The Japanese Lantern

by Isobel Chace

  In the noise, only Yoshiko heard the telephone bell and she slipped quietly away to answer it. She loved the instrument with a mixture of awe and sheer sublime joy that all Japanese feel when faced with a receiver; and nothing gave her greater pleasure than to answer it, or to telephone all her friends one after the other if she could think of nothing better to do.

  This time, however, she came back with a slight frown on her face.

  “It is for Miss Kennedy,” she announced doubtfully. “He says the name is Edward and that you will remember him.”

  Jonquil excused herself, as puzzled as the rest of them as to whom it could be. Edward, she thought, but I don’t know any Edwards! She picked up the receiver and put it to her ear.

  “This is Jonquil Kennedy speaking,” She said. There was a crackling noise at the other end. “Hullo, Jonquil. This is Edward Keeving. Remember me? I followed you over today and have only just got in. I thought I'd telephone you and make sure that everything is okay. I was a little worried about you.”

  Jonquil felt a rush of gratitude towards him. How nice of him to have bothered!

  “How very kind of you!” she exclaimed. “I was feeling a little nervous, and hearing your voice— I mean hearing the voice of someone else—”

  “Someone who isn’t going to employ you?” he suggested.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “I’m glad I’m so good for the morale,’.’ he said in pleased tones. “I thought you might be annoyed at the liberty.”

  “Oh, no!” Jonquil protested. “I appreciate it very much.”

  “Then perhaps you won’t mind if I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

  “Why should I?”

  It was so odd, she thought, that the Edward Keeving of tonight should be so different from the man in Manila, whom she hadn’t liked at all. This Edward Keeving was fun. He had made her feel almost at home in her new surroundings.

  “Because you might not want to answer,” he replied promptly. “But I shan’t give you the opportunity to change your mind. Why did you fib to me last night? Did I look so like an ogre that you couldn’t tell me the truth?”

  For a moment Jonquil’s mind was blank.

  “Fib to you?” she asked.

  “Ah!” he laughed. “I knew that you wouldn’t want to answer!”

  “It isn’t that at all. I don’t remember fibbing to you.”

  “No? You said Mitchi Boko had introduced you to Mr. Tate.”

  Jonquil remembered with dismay that she had said exactly that. It would be much more difficult now, she reflected, to explain just why she had said it. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!

  “Well, they were both on the aeroplane,” she excused herself.

  Edward Keeving chuckled.

  “That hardly begins to answer,” he said. “I can see that it will take a long time to worm the truth out of you. Suppose you come out and have dinner with me one evening?”

  “I should love to.” Surprisingly that was true. There seemed to be no resemblance between this laughing voice and the awkward, deprecating man of the night before.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Not so soon,” she said firmly. “I hardly know exactly what I have to do yet.”

  “Then shall I ring you again?”

  “Would you?” Her pleasure showed in her voice. It would be very nice to be sought out by him—as an antidote to her experience with Jason.

  “I certainly would. I warn you, I’m quite ruthless once my curiosity is aroused. I’m not going to allow you to escape me.”

  Jonquil was still smiling when she went back to the others.

  “It was Edward Keeving,” she told them in answer to their look of enquiry, discreetly veiled, but nevertheless quite obvious.

  A fleeting frown crossed Jason’s face.

  “I didn’t think you particularly cared for him last night,” he said.

  Jonquil blushed a little.

  “I didn’t. But it just goes to show that one should never judge on first impressions. He was charming this evening.”

  There was some surprise at the emphasis that she gave the remark, but Jason only smiled at her with a slightly mocking smile.

  “You must have made quite an impression,” he said carelessly.

  Jonquil hastily ate the remains of her pudding. Why did Jason have to be so nasty? she wondered. Giving the impression that she had gone out of her way to attract Edward Keeving, when she had done nothing of the sort! Why couldn’t he leave her alone?

  “And who might Edward Keeving be?” Mrs. Tate asked sourly. “He appears to be a man of good taste, which is more than I can say for my own nephew!”

