The Japanese Lantern

by Isobel Chace

  “Of course not,” Jonquil said warmly. “I’m afraid they’re not very exciting—”

  “They are to me. I have heard from my father. Tomorrow I must go home to Kyoto to get the house ready for him. That is why I came to your room. Do you think that you can persuade Jason that he must come too?” Her green eyes darkened almost to black in her anxiety.

  “I shouldn’t think so—” Jonquil began.

  “But you must!” Yoshiko pleaded. “You cannot believe how important it is to me! I am only half Japanese, and sometimes my father does not understand this. He—he is arranging a marriage for me. Very good family, you understand, but I want to be like you. I want to choose for myself. In Japan this is seldom possible. I have only seen my fiancé once. We went to a hotel with our families and saw each other, and then we exchanged gifts. You cannot understand how terrible this was for me. That day I was not at all Japanese! But to my father I am officially engaged. Only Jason can make him change his mind!”

  She made a pathetic little motion with her hands.

  “I don’t see how I can persuade Jason,” Jonquil objected, quite horrified by the story that Yoshiko had related. “Is it necessary for you to go home to Kyoto?”

  “Oh, yes, I keep house for my father.”

  “But if your father—”

  “My father follows the custom here. It is I who want to be different,” she said simply. “All you must do is agree with me when I suggest that you and Alexander go home with me. He will soon follow to make sure Alexander is all right. He promised Janet to see something of the boy while she was away. Then you can live at his house, and he will come to us!”

  Put like that it all sounded very simple—and Jonquil wanted to see Kyoto. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel more enthusiastic about the plan. Earlier, when Edward had mentioned that he was going, she had been quite envious of him. Then the pieces fell into place in her mind. Edward was going to Kyoto tomorrow too! Why?

  “I’ll try,” she said out loud. “But I don’t see why he should pay any attention to me.”

  “He will,” Yoshiko assured her. “You see. He will be glad of the excuse to come with us.”

  That might be true, Jonquil thought. But she was determined to talk the whole thing over with Mrs. Tate first!

  When Yoshiko had gone, she slipped off her clothes and almost fell into bed, she was so tired.

  It was only then that she remembered that she had left her lantern in the boot of Jason’s car.

  Mrs. Tate looked smaller than ever in bed and rather disgruntled.

  “I called you three times,” she announced. Jonquil tried to look apologetic, failed entirely and smiled instead.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you do look cross!”

  “I feel cross,” Mrs. Tate told her. “And I have every right to. I’ve been waiting all morning for you to tell me about your night out yesterday. Was Edward Keeving still as charming as he was when he first rang up?”

  Jonquil looked reflectively down at her hands. “He told me one or two quite interesting things,” she said quietly. “One, that his firm didn’t deal with alloys anyway; two, that you had put quite a lot of money into Jason’s firm; and three, that he’s going off to Kyoto.”

  The old lady gave a little crow of satisfaction. “You have been busy! You must ask him why his firm doesn’t deal in alloys. I could tell you, but—”

  “Then I wish you would,” Jonquil said impatiently. “I don’t believe that Edward is one little bit interested in the alloy!” Except as a man, his words came back to haunt her.

  “Oh don’t you, miss? Then you’re a great deal more stupid than I thought. Naturally Keeving Chemicals isn’t interested, but one of the small firms they’ve recently taken over in the United States is interested in nothing else! So put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  With a confused movement, Jonquil brushed hack her hair from her forehead.

  “I don’t see where that gets us,” she said.

  “Well, I do,” Mrs. Tate retorted. “I play the Stock exchange myself. Naturally people would rather deal with a reputable company, but if they stole our alloy they could ruin the market for us.”

  “I don’t really understand—” Jonquil began.

  “No reason why you should,” the old lady informed her tartly. “You stick close to Edward and find out what he’s up to. Seen anything of Mitchi Boko?”

  Jonquil shook her head, blushing.

  “No-no,” she said doubtfully. “At least I don’t think I have.”

  Mrs. Tate looked at her thoughtfully.

