom in Japan,’ he said gently.
‘Terrible overcrowding everywhere. Of course, I own my home. My daughter, too. I haf six bedrooms.’
Here Mary brought up Sylvie to be introduced, and Mrs Levy was spared the anguish of hearing that Mary’s new home had forty rooms, and stood in the Japanese equivalent of seventy acres. Yasuhiro would never have shown such execrable taste as to proclaim these facts, but Mrs Levy would have drawn them out of him.
Sylvie could only stare and mutter, but Chris surprised his hostess by saying loudly ‘Congratulations –’ and then, to everybody’s mounting embarrassment, plunging into a humorous account of the horrors of the married state, delivered with what used to be called guffaws, while his merry little eyes darted sideways glances at Mary.
‘She’ll do yer, boy. She’ll have yer down for the count before yer know whether it’s August or Saturday night. I’m warning yer. I bin through it. Look at me. Lost a stone the first six weeks –’
‘Oh you liar!’ Sylvie screamed.
‘You take my advice and scarper while you got the chance –’
‘You joke,’ said Yasuhiro, while his smile became stony.
‘Joke! It’s no joke, I can tell you, mate –’
‘It’s . . . kind . . . of you. But believe that I can protect myself from these dangers. There will be difficults, of course of course. But expect these when Japanese marries Western girl.’
Here Mrs Cadman, sharing the general c
onviction that Chris had been fortifying himself before arrival, bustled up and started firmly to chat to Sylvie.
The glassy-eyed hush was broken, people were steered into groups of two, and Wilfred, seeing that the greenish tint had become permanent, joined Mrs Levy in her critical survey of the turkey.
‘What a beautiful jacket. Is – is it mink?’
Mrs Levy turned graciously to inform the semi-whisperer that it was, indeed, mink.
‘Mink. I have read about it, of course, but I’ve never seen any. Would you mind if I just felt it?’
Admiration of her possessions was almost Mrs Levy’s favourite form of conversation. She allowed the gesture, then suggested that they should sit down. She speedily turned the discourse to an uninterrupted description of the comforts and devices in her daughter’s house, with hints about the enormous sums they had cost, and the continual fears of her daughter and herself that they might ‘have bugglars’. As Miss Wayne’s own life was darkened by a fear of burglars and what they might be plotting to do to the top-back at 20 Rowena Road, she soon wished that the monologue might have stayed with the glories of electric percolators and blankets.
No one was completely at ease. The hot, rich breath of money was too insistent, and Yasuhiro, as host, lacked the desirable mateyness. (‘Looking at them as if they were beetles,’ thought his future wife resignedly.) Nevertheless, by degrees, the atmosphere thawed – even became lively.
There was a great deal of alcohol, though party manners, and fear of their women, prevented Mr Grant and Chris from drinking as much as they would have liked. One glass of champagne transported Wilfred, though Mary’s expression of quiet happiness would have been enough for him.
Mrs Levy and Mrs Cadman exchanged glances when Sylvie screamed and slapped people, and the former also derived some entertainment from pricing everybody’s clothes. When this was done, she fixed her eyes upon Yasuhiro moving gracefully from guest to guest, and, so far as her nature would permit, marvelled.
Miss Wayne had a technique for dealing with social occasions: she did what she considered her duty first, then made the very most of even the smallest chance of any enjoyment. She seldom came away from places that most people would have called hopelessly dull without some grain of pleasure to chew on.
She now crept from group to group, sipping a glass of champagne, and paused beside talkers to listen, occasionally putting in a murmured contribution. The lovely light from the lanterns, the hundreds of flowers, and Mary’s necklace and ring – what a sight it all was! Her eyes moved shyly from face to face, and came to rest on that of her host.
He had returned to the salmon and taken his former place beside it. He stood looking out across the softly lit, flowery room.
Homesick, poor boy, thought Miss Wayne. I’d like to just say a word . . . show him someone understands . . . but they always say in those books you mustn’t pry with young people . . . well, I could just say how pretty everything looks; and she made her way towards him.
He felt her creeping advance almost before he saw it. It was the last straw. Chris had just been commenting on the salmon: it wasn’t too bad, he handsomely conceded, but if he, Chris, had known beforehand, he could have got it for them wholesale. Yasuhiro had thanked him, smiling over clamped teeth.
And now here was Miss Wayne.
He whirled round on her like a blue and silver dragon.
‘Miss-Wayne – you still think wrong spend money on flowers when Indians starve?’ His English was fragmented.
‘Yes . . . Mr – I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name . . . I do think so.’
With what was plainly, to him, a heroic effort, she looked straight at him. Here it was, she thought: the face of triumphing Youth, heartless and strong, as it smiled from other people’s televisions, or was witnessed while one crept past it in the street.
Yasuhiro experienced an emotion unfamiliar to him: shame.
He smiled, his real smile, and then he made her a bow from the waist, so low that she saw the silky black top of his head for a long instant before he came slowly up again. The gesture was unmistakably one of admiration, and she could only stare. But slowly her heart warmed with happiness. She said nothing.
‘Miss-Wayne, Mairly tells me you go very much to a church. Would it please you take all these flowers tomorrow to your church?’
