The Japanese Lantern

by Isobel Chace

  “But I think it’s more the place for an evening meal. We’ll try one of the nearby places that mix their sukiyaki with ice-cream.”

  “Oh, yes,” Alexander agreed enthusiastically. “I forgot to say I was going to have ice-cream. Chocolate ice-cream.”

  Jonquil had never seen so many restaurants in her life before. She thought that there must have been hundreds in the Ginza and the surrounding streets, all jammed full of people, most of whom were men.

  Jason led the way to a fairly large place that was relatively empty. He shepherded them all in before him, his eyes alight with amusement as Jonquil’s eyes took in the rows of shoes that had been left in the vestibule by the restaurant’s patrons.

  “I hope you haven’t any holes in your stockings,” he said lightly.

  Her look was indignant.

  “Have you, Mr. Tate?” she asked sweetly.

  He grinned.

  “Why sure. That’s why I brought you here. I’m touting for someone to mend them for me!”

  Yoshiko looked from one to the other with a comic look of uncertainty.

  “Don’t you understand what to do, Jonquil ?” she asked. Quickly she showed her where to leave her shoes and hurried her through the doorway after the waiting attendant—not, as Jonquil had expected, into a room filled with people, but one divided into innumerable little compartments by paper walls that were hardly more than screens. The waiter showed them into one of these little rooms and indicated the low table in the middle. To Jonquil’s consternation it was the only piece of furniture in the place. Apparently this was indeed a Japanese restaurant and one was expected to sit on one’s own legs, or to manage as best as one could.

  Yoshiko was the only one of them who could manage it for any length of time. Jason and Jonquil disposed of their legs as best they could and Alexander sat cross-legged, much amused at this novel arrangement.

  “You should have taken us somewhere else,” Yoshiko told Jason, shaking her head at him with mock disapproval.

  “But why?” he demanded. “Miss Kennedy came to see Japan, not some Westerner’s idea of what it should be like.”

  He gave the waiter some rapid orders in Japanese and sat back, supporting his weight with his hands, and watching the two girls closely. Yoshiko giggled and glanced surreptitiously at Jonquil.

  “You are very naughty,” she said. “That is why I like you so much!”

  Jonquil eased herself off her legs and wriggled into a more comfortable sitting position. Nothing, she determined, was going to ruin this experience for her. Jason could be as beastly as he liked! She dismissed firmly the tiny prickle of hurt that she still felt at his attitude and concentrated all her attention on the meal that was being set before her. The slices of raw, pink fish dismayed her a little, but she ate them bravely, aware that Jason’s eyes seldom left her and quite sure in her own mind that he had ordered it deliberately.

  “Do you have to work this afternoon, Jason?” Yoshiko asked him, her dark green eyes shimmering with amusement as she watched Alexander bravely trying to follow Jonquil’s example with the fish.

  “I ought to. What do you want me to do?”

  She looked up at him through her eyelashes , “I thought you might like to take me out to tea,” she suggested.

  Jonquil found that she didn’t want to hear his answer. She turned quickly to Alexander and told him that he could leave the rest of his fish. To her surprise Jason backed her up.

  “Yes, leave it, Alex,” he told the boy. “You’ll like the next course better. This was to tease Jonquil a little. But I’m beginning to think that nothing will make her admit defeat. Even her curiosity comes to her aid.”

  Jonquil shot him a swift glance. What did he mean by that? she wondered. Was it possible that he knew his aunt was trying to enlist her aid to check on his friends? Or was it just her guilty conscience speaking? She had a suspicion that he would think he could manage his own affairs quite well without any help from her—and who was she to deny it?

  Fortunately her attention was distracted by the waiter who appeared at that moment with a number of assorted plates and bowls, each of them more beautiful than the last.

  “They’re almost too lovely to use!” she exclaimed.

  Jason’s lips quirked with amusement.

  “The Japanese don’t have our passion for locking all their best things away,” he drawled. “Some of these bowls are designed by quite famous artists.”

