The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

  ‘What does that say?’ he asked. He could read each character of the headline, but couldn’t tell what they said put together.

  ‘Government plans to destroy Crow Castle,’ said Mori. He followed the characters with his knuckle. To order them in English, he had to skip about.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Mori smiled. ‘It’s a modernist policy in Japan. The castles represent the old shogunate, so they’ve been force-auctioned by the new government. Some were knocked down, most are re-garrisoned with imperial troops or sold. Crow Castle is Matsumoto Castle. It’s black. They tried to take it down about ten years ago, but the locals protested.’

  ‘Matsumoto. Did I meet someone called Matsumoto recently?’

  Mori tipped his head and Thaniel saw him sift through memories. ‘Akira?’

  ‘No idea. Tall man, immaculate suit. Very dandy. He was with Grace. I mean Miss Carrow.’

  ‘Yes. Same family, it’s his father who owns the castle now.’

  ‘Where do the knights who lived in the castles go?’

  ‘Townhouses in Tokyo.’

  ‘For God’s sake, the closest I can get to medieval England is a Walter Scott novel. People shouldn’t be throwing away their history when it’s still doing archery practice forty miles up the road.’

  Mori looked doubtful. ‘I lived in a castle. It was cold.’

  ‘Philistine.’

  ‘Call me Delilah,’ he said, unmoved.

  Thaniel touched their cups together.

  Sitting down had taken them below the haze of pipe smoke. He was glad of it. It made an illusion of distance. Now that he was here, he wanted not to be. He had seen every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but it was different to see the composers close, unseparated from everyone else by the fourth wall of a stage or the slope of tiered seats. It was pulling at something that still stung.

  ‘I say!’ bellowed Gilbert, looking in their direction. It made him jump. ‘You in the proper clothes, do you speak English?’ He was aiming at Mori.

  Mori nodded.

  ‘Get over here and help.’

  Mori looked at him, but Thaniel shook his head. ‘No, I’d rather—’

  ‘But he thinks that Japanese sounds like baby talk and he has a ridiculous moustache, and he’s talking to those men of twenty and twenty-five thinking they’re twelve. You’re missing it.’

  Thaniel laughed, a little and helplessly. ‘You’re ridiculous.’

  They skirted around the girls, who were teaching each other to waltz, badly, because they didn’t seem able to hear the rhythm well. Gilbert motioned them into seats close to him. He was smoking a pipe while he talked and there was already a volcanic cloud around him. As soon as they were sitting, he thrust at Mori a sheet of paper with the story written on it and told him to get on with it by himself. Thaniel frowned, but before he could tell him not to be rude, Mori touched his arm.

  ‘Enough crusading for the one day,’ he said. ‘Pace yourself, before you’re ransomed by irate Muslims.’

  Thaniel kicked his ankle, but Mori paid no attention.

  ‘Another Englishman, thank God,’ Gilbert said, oblivious. ‘You forget you’re in London with this rabble, don’t you? It’s like Peking in here. What brings you here? Interested in music?’

  ‘We saw the posters for the new show. The Mikado, is it?’

  ‘That’s right. Satire set in Japan. Supposed to be for October, some foreign notable coming then. We want some real Japs to come in and coach the actors, though none of them seem to speak English.’

  ‘Most of them do,’ Thaniel said. He had been to the village often enough now to know that almost all the smallest children had English nannies, and that not everyone was fresh from Japan. Osei and her father had been in England for years. ‘They’ve been told they should be as Japanese as possible around tourists.’

  ‘Hah. Contracts.’ Mr Gilbert blew out a lungful of smoke and then banged the bowl of his pipe against the edge of the table. ‘I see. You’re pretty knowledgeable. Speak Japanese, do you?’

  ‘Only a bit. What’s the story, of the operetta?’

  ‘It’s about a wandering minstrel, Nanky-Pu, who falls in love with an unsuitable girl called Yum-Yum and afoul of the tyrannical emperor. How’s that?’

  Thaniel was careful not to move his face much. ‘Good. Not quite like real Japanese?’