  Jonquil’s face burned. If she only knew! But Jason remained quite calm and Yoshiko had apparently not noticed that the remark was directed against her.

  “Very good taste,” Harvey Buckmaster agreed, with a smile that put Jonquil a little more at her ease.

  “Which is more than I can say for my charming aunt,” Janet Buckmaster teased Mrs. Tate gently in an undertone. The old lady smiled reluctantly.

  “Are we going to spend all evening over this meal? she asked impatiently. “I'm tired and I expect Jonquil is too. She can come with me to my room.”

  It was a little hard to be removed so early, Jonquil thought, but she obediently got up and accompanied Mrs. Tate from the room, happy that her goodnights should have been so warmly received. She liked the family immensely—except for Jason. She didn’t like him at all! But that way her thoughts led her into danger. She would not allow him to make her unhappy. In fact she wasn’t going to allow him even to spoil her pleasure in his family. He could go and play with Yoshiko and she wouldn’t care one bit! Well, not very much anyway.

  Mrs. Tate wheeled herself along the corridors at a speed born of long practice, judging the corners nicely, so that she just skimmed round them, with Jonquil in full flight behind her.

  “Open the door, my dear,” she commanded regally, when they had reached her room. “Hmph! Nice to see a girl opening a door like a human being, instead of going on her knees like an animal!” She caught Jonquil’s surprised look. “I can see your acquaintance with Japanese manners is rudimentary!” she remarked dryly.

  “It’s non-existent,” Jonquil confessed.

  “Good!” the old lady chuckled. “Couldn’t be better. Come in and sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you.”

  Mrs. Tate wheeled her chair over to the window and sat for a moment staring out at the moonlit garden.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said at last.

  “It’s all that I ever imagined,” Jonquil confessed. “We do our best at home, but I’ve never seen anything like the gardens they seem to have here. They make me want to weep. Silly.”

  The old lady looked at her sharply.

  “Not silly at all,” she retorted. “Merely shows that you have feelings. The sort of feeling that every woman ought to have.”

  This was a point of view that had been presented to Jonquil too often for her to feel any surprise, so she waited in silence for the old lady to go on. When she did, she could only gasp in surprise.

  “I suppose you and Jason had some silly quarrel.” Mrs. Tate said sharply. “You ought to have more sense. Especially”—and her voice changed —“as he’s in danger and may very well need your help.”

  “My help?” Jonquil asked weakly.

  “What’s this Edward Keeving to you?” Mrs. Tate demanded.

  “Nothing. I don’t know him well. I only met him yesterday.”

  “Quite. Does he know Mitchi Boko?”

  “Yes; yes, I think he does.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not really. I met her on the plane to Manila. She was frightened when we went through a thunderstorm and I went and sat beside her.”

  The old lady’s bright eyes watched her carefully.

  “What did you think of her?” she asked.

  Jonquil swallowed.
/>   “I thought she was quite lovely,” she said distractedly. What if Jason really was in danger? Her heart thumped uncomfortably. Why should he be? Because of his job? Her eyes widened as she gazed at Mrs. Tate.

  “So did I,” the old lady agreed. “Quite lovely. And very, very dangerous.”

  Jonquil almost blurted out that that was exactly what Jason had said, but something deep down inside prevented her. “Why do you think Jason’s in danger?” she asked instead.

  The old lady’s eyes snapped with amusement. ‘So you are interested,” she said. “Jason too, I notice!” She chuckled in quite a kindly way. “I thought you were, and it’s always nice to be proven right.”

  “Did you ask me in to find—”

  “No, I did not,” Mrs. Tate denied before she could finish. “I asked you in because I wanted your help. My nephew is one of the cleverest men I know, and so it goes without saying that he is also very stupid. Everyone knows that he has discovered something very important. Why else would Harvey pick this moment to go to America? He hates the winter in New York as much as the next man. What it is, of course I don’t know, and I don’t want to. But what I do want to know is who all these strange people are who are suddenly scraping up acquaintance with my nephew. People like Mitchi Boko—and, possibly, Edward Keeving!”

