Dreaming Spies (26 page)

“Haruki-san was reading the Henry plays on the ship, and we got to talking about Falstaff. How Shakespeare seems more interested in that fat old knight than in the King himself. And she said something remarkable, about how Sir John offers up his honour, just so young Harry can refuse him, and grow into kingship. I think she was talking about her father.”

“The Samurai who offers the Emperor his most valuable possession: his pride.”

The rôle of a Fool was not only to entertain, but to speak the truth. Particularly dangerous truths, words that the King does not want to hear. If the angry voice that night had in fact belonged to the Prince Regent, perhaps truth-speaking was a Fool’s job here, too.

Which would make Sato-san more King Lear’s companion than Prince Harry’s buffoon.

I smiled to myself, and resumed my reading of that poet-Fool, and possibly spy, Matsuo Bashō.

If boarding the train had felt like stepping into another world, coming to Tokyo felt like entering a whirlwind.

A universal characteristic of the Japanese people, I had discovered, was their energy. This industrious nation seemed never to pause—whether small child or ancient crone, every citizen had some task at hand, at every moment.

Multiply that devotion to labour times a million, for the population of Tokyo. In a city that had been half-levelled by quake and fire seven months before, the pitch of activity was feverish. Signs of the disaster lay on all sides, but on our ridiculously brief taxi drive from the central train station to the Imperial Hotel, every other building appeared to be either freshly repaired or currently a-boil with activity. Every pedestrian trotted, every rickshaw-puller ran, every bicycle, car, and lorry dodged and sped.

There were picnics beneath the cherries here, too, but far from languid perusal of blossoms, those were hives of activity, with children running about and every adult either eating, drinking, or carrying on a vehement conversation.

“Many people are in the park,” I said to the driver in Japanese.

“
Hai
,” he agreed. “
Hanami
. You know hanami? Pickanick,
hai
? Under sakura—cherry. Every year, big parties. Much sake!” He laughed.

A picnic with a few thousand intimate friends under the flowering trees. After days spent among the bamboo-covered hills, the cacophony was dizzying. No less, the hotel.

“Good heavens.”

The taxi driver heard my astonishment, if not the reason behind it. “Yes, yes!” he exclaimed. “Imperial Hotel! Open day before earthquake—you know earthquake? No hurt at all. Everyone come here for help, after. American build it, light. Fank royd light.” I had grown accustomed to the inability of the Japanese tongue to distinguish between the
L
sound and an
R
, but it took me a few moments to sort out the driver’s words. A name: Frank Lloyd Wright. I’d vaguely heard of him, a small man with a large ego.

And, it would appear, an imaginative view of Japanese architecture. The compound was built from an unlikely mix of yellowish brick and rugged lava-stone slabs of a peculiarly greenish tint, combining the roofline of a Japanese farm house with a right-angle Illinois sensibility and the brutality of a Mayan temple. Over this uneasy mix lay a heavy dusting of Moorish detail, apparent as we drew near, circling an enormous sunken pond. Our driver slowed so we could admire it, pointing out that the water it held was designed to fight the fires after a quake. The low, rectangular pond, half-covered with shiny new lotus leaves, somehow brought to mind a Yucatan sacrificial arena.

The foyer was a similar giddy blend of East and West, with vast Navajo-esque carpets stretching to walls made of children’s stone building-blocks. When we reached the desk, I was almost disappointed not to be greeted by men in buckskin and feathers.

Dared I hope that the kitchen of this ethnic hotchpotch contained an English tea pot?

Our rooms, we were told, were ready. Our trunks had been forwarded from the ship. And yes, a tray of English tea would arrive immediately.

I was relieved to find the rooms somewhat less frenetic than the exterior. They looked out onto a Midwesterner’s version of a Japanese garden, and my bones cried out in joy at the sight of an actual bed. I will say, however, that using a bar of soap inside the porcelain tub felt distinctly wrong, and my skin did not feel entirely clean as I climbed out of the murky water. Nor did the clothing I took from the trunks seem to have been designed for my body, being too loose in some places and too snug in others.

I studied the Western woman in the glass, absently trying to adjust the buttoned blouse to lie correctly. “I need a haircut,” I told Holmes. Something on the farther edge of fashionable, like that of the late, lamented Miss Roland. “And I’m afraid I’ll have to have my nails done.”