  Gilbert shrugged. ‘No point. The safest way to success is to write according to the capacity of the stupidest member of the audience. If the actors say “ping” often enough, everyone will get the gist.’

  Another twang came from the piano.

  ‘Can’t someone sort that bloody thing out?’ Gilbert shouted across the room.

  ‘I can, I can,’ Thaniel murmured, having decided to go himself anyway the next time the bad note sounded. It was making his fingernails feel stretched.

  He wound his way back across the room and tapped his knuckles against the top of the piano. ‘Give me a second and I’ll tune it properly.’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ Sullivan said. He had a very clipped voice, and his relief had to squeeze itself through the cracks without showing much. ‘There never is a blind piano tuner about the place when one has need of such a person, is there? I take it you work with pianos?’

  ‘I used to,’ Thaniel said. He tilted open the piano top and leaned down to loosen the small key that held taut the faulty string. ‘Try that.’

  Sullivan smiled. ‘You’ve got perfect pitch?’

  Thaniel nodded.

  ‘I’d be much obliged if you’d have a listen to this middle part, then. Come and sit down.’ He moved up on the piano stool. He was plump, so there wasn’t much space, but Thaniel was slim enough to fit. ‘So, it’s for an operetta set in Japan, and there’s a little oriental part in semitones here, which melds into a jauntier theme here, but the bridge is rather clunky, like this, you see … ’

  ‘I’m not qualified to tell you anything.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but what do you think?’

  ‘I … think it’s clunky.’

  ‘Exactly. You look like you know this place, I don’t suppose you know much about oriental music?’

  Thaniel pinned his hands under his thighs, not wanting to touch the piano keys, but he described what he meant and Sullivan played it slowly once or twice before he understood and lit up.

  ‘Not qualified my foot! Which theatre do you belong to, I didn’t ask?’

  Thaniel shook his head. ‘I don’t. I’m a clerk at the Foreign Office.’

  ‘A clerk at the – what a waste. Pianist, though?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d feel like turning up at the Savoy for the Sunday rehearsals? I’ve been looking for a pianist for a while, I’ve been on the edge of writing out the part altogether. Can’t play and conduct at once. There wouldn’t be much money, but it would certainly be good to try you out. Will you come along?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d have the time,’ he said slowly, feeling heavy.

  Sullivan swept the air with his hand as if he could erase the words. ‘It’s not like a symphony orchestra; I don’t rule the pit with an iron fist or shout at anyone who can’t play the Bolero with his eyes shut. Short rehearsals. The show will be in October sometime. What do you say?’

  Thaniel didn’t know what he wanted to say. The idea of it made him afraid. He hadn’t touched a piano in years; he couldn’t tell if he would still be able to play well, or, come to that, if it would still have any of its old shine now. He was on the edge of refusing when he saw Mori watching him and understood suddenly what it all was. Mori had changed the note, weeks ago. It was Mori’s version of a present. A strange warm feeling prickled down his arms.

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘Excellent!’ Sullivan wrung his hand. ‘And thank you for your help today. It really would be a tragedy if you were never to do orchestral work. By God, I’ve contracted you to work for me without even asking your name, Mr … ’

  ‘Steep
leton.’

  ‘Well then, Mr Steepleton, I must buy you a drink.’

  The drink became five drinks and the hours melted, and it was evening when things began to break up at last. When he looked for Mori, he couldn’t find him at first. In fact he was in plain view, in a far corner with some of the more austere-looking village men. He was listening much more than he was talking. From the way they were moving their hands, they were describing disputes and troubles. He excused himself as Thaniel started to make his way across and the men stood too and tipped deep bows.

  ‘What was that?’ Thaniel said as they met at the door. He opened it for him and they both went carefully down the steep step and into the cool evening. It wasn’t dark yet, but the twilight was doing its trick of flattening everything, so that the way to the gates was harder to see than it would have been in full night and bright lamps. The air tasted clear after the smoke inside.

  ‘Some of the boys have been going to nationalist meetings and bringing back Western friends lately. No one speaks enough English to explain to the owner.’