  “But what do you want me to do?” Jonquil asked, feeling rather as though she had fallen down the rabbit’s hole with Alice.

  “I want you to find out for me,” the old lady said calmly. “I can’t get about, but there’s nothing to stop you getting to know these people.”

  “But—”

  “You’re tired. Tell me your objections in the morning. Oh—and shut the door when you go out, will you? I hate draughts!”

  Jonquil crept out, looking up and down the corridor as she went. It was silly, but Mrs. Tate’s fears were catching. In fact she could have sworn that she just caught sight of a skirt sweeping round the far corner. A yellow skirt, such as the one worn earlier by Yoshiko. Was it possible that she could have been listening at the door? Jonquil shook herself, chiding herself for letting her imagination run away with her. But it was odd, for nobody but Mrs. Tate slept at that end of the house.

  CHAPTER IV

  Slowly and majestically the aeroplane rose into the air. For a moment it seemed impossible that it would clear the buildings ahead of it, but that was only an illusion. Within seconds it had gathered speed and had become no more than a dot, fast disappearing to the horizon.

  Alexander stood in the middle of the apron, a small foursquare figure, with tears pouring down his cheeks.

  “Come now,” Yoshiko chided him gently. “This is not very brave, huh? You would not like people to see these tears?”

  “I don’t care!”

  Jonquil handed him a handkerchief as unobtrusively as possible and tried not to look as though she was watching him as he surreptitiously wiped his eyes.

  “I’m depending on you to see that the taximan takes us home the right way,” she told him. “I don’t fancy getting lost on my very first morning.”

  To her relief he smiled at that.

  “We’re not going home. We’re having lunch with Uncle -Jason. He promised me, didn’t he, Yoshiko?”

  The Japanese girl nodded, casting an oblique look at Jonquil.

  “He’s quite right,” she said. “Did Jason say nothing to you? We are all to have lunch with him in the Ginza.”

  “But—” With an effort Jonquil swallowed down her irritation. “That will be lovely!” she exclaimed, seeing Alexander’s pleasure change to doubt. “But I do wish he had told me. Will it be terribly smart?”

  Yoshiko smiled understandingly, grasping Alexander by the hand just before he ran off to look at another aeroplane.

  “There are lots of eating houses,” she said comfortably. “I am not very smart either. Come, we will go and find a taxi.”

  She led the way through the airport buildings with Jonquil and Alexander following behind, both of them inclined to stand and stare at the people all around them.

  “Takushi! Takushi!”

  A small Citroen came to a perilous halt at the entrance steps and they climbed quickly into it, Yoshiko keeping up a flood of directions to the driver all the while they were settling into their seats.

  “There is nothing quite like a Tokyo taxi,” she warned Jonquil in a dry voice. “It’s best not to look until you become accustomed to them.”

  The taxi took off, its tyres screeching their protest, and they shot out of the airport grounds and into the main road traffic. Surprisingly, Jonquil was not in the least afraid. They might be going unbelievably fast, but the driver gave a great sense of security to her. He looked so competent, not in the least like the dare-devil that she had expected.

  It had been a very busy morning for the whole household, making sure that the Buckmasters had everything they needed for their trip to the States and helping with the last-minute packing that is always inevitable on such occasions.

  Yoshiko grasped a strap as they swooped around another corner. She giggled happily as Alexander slid across the seat almost into her lap. “This is good!” she sighed. “In an aeroplane it is so dull! I feel sorry for Janet and Harvey.”

  They all laughed at that, the driver too, though he had no idea what the joke was about. Yoshika called out something to him in Japanese and he nodded his head, bringing the car to another screeching halt.

  “I said we would walk,” Yoshiko explained. Her eyes glinted with mischief. “Mitsukoshi , have very charming shoes—” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “Clothes are so expensive, one cannot neglect one’s opportunities.”