  “I think they’re ugly!” Alexander announced loudly.

  “Oh, no! Look at the greens and the—”

  “You can’t talk a child into appreciating things,” Jason interrupted her curtly. “Why tear yourself to pieces trying?”

  One way and another, Jonquil thought, she was going to be very glad when this meal was over and she would be free to take Alexander home. Even Yoshiko was beginning to look at them curiously, wondering why they couldn’t get on better together.

  She ate her sukiyaki without much enjoyment, even though it was delicious. Little strips of beef and vegetables were brought on an electric brazier and they were left to attend to the cooking themselves. She ate whatever was given her, but the fun had gone out of the experience. There would be other times, she reflected, when she would enjoy it more.

  When they left the restaurant Jason and Yoshiko put Jonquil and Alexander on a bus which would take them past their own front door.

  “Alex knows where to get off,” Jason told her. “Do you think you'll be all right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said formally, suppressing a momentary anxiety at being left to traverse Tokyo on her own. If it had been Manila, Jason would have taken her right home, she thought. But this was not Manila, she reminded herself severely. It was time she stood on her own two feet. She had asked him to remember that she was his nephew’s governess, and presumably as such she should be capable of finding her own way home.

  He helped her onto the bus, lifting Alexander bodily on to the platform beside her.

  “You can blame your own stubbornness for this,” he said obliquely. “I could easily have taken you all to tea. Yoshiko wouldn’t have minded.” He looked up in time to catch Jonquil’s sceptical expression and his face hardened. “Sayonara,” he said, and lifted his hand in a vague salute as the bus carried them rapidly away from him.

  The telephone was ringing as they entered the front door.

  “Is that you, Jonquil?” Mrs. Tate called out from her bedroom.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tate.”

  “Then answer that dratted phone. It’s done nothing but ring ever since you all left this morning.”

  But the telephone stopped as soon as Jonquil got to it. Automatically she picked it up and said “Hullo” once or twice, but she knew it was useless. One’s own voice has a slightly different sound when the line is dead.

  “Who is it?” Mrs. Tate asked her.

  Jonquil went to the open doorway of her room and smiled at her.

  “I’m afraid they rang off before I got there,” she said. “Is there anything I can do for you while I’m here?”

  The old lady’s sharp eyes watched her for a moment.

  “Yes, there is,” she said at last. “You can come in and talk to me for a bit. The days seem very long when everyone is out. I was tired too and couldn’t be bothered to dress and get into my chair, but then when the telephone went I regretted it. No good relying on the servants to answer the thing, they’re afraid of it!”

  Obediently Jonquil went in and sat down in the chair beside the bed.

  “Have you been thinking about what I told you last night?” Mrs. Tate demanded.

  Jonquil wriggled a little uncomfortably.

  “Yes, I have,” she admitted. “But I don’t think Jason would like it, even if he were in danger. He seems more than capable of looking after himself.”

  Mrs. Tate snorted.

  “If he were, my dear, he wouldn’t be playing around with Yoshiko. Mr. Matsui has quite other ideas for her, let me tell
you!”

  “Doesn’t he want her to marry Jason?” Jonquil asked, shocked that anyone should dismiss Jason’s claims in favour of anyone else.

  Mrs. Tate’s eyes twinkled.

  “He’s not a fool. He knows that it wouldn’t work out. Jason would be tired of her before a year was out. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about. I do wish, Jonquil, you would be quiet and let me get on with it!” She pulled irritably at the sheets. “Being a research chemist in these days has all sorts of side issues. You work for a company, but that company works for governments and if you can’t get government backing, quite often it breaks up the company—”

  “But surely—” Jonquil began.

  “I shan’t tell you anything if you can’t be quiet!” Mrs. Tate said petulantly. “I can’t bear being interrupted.”

  Jonquil apologized solemnly, a little amused by the old lady’s air of self-importance.

  “Please go on,” she said.

  “Jason is on to a big thing,” Mrs. Tate whispered mysteriously. “We all know that. And if we know it, so will all his rival firms, and they will want to get it out of him.”

