by Sachi Parker
So when the time came, I suggested going to boarding school, but it was Dad who cleverly implanted it in my head, as if I were the Manchurian candidate. I suspect he was growing wary of my rebellious side, and a mouthy pain-in-the-ass teenager in the house (even a meek, mildly defiant one) was just going to cramp his freewheeling style.
Or perhaps Miki was behind it. She may have planned all along to have me sent away the moment I reached a disposable age.
In any case, I was now out of their hair, and any guilt my dad may have felt about neglecting me in the past could be dismissed. I wasn’t his responsibility anymore.
The curious thing—curious to me even now—is that I didn’t go off to boarding school alone. Yuki went with me—and Dad was paying for it.
The story I heard from Yuki was that my dad and Yuki’s dad used to drink together at the Press Club in Tokyo. Between libations, Yuki’s father had confided to Dad that one of his dreams was to send Yuki and her brother, Kenji, to boarding school in Europe. He had the money for it, safely tucked away in a Swiss bank account. Then he died of a swift-moving cancer, and he neglected to give the account code to the other members of the family beforehand. The money couldn’t be retrieved; it may be sitting there still.
So there was no money for Yuki’s education, but Dad remembered his friend’s dream, and he took it upon himself to send Yuki to boarding school, in tribute to her father’s memory. It’s an uplifting tale, and it may even be true.
• • •
MY new school was named Charters Towers—or, in the accepted local pronunciation, “Chah-tuz Towz.” It was a stuffy, dreary, very traditional English school, the kind of place where the teachers wore long black gowns and those funny hats that looked like popovers, and you had to walk single-file from class to class, as if you were doing a community theater production of Oliver Twist. The discipline was similarly Victorian; if your skirt was one inch higher than school regulation, they caned you.
If you’ve ever seen a British period film or Masterpiece Theatre—one of the many versions of Jane Eyre would suffice—you’ve seen Charters Towers. There were the same long, dark hallways; the communal tables in the dining rooms; the wide winding staircases; the huge stained-glass windows; and the freezing cold rooms, impossible to heat. It was Hogwarts without the magic.
Still, I considered myself happy there. It was grim and gloomy, but at least I had company. It was an all-girls school, so there were no boy troubles, no hormonal distractions. The teachers were strict and humorless, but I was used to that from my days in Japanese schools. Plus, they had their amusing qualities.
The math teacher, for instance, was so absurdly pompous that I would burst out laughing the minute he walked into the room. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop. I became so disruptive that he made me wear a dunce cap and sit in the corner, facing the wall. That only made me laugh more. It seemed the more he punished me, the more I laughed. Soon I was dreading going to math class, because I knew I was going to start laughing and never stop. He would grow furious, and I would laugh even more. It was agony, but I couldn’t help it!
Then there was the infamous Mr. Gerard, the geography teacher, who would take long, self-important strides across the yard in his mortarboard hat, his leather shoes slapping loudly on the pavement. With every self-important step, he would let out a fart. I guess he couldn’t help it. A more self-conscious man might have taken smaller, more judicious steps, but Mr. Gerard could not suppress his essential heartiness, so he strode on purposefully, farting as he went. The smell would collect under his flowing robes and then gently waft out as he clipped along. You didn’t want to be caught in his wake.
It was a colorful setting, Bexhill-on-Sea. Near Hastings (where a pretty famous battle was fought), it sat right on the southern coast, and looked out on the English Channel. The air was fresh, the country green. Plus, there was a Woolworth’s in town where you could buy candy.
The downside was the constant, monolithic cold that permeated the rooms of Charters Towers. You couldn’t get away from it; it burrowed into your bones. The only way to get warm in that dank, clammy world was to bury yourself under a thick comforter made of eiderdown. That was heavenly. I would crawl into bed and pull the eiderdown around me, and suddenly the world was soft and blissful. Whenever I wrapped myself in one of those comforters, I felt happy. I felt loved.