  “My dear, you’re not a very good liar. Did you see her last night?”

  “I thought I caught a glimpse of her, but I may easily have been mistaken. I didn’t actually speak to her.”

  She had a suspicion that Mrs. Tate was enjoying herself. Once again she wondered if the whole thing was a hum, something to keep the old lady entertained. Why wouldn’t she tell her exactly what her suspicions were? Why did she leave her to work completely in the dark?

  “Yoshiko wants us all to go to Kyoto with her today,” she mentioned, broaching the subject lightly in case Mrs. Tate should be against the plan.

  “That would suit us very nicely,” the old lady said comfortably. “You can’t keep an eye on Edward from here!”

  “N-no, but Mitchi Boko will still be in Tokyo.”

  “I’ll look after her.”

  “You?” Try as she would, Jonquil could not conceal her surprise.

  Mrs. Tate chuckled.

  “I’m not so helpless as you think,” she retorted. “Go and make a start on the packing.”

  That was easier said than done. Her own packing presented no difficulties, she had merely to repack the things that she had unpacked a day or so earlier, but Alexander’s was a very different.

  ‘‘Why are we going to Kyoto?” he asked indignantly. “Uncle Jason didn't say we were going.”

  “Don’t you want to go?” Jonquil asked mildly.

  “No.”

  Devastated by this simple but quite firm negative, Jonquil stared helplessly at him.

  “Why not?” she asked at last.

  “The amah at Kyoto won’t make jelly,” he explained. “And we always have jelly on Sunday in Tokyo.”

  “But I can make jelly,” Jonquil assured him hopefully. “And mushrooms in the grass.”

  “What’s that?” Alexander asked cautiously.

  “It’s green jelly, with banana stalks holding up meringue mushrooms.”

  An intense, joyful look came into his eyes.

  “Really? Can we have them next Sunday? And, Jonquil, don’t take those vests. They scratch me!”

  By the time the packing had really started the room was chaotic, and it was into this scene that Jason came, without bothering to knock, and looking as though he had had no sleep at all the night before.

  “What’s all the activity?” he demanded.

  Jonquil regarded him with dismay.

  “I—I thought you knew. At least I thought Mrs. Tate was going to tell you. D-didn’t Yoshika say anything?”

  Surprisingly he looked amused.

  “Were they all supposed to have told me?” he asked.

  She nodded, feeling slightly ridiculous.

  “Yoshiko heard from her father and she has to go back to Kyoto today to get the house ready for him. She wanted all of us to go with her, and Mrs. Tate seemed agreeable.”

  “It seems a good idea,” he agreed. “At least it will get you all out of my hair for a few days. Which train are you catching?”

  “I don’t know.” It was unreasonable to feel hurt. He probably did feel responsible for them all, but, deep down, she hadn’t thought that he would have been quite so anxious to get rid of them. “W-won’t you be coming?” she asked.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “No, Miss Kennedy, but you can tell Yoshiko that I’ll telephone her father as soon as I can.” He grinned suddenly. “It’ll be quite
a relief to have you and Edward in different cities. At least he can’t do you any harm while you’re in Kyoto!”

  Jonquil never knew whether she would have disillusioned him or not, but at that moment Yoshiko came running into the room, her eyes alight with pleasure at seeing Jason.

  “Have you heard my father comes home?” she questioned him gaily. “I must catch the twelve-fifteen to Osaka. You don’t mind my taking Jonquil and Alexander? I thought they could stay at your house.” She looked up at him with her head slightly on one side. “You will come too, Jason?” she asked.

  His face softened.

  “Perhaps, later on,” he said gently. “I have business here first.”

  “But not too much later on,” Yoshiko pleaded.

  He smiled at her.

  “As soon as possible,” he agreed. “Will that suit you?”

  Yoshiko nodded, well satisfied.

  “You see, Jonquil,” she said happily, “he spoils me. He must be very fond of me, don’t you think?”

  “Very,” Jonquil agreed. It was not her fault if her voice sounded a little tight, or that Jason seemed to find the whole situation rather amusing.

