Signs for Lost Children

by Sarah Moss

  ‘I doubt that I have a gentleman’s taste, Miss Davis.’

  She picks up his book. ‘Ah, yes. Mr. Marston. He relied, you know, much more than he admits upon a translator whose English was far from perfect. And you know how these people will invent something rather than say that they do not know.’

  ‘These people, Miss Davis?’

  She opens the book. ‘Translators. Guides. Native informants. Of course in Japanese there are ways of communicating ignorance without saying “I do not know” but in English it invariably sounds like lying.’

  Her skirt balloons in a gust of wind but she does not clutch as another woman would.

  ‘You speak Japanese, then?’

  She flicks through the book. ‘Well enough.’ She glances up. ‘You are surprised?’

  He shrugs. Miss Davis’s father was a missionary and the family have been in Japan for three years. They are now, according to her mother, returning to England more or less destitute to live with Mrs. Davis’s brother. It is not Tom’s understanding of destitution that travels on such a liner.

  ‘Envious, perhaps.’

  ‘I had no special teaching. I learnt as anyone might learn, by persistent application.’

  ‘I congratulate you.’

  She closes the book. ‘I was able to help my father. It is hard for a foreign man to address Japanese women.’

  ‘But you were able to do it? To preach in Japanese?’

  He imagines her, white-skinned and blue-eyed, on a podium before an audience of women kneeling in kimono. Why would they come?

  ‘When I was called. Yes.’

  From the dining room, the gong sounds.

  ‘I suppose you do not take tea?’ she asks. Most days, he doesn’t.

  ‘I think I will.’

  He does not offer his arm, but holds doors. Mrs. Davis smiles up at him as he pulls back Miss Davis’s chair. There are three tiers on the cake-stand: sandwiches, scones and fruit cake, piled on doilies that remind him of Ally’s Aunt Mary.

  ‘There you are, Louisa. It was not too windy, then, out there?’

  Miss Davis turns her tea cup so that the handle points the correct way. ‘No, Mamma.’

  Silence falls. There are chairs at the table for an American man who has been teaching at a business college and his English wife, and for a Japanese man who says little and appears to find the food unappealing, but it is unlikely that they will come now.

  Mrs. Davis pours tea for Tom and her daughter. Miss Davis takes a sandwich. There is silence. She takes a neat bite. Her mother wields a cake-fork. He shifts in his chair. More silence. He will make them speak, he thinks, he will go on talking until Miss Davis’s self-containment is breached.

  ‘I saw some dolphins earlier,’ Tom says. ‘Playing in the bow wave.’

  Miss Davis sips her tea, holding the cup the Japanese way, in both hands.

  Mrs. Davis is gazing out of the window.

  ‘Only a small school. I always like to see dolphins. To be reminded that the water is full of life.’

  Miss Davis takes another bite of her sandwich.

  ‘And that we find the same creatures the world over. That voyaging is not merely an unnatural human propensity. Who knows how far a whale might travel?’

  Mrs. Davis slowly turns her head, as if hearing a faint sound from far away. He will keep going, he thinks, until one of them says something. He will see how inane they allow him to become before they are shamed into speech.

  ‘It is surprising, isn’t it, that in the art of such a seafaring nation as Japan marine life is so little represented. Considering the attention paid to all kinds of foliage. I have seen even mushrooms most precisely represented.’ His lips tighten to stop himself smiling as this monologue drifts towards nonsense. Miss Davis touches her fingertips to her napkin. He remembers finding bits of a tea-set along the beach at Porth Leven the week after a bad storm, picking up a blue-and-white cup missing only a part of the handle and turning it over to read Atlantic Line Sophia painted on the bottom. ‘Although I do have among my collection a netsuke in the form of a dolphin. Made of walnut wood, I believe.’

  Miss Davis sets down her cup. ‘You have been making a collection, then, of Japanese art work?’

  She sounds disbelieving, as if he’s claiming to be a circus acrobat or a dress designer.

  ‘Fulfilling a commission only. I do not claim to be a connoisseur, but I have enjoyed what little I have been able to learn.’

  ‘Really.’ She splits her scone. ‘And what did you buy, Mr. Cavendish, for this commission?’