‘Oh yes. You are so kind. But all of them?’
‘You won’t feel these flowers wicked – un-worthy – to be offered in your church because they are bought with money which might have gone to starving Indians?’
‘Oh no . . . of course not. So beautiful . . . nothing so beautiful could be wicked, I’m sure.’
‘That, about the flowers, you said, was a poet’s thought.’
‘Well!’ murmured Miss Wayne. ‘However shall I get all that lot round to Holy Trinity?’
‘Mary shall help. And her father,’ ordained Yasuhiro, disposing of their Sunday morning lie-in. ‘I will arrange it.’
They exchanged smiles, and she moved away to the shelter of Mrs Cadman’s company. How sweet he looked when he really smiled! A nice boy underneath, I expect, thought Miss Wayne.
At half past ten the salmon and turkey were served, with various exotic salads from different countries discovered by Yasuhiro at the end of his Japanese cookery book and included for the fact that they looked pretty.
‘It’s Arab,’ Mary confided on a warning note to Mrs Cadman, holding out one of the salads on the thinnest plate Miss Wayne had ever imagined, with a pattern of Japanese ladies in pink and grey robes walking beside grey waterfalls.
‘Arab?’ Mrs Cadman studied the small, highly coloured mound. ‘Well, I only hope it isn’t encouraging them.’
Towards half past eleven, Chris started making facetious, and Mrs Levy solicitous, remarks about the necessity of Sylvie’s getting her beauty sleep. Yasuhiro stood, ready to make courteous farewells and accompany each guest to the front door.
The final surprise was sprung when two large, luxurious hired cars were discovered waiting to take the visitors home.
In they got, Chris loudly announcing that he and Sylvie would have one of their own next year, while Mrs Levy excused herself for accepting the lift by saying that of course her daughter’s car would have been there to fetch her if it had not been fetching her daughter from the very smart party in Golders Green.
The door shut on the tenants at number 20.
Something blue and silver shot past them as they stood chatting for a moment in the hall. It disappeared into the basement.
‘What on earth’s the matter with him?’ exclaimed Mrs Cadman.
Mary shrugged.
In so short a time as instantly to fill their minds with pictures of robes being hurled all over the room, back flashed Yasuhiro: face greenish, hair disordered, dressed again in the uniform of world youth.
‘Well,’ Mrs Cadman was beginning, ‘I’m sure––’
‘I go for long walk,’ he said, in that very low, almost growling voice which had once dismayed Mary, and, sweeping round to face the little group as he stood at the front door, he added: ‘I hope the party successful. Hope all honoured guests enjoy flowers, lights, British food. Miss-Wayne,’ a short bow towards her, ‘you are very brave. Samurai-woman. Goodnight.’
The door slammed. They heard feet tearing along the pavement, then the sound died away.
Miss Wayne blinked. Samurai? Oh yes . . . she had read . . .
Mr Grant shook his head. ‘It was that young Pollitt. Not a bad chap, but low. Not an idea about anything. Needs eighteen months in the Guards – only they’d never take him. A stone off him in weight wouldn’t hurt, neither.’
‘Over the Heath, I expect,’ muttered Mrs Cadman. ‘Sooner him than me, this time of night.’ She shivered, then turned to Mary. ‘Aren’t you a bit afraid of him getting mugged, dear?’
There was a pause.
‘I’d be really sorry,’ said Mary, ‘for anyone who tried mugging him.’
31
Katherine
It was late afternoon on the following day, and Mary and Wilfred were sitting in the dining room at the Great Eastern Hotel, which is apparently built into Liverpool Street station, and finishing a rather sumptuous tea, Wilfred standing the treat. The trains were blaring and bellowing below, but their noise was muted by thick walls and distance. Wilfred’s train left in about twenty minutes.
‘A bit selfish, isn’t he, love? Don’t think I’m knocking him, but these things do make all the difference, once you’re married.’
‘Selfish! You can say that again. And a racist, and a militarist – a sort of poor man’s Hitler, I suppose. Oh, a nice old picnic it’s going to be, being married to him.’
She smiled, looking absently out across the long room where the Danish businessmen were getting their first taste of English tea. Her father studied, a little wistfully, the young face.
‘You know I don’t mean to butt in, love, but – are you quite sure it’s going to be all right? Isn’t it – well, more than a bit risky?’
‘Getting married’s always risky,’ pronounced Mary, biting into the last cress sandwich, ‘and, mind you, he is other things as well.’
‘How do you mean, other things?’
‘It’s a bit difficult to explain. I’d have to use corny words like honourable and patriotic. And then I’m always thinking about him,’ she ended suddenly, in a mutter, and the blood ran up under her skin.
Her father looked away. No, it had never been like this for him.
‘We’ll be all right, Dad,’ she said in a moment. ‘It’ll be interesting, in a way.’
Interesting! Really, the young nowadays. What would Pat have said if he had called the prospective joining together of their two lives ‘interesting’?
He glanced at his watch.
‘I must be moving . . . Where is he, this evening?’
‘Off to his kendo class – funny occupation for a Sunday evening, whacking at each other with great sticks, but he likes it. I think he’s getting the party off his chest.’
The Yellow Houses Page 32