  The taxi swept past the Imperial Palace and into Z Avenue, going so fast that the neon lights blurred into one another in a mass of colour.

  “It is exciting to be going home,”! Yoshiko giggled. “Kyoto is as different from Tokyo as the old from the new.”

  “How different?” Jonquil asked.

  “Kyoto is the dream, Tokyo the reality,” Yoshiko explained. “In the old days the Emperor lived in Kyoto with his court. They walked beneath the cherry blossom and they wrote pretty poems, but they had no power. The power was with the Shogun, and he lived in Tokyo. For centuries this was so.”

  “But isn’t Kyoto a modern city today, like Tokyo?”

  “In parts,” Yoshiko admitted, “but it is Japanese.”

  She sat up impatiently in her seat waiting for the taxi to draw up outside the station. At the first possible moment she swung open the door and jumped down on to the ground, pulling Alexander after her.

  “Are you excited, Alexander?” she asked. “Going to Kyoto?”

  Alexander was. His eyes shone and he held tightly on to Jonquil’s hand while Yoshiko found a porter and arranged with him to take the baggage to the platform.

  “If Yoshiko makes so much noise everyone will think she is gaijin too!” he whispered.

  Yoshiko heard him.

  “Do I look so foreign?” she demanded. “Don’t I look Japanese?”

  Alexander studied her carefully.

  “Yes, you do,” he admitted. “Except for your eyes. I never saw a Japanese with green eyes!” He laughed, the idea striking him as funny, and the porter smiled at him, making him laugh all the more.

  Glancing round the station, it seemed to Jonquil that the hoardings were taken up entirely with fire-fighting instructions. Everywhere she looked the flames looked back at her. All over Tokyo there were these same warnings, but never had she seen so many grouped together as here. One single advertisement for Mikimoto’s Pearls broke up the range, looking cool and unexpectedly sophisticated in the middle of such a welter of heat. She wondered if she would be able to afford any before she returned to Australia and thought, with a sigh, that it was not the original price that would forbid her but the Customs duty when she returned home.

  “You are dreaming, Jonquil,” Yoshiko accused her. “That is the danger of Japan. We have too much beauty!”

  That that beauty was not exactly evident at that precise moment, Jonquil thought it would be tactless to point out. Instead she hurried after the fast disappearing porter towards the barrier of the platform.

  “Will you buy the tickets?” she asked Yoshiko. The Japanese girl nodded and wandered off towards the booking office, returning with train tickets, express tickets and sleeping accommodation tickets, all of which were checked ponderously before they were allowed on to the platform.

  It was fun standing watching the other passengers arrive to board the express, the men leading with their laden womenfolk following two paces behind, all of them hurrying to get as good a seat as possible for the overnight journey.

  “We must hurry,” Yoshiko adjured her. “In Japan all trains leave and arrive exactly on time!” This it seemed was a matter for pride for the whole nation, for nearly everyone checked their watches by the station clock with a pleased smile, before they stepped up into the wagon.

  Two minutes to go, and then one moment, and only the late passengers hurried along the platform now. Jonquil’s eyes picked out a European by his extra height and she watched him tip the porter and turn to his companion. He looked familiar and she thought pleasurably that it just might possibly be Edward. There was a slight argument as to who should board the train first and Jonquil was amused to see that the man lost, stepping angrily up into the corridor. His companion followed demurely behind him, clutching two suitcases, making it difficult for her to get in behind him. She looked up for an instant to reply to something he had said, and Jonquil heard herself gasp. For the girl who was with him was Mitchi Boko.

  CHAPTER VI

  The train pulled slowly out of the station, gathering speed with every second. Jonquil turned away from the window and went back to her seat. Her thoughts were chaotic, and more than ever she wished that Mrs. Tate had been more open with her. Impossible theories crowded into her mind as to why Mitchi Boko and Edward were travelling together. Surely he couldn’t be attracted to her? Instinctively she knew that that couldn’t be so. It was not only that she had come to like Edward and that he had told her he was attracted to herself. Or was it? Could she be quite sure?