  ‘Yes, probably best to stop that. Nationalist meetings are usually run by Clan na Gael.’

  ‘People can be nationalists if they want,’ Mori said. His eyes lifted upward as they passed the shrine and its two pale trees. He wasn’t devout, but for the sake of sightseeing he had shown Thaniel how to write a prayer card a few days ago, and it was still hanging up. There was only one priest, who could only go through so many each morning. ‘Especially if it’s the kind of nationalism where Japanese boys go to hear Irishmen speak in London and make friends to bring home.’

  ‘Have you gone … oh, I see what you mean. I still don’t think—’ He choked when Mori put his arm out across his chest to stop him walking on. Yuki, the angry boy from his first morning, was pointing a sword at them. Its tip was just in front of his face. Yuki inclined his head at them and moved it toward Mori instead. For what felt like a long time, nothing moved around them except the leaves and the prayer rope strung between the trees. The paper lamps outside Osei’s shop swayed on their cord and moved the candlelight about in waves.

  ‘You’ve seen the newspaper, then,’ Mori said in Japanese.

  Thaniel started forward in the hope of drawing Yuki’s attention, but Mori’s arm across him tightened.

  ‘You could stop it,’ Yuki said. Though his hand didn’t flicker, there was a catch in his voice. ‘You are a Mori. You are a knight. You could stop it. Japan is falling down and you make watches!’

  ‘I want to go home, it’s getting cold. Let us by.’

  When Yuki feinted, Mori only batted the sword away with the back of his hand. It looked easy, but there was a bang that was steel hitting bones. The impact went visibly up Yuki’s arm. Mori caught him by his elbow and twisted until he dropped the sword. Because the lower part of the blade had no edge, he held it there and gave it to Thaniel hilt-first. It was very light, and too short for a white man.

  ‘Come on. I’m taking you home.’

  ‘Get off me, you—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Mori said.

  Yuki walked with them unforced, but resentment steamed from him. Once, he tried to push Thaniel away, but Mori smacked him over the back of his head. He was calmer after that and Thaniel didn’t understand, until he realised that it was something the boy understood, from an older world. He wanted samurai, not modern manners. It was what he had been saying all along.

  The village occupied the south-west corner of Hyde Park, but one side of it was blocked off by a long building that Thaniel had vaguely in mind as having once been a hotel, five or six storeys tall. There were shop canopies outside now. Past it was the pagoda and the small lake, water black and orange by the paper lamps. They made fragile silhouettes of the bridges that looped between the two islands, and the prayer gate in the shallows. It would be a fine view during the day, but it was eerie in twilight. Stiffly, Yuki led the way into one of the middle shops.

  The light was almost too dim to see by. Pegged high near the ceiling were miners’ lamps, closed around low flames that only showed through slits. Despite the fresh air from the open door, the smell of saltpetre was strong. Crowding the banks of shelves were paper packets in bright colours, all different; some were ordinary squares and rectangles, but others were paper dragon heads or red cylinders painted with tiny, perfect pictures of knights or women with long hair. All of them had labels pasted on their sides somewhere, in big Japanese characters.

  ‘Nakamura’s Flower Fires,’ Thaniel read. He looked at Mori. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Fireworks.’

  Toward the back of the shop was an open space with tatami mats and a low workbench, where an old man knelt cutting straight, thin sticks from bamboo canes. He looked mortified when he saw them, and fell straight on to the floor in front of them. Thaniel thought he had fainted, but it was a bow. When he sat up again, there was a smudge of dust on his forehead. Although he wiped it away, the deep lines in his skin remained lighter. Mori helped him up. He was younger than Thaniel had thought, but ailing with something difficult. Behind him, a curtain rustled and a woman eased the edge of it aside, but she dropped it when she saw them all.

  ‘You can’t do that whenever you see me,’ Mori was saying.

  ‘Mori-sama is very kind, but I know my place.’ Nakamura looked helpless. ‘What has he done now?’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Mori said. ‘But perhaps he shouldn’t have a sword.’