So much so that today, I confess, I’m an eiderdown addict. I collect eiderdown comforters at every opportunity; they’re my great extravagance. I must have a dozen of them around the house. I get them imported from overseas—made from genuine Hungarian goose down, they cost a fortune. Still, they’re worth it. Whenever I wrap myself in eiderdown, I feel loved.
An unsettling aspect of the English school system was that when you reached the age of twelve, there was a special exam to decide the course of your future studies—it would determine which kids belonged on the fast track and which didn’t (perhaps the inspiration for Harry Potter’s “Sorting Hat”). The smart girls who aced the test were sent into Science and Math. The not-so-bright ones were directed into Cooking and Sewing.
So Yuki and I had to take the exam the year we arrived. I wound up in Cooking and Sewing; Yuki went to Science and Math. She had again confirmed her position as the Smart One, the better version of me.
• • •
WHEN we checked into Charters Towers at the beginning of the school year, we had to surrender our passports, our money, and our airline tickets for the trip home. These were locked up in a special box, and we would collect them again at the end of the semester. Because we were traveling together, Yuki’s and my things were stored together.
When the winter recess rolled around, however, we didn’t go home. Instead, we went to visit my godfather in Ireland. He was a producer and screenwriter named Kevin McClory. In the 1950s he’d been an assistant director on Around the World in 80 Days, where he met my mother—she played the Indian princess Aouda—and they became good friends. Later he developed a screenplay with Ian Fleming, based on Fleming’s character James Bond. Fleming novelized the screenplay as Thunderball without crediting Kevin, and that resulted in a lawsuit and a nice settlement. Later, in 1965, when Thunderball was made into a film, Kevin got the producing credit.
This is why he now had a stately mansion in Connemara, with servants and horse stables; and that’s where Yuki and I spent the Christmas holiday, like little Irish princesses. For two girls fresh from the dungeons, this style of living was incongruously upscale and elegant. Every day, we were served high tea on silver trays, with crumpets and cucumber sandwiches. And every day, we would put on our cute riding outfits and go galloping across the wild green countryside. All the stable boys had crushes on us, and I watched and learned as Yuki toyed with them and put them through their paces. She was a master of her craft.
It was all very idyllic, and over all too quickly. We were soon back in the dank, dreary confines of school; a splash of cold water in the face, except it was cold all over.
It wasn’t until we slogged to the end of the spring semester, and it was time to go back to Japan, that we went to the school office to retrieve our airline tickets. There was one small hitch, though: the tickets were gone.
“Excuse me,” I said, after rummaging through the storage box, “where are our plane tickets?”
The matron looked at us blankly. “Did you have plane tickets?”
“Yes,” I said, “they were both in this box.”
“Mine was in my white purse,” said Yuki helpfully. But her white purse was gone, too.
The matron shrugged. If we put the tickets in the box, then they should still be in there. “Are you sure you didn’t keep them in your dorm room instead?”
This was a crazy question. Why would we have done that? All students were required to hand in their airline tickets. It was a rule, and if you broke a rule at Charters Towers, you were punished. Neither Yuki nor I was going to risk being caned just to keep our plane tickets as souvenirs.
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This was as much guidance as the matron was going to provide. If the tickets were gone, they were gone. She knew nothing about it; she washed her hands of it. End of story.
For us it was just the beginning. Losing a plane ticket in those days was a serious business. There were no e-tickets or computer backups in those days; a paper ticket was like cash, and if you lost it, you were screwed.
Yuki and I had no idea what to do next. We were effectively stranded in England. While the school notified our parents, we got on the train to London without a plan of action. I guess we had this vague, youthful hope that maybe by the time we got to Victoria Station, everything would be solved for us. If worse came to worst, we could always go back to Connemara.
My real fear was that my father would come all the way from Japan to sort things out, and in his exasperation he would unleash his titanic, unreasoning anger on us. So I was naturally relieved when my mother showed up at the station instead.
I shouldn’t have been.