“Stop tugging at your clothes,” he ordered.

“Stretching out wrinkles,”
I quoted,
“I make my coat suitable/For a snow-viewing.”

“Call down for a maid,” he suggested.

I laughed. “Wrinkles aren’t the problem.” After all my complaints to Haruki-san, my belly missed the firm grasp of the obi. Although, interestingly, I thought it would be easier to set aside the learned habit of bowing at every greeting, introduction, and encounter when I wore a frock instead of Japanese attire.
Apparel oft proclaims the man
—or rather, clothes make the manners. However, it was not just the clothes: “I’ll need to find a salon right away, if we’re to make an impression.”

“While you are submitting to the womanly arts, I shall hunt down a Thomas Cook and restore our funds.”

“You might also make enquiries as to the Darleys. Shall we meet in the bar around six? I’ll definitely need a drink by then.”

The Darley party was on Friday night; today was Tuesday. That left us little time to trail our skirts in front of the earl and his lady and achieve
an invitation. I could do little about my wardrobe tonight, but I did have two frocks that had spent the voyage in the ship’s hold, as well as an exotic, heavily-embroidered silk tunic given to me in India. All of them had been ironed and hung in the wardrobe awaiting our arrival. Those clothes, along with a fresh haircut and my mother’s emeralds, would catch the eyes of the fashionable set: even in a city of a million souls, I had no doubt that the Darleys’ circle would be exclusive, and not given to stray travelling companions with uncontrolled hair and rice-planters’ cuticles.

By six, I was a different woman—one who tossed down her lurid cocktail with aplomb. One who crossed her silk-covered ankles with little regard for the length of her hemline. One who accepted a light by cupping her much-older husband’s hands against the end of her cigarette, before slumping back with a dramatic flourish of the garish enamelled holder.

Much-older husband was one of Holmes’ least favourite rôles, but he manfully concealed his distaste, pasting on an expression of proprietary approval.

We drank, I flirted, he beamed, all the while surveying the room. We were hoping for the Darleys, who (as Holmes had confirmed during the afternoon) were guests in the hotel. When they failed to appear, we shifted our attention to the type of person Lord Darley would have migrated towards, whether his interest lay in promoting his friend’s china-wares, or in the darker realm of the blackmailer: moneyed, assured, and young enough to mis-behave.

One group we discarded because the men were mostly Japanese. Another because their raucous behaviour implied sins too openly indulged for a blackmailer’s attentions. There was a trio seated in the bar’s most desirable corner, but they, too, were not ideal: two Japanese Flappers wearing far too much makeup and a highly-polished Englishman in his thirties. As my eye surveyed the room, I found him surveying back. I gave him a polite smile over my cocktail glass, and moved on—or, was about to move on, when one of the girls at his side bounced a little and gave an exuberant wave towards the door.

Aha: Thomas, Viscount Darley and his blaring pal, Monty Pike-Elton.

They did not notice us as they went past. We gave them time to order a round of drinks, then rose to make our way towards the dining room—with a sideways loop to greet our old shipmates.

Neither recognised me, although they stood somewhat warily to greet Holmes. Then he gestured in my direction with a faintly owlish, “You remember my wife, Mary?” Both young men gave me a look that could only be called appraising.

“Well, well,” said Tommy. “You’ve certainly polished the diamond.”

It was said in a manner that would have made a lesser woman smack him, and a lesser man than Holmes knock him down. But both of us just upped the wattage of our beams, and as I leaned over the table to shake various hands, I loosed a stream of chatter.

“It’s
such
a relief to be off that ship and be ourselves again, don’t you find it so? (How d’you do, Kiko, Mina.) I mean, ships can be so
incredibly
tedious with the sorts of people (Eugene—oh, sorry, Gene, good to meet you.) one is trapped with, the only thing one can do is either spend the whole trip tipsy or just go grey and dull like the others. I
swear
, we haven’t been completely sober since we got off—and the first thing I did was go and spend some of Bobby’s money!”

Robert Russell spoke up from my side. “One thing my Mary’s good at is spending money.”