  He thinks about the treasures in their crates somewhere below his feet, about the netsuke curled and sleeping, the pale green bowls in their nests of straw, the furled silks. He chooses the one whose untimely exposure he minds least, the selection of which he is most certain. Anything sold at the Annual Exhibition is an unquestionable choice.

  ‘There is a silk hanging. Representing deer in an autumn wood. I suppose you had many opportunities to admire the changing trees, but I found the colours quite remarkable, beyond anything I have seen in England. This piece is gold-coloured but somehow quite natural-seeming at the same time, with dark branches and the crimson maple leaves, and under the tree a doe and a fawn. Woven, in this case, but I have also some embroideries.’

  She has put a lot of strawberry jam on her scone. ‘And you were told, perhaps, that this came from the household of a samurai warrior, where it has been venerated these hundred years and more?’

  Her mother murmurs something, some restraint or protest.

  ‘No. It is new. Only the skills are old, such as we have not in Europe.’

  She smiles and then dabs her lips with her napkin, as if to cover the smile. ‘I thought as much. I am afraid you will find, Mr. Cavendish, that the Japanese learnt the arts of these hangings, as you call them, from the French within the last twenty years. It is like your lighthouses, you know: they perceive a need, or perhaps a market, and bend their energies to learning. These ‘hangings’ are made only for Europeans, using methods picked up in Lyon by young men sent for the purpose. They learn our arts, you know, as well as our sciences, and render them back to us. You could as soon say that the Japanese railways are built to an ancient tradition. May I help you to cake, Mr. Cavendish? You are not eating.’

  He pushes his plate away. ‘As you remarked, it is not my habit to take tea.’ Under the black hat, her hair is slipping down. He finds himself imagining how a bruise would look on the white skin between her collarbone and the neckline of her black dress, how it would bloom red, and then dark grey, as if she were smudged with coal, and over days turn purple, green and yellow, a stain of colour on her photographic black-and-white. In any case, Tom has fulfilled his commission, and he believes De Rivers will like the golden deer wherever the weaver learnt his trade.

  ‘We are perhaps beginning an era where a great many of our more interesting endeavours will result from international exchange of one kind or another,’ he says. ‘Although I cannot think of an instance where Europeans have learnt a new technology or branch of science from another continent.’

  ‘You think all things come of us, and of our own do they give us?’

  It takes such sacrilege to rouse Mrs. Davis. ‘Louisa, please. Do not use those words so lightly.’

  ‘I did not mean them lightly, Mamma. Only to suggest that Mr. Cavendish seems to see his own kind as the creators of the world as we know it.’

  He is confused; is it not she who has just told him that what he thought to be authentically Japanese is in fact a European fabrication?

  ‘As we know it,’ he says. ‘Perhaps the difficulty is not with the world and its creators but with our knowledge. Or at least, with my knowledge. I do not doubt that there are original Japanese arts and sciences, but it is easy to believe that I have not succeeded in apprehending them. I came here,
after all, to assist in the building of lighthouses, and that I believe I have done to the satisfaction of all concerned.’

  She nods. ‘A pleasing outcome indeed, then, Mr. Cavendish.’

  He looks at her, but her eyes are downcast. Quite apart from the loss of her father, he thinks, she is a very unhappy woman. It is no wonder she is not married.

  As soon as tea is over, he goes in search of the professor. The smoking room first, he thinks, for it has become rather as he imagines a gentleman’s club to be, a place of stale air, leather armchairs and prints hung too high to be of anything other than symbolic value. Drinks, he hears, are served at all hours of the day. He does not go there, and nor do the women.

  Professor Baxter is asleep in a red armchair with a book open on his lap and his head lolling in the corner of the chair’s winged back. On the table beside him is a glass of something brown and clear. His mouth is open red and wet, a gash or an indecency in the shabby refinement of this room. It is the mouth that makes Tom wake him, coughing theatrically from one pace behind the chair. The professor shifts, swats at a non-existent fly and then snores once as his head falls back. His mouth opens again. His teeth are flecked with brown and there is a string of saliva between his lips.

  ‘Ah, Professor Baxter, there you are!’

  He snorts, starts and sits up, blinking.

  ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t realise you were resting. Please, excuse me.’

