Dreaming Spies (15 page)

Thomas Darley’s friends had run out of ready cash some time before. Now, they kept the newly impoverished viscount from pummeling the steward, pushing Tommy back into his chair and thrusting into his hands a glass with the dregs of the brandy. Holmes just leant back, playing with the heavy gold watch that five minutes earlier had been strapped around young Darley’s left wrist.

“I thought he was going to pass out,” Holmes told me the next morning. “He was not too drunk to realise just how much he’d lost, and it came crashing down on him that he’d have to go crawling to his father if he wanted the steward’s debt paid.

“I gave each of the others a few bills to compensate them for their own losses, then sent them away and had the steward bring us coffee.

“After he’d had a while to think about it, to fully meditate upon the ruin that was opening at his feet, I counted out enough to repay the steward and pushed it across the table. ‘Cheating at cards is a dangerous game,’ I told him. ‘There is always the chance one will come across an opponent, however unlikely, whose misspent youth has left him very good at it.’ ”

“What did he say?”

“I feared for a moment that he would fall to the carpet and kiss my shoes.”

“Precisely how much money are we talking about?”

He told me, an eye-blinking amount that explained the cat-at-the-cream expression on his face. “Wow.”

“Indeed. The Royal Naval Benevolent Trust will find good use for it.”

“I’d say.”

“I also gave the lad back his watch.”

“Generous of you.”

He shrugged. “I have a watch. A very nice one.”

Which I had given him as a wedding present.

“That poor boy.” I had to laugh. How long would it be before he could look at his wrist and see only a timepiece, and not a reminder of near-catastrophe?

Holmes knew instantly what I meant. “Yes. The rest of the voyage may prove a trifle uncomfortable for him.”

To my amusement, such was the threat of discomfort that Thomas Darley fled the ship the next day in the company of the person who, until Holmes loomed on his horizon, had been anathema to him: his stepmother.

The earl, it seemed, was ill, thus unable to escort his wife to the stables. When he requested that his son take his place, it seemed that the alternative of staying onboard and risking a confrontation with the man who had stripped him dry the previous evening was an even greater horror than riding with his father’s new wife.

The viscount and the countess walked down the gangway well before noon, if not exactly arm in arm, at least together. They returned at the end of the day, looking tired but with much to tell the earl about Colonial horseflesh.

Darley himself, looking somewhat wan from a bout of
mal de mer
, had managed nothing more strenuous than his weekly attendance at the shipboard Sunday services, which (I’d noticed as I walked past in search of a book) had been populated this day chiefly by the staff of the
Thomas Carlyle
. He nodded as his wife and son described the hardships of the
tropical climate on Thoroughbreds, and managed one or two interested questions, but he turned in early, as did his chastened son.

“Well, Holmes,” I said that night as we resumed simultaneous preparations for bed, “at least you seem to have healed the rift between Thomas Darley and his father’s new wife.”

And I was pleased that it hadn’t taken him the entire voyage to do so.

In the normal course of events, a ship such as this one would put in to Yokohama, a short train ride from the capital city of Tokyo. But last September’s Kantō quake and fire had all but wiped Yokohama from the map; for the past six months, most ships putting in to the remaining ports on Japan’s main island were carrying some form of relief.

The
Thomas Carlyle
would be among the first trickle of returning tourists, although even then, the ports available to us were well away from the centre of devastation. Holmes and I had originally thought to depart the ship in Nagasaki, making our way north by train through Hiroshima and Okayama to Kyoto; Miss Sato suggested that Kobe would be more … useful to us.

Kobe it was.

Sun falls to starboard
.

Moths have gnawed our woollen coats
.

Who knew cold would come?

We reached Japan with no more fatalities.

Since leaving Colombo, we had gone for days with nothing to look at but sea and the occasional passing ship, followed by the thrill, then letdown of approaching, then departing a series of ports. But after three weeks of this routine, we put in at Nagasaki. From then on, the coast-line of Japan lay permanently off the port-side rails, causing a perceptible tilt with the weight of the land-hungry gawkers.

The deck remained at a cant even when we turned through the Kii Channel into first the Inland Sea, then Osaka Bay—however, by that time the reason was more the warmth of the afternoon sun on the southern decks than any view. Limbs and shoulders disappeared beneath wool for the first time since Bombay. I bundled along with the others, although once we had land on both sides, I was happy to trade the warmth of the port-side decks for the relative quiet of the starboard. I stretched out on my deck-chair and watched the landscape scroll past, studying the scores of small islands and myriad foreign coastal craft—junks and
sampans and barges, fishing boats with high prow and stern, their sails like Hokusai prints.

The day had been filled with leave-taking. Most of our Japanese passengers were departing here, along with the three Darleys, Monty Pike-Elton, the two British hearties on world tour, and the pair of adventurous young Americans, Clifford Adair and Edward Blankenship. (All of the men had sat eagerly in the front row for Miss Sato’s final lecture, on the etiquette of the geisha house, only to be disappointed to hear that a geisha was more artist than good-time girl. When Miss Sato then cranked the gramophone to illustrate the sort of Oriental music the young men might encounter, well, suffice it to say their eagerness was quenched. One of them used the word “caterwauling.”)

The city that rose up on the other side of Osaka Bay spread for what looked like miles along the coast. The water grew increasingly crowded with fishing boats and steamer ferries, merchant marine and pleasure boats. Progress slowed.

When the docks were clearly visible, progress ceased altogether, as the engines fell away. Pilot, quarantine agents, newspaper men, and the crème de la greeters swarmed onboard. Fishing craft and curio sellers pressed up against the ship’s side. Around me, complaints arose from the passengers who were too important to be under the scrutiny of the quarantine men, but too insignificant to be sought by news reporters and official greeters. Eventually, smoke began to belch from the stacks of a docked ship. When it had parted from land, our engines picked up, and we proceeded into its berth.