In fact, while I was submitting to torture in the salon that afternoon, it had been Holmes who rounded up half a dozen expensive sparklies. I held one of them out now, an ornate snarl of silver, pearls, jade, and enamel weighing down my right wrist. The two girls oohed over it while the three men calculated its worth. Holmes and I preened over the monstrosity for a while, then stood back.

“Well, it was lovely to see you again,” I gushed at Tommy, following it with an inclusive smile at the others. “We’re off to eat—isn’t it nice to have something other than rice! Why, even Prince Chichi—”

Perfectly on beat, Holmes cut in. “Mary, let’s be a bit discreet about throwing names around.”

I made a little exclamation of mingled irritation and embarrassment,
doing my best to summon a faint blush. “Sorry, sweetie, he was just—oh, there I go again! Never mind,” I said to the others. “I hope you’ve been having as grand a time here as we have. Perhaps we shall meet again, if you’re staying at the Imperial?”

“Of course. Some of us, anyway,” said Tommy. “Gene’s a permanent fixture here, has a flat in the city. Say, I don’t suppose you’d like to accompany us to a club, later?”

“Oh, I’d love—” I began, at the same time that Holmes let loose a repressive grumble.

“After today, I’m a bit tired,” he complained.

It was time to distance myself from the man who had humiliated the aristocratic card shark. I turned to Holmes, making my eyes wide in the fashion of Clara Bow. “But
I’m
not, and you promised me … Would you mind, if I went along with them? Just for a little?”

“I want my dinner,” he stated.

“Well, me, too.” I turned to Tommy again. “Where were you thinking of going? I could maybe catch you up, if …”

The polished Gene replied. “I thought they’d like a visit to the Caramel Box. It’s a new jazz club just off the Ginza, very popular with young people and foreigners.”

In the end, I said that I’d join them there for a time if my energy hadn’t lagged (meaning: if my fuddy-duddy of a husband didn’t stop me) and we passed on to the dining room, into a realm of tables laden with more meat than I had seen in weeks.

“Holmes, your grin is slipping,” I murmured.

“Part of the act,” he replied. He intercepted the waiter, to pull out my chair, although he did allow the fellow to drape me with the table napkin.

Wine where my palate had grown accustomed to clean tea; meat where I wished for rice and pickle; conviviality when I craved a peaceful turn through the garden, or curling up with one of the books from which I had long been separated. But we played our act to the hilt, and attracted the amused smiles of those around us, and were rewarded, just as I laid a
hand on Holmes’ arm to deliver a loving gaze, to see our would-be friends pass by the door: I caught the eyes of both Tommy and Gene, before withdrawing my hand and using it to raise my wine glass to Holmes.

How we both got through the meal without gagging, I do not know.

Even with a determined sleight of hand—tiny sips, tinier top-ups of the glass, a heavy meal, and three outright exchanges of my full glass for Holmes’ empty one—I was fairly pie-eyed at the end of the meal. Holmes, having taken the brunt of the two bottles, had no need to feign inebriation. We walked from the room more or less holding each other upright. Once behind closed doors, he dropped heavily onto the bed and ran a hand over his face.

“I am out of training when it comes to wit … withstanding alcohol,” he said, his voice precise.

“You’ll have a head on you tomorrow, Holmes. I’d better go, before they decide to move on. Will you be all right?”

“Shall I ask you the same question when you roll through the door in the wee hours?”

“I’ll try not to wake you.” I fetched my coat, settled my good hat over my crisp hair-do, and opened the door.

“Watch your back, Russell,” he warned.

There was greater risk of him falling out of bed than in me falling into dangerous company, but I did not say so: he was Holmes, so he would let me go. At the same time, he was Holmes, and he would worry.

I rolled in, as Holmes had it, well after three, trying to tip-toe until I tripped over a carpet and sent shoes and handbag flying from my hands. The room’s snores stopped for a moment, then resumed.

In the morning, both of us were bleary with headache and hoarse from our attempts at ridding our stomachs of excess.

Tea—Japanese—and rice were all we could manage until noon.

I dug through my trunks, finally uncovering the pair of glasses with
smoked lenses, and we crept down to the dining room, valiantly concealing our every wince at the noisy hotel. The day was distressingly bright. We chose the dimmest corner possible in which to nurse ourselves back to some semblance of cheer.