  ‘What? What? Ah, Tom Cavendish. Dear me. I must have dropped off. And what was I reading?’ He turns over the book. ‘Dickens. I fear then that my dozing says little for my literary judgement. Only do you know, I hadn’t read it for years, not since I was a boy, and I thought: I remember reading that and I liked it, let’s try again. It’s not as if the library is full of temptation. Do sit down.’

  Tom sits. ‘Bleak House is slow at the beginning,’ he says. ‘I’m sure the last two thirds would keep you awake.’

  ‘Let us say so, dear boy.’ He picks up his glass and sniffs it. ‘No point in wasting it, is there? Care for one yourself?’

  Tom shakes his head. ‘After dinner, perhaps. Professor, may I ask you about something?’

  ‘Naturally. Anything in the world. I am at your disposal.’

  The professor sits up and smooths his hair, takes on before Tom’s eyes the air of a man of authority.

  ‘I bought some hangings, embroidery on silk, as part of my commission.’

  The professor nods. ‘Very popular with collectors. Some exquisite work. Quite remarkable.’

  ‘Miss Davis says they’re not Japanese. Well, that the Japanese make them in mimicry of the French. That they learnt to do it by sending men to Europe.’

  ‘Does she? A learned young lady. Prefer them pretty, myself.’

  ‘I am a little—a little concerned.’

  ‘Concerned? Why? You fear that your patron will scorn your offerings in the belief that he could buy the same thing in any department store in Paris? Dear boy, the best Japanese things are quite extraordinary. Far beyond anything made in Europe. Surely you can see for yourself, the design as well as the execution, startling. Where did you get them?’

  ‘A place my guide told me, out in the hills. They make things for the Imperial Palace. I thought that meant something.’

  The professor leans over to pat his hand. ‘I should say it does. Is this Nakayama? Well then. You could not have done better. And perhaps you feel able to mention the sum?’

  Red-faced, gaze averted, Tom mentions it.

  ‘You did very well, dear boy, very well indeed. They are not street-sellers to be fleeced or haggled as if their work were fruit at the end of a hot day. I knew the old man, you know, when he first came to Europe. Met him in London. He’d been in Macclesfield at the silk mills. Tiny little chap but he knew what he was doing all right. Miss Davis is right, the hangings are not an old Japanese tradition, any more than the railway lines or the vaccination are old Japanese traditions. But if we limited ourselves to old traditions, you and I would still be painting ourselves blue and living in mud huts. They’ve been weaving and embroidering silks since we were crawling in the mud, just not hanging them on the walls. Prize beauty where you find it, dear boy, that’s my advice. If a thing’s well done it’s well done, wherever the chap’s father learnt to do it.’

  He watches Tom for a moment. ‘Do you want to have them lift your boxes, let me have a look, put your mind at rest? I’ll tell you, if it’s Nakayama work you’ll sell it easy as whistling if your man doesn’t like the look of it.’

  Tom shakes his head. ‘It’s his anyway. Bought with his money. It would be easier in some ways if the risk were mine.’

  ‘Well then, he can sell it. Do you want to show me?’

  Outside, nothing is different: sea and sky, waves and wind.

  ‘I thank you but no. They are all wrapped and nailed into their crates. It’s not as if I can do anything about it now whatever you say.’

  ‘You have insurance?’

  ‘I do and Mr. De Rivers does. For more than I spent.’

  ‘Leave it all be, then. And don’t worry. Here, I’ll get you a drink.’

  * * *

  Later, he walks the deck. There is moonlight and a light wind and the surge of the ship under his feet, and the waves black and silver under the stars. He does not know why he is troubled. Of course everyone on a ship is by definition literally disturbed, but there is something more than the daily discomfort of the transitory state. He remembers the imaginary bruise on Miss Davis’ breast. He remembers Nakayama, the white buildings against the winter-forested hillside and the drift of clouds down the mountain valley and then the shock of the boiling dyes, pink and red and steaming hot, the man holding up the silk now dripping as if with blood. He walks a long time, as the ship and the sea turn under his feet towards the morning stars.

  THE PATH OF ODYSSEUS

  She meets the postman at the gate and opens the letter there, standing on the path with the seagulls crying around her and the wind jostling the last faded petals off the camellias. Odd to have flowers that die in the spring. She can’t read the postmark—Kyoto still or Yokohama? She’s torn the chrysanthemum stamp in her haste.

