But when the matron finally arrived, hurrying across the lawn accompanied by the other woman, Elly felt that the spell had been broken. The matron’s face looked flushed and flustered, and Elly realized that she had probably committed a grave faux pas by arriving unannounced.
‘Mrs Ruskin,’ said the matron breathlessly, ‘I’m so sorry you didn’t give us notice of your visit. We would have been better prepared, and I might have been able to save you a wasted journey.’ She fumbled with a key in the padlock and opened the creaking gate.
‘Why? Isn’t it possible to see Maya today?’ asked Elly, feeling a sudden stab of disappointment. She could sense the matron’s embarrassment without fully understanding its cause.
‘Unfortunately not. Please do come into the house and sit down. We can talk about it there.’
‘I’m so sorry for descending on you like this,’ said Elly uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t want to cause any inconvenience. I can see I’ve caught you at a busy moment.’
‘Oh no. It’s no trouble,’ responded the matron, formally and unsmilingly.
She led Elly across the garden and through a side door into a little parlour whose windows looked out across a courtyard surrounded by a thicket of tall bamboo. Elly sat awkwardly at the table in the centre of the room, while the matron stood with her back turned, pouring water from a metal thermos into a pot of tea.
‘We would have contacted you to let you know, of course,’ the matron was saying, ‘but it only happened the day before yesterday, so there hasn’t been time.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Elly. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’m afraid Maya is no longer with us.’
The matron turned towards Elly and poured a stream of pale golden tea into her cup. Elly could see a look of genuine sympathy on the woman’s face, and dreaded what was going to come next.
‘Maya’s mother, apparently, has come into some money. I’m not at a liberty to divulge all the details, of course, but in any case, it seems that she now has an apartment of her own, and has decided that she can give her little girl a stable home after all. She came here the day before yesterday to collect her daughter. I understand that this may come as something of a disappointment to you, since you and your husband have shown such a kind interest in possibly adopting the little girl. But I’m sure you’ll see that it’s the best-possible outcome for everyone in the long run.’
* * *
When she got home after the long journey back from Oiso, Elly poured herself a largish glass of whisky on the rocks and sat on the sofa in the front room nursing it as she waited for Fergus to return from the Press Club. She was going to hold her emotions together, at least until she could talk to him. Fergus would comfort her. He would tell her that everything was not lost. After all, he was the one who had said, ‘Together we’re going to do it, whatever the difficulties.’ They would find a way.
It would be a terrible wrench to give up the dream of bringing Maya into their family, but the matron was right, after all. Of course it was best for the child to be with her real mother, who clearly loved her enough to want to look after her. How arrogant I was, thought Elly bitterly, to imagine that I could be a better parent than her own mother. The loss of Maya did not have to be the end, though. They could find another child, one who needed them even more.
But when Fergus finally arrived home, he swept into the room in a storm of anger, slamming the door shut behind him. ‘They can’t do this!’ he raged, the moment he entered the room. ‘How can they?’
‘Do what? What are you talking about?’ asked Elly, briefly distracted from her own grief.
‘My editors. The management. Duncan bloody Cromer and his managerial politburo. They’re moving me. They want me to go to Hong Kong. Hong Kong, for Christ’s sake!’
‘What, permanently?’ said Elly.
‘Well, for the next two years, at any rate. “China’s where the action is now”. That’s what the sainted Duncan told me. And all because I speak Chinese. They say I’d be more use to them there. Idiots. It’s completely escaped them, of course, that the Chinese they speak in Hong Kong is a totally different language from the one we spoke in Shanghai.’
He collapsed on to the seat next to Elly, then noticed the whisky bottle on the table and reached out to take a swig.
‘But we can’t leave Japan!’ cried Elly, hearing the panic in her own voice. ‘Not now. I have to be in Tokyo, to be near to Mother. I can’t abandon her the way she is. And . . .’ She needed to explain about Maya, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
She paused for a moment, the realization slowly sinking in. ‘This is about Vida, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘It’s because you were questioned by the police, because your face was in the newspapers. They want to get you out of Japan as soon as possible, don’t they?’
Fergus put the whisky bottle back on the table and nodded.
‘Yes. That’s the first thing I thought of too. They’re denying it, of course. They say it’s just their “new editorial strategy”, whatever the hell that may mean. But I’m sure it has to do with Vida. They don’t want any embarrassment. For all I know they probably suspect me of murdering her.’
‘Oh, don’t be absurd,’ cried Elly. ‘Of course they don’t. But I can imagine that they’re terrified of complications with the Japanese authorities. When do they want you to go? Is there anything you can do to get them to change their minds?’ She got up, found a glass for Fergus and filled it with most of the remaining ice from the icebox.
‘They want me in Hong Kong by the end of the month. I don’t know. I suppose I could try getting in direct touch with Duncan. Explain your circumstances and everything. It’s not just your mother. It’s the adoption. What are we going to do about the adoption?’
This should have been the moment to start telling him that Maya was gone. But instead, Elly just sat beside him nodding sympathetically as he raged against his employers, while they finished the bottle of scotch between them and then started on another one.