  She waited for the other passengers to settle and then took Alexander down the train to the sleeping compartments to put him to bed. Unfortunately the girl calorie callers chose that same moment to push their trays down the aisles, wailing their wares in incomprehensible Japanese and mowing down anyone who happened to get in their way. As the lesser of two evils, Jonquil meekly handed over a few yen and was given in return some American packaged sandwiches, filled, as she later discovered, with raw fish.

  “Are we going to eat those now?” Alexander asked, with the perennial hunger of a six-year-old.

  “If you like,” Jonquil agreed.

  She found the right sleepers and undressed the little boy, helping him into his bunk.

  “Shall I stay with you?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I want to go to sleep,” he told her solemnly, “and I never sleep if someone is watching me.”

  She didn’t really like to leave him, but Yoshiko had assured her that no possible harm could come to him, and that he was quite accustomed to being left, so she pulled the doors shut and started back up the train.

  The Japanese, she noticed, seemed to regard the train journey as an excuse for a picnic. In every seat there was someone munching away, usually talking at the top of his, or her, voice at the same time. The noise was terrific. The trip was a thrilling departure from their everyday lives and each one was determined to make the most of it. Here and there a more sophisticated group of business men sat in little huddles, mostly drinking beer, for even they, it seemed, needed sustaining while they travelled. The passengers had settled down to enjoying themselves.

  Coming towards her was a Japanese girl, dressed beautifully in Western clothes. Jonquil paid no attention to her at first, but the girl waved to her and quickened her steps.

  “It is Miss Kennedy, no?” she cried out, apparently delighted. “We meet in aeroplane. Remember?”

  “Mitchi-san,” Jonquil breathed.

  “That me! I horiday now. Go home to Kyoto!” Without any apparent difficulty she adjusted her voice to the scream that was necessary to make herself heard above the noise all round them.

  Jonquil nodded and smiled, not feeling equal to reply in kind.

  “You go to Kyoto too?” the Japanese girl asked. “That is great! Yoshiko is with y
ou?”

  Jonquil nodded again and immediately Mitchi Boko stopped smiling.

  “You come with me,” she said urgently. “We talk.”

  She led the way quickly to an almost deserted car where she gestured to Jonquil to sit down beside her. Apparently she could manage her Western high heels as easily as she did her geta, for Jonquil was hard put to it to keep up with her and subsided into the seat with something akin to relief, after struggling against the motion of the train.

  “Yoshiko ask you go to Kyoto?” Mitchi Boko asked.

  “Yes, she did,” Jonquil agreed.

  “You go to her wedding, perhaps?”

  Jonquil looked at her in astonishment.

  “Why, no, I don’t think so,” she said.

  Mitchi Boko shrugged her shoulders in a pretty little movement.

  “Such a pity,” she said easily. “Everyone should see a Japanese wedding. Very lovely! With traditional kimonas. The only time we wear a scarlet one, you understand—underneath, of course! We wear many for such auspicious occasion!” She laughed, showing her even, white teeth. “You think me silly? But in Japan we say that in October the gods are away. No gods on earth, you understand. For they all meet in heaven to match-make. So-and-so will be very happy wed to so-and-so. Then in November everyone gets married!”

  Jonquil smiled. The idea appealed to her imagination.

  “I wonder if they’re busy on my account,” she said laughingly.

  Mitchi Boko took her seriously.

  “But of course!” she insisted. “Mr. Keeving I think has told them all about you, is not so?”

  Jonquil blushed.

  “I hardly think so,” she said hastily. “I thought I saw him getting on the train.”

  “So?” Mitchi Boko smiled. “You look for him too? It is very happy for you both.” She nodded wisely. ‘Mr. Keeving soon be very rich man and you live happily ever afterwards! know. First I thought Jason-san, but not so. Mr. Keeving he explain.”

  “But—” Jonquil began uncomfortably, but Mitchi Boko only laughed at her.