Mom greeted us coolly—no hugs or kisses. There was nothing bubbly or effusive in her mood. She brought us both to the nearby Grosvenor Hotel, where she’d reserved a penthouse suite. Then she put Yuki in one of the bedrooms, shut the door, and locked it.
Mom turned on me and stared hard.
“So, what did you do with the tickets?”
I was so surprised by the question that I was initially speechless. “What did I do with the tickets? I didn’t do anything with them, Mom. They just disappeared.”
Mom nodded. “Uh-huh.” She paced the room a moment. “They just disappeared…” She stopped and gave me a significant glance. “Like your retainer, I suppose?”
“My retainer?”
“Your father told me all about it. We don’t have any secrets, you know. You lost your retainer, so he bought you a new one, and then you lost that, too. Didn’t you?”
“Well—yes, but that was because Eguchi-san tricked me.”
“I’m not talking about Eguchi-san. I’m talking about you. You lost the retainer, but it wasn’t really lost, was it?”
“No. Because Eguchi-san took it.”
“Exactly.”
My head was starting to spin. I couldn’t follow her logic, which may have been her intention.
“So maybe the tickets are lost,” she went on, “and maybe they aren’t.” She let this hang cryptically in the air.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe you know what happened to the tickets, and you’re not telling me for some reason.”
What reason was she talking about? “I’m kinda confused, Mom.”
“I’m confused, too,” she replied. “We bought the two of you expensive plane tickets, and now they’re gone, and nobody knows anything about them. They must have gone somewhere, right? They just didn’t get up and walk away by themselves.”
True point. I couldn’t argue with her on that one.
She folded her arms. “So, do you have something to tell me?”
Did I? I couldn’t think of anything. So: “No.”
Now Mom gave me the Look. The Look was one of her most trusted weapons. It signaled suspicion, righteous anger, contempt, and a steely determination to ferret out the truth. Her mouth would tighten, and her eyes would narrow to a squint, and you could see cold fire flashing within. She was like a basilisk lizard eyeing its insect prey.
I was getting the Look now, and I knew that whatever I had said so far, it was not what she’d wanted to hear. She was waiting for something else.
“Sachi, we’re not leaving this room until we find out what happened.”
“But I don’t know what happened, Mom.”
“I think you do,” she said finally. “I think you cashed those tickets in and you took the money. That’s what I think.”
I was stunned out of my shoes. I cashed in the tickets and took the money? Me? First of all, I didn’t even know this was possible. Could you actually do that? My next question was, how would I have done that? What was the process for cashing in airline tickets? I had no idea, and I was astonished that my mother would think I did. It was like suggesting I knew how to score a kilo of heroin.
I told her as much. “I didn’t do that, Mom. I don’t know how to do that.”
“Maybe you don’t know, but I think it’s very possible that Yuki does.”
Oh. I suddenly realized what the stakes were here, and why Yuki and I had been separated. We were like two members of an underworld gang, rounded up in a police sting, and now we were being held for questioning. Yuki was the brains of the gang, I was apparently the stooge, and Mom was the head detective in charge of the investigation. This lavishly furnished bedroom in a legendary five-star hotel had become my interrogation cell.
I started getting dizzy. Plus, I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since we left Bexhill.
“Mom, I’m really hungry. Can we order room service?”
“Not till we get to the bottom of this.” She was pacing again. Mom had never played a cop before, so she was probably relishing the opportunity. She resumed the interrogation, peppering me with questions, trying to trip me up. But she couldn’t break me, because there was nothing to break.
Finally, she gave up in frustration. “Okay, let’s see what Yuki has to say.” She left me and headed for Yuki’s bedroom.
“Mom!” I called. She paused at my door and looked back expectantly. “Can I get something to eat, please?”
She looked at me a moment. “No,” she said, and shut the door and locked me in.
Now I was really confused. What? No? I wasn’t going to eat? Because my plane ticket was missing? That was silly. Surely Mom had spoken in a moment of pique. She would bring me a sandwich when she came back. Surely. In the meantime, I drank water from the bathroom tap. That would tide me over for a little while.