Hong Kong. Fergus had been there before, but Elly had little notion of what it was like. She could remember a photo or a print she had seen somewhere of sunset in Hong Kong: buildings perched on steep, rocky hill slopes around a harbour that was filled with square-sailed junks. It had looked rather attractive, but the image had been old and faded. Hong Kong might look quite different now. Could they begin the whole adoption process all over again in Hong Kong? Perhaps it would be easier under British law. But Tokyo had finally started to feel like home. She felt settled here, and dreaded the thought of uprooting her life and starting all over again in yet another completely unfamiliar place.
‘I suppose I could go freelance,’ Fergus said at one point. ‘I could tell them to go to hell and just stay here with you.’
Elly put her arm around his shoulders.
‘Bless you for suggesting it,’ she said, ‘but I really don’t think it would be a good idea, do you? You know better than anyone how hard it is to make a living as a freelancer. We’ll work something out. You can always move to Hong Kong first, and I can follow you later when . . .’ Her voice trailed off. It sounded callous to say ‘when Mother’s dead’, but she knew that was what it would come down to in the end.
Eventually, Fergus’ fury subsided into fretful mutterings. They hugged each other briefly, and then Fergus fell asleep on the sofa, and Elly left him there and went to bed.
* * *
She awoke with a headache and a sour taste in her mouth. Fergus had gone out already and she had, fortunately, just removed the glasses and bottles from the table when two policemen — the fat one who had taken notes during their interview and another young man whom she’d never seen before — appeared at the door.
Her first thought was that they had come for the photograph, which was still lying around somewhere in the house despite Fergus’ promise to hand it in. But then she realized that was impossible. No one had told the police that there was another photo, and there was sure
ly no way they could have guessed.
The policemen greeted her politely, removed their boots and hats, and then stood silently in the front room with their hands folded in front of them, looking ill at ease. For a dreadful moment Elly thought they were going to report another violent death. Had something happened to Fergus, or to Ken?
But instead, the fat one gazed around the room for a while and then remarked, in conversational tones, ‘Nice places, these, aren’t they? Built immediately after the Great Kanto Earthquake. My brother and sister-in-law used to live in one of the houses just around the corner before the war. They moved away during the bombing, though. They’re in Nagoya now.’
Elly stared at the men in bewilderment. Surely they weren’t here for a casual chat about the neighbourhood architecture? She glanced nervously at the table, and was relieved to see that the photo wasn’t there. Presumably Fergus had taken it up to his study. She wondered if the policemen were going to ask to search the house, and what the penalty might be for withholding evidence in a murder enquiry.
‘Please do sit down,’ she said aloud. ‘Could I give you some tea, or maybe a cold drink?’
‘Something cold if you have it, please,’ replied the fat policeman. So she fetched a bottle of Calpis and some chilled water from the icebox, and sat opposite them as the two policemen sipped their milky drinks and gazed around the room with open curiosity.
‘My husband’s out at work, I’m afraid,’ prompted Elly. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’
‘We’re just following up a few issues,’ said the fat policeman. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his sweating forehead. ‘I always find the heat at this time of year so trying, don’t you?’ he added apologetically.
The younger man — he looked little more than a teenager, and still had acne scars on his cheeks — took out a notebook and pencil.
‘We understand that you were interned in Australia during the war and were repatriated to Japan on,’ he looked at his notebook, ‘the fourteenth of March 1946.’
‘That’s correct,’ said Elly. They’d certainly lost no time in doing their homework.
‘And your maiden name was McPherson. So your father was English?’
‘Scottish,’ said Elly.
‘And your mother is one . . . Tanaka Rie. A Japanese woman.’
‘Well, now her surname is McPherson too, of course,’ said Elly, as calmly as she could manage, ‘but she was born Tanaka Rie.’ She wanted to say, why are you asking me all this? Is it a crime to be half Japanese?
But the policemen seemed to have satisfied their curiosity about her background, and moved on to other things.
‘You told us when we spoke to you before,’ said the fat policeman, ‘that you had lunch with Miss Toko in Kanda in . . .’ he paused for a moment, and the younger man consulted his notebook and completed the sentence. ‘In early June.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you remember the precise date of your meeting?’
Elly considered, and then said, ‘Just a moment.’ Her little diary was lying on a bench in the kitchen. She had written nothing in it for the past week. As she picked it up, she wondered whether the policemen would ask to read it, and whether it contained anything incriminating. But they seemed only interested in the date.
‘The third of June,’ she said, not reading out the entry that followed. Had lunch with Vida in Kanda. Strange woman.
‘And how did Miss Toko seem to you at that time? Did she seem at all . . . let us say, unwell?’
Elly stared at them.
‘I’m not quite sure what you mean,’ she said. ‘She seemed fine, as far as I could tell. It’s difficult to say. You have to understand, I barely knew her. I had met her only once before, briefly, at a party last year. But she seemed to me to be fine. Cheerful. Happy, even.’
She could make no sense of where this was leading. They could hardly be about to suggest Vida had died of natural causes, or committed suicide.
‘And what exactly did you talk about when you met her?’ asked the older man.