With the help of Miss Sato, our passage through Customs was rendered painless. She met us on officialdom’s far side, along with a group of other Japanese who had been onboard, and bowing commenced.

For the time being, my wish for a local guide was to be granted, with Miss Sato ushering us into her homeland. To my greater relief, Miss Katagawa, often her companion aboard the ship, had been claimed by the young men, and although vague plans were made for a rendezvous, it meant that Holmes and I did not have to search for an excuse to be rid
of the lads. Instead, after a few dozen more bows, our diminutive companion guided us, gently but firmly, in the direction of the chaotic street.

For twenty-four days, my world had been 582 feet long with a population of little more than a thousand souls. Since my rare ventures onto terra firma threatened more disorientation than relief, Kobe was the first time I had allowed myself to become conscious of a horizon that did not either vanish into the haze or curve upwards in both directions. My eyes stuttered against the concept of
distance
, just as my legs searched for footing on the motionless docks.

Disconcertingly, all around us a sea of rickshaws surged and swelled amidst a cacophony of shouts, bells, horns, warnings, and exhortations. Miss Sato took no notice, merely hopped sure-footedly up onto a low wall to make a slow revolution, less as a means of seeing over the crowd, I thought, than to show herself. Sure enough, in a minute she was exchanging bows—his lower than hers—with a whip-thin man of about forty who emerged out of the crowds. They launched into a rapid conversation that included gestures in our direction, after which he bowed, turned on his heels, and darted back into the wheeled sea, to reappear with a pair of other rickshaw runners who might have been his brothers.

Our trunks would be sent on to our eventual Tokyo destination. Here, we each brought nothing but a valise. Climbing with them into the wheeled contraptions, away we flew.

Rickshaw neophytes are readily identified by their pale faces and white knuckles. I was not new to the sensations of a flying jostle several feet above unforgiving ground, although these rickshaws were lighter than their Indian counterparts, hence faster. They were in general a superior design to the Sub-continental, with actual pneumatic tyres and cushions on the wooden seats. The runner wore an official-looking blue uniform with a towel tucked into his belt. His straw hat bobbed, his fraying straw sandals flew, and the brisk rhythm of the little bells lulled me into complacency.

Then we left the city behind, and the ground began to rise. Ahead, I could see a gathering of similarly-clad men. Three of them got to their
feet and moved to intercept us, and I was on the edge of calling to ask Holmes if he had his gun to hand when the first one trotted around behind Miss Sato’s rickshaw and set his shoulder to it.

These were our secondary engines, to propel us over the hills behind the town.

The view was like the world’s best crow’s nest. I craned, watching the city fall away, thrilled by seeing the ocean shrink, until it became merely one feature among others. At the top of the range of hills, we paused to pay off the supplementary power sources and allow our runners to rest, squatting together and renewing their lungs with cigarettes while we followed Miss Sato to a small, low building. There we were offered noodles or tea. We chose tea—not the English milked variety, of course, but watery, pale green Japanese tea, bitter and remarkably refreshing. We slurped it down to the scum in the bottom, breathing in great lungsful of incredibly green and living air, then resumed our wheeled perches and set off again, this time downhill.

Eventually we came to a small town of low, close-knit buildings with roofs of tile or thatch above age-blackened wood walls. The air took on an oddly metallic taste and a moisture suggestive of a steamy bath-room: Arima was a town of many
onsen
, a word that means both a large public bath filled with the naturally-hot mineral water from springs all over this tumultuous countryside, and the inn built around such a bath.

Miss Sato’s runner appeared to know where we were going. Our little procession wound through narrow streets lined with shops and homes and unidentifiable businesses. At last, the wheels slowed, and stopped.

We climbed down from the rickshaws before the oldest, simplest building of all. The front of the onsen resembled a gateway, thatching on the portico and atop the side wings; its central gate opened into a courtyard with a raised veranda on three sides. There assembled a line of bowing individuals: three women dressed in bright kimonos with hair like sculptures, one man in more sombre colours. Taking our lead from Miss Sato, we returned their bows, then allowed ourselves to be ushered to the entrance.

There we ran into our first barrier: none of the soft slipper-shoes marking the transition from the out of doors were designed for enormous Western feet. The ladies went pink with shame and the man dark with fury, while Miss Sato attempted to soothe the honour of the house by a string of what were clearly abject apologies. Larger slippers were summoned, although I gathered by the continued pinkness of face that mine were intended for men.

It took several minutes for the flurry of apologies to run its course, but once this international incident had been averted, we were invited inside, and shown our rooms.

Fortunately, Miss Sato’s lectures had prepared me for the accommodations: stark expanse of pristine straw mats, one wall of wooden cupboards, a niche holding a narrow vase with a single branch of cherry blossoms, and a low wooden table with round silk cushions tucked under three of its sides. We traded shoes again, and a tray of tea and little biscuits followed us in the door, with steaming cloths for our hands. At Miss Sato’s invitation, we lowered ourselves onto the puffy cushions at the little table and watched one of the maids pour pale green liquid into vessels that looked like egg cups. She then withdrew, abandoning us to our sybaritic refreshment.

My hand reached out for the diminutive cup, then stopped mid-air. “What is wrong?” Miss Sato enquired.

“It’s not moving.”

Three sets of eyes watched the pale liquid. It sat, precisely as the maid had left it, completely motionless in its porcelain frame, but for the faint steam rising off its perfectly flat surface. With none of the constant trembling that had shaken our drinks and our bones for the better part of twenty-four days. With something like reverence, I disturbed the cup’s repose to lift it to my mouth.