Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [20]
‘I better get back. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He pinched the boy’s cheek. ‘So long, kid!’ And then, remembering: ‘Sayonara!’
Pinkerton struggled to get his shoes on, hands and feet failing to co-ordinate. He left hastily, not looking back, feeling her eyes on him as he strode down the hill. In his white uniform he sweated, moisture crawling down his back, soaking his armpits. He took off his cap and wiped his brow, his brain a buzzing hive of bees.
From the house she saw him remove the naval cap; saw the way the sun glittered on his hair, the golden hair of her golden husband, who had not touched her since he arrived.
8
Pinkerton had seen on a market stall a woodcut of a Japanese dragon caught in a trap, its body writhing in panic. He walked through the Nagasaki streets now in a state of agitation no less panic-stricken, his thoughts twisting this way and that.
One: he had a son. Two: the mother was Japanese. Three: he had a career to consider. Four: he had a fiancée. Another man might have put these priorities in a different order. Again and again he ran through the situation, a dragon trapped in a pit, a rat trapped in a maze: a son, a woman he’d almost forgotten, a fiancée . . .
He had found his way without thinking to the consul’s office, perhaps intending to ask his advice, but as he reached the entrance, a woman appeared in the doorway – a vision in yellow, an impossible sight: a girl who should be safely far away in Oregon stood before him as though materialising from his wild thoughts. She laughed delightedly at his astonishment.
‘Surprise!’ she cried, opening her arms wide like a self-presenting conjuror.
He folded her in an extravagant welcoming hug and saw, over her shoulder, Sharpless watching them, bleak faced. Once again Pinkerton felt sweat break out on his body.
And Sharpless, seeing his niece flinging herself into the arms of a man he despised, felt incredulity melt into something like horror. Was Nancy, like Cho-Cho, to become a woman betrayed? He felt a sinking of the heart, a taste of the pain that lay ahead.
The afternoon aged into the evening and a tray of tea brought in by a servant was removed untouched, to be replaced by another, steaming hot, which cooled untouched in its turn. Nancy, huddled in the consul’s oversized wooden chair, tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Pinkerton had finally run out of words and the silence lengthened. She looked at the two men appraisingly, as though considering their relative merits. Her uncle seemed to have shrunk into himself; he looked old, the long face gaunt and drawn; Pinkerton sat very straight, naval cap tucked under his arm, as though facing an examining board – which in a way he was.
Nancy said slowly, her voice drained of expression, ‘So. You have a child.’
He nodded.
‘Did you not know this before?’
‘Not exactly . . .’
She frowned in puzzlement. ‘How could you not know exactly, Ben? Either you know you have a child or you don’t.’
He had been uncertain, he said. He tried to explain the difficulties: the naval life, moving about from place to place, communication chancy . . . It sounded thin, even to his ears.
Nancy attempted to keep to the facts that could be established. The certainties of this messy affair.
‘So the child’s mother died.’
‘Well, no.’
‘No?’
Sharpless saw a steeliness enter his niece’s face, an expression he had seen in his sister. She leaned forward, hands gripping the arms of her chair.
‘You have a wife?’
Haltingly, he tried to build a picture for her of how it had been. A man, lonely, far from home. The local custom. A wife here was not for always. It was . . . what was it? The words filled his mouth like fur balls in a cat’s throat; he coughed, tried to swallow. ‘It was a mistake. But it happened.