Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [18]
7
For a few minutes, in the state of turbulence following his first sight of the boy, Pinkerton was incapable of anything more than a shocked recognition of paternity. He listened with astonishment as the child recited greetings, first in Japanese, then English.
Suzuki, emerging from the house, eyes downcast, mortified to be seen in her work clothes, did her best to remain invisible as she skirted the group. But Pinkerton called out, ‘Hey, Suzuki! You’re still here!’
She paused and bowed, still without looking up, trying to keep her factory-scarred hands out of sight, tucked into her sleeves. But Pinkerton, desperately seeking diversions from the calamity of this encounter, drew her aside and muttered that he needed a present for the boy – for Joey, as his Western ear had heard the name.
‘You understand what I’m saying?’
Suzuki, who understood quite well what he was saying, cast a frantic glance in Cho-Cho’s direction.
‘Suzuki has work she must attend to—’
‘Sure, just as soon as she’s got me a little something for Joey, okay?’
He pressed bills into Suzuki’s hand and pushed her cheerfully towards the path.
‘I should be going,’ Jensen said. ‘I can find my own way back to the ship.’
Pinkerton, aware this would leave him stranded alone with Cho-Cho, waved away the suggestion:
‘Heck no, you’ll just get yourself lost. Enjoy the view, sniff that clean air.’
But the young lieutenant proved obstinate and set off to catch up with Suzuki, who could point out to him the best way back to the harbour.
On board the liner Sharpless greeted his niece affectionately.
‘My dear Nancy, welcome to Japan!’
Mary was his favourite sister, and the girl had her mother’s looks, the same way of wrinkling her nose when she laughed, a mannerism he found endearing. He smiled, taking pleasure in the look of her, the shiny hair, the quick smile, the sense she brought him of an outside world where people were open and direct and said what they thought. He had grown to love this complicated, unfathomable, coiled society; there was a poetry to social intercourse here that turned humdrum exchange into an art form, but just occasionally he yearned for simplicity, the calling of a spade a spade. The American world.
As they rode through town he made plans for her brief visit.
‘You’ll stay at the Methodist mission house, with Mrs Sinclair.’
Disappointed, Nancy murmured, ‘Not with you?’
He shook his head, smiling.
‘My quarters are hardly suitable. I think I should warn you: Nagasaki has made some progress – look at the paved streets – but conditions are unlikely to match American expectations.’
He did not add that it had been his own decision to choose a traditional Japanese house rather than westernised accommodation.
He asked for news from home, but as they rattled along the road he kept breaking in to point out an unusual building, or a view worth noting. She saw with some surprise the affection, even pride, with which he regarded this malodorous, primitive place.
Only when she was seated across the desk from him did he enquire why she had so suddenly decided to join the ship which brought her to Nagasaki. She gave a small, gleeful jiggle of the shoulders.
‘I thought you’d never ask! The trip’s horribly expensive, but Daddy said he never gave me a proper twenty-first birthday present, so this is it.’
An excited laugh and a wrinkling of her nose. ‘My fiancé is here and it seemed a cute thing to do, to give him a surprise!’
‘You’re engaged! I didn’t know—’
‘It