  “But I don’t see how they could,” Jonquil objected. “He doesn’t carry the information around on him, surely? His firm must take all the usual precautions?”

  Mrs. Tate looked a little disappointed.

  “I suppose they do,” she admitted reluctantly. ‘But I never feel that Jason is adequately protected. Look at the people they allow him to mix with. My dear, I can trust you, can’t I?”

  She looked so old and bewildered and, indeed, genuinely worried that Jonquil was quick to reassure her.

  “Of course you can, Mrs. Tate,” she said almost eagerly. “I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  “That’s what I hoped you’d say,” the old lady admitted. “I like you, even though you are so young. And there’s no need to look so abashed, I’m not asking you to spy on the man, only to keep an eye on these people. I’d do it myself if only I weren’t tied to this bed and that chair!”

  She was becoming so agitated that Jonquil hastily assured her all over again that she would do anything that was asked of her. It was rather a relief when the telephone bell went again and she had to go off to answer it.

  A rather impatient voice at the other end asked if he could speak to Miss Jonquil Kennedy, and she had some difficulty in persuading him that it was indeed she who had answered the call.

  “Jonquil? Good. I’ve been ringing up all day, but I couldn’t get any reply. I’m sorry not to have recognized you; you sounded quite harassed, not at all like yourself. Nothing wrong, I hope?”

  With some relief, Jonquil realized that it was Edward Keeving.

  “Oh, Edward!” she exclaimed. “You always seem to ring up at just the right moment!”

  There was a slight pause.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked at length.

  N-nothing’s the matter. I was just rather glad to be interrupted. How very nice of you to ring up again so soon!”

  He laughed, a low, meaning laugh that brought the colour flying into her cheeks.

  “Did you think that I wasn’t going to ring you up very soon?” he asked, and then when she didn’t answer that: “You should have known me better, my dear.”

  “I did think you’d telephone,” she protested, “but not quite so soon.”

  “I couldn’t wait any longer,” he admitted. “Besides, the thing I want to take you to is tomorrow evening. Are you interested in seeing a slice of Japanese life?”

  “Oh, yes!” she agreed. “But I’d better ask someone if it will be convenient. What are you taking me to, Edward?”

  “That will be a surprise,” he teased her. “I’ll give you a clue. Tomorrow is the twelfth of October.”

  “You know that doesn’t mean a thing to me!” she complained. “Tell me more.”

  "Certainly not! Go and ask your dragon if you can come.”

  Jonquil hesitated. She wasn’t sure just who exactly was her dragon. She didn’t think Jason would be interested in whom she went out with and she wasn’t going to ask Mrs. Tate if she could help it. She was sure the old lady would be only too enthusiastic that she should get to know Edward Keeving, and that wasn’t the way that she wanted it. She didn’t want to go out with Edward in a suspicious frame of mind.

  “Look, Edward,” she compromised, “I’ll say I’ll come and I’ll ring you if I can’t. Will that be all right?”

  “Fine. Do you want my number?”

  He gave her the numbers in English and then told her how to pronounce them in Japanese. After one or two rehearsals she thought she would be able to manage to get through to him and he rang off.

  “Who was it on the telephone?” Mrs. Tate called out to her.

  “It was for me,” Jonquil called back, and from the depths of her room she could hear the old lady chuckling.

  The hours went so quickly that Jonquil felt that she had only just managed to squash everything that she had to do into them. Alexander had put off his bedtime to the last possible moment and it came as rather a shock to her to find that she had only allowed herself half an hour to get ready, before Edward was due to fetch her.

  The bathroom was through the living room from her room and she scurried through it in her dressing-gown straight into Jason’s arms.

  “Going out?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m late now,” she said breathlessly.

  He looked as though he was going to say something, but then he changed his mind and stood aside for her.

  “Have a good time,” he said.

  The bath was a Japanese one that one sat in rather than lay in, filled with boiling hot water and scented lavishly. Jonquil hurried all she could, but the temperature was too hot for her to do more than put one toe in, and, as it was filled by hand, she didn’t want to ask for any cold water to cool it off.

