Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [74]
Inside was a photograph of a woman, pale-skinned, black hair cut short and severe. She wore a flowing dark dress, her hands resting in her lap, white as marble. Bleached out in the printing, her features were barely visible, but above the unsmiling mouth Joey saw that her eyes were almond-shaped.
‘It’s Cho-Cho,’ Nancy said. ‘It’s your mother.’
After the arrival of that first letter from Nagasaki, addressed to Mary, there had been furtive family conferences when Joey was out of the house. Mary felt betrayed:
‘To conceal his marriage, his family! Henry was not honest with us; we deserved better. And now this.’
Nancy thought the letter should be acknowledged, though it was clear Joey did not wish to revive the past: it seemed that Cho-Cho was indeed dead – to him. Louis felt unqualified to pronounce – this was women’s business.
Time passed. Then Nancy wrote back – briefly, ambiguously. Just how should a wicked stepmother pitch a description of a stolen boy’s condition? To say he was happy and settled might well seem callous, emphasising Cho-Cho’s lack of importance to him. In the end she simply said the boy was fine, and doing well at school. She sent a snap of him at the beach, sunlit and gleaming from the sea, a thinner, younger Ben. She added that he now knew his mother was alive; a shock for the boy, and one he would need time to get used to, but – a tentative suggestion – perhaps Cho-Cho would like to send a photograph for Nancy to pass on to him?
There was no response, and she regretted writing, but much later, a second letter had arrived, containing a photograph, and a brief note: ‘I do not want to intrude into your lives. The past was a bad place, not to be revisited. The good that has come out of it is that my Joy – your Joey – is happy.’
*
Joey stared at the photograph now. He felt confused, betrayed. Where was the figure in the kimono he recalled, glancing over her shoulder, hair piled high, the graceful curve of neck and cheek? The woman he had tried to hold on to by covering sheets of paper with scribbled sketches, laborious drawings. Sometimes he had pressed the paper to his face, breathing in deeply, trying to retrieve her elusive fragrance through her image, trying to keep her fresh in his mind; the woman he had walked beside on the seashore, who had run out into the spring rain with him, face tilted up at the sky, laughing . . . This woman was a stranger.
‘She looks different,’ he said.
‘Different from what?’
‘From the way I remembered her.’
He replaced the photograph in the envelope and slipped it into his pocket.
He checked the bag one last time and his fingers touched the old spinning top. He pulled it out, balancing the battered sphere in the palm of his hand.
‘She gave it to me.’
Nancy, unaware that it was Ben who gave him the toy, that it was Suzuki who bought it, did not contradict his unreliable memory. Only Cho-Cho could have described the true scene.
He closed the bag. ‘I’ll say goodbye to Gran.’
In the wide bed Mary seemed insubstantial, barely disturbing the blanket.
She peered up at Joey. ‘You’ve grown so tall . . .’
She was plucking fretfully at the patchwork covering, angry with herself for being unable to ‘get down there’ and harangue the men in charge. This whole internment business was being mismanaged, in her view: why hadn’t the Church done something? The Quakers had protested, why had the Methodists not raised objections? She felt mortified. Raising herself from the pillows, she gripped Joey’s arms and kissed him fiercely.
‘We’ll pray for you.’ Adding hastily, ‘Not that there’s anything to worry about, of course.’
He touched her soft, papery cheek and ran down the stairs, swallowing to hold back tears. When Nancy was at work it was Mary who had collected him from school. She would hug him, before he grew too old for such things, her face smooth against his, and step out smartly to keep up with his skipping, jumping pace. Now, the outside world was contained in the view from her bedroom window. Only her mind still