  He’s coming home.

  The letter shakes in her hand, as if this were a shock, as if she hadn’t believed herself married and her husband yet walking the earth. She holds it in both hands. Five weeks ago. Five weeks ago he was leaving Kyoto. The holly trees arch in the wind like angry cats. He may be here, opening this gate, in two weeks. She must prepare the house. She must make sure his things are just as he left them, that the place is perfectly clean and tidy, all signs of the plasterers and painters gone. What if he dislikes the curtains, if he is angry that she did not take care of the old ones, allowed them to moulder in the damp? She must cook for him. He likes pies. Her pastry is not reliably good—maybe she could ask Molly to make some extra? He need not know, she need not tell him that it is the work of another woman’s hands. And her body, she thinks, her breathing accelerating, she is still thin, and her hair noticeably greyer than when he left; what if he does not like this, if he regrets—if he would prefer—And her commitment to Rose Tree House, which means that it will be hard for her to cook before he comes home each day. What if he objects, if he does not like her to be out so much? You must take a housekeeper, Aunt Mary would say. It is time to have a servant. She remembers Jenny and shivers: someone to watch, and judge. Someone to know the stains on her underwear and her fancy for ginger biscuits, to read her letters when she is not there and to see how long she does not mend her clothes. Someone watching for every failure. No. Why should she jeopardise her newfound peace so that Tom doesn’t have to eat her cooking? She has stood still for so long that a thrush hops across the grass by her skirt; she will miss the boat.

  She sees it leave from the quay as she hurries down Dunstanville. She can see the trees
around Rose Tree House and the mansions above it from here, but not the building itself. There is no reason why anything should have gone wrong, no reason why her lateness should cause any distress. She has half an hour, now, before the next ferry. She finds herself turning aside into the Prince Albert Garden, her feet following the path around the palm trees and the pink-flowering cactus, down the slimy stone steps to the beach. She’s visible from across the estuary here, from Flushing, but it’s also a place of concealment, under the old stone groyne. There is sea-glass among the pebbles, bits of broken china worn smooth as stone, and beer bottles and fishing-line more recently given to the sea. She sits on a rock and looks down the Carrick Roads, out to the open sea. Tom is there, somewhere, perhaps already in the Mediterranean, passing the sands of the Holy Land, maybe with Cyprus a shadow on the horizon. The path of Odysseus, the wine-dark sea. Papa had wanted to name her after Penelope but Mamma was right, if not accurate, in objecting that there are more uses for a woman’s life than undoing her knitting. There is not, Ally thinks, a great deal of difference between Sisyphus’ curse and Penelope’s salvation, only that what is torture for a man is meant to be fulfilment for a woman. She sees a small white form among the wet stones by her feet and stoops to pick it up. A china figurine, a female shape that has lost its arms and had the detail of its garb and facial features worn away by sands and sea. The curls of hair gathered high on the head are still visible, and the line of a tunic across the breast, a costume such as Ally once wore to model for Papa’s Proserpina. She dusts off the sand with her fingertips and slips the figure into her pocket. Across the water, the ferry is leaving Flushing. She makes her way back up the steps towards the quay.

  THINGS HE CAN BARELY NAME

  He stands at the rail again, staring at the horizon which is still empty. He woke early and lay sweating under the sheets until the weight of inactivity became impossible. The brief flurry of dressing over, he paced the deck until he could no longer pretend not to know every knot in every plank. He toyed with breakfast, the eggs now pallid and tasteless, the sun already too hot for coffee to have any appeal and Louisa Davis as usual absent from the table. There is nothing to do. The women, he thinks, are accustomed to it; they sew, read, walk the deck, write letters, attend the meals served with the regularity and ceremony of monastic offices. They dress for dinner, spend time arranging their hair. It does not appear very different from their routines on land, Ally’s Aunt Mary and Mrs. Senhouse and doubtless English gentlewomen across India all keeping to the same timetable. Or perhaps more of them than one thinks are like Louisa, bored and angry and prowling. Their eyes have not met, they have scarcely spoken at the table, for the last two days.