Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [21]
A spasm of disgust. She glanced carefully about the room, as though assessing the framed prints on the walls.
Pinkerton’s ruddy complexion had drained into greyness. He looked and sounded like a sick man as he fumbled his way through a thicket of words: he knew it was impossible for Nancy to condone what had happened. He did not expect her to forgive him; nothing could make up for what he had done. He was the worst of men. All he could attempt now was to do what was right for the child. But he wanted her to know that she mattered more to him than the world—
Nancy stood up briskly.
‘I’m going back to the ship now.’ She addressed Sharpless, her voice as mechanical as a railroad station announcement:
‘Will you get a rickshaw for me, please?’
‘Wait!’ It was almost a shout. Pinkerton added, quietly, ‘Please. Hear me out.’
Sharpless stood up. ‘I’ll leave you—’
But Nancy, in a quiet, dead voice, asked him to stay.
And Pinkerton talked on, sentence after stumbling sentence, his words filling the room like a thickening gas.
He said desperately, ‘It’s not the kid’s fault. He’s my son and I can’t just abandon him. I want to give him a life, I reckon it would be the Christian thing to do. It would be asking too much of you, I know that. But – can we talk? Please?’
After a while Sharpless found it hard to breathe. He reached for a fragile cup of cold tea and drained it. He sensed Nancy’s hesitation. Should he speak? She was on a knife-edge and he could tilt her one way or the other. But which way should it be?
He was no Solomon; he wanted no part of a situation that was bound to end in tears. Pinkerton, backed into a corner, was reluctantly seeking what would be the right thing to do. Cho-Cho, he knew, remained wrapped in a protective garment of hope and illusion that prevented her from seeing the reality before her eyes. One day, she had always maintained, one fine day when the swallows returned, so would her husband. He had returned, but not as her husband, and despite the sunlight the day had taken on the chill of betrayal.
But he was getting ahead of himself: there were three people involved here and the third was being introduced to circumstances bizarre beyond anything she could have imagined.
He expected anything from hysterics to fury, but when, after a long silence, Nancy spoke, she seemed oddly calm, seemed at first to be changing the subject.
‘They told us on the ship that there’s a special church here, an old wooden church.’
‘That would be Oura Cathedral,’ Sharpless said.
‘Is it far?’
‘Not really.’ He felt unreality descending: were they actually having a conversation about a Gothic wooden church? Perhaps his niece was unable to face the truth of what she had heard and was retreating into a sanctuary of ignorance.
Nancy said, ‘I would like to go there. Now. With Ben.’
‘You are aware it is a Catholic cathedral,’ Sharpless said cautiously.
‘I think I can speak to God from a Catholic cathedral as directly as from a Methodist church, Uncle Henry.’
She rose and stood waiting. Sharpless marvelled at her composure, that a girl so young and innocent seemed of the three people in the room to be the one in charge.
He led the way to the street and put them into a rickshaw.
On the journey she remained silent, unreachable beyond an invisible wall, eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. Pinkerton, clammy in the heat, a babel of unspoken words filling his head, just once attempted to break through.
‘Nance’ he began, ‘if you could just let me try and explain—’
She held up a hand, cutting him off.
At the cathedral she walked ahead of him, went to a pew and knelt, head on folded hands. He seated himself at the back, close to the open door, and prayed, not for forgiveness or a solution, but for a breeze to cool his feverish skin. Time passed. The angle of the sun on the stained-glass windows shifted, throwing moving patches of colour on to the floor. Outside, from nearby trees, the relentless creaking of cicadas filled the air, a sound like rusty scissors, stabbing into his head. Shifting his weight, his