Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [10]
‘A man called Thomas Glover built this house.’
‘An American?’
‘He came from Aberdeen.’
‘Is that in America?’
‘Ah, not exactly –’
‘But I want an American garden.’
‘Trust me,’ he said, and led her through the gates.
On either side of stone-paved paths the gardens spread out around them, huge beds of brilliant colour, circular or oval, interspersed with flowering trees.
‘What are these called?’ She pointed to a carpet of lush green leaves spiked with orange blooms.
‘Marigolds,’ Sharpless said with more confidence than he felt. ‘I think those are marigolds. The ones over there are roses. Some of them are fragrant.’ He was on more secure ground with the roses, which the Japanese regarded as no more than bushes with thorns, their flowers banal.
He showed her the rest of the garden and she darted from bed to bed, hovering over the blooms like her namesake insect. As they moved on she fluttered ahead of him along the curving path into some shrubbery, her tiny figure glimpsed between the bushes. But when he caught up with her she was standing quite still, staring at a small statue of a woman in a kimono by the side of the path. Sharpless cursed silently. He had forgotten the statue.
‘Who is she?’
‘She was Mr Glover’s wife.’
‘Japanese.’
‘Yes.’
The two figures confronted one another, both kimono-clad, one frozen in stone, spine gracefully curved, holding a fan, the other moving closer, backing away, pressing fingertips to face as though to confirm that indeed she too was Japanese and female.
Going home in the rickshaw she was silent for a while. Then she turned to Sharpless.
‘I want to plant seeds, grow American flowers.’
‘It will take some time,’ he said cautiously.
‘Oh, I have time! The lease of the house is nine hundred and ninety-nine years!’ Her laugh was dangerously bright. ‘My husband says the honeymoon may last longer than his lifetime!’
Sharpless was torn: he wanted to warn her, tell her to beware of putting too much faith in a lifelong honeymoon; the lease could be cancelled in a day if Pinkerton decided to stop paying the rent. But it was not the Japanese way, to make bald statements. And did he have the right to intrude on the girl’s happiness, to risk spoiling a story which, after all, might against all odds have a happy ending? When before her was visible evidence of a Nagasaki mixed marriage that had stood the test of time.
He ordered the seeds.
5
From the start Pinkerton had found the house cold, unwelcoming: no vases filled with flowers, no framed photographs, no shag rugs . . . He searched for words, simple words that she would understand, to explain how he felt. Next day he came home to find her waiting, an expectant smile on her face, hands clasped. She had prepared a speech:
‘Surprise for you, happy Pinkerton!’
He looked around, eyebrows raised, and glanced back at her, puzzled.
Her smile dimmed. She waved a small white hand at the wall. The scroll was one she treasured, it had belonged to her father and she had removed it from its crimson box and hung it in the small alcove at the centre of the wall, the tokonoma, the place of honour reserved for a precious object.
‘From – my family.’
Pinkerton stared at the scroll, bemused; a few scribbled lines, dark grey on white, plus one red mark.
‘Oh. Right. Nice.’
In his view the scroll didn’t exactly light up the place; he thought the room still looked bleak.
And there was the matter of what they put into their mouths. Sharpless had warned him about the food: ‘You eat raw things at home: think of it as a kind of salad.’
He was unpersuaded: ‘Raw fish? Forget it!’
Next day he appeared with offerings from a sympathetic ship’s cook, which he handed to Cho-Cho. She unwrapped the packages and looked doubtfully at the mysterious, curiously similar brown slabs.
Pointing at each in turn he identified them: ‘Meat loaf. Hash brown potatoes.