  It was certain, Jonquil thought, that Yoshiko didn’t often neglect hers. All her clothes were lovely and she wore them with an air that many Western girls would have envied.

  “Don’t you ever wear the kimono?” she asked her.

  Yoshiko shook her head.

  “At festival times. Hardly anyone wears it now.”

  But there were still a few women who clung obstinately to their own dress, Jonquil noticed, their wooden sandals clattering along the pavements at a terrific rate and their bodies poised forwards as if their heads could hardly wait for their feet to catch up with them. And inside the store there were hundreds of kimonos being sold, some of them so beautiful and costly that Jonquil wanted to stop and look at them for minutes at a time.

  The shoe department was divided in two also. On one side was a large range of Western styled shoes and on the other the traditional Japanese designs. Yoshiko made straight for some imports from Italy.

  “These!” she said triumphantly. “Aren’t they beautiful.”

  “Too frail,” a man’s voice said behind them, and both girls jumped round to come face to face with Jason. “I found Alex in the doorway and guessed you’d come in here,” ho explained in answer to their look of enquiry.

  “I can’t resist them,” Yoshiko sighed.

  “I prefer the ‘zori’,” Jason maintained. He pointed to some gaily coloured Japanese sandals in another showcase.

  “Too common!” Yoshiko complained.

  Jonquil went over to have a closer look at thou while Yoshiko made up her mind as to which pair of shoes she would eventually buy. She was sorely tempted to buy a pair herself, they were so gay and the patterns were so individual. She wondered whether they were frightfully expensive and looked round helplessly for a price-tag that she could understand.

  “Sit down, both of you,” Jason commanded them, “and I’ll buy you each a pair.”

  Yoshiko pouted prettily and sat down hastily on the nearest seat.

  “You’re sweet, Jason,” she told him.

  His eyebrows went up at that.

  “Am I?” he asked. “You don’t seem to be so sure, Miss Kennedy.”

  Jonquil blushed a little.

  “I—I’d rather buy my own,” she said awkwardly. “Are they—are they terribly expensive?”

  He shrugged his s
houlders indifferently and turned back to Yoshiko.

  “What colour?” he asked.

  Jonquil bit her lip. Surely he couldn’t still be angry with her? And if he did want to buy Yoshiko a pair of sandals, she wasn’t stopping him! she thought indignantly. She just didn’t want him to pay for hers. Surely that was very reasonable? Girls didn’t accept presents like that. At least, they didn’t at home in Australia.

  The assistant who came to serve her spoke a fluent if slightly formal English and immediately the whole shop was hers. Nothing was more important than finding the exact pair of sandals that she required, and in the end she chose a scarlet pair, astonished at how few yen were required for them.

  Yoshiko chose a more complicated pattern, decorated with fish.

  “It is a catfish,” she explained with glee to Jonquil. “Every time it shakes its tail Japan has another earthquake!”

  “Very suitable,” Jason teased her, and she giggled.

  He summoned the assistant and paid for both pairs of sandals with a selection of notes from his pocket. Jonquil tried to press the right amount into his hand, but he gave her a rather cold glance and shook his head.

  “Sometimes it’s better and safer to give in gracefully, Miss Kennedy,” he said softly. There was a warning sternness underlying his words and she hadn’t the courage to defy him any further.

  “Thank you very much then, Mr. Tate,” she said reluctantly, and was further annoyed by his mocking smile.

  Alexander appeared pleased that they were at last ready to take him to lunch. He hooked himself on to Jonquil and began to tell her of all the things he planned to eat, so that she missed Yoshiko’s laughing remarks as she thanked Jason in her turn for her sandals.

  “If you’re going to eat all that, young man, we’d better get going,” Jason broke in on Alexander’s hopeful menu. “Where do you want to go?”

  Neither Alexander nor Yoshiko had any suggestions, and so Jonquil shyly suggested that they should look up Mitchi Boko.

  “Didn't she say her restaurant was in the Ginza?” she reminded Jason.

  He gave her an odd look.

  “She may have done,” he agreed carelessly.