About half an hour later, she returned from Yuki’s room. Empty-handed. I don’t know what went on with Yuki, but Mom didn’t look satisfied.
The questioning began again. Why did you take the tickets? Where did you sell them? How much did you get?
Mom paused a moment, and then dropped her little bombshell: “You know, Yuki says it was all your idea.” I knew she was lying about this—Yuki would never have folded so easily—but I was so frazzled and Mom was such a good actress that I believed her anyway.
“It was not my idea!”
“That’s what I thought,” Mom went on silkily. “Yuki was really behind it, wasn’t she? She’s the one who wanted the money. Why? To send home to her mother? I know they’re very poor. That was the reason, wasn’t it?”
I’d seen this movie before—she was trying to play us off each other—and I wasn’t going to fall for it. I would never betray Yuki, no matter how disloyal she was to me. No, never!
Although I did start to wonder…Maybe Yuki did take the tickets. Maybe she did send the money to her mother. She was certainly capable of it, wasn’t she?
So the interrogation went on, all day and into the night: Mom shuttling back and forth from one room to another, browbeating us, squeezing out odd bits of information and relaying them back to the other prisoner. When it was time for bed, she locked us both in our rooms, without feeding us, and promised to continue the discussion in the morning—which she did.
I honestly don’t know how long this went on. I remember it as being three days. Yuki thinks it was only a day and a half. Maybe so, but I just recall being hungrier than I’d ever been in my life. Plus, I couldn’t sleep, both from the anxiety and the hunger pangs.
Yuki said it was exactly like one of those World War II movies, where the good guys were interrogated by the Gestapo. There was no physical torture (except for starvation!), but the psychological manipulation was so intense that Yuki was on the verge of despair. It was the closest, she says, that she’d ever been to entertaining suicidal thoughts.
And all this terror was being whipped up by my mother, that sweet, kooky gamine beloved the world over. I began to see where the Drag
on Lady epithet might have a basis in truth.
Finally—after holding out as long as I could, and seeing no end in sight—I cracked. Totally. “Yes, it’s true, we did it, we did it!” I bogusly confessed.
“You did it?” Mom asked pointedly.
“No, it was Yuki’s idea.” Yes, to my shame, I threw Yuki under the bus.
“Why?” Mom pursued.
“Why?” I quickly recalled all the malignant little seeds she had planted, and responded accordingly. “Because…her mother had no money, and she needed to pay her rent. So we took the tickets, and Yuki found a place to sell them. She’s the smart one, you know. Not me.”
Mom nodded. “She has a devious mind.”
“You’re right, Mom. You can’t trust her!”
Mom pondered a minute, then left the room. A moment later she returned with Yuki. “Okay, Sachi, would you repeat what you just said?”
“Repeat…?” I hadn’t counted on this. Yuki, who looked worn down but still had an air of defiance about her, waited curiously. She knew she had nothing to worry about, because she hadn’t done anything. What could I possibly say?
“Yuki did it!” I said, pointing at her. I was like one of those hysterical girls in The Crucible, picking out witches right and left to save her own skin. Then, when Mom pressed me, I repeated the entire story, just as I’d originally invented it.
Yuki was at first astonished; then she threw me the dirtiest look I’d ever seen. I could see that whatever friendship we’d managed to forge was instantly over. She denied the charges and raised a mild protest, but she seemed to recognize immediately that she couldn’t win. It was my word against hers, and my own mother was the judge.
Mom gave Yuki a short, dismissive lecture—“I’m very disappointed in you”—and took her back to her bedroom. It was very quiet in there, and I wondered what could be going on. Was Mom calling the police? Was she making Yuki sign a confession?
When she returned, her bright, bubbly smile was back. “Now, what would you like to eat?”
I had a hamburger, medium rare, with thinly sliced red onions and tomatoes and Dijon mustard. The bun was toasted. Pickles and crispy French fries on the side, and a hot chocolate. It was the best food I’d ever tasted. In fact, give me that exact meal and an eiderdown comforter, and I would be in heaven.