  ‘Where did you find a sword?’ Nakamura demanded of his son. Thaniel propped it against a bench, out of Yuki’s reach ‘Mori-sama, I am so sorry—’

  Mori interrupted him quietly in Japanese. Nakamura started to reply, and then hung his head. Yuki snorted, but there was an awkwardness to his impatience.

  ‘He needs to be apprenticed,’ Nakamura said miserably. ‘He has nothing to do but label boxes here and go to his meetings in town.’ Thaniel glanced at Yuki. He was probably popular among the more insane Irish. ‘I was wondering, Mori-sama, if perhaps … ’

  ‘I’m not sure clockwork would suit him,’ Mori said quietly.

  ‘I don’t understand?’

  Yuki did. His expression hardened again and his black eyes strayed to the shelves of fireworks. Thaniel was inclined to agree with him. Forbidding the boy clockwork seemed like a vain effort when he already worked in a firework shop. The longest rockets stood in ricks tied with string, or baled tightly on the shelves. There were hundreds. The workbench was scattered with planed sticks and coloured paper, and labels, and bowls and packets of powders whose shades varied from silvery grey to white. One set of jars were opaque black to keep out the sun. Their tags were built of old, complicated characters, the sort that had first been drawn in the sand of sulphur-seamed caves to describe what there wasn’t a word for yet.

  ‘Never mind,’ Mori said. ‘I think Mr Yamashita is looking for someone to help him.’

  ‘But that’s bow-making.’

  ‘It’s a good solid trade and it’s difficult enough to be interesting, and it’s traditional. And Yamashita is strict.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nakamura said. ‘Yes, sir.’ He pushed his son’s shoulder. ‘Apologise to Mori-sama. Now!’

  Yuki looked away like a cat. There were frustrated tears in his lashes.

  ‘If you’re polite,’ Mori said quietly to him, ‘Yamashita might teach you how to use that sword, too. You could be good.’

  Yuki blinked, startled by the praise, and his father seemed unable to decide between pleasure and shame.

  ‘Good night,’ Mori said, bowing slightly. Nakamura hauled his son on to the ground, where they both stayed.

  Thaniel led the way out. After a short while he said, ‘Nationalist meetings and a shop full of fireworks sound like two things that would be better not lined up.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have arranged for him to be without one or the other?’

  Mori was quiet. Then, ‘You said to that policeman that he should fight someone his ow
n size.’

  ‘Y–es?’

  ‘Yuki isn’t my size. I’ll take a bomb from him if he makes one, but I don’t want to stop him making one. It’s shaking a baby or kicking a kitten.’ He sighed. ‘I mean—’

  ‘No, I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘Bet your life on it?’ Mori said ruefully.

  ‘Yes.’ The truth of it had a helium lightness. As they started back to the village gate, he took Mori’s hand to see what damage Yuki had done. There was a long cut across his knuckles where the sharp edge had just caught him, and a red stripe from the flat that would bruise later. Mori watched him look, not for long, then pulled his hand back and folded his arms. It was a lonely thing to do, Thaniel thought. He wanted to ask what the matter was, but he saw Mori’s shoulders stiffen at the approach of that future, then ease again when he stopped intending it.

  ‘Lord Carrow is outside our house,’ he said. Thaniel sighed, because he had forgotten about Grace and he was tired now, and not keen to argue with a man he didn’t know. Mori didn’t look at him, but his nearer shoulder eased back, like an opening door so that they could speak from adjoining rooms. ‘You needn’t do it.’

  Thaniel shook his head. ‘I think it’s a bit late for that.’

  NINETEEN

  The Carrow carriage had stopped opposite number twenty-seven. It must have been there for a while, because the horses were restless and shaking their heads. Its lamps illuminated the family crest painted in blue and white, and once Mori had slipped inside the house by himself, the carriage door opened and a tall man with a silk-lined cape stepped out. He stood with his cane in front of him, looking at Thaniel hard.

  ‘Do you intend to marry my daughter?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lord Carrow’s expression tightened. ‘She was very straight. She said she had to marry somebody and means didn’t matter.’