  At last, however, she was ready, just as Edward’s car slid up to the front door.

  “Shall I let him in?” Jason asked her. There was a slightly sardonic note in his voice that she did her best to ignore.

  “I’ll go straight out,” she said. “I think he expected to be a little earlier.”

  Jason shrugged his shoulders.

  “If you’re last in, don’t forget to lock up,” he reminded her.

  Now what in the world was there for her to take exception to in that? She looked up at him quickly to see what he was really thinking, but his eyes were veiled. He threw himself down into a chair, picked up the book he was reading and began to look through the pages for his place.

  Edward looked very suave and Western in his dinner jacket and she wondered again what it could possibly have been that she had disliked about him in Manila. He opened the door of the car for her and smiled as she pulled her skirt out of his way.

  “You look very charming,” he told her, as he got in beside her.

  “Why, thank you,” she said.

  It was nice to know he thought so. And he did really think so, she knew, by the intangible something in his eyes when he looked at her.

  “I had an awful race to get ready,” she laughed, and told him about her adventures with the bath.

  “I was glad you could come,” he smiled. “Unfortunately I have to go to Kyoto tomorrow and I don't know exactly when I shall be back. The snags of not being one’s own master!”

  “Oh.” She was immensely sorry. It was ridiculous that his presence in Tokyo should mean anything to her, but it had been comforting to know that he was there. She thought it was his kindness in telephoning her that first evening, when everything had been so strange.

  “I shall miss you,” she said at last.

  He smiled at that.

  “Will you? I’m very flattered. But perhaps we shall meet there. You never know. The great Mr. Tate has a house there, I believe, and Kyoto is Yoshiko’s home town.”

  “I hope so. Is it really so much more lovely than Tokyo?”

  He gave her rather a
n odd look of amusement mixed with enquiry.

  “I’ll tell you when I get back,” he said. “Like you, this is my first visit to Japan. I thought you knew that?”

  She remembered now that she had been told that. It must be the confidence with which he found his way around that had made her forget, about it.

  “You must have travelled a great deal, though,” she said. “You seem quite at home here, not in the least uncertain as I am. Yesterday I travelled on my first bus, and I was terrified that I wouldn’t get out at the right place.”

  She thought he seemed pleased, for he grinned and said:

  “Girls should always be a little uncertain. It makes it so much easier for us men to be properly protective.”

  Edward drove well, she thought. The traffic might well have flustered a lesser man, especially the cheaper rated taxis that pushed through unbelievably narrow spaces, intimidating the private drivers as they went.

  “Are we going far?” she asked.

  Edward shook his head.

  “I thought we’d dine at the Imperial” he said. “They serve Danish food, which suits me better than these other peculiar dishes. I think you’ll like it.”

  She couldn’t help being a little disappointed that they were not going to a genuine Japanese restaurant, but she had to admit that the Imperial Hotel was an experience in itself.

  It was one of the few buildings that were still standing after the tragic earthquake that demolished Tokyo before the war. It had been designed by a famous American architect, who had floated the foundations in mud. The idea must have worked, for while the rest of Tokyo was being laboriously rebuilt, the Imperial had stood, proud and defiant, exactly where it had always been.

  “Tell me all about this job of yours,” Edward suggested as they waited for their smorgasbord to be brought to them.

  “I have really very little to do,” Jonquil began. “The Tates are being very kind to me—Mrs. Tate is a cripple, you know, which is rather sad. I think it was because of her that they decided to have me. She gets rather lonely when she is on her own a great deal.”

  Edward looked thoughtful.

  “Mrs. Tate? Is she Mrs. Buckmaster’s aunt?” Jonquil nodded. She was no longer very surprised by the amount Edward knew about her employers. The Tates were obviously a well-known family in Japan. But it gave her an uncomfortable feeling all the same. Bother Mrs. Tate! She thought. She didn’t want to have to worry about Jason.