Elly paused for a moment, and selected her words carefully, avoiding the delicate subject of the photographs. ‘We talked about her pen name. She told me it had been chosen for her by a friend. And she said a little bit about the time she’d spent in China — not much, really. Mostly we talked about the state of the world. Vida — Miss Toko, that is — said how afraid she was that there might be an atomic war. She did seem quite worried about that. She said she’d seen too much war already.’
‘Did she appear to you be particularly anxious about anything else?’
‘Not that I noticed,’ Elly replied. But she had a sudden memory then of Vida playing with the food on her plate, the uneaten rice omelette.
The older policeman stared intently at his stockinged feet as he continued, ‘You see, we have just received a preliminary medical report on Miss Toko’s body.’
Elly suddenly felt cold. Please not, she prayed silently. Please do not tell me that she’d been raped.
But instead, the policeman said, ‘The medical examination indicates to us that Miss Toko had given birth to a child shortly before she was killed. About a week before, we think. We wondered if you or your husband were aware of that fact.’
And as Elly stared at him in silent astonishment, he added, ‘We were hoping that you might have some information that could help us. We need, you see, to discover the whereabouts of the baby. Do you know of anyone who might have been entrusted with the care of the infant?’
‘No, no. I had no idea . . .’
The policeman produced a card bearing the address and telephone number of the police station, scribbled his name — Senior Constable Mita — on the bottom and handed it to her. ‘If you think of anything that might be of help, please do call this number,’ he said as he rose to leave.
He was halfway to the door when he turned and added, almost as an afterthought, ‘We also, of course, need to establish the identity of the baby’s father.’
CHAPTER 20
The young woman sat on a wooden chair in the untidy kitchen of the Saishu Guest House, nursing the infant. She had draped a towel loosely over one shoulder, and its folds partly concealed her half-bared breast and the baby’s downy head.
The guest house kitchen, Jun had quickly come to realize, only seemed chaotic. Under the surface, some mysteriously ordered pattern was at work. There were shelves crammed with jars and bottles of oil, soy sauce, chilli paste and other substances that he didn’t recognize, and onion peelings and partly chopped shallots were scattered over the wooden counter. Two massive blackened cauldrons seemed always to be boiling on the stove, and bulging sacks of rice and flour were stored in every available corner under the tables and chairs. And yet somehow, when the time came to produce breakfast or dinner for the uncertain number of people who were crammed into the rooms of the guest house, the landlady, Mrs Kono, and the slow-spoken girl who assisted her, always seemed to know exactly where to find the ingredients they needed, and were able to whip up astonishingly tasty meals of chicken gruel and pickles or scallion pancakes in a matter of minutes.
The young woman who was nursing the baby had introduced herself to Jun as Haruko, although he noticed that Mrs Kono always addressed her as Chongja. The landlady herself was almost invariably simply called ‘Grandma Ko’. Haruko was a granddaughter, or maybe granddaughter-in-law, of Grandma Ko’s cousin. Haruko’s husband had apparently returned to Korea a year ago, and had never been heard from again, and she herself had recently lost a baby of her own to scarlet fever, which was why she had milk to spare. She had a large strawberry birthmark on one cheek, and was so shy that at first she had seemed sullen, but Jun watched in wonder at the tenderness that she showed to the baby as she cradled its head in her hand and gently coaxed it to take the breast.
‘What’s your little one’s name?’ Grandma Ko had asked, when she first discovered the baby nestled in the blue holdall, and Jun had randomly sei
zed on the name of the boy who used to sit next to him at school.
‘Kunio,’ he said. ‘He’s called Kunio.’ So Kunio he had become.
The moment Grandma Ko had discovered the baby, her manner had undergone a remarkable transformation. The dour hostility vanished, replaced by maternal warmth. She had lifted the baby out of the bag, carried it outside to a bench by the water tank in the back yard and stripped off the soiled and stinking gown and nappy that it was wearing. Then she had got Jun to help her rummage in a cupboard for clean towelling to use as a makeshift nappy, and sent her assistant off to find Haruko. All the while, she had kept up a stream of talk, mostly addressed to the baby, but occasionally also to Jun.
‘You poor little creature, you must be half starved! How could a mother do that — go off and leave a little thing like this? When was he born? It can’t have been more than two or three weeks ago. What possessed his mother to leave him like that? Did you have a fight or something? That’s it, yes, you’re a bit more comfortable now, aren’t you? There we go, my darling. We’ll find someone to give you something good. Just you wait and see. She’ll be here any moment.’
Jun watched in fascination. His only knowledge of babies came from the vague images he had of the time when his sister Kiyo was born, and his most powerful memory of that event was of the resentment he had felt towards the mysterious, squirming, pink rival who seemed to absorb all his mother’s attention. He was afraid that Grandma Ko would ask him searching questions about his imaginary wife and the birth of the baby, but in fact, although she did ask plenty of questions, she rarely gave him time to answer any of them. She had forgotten her threat to turn him out at eight in the morning. He was, it seemed, welcome to stay as long as he wanted.
THE LANTERN BOATS an utterly gripping and heart-breaking historical novel set in post-war Japan (Historical Fiction Standalones) Page 19