The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

by Natasha Pulley

  She interrogated Mori about France and, having decided it was a generally unworthwhile place, she said in her upright Japanese that dinner had been a real feast, and looked solemnly approving when Mori gave her the octopus cake. She turned to go without saying anything else. Thaniel poked her.

  ‘Hey. Show me an uppercut, soldier.’

  She did, and smiled when he pretended that catching it in his palm had hurt.

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I can’t play with you now, it’s cake time.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Thaniel watched her go, trying to tell if she was all right or not. She wouldn’t sulk if she was unhappy or angry. She would behave normally, but then she would change all the door handles.

  ‘I’ll get it in the neck later,’ Mori said. ‘But she’s got a perfect right to that.’

  ‘No, she hasn’t. She can’t keep you in the house forever,’ said Thaniel.

  Mori studied him for a while, heedful and unhurried. ‘And how are you?’

  He still didn’t know how to say it, so fast and all in one go seemed best. ‘Francis Fanshaw wants me to go to Japan. There’s some trouble at the legation in Tokyo. I’m supposed to sort it out. I don’t know what your plans are, but …’ His throat had gone dry again. ‘I suppose we need to decide where Six goes, here or there.’

  ‘No, we’ll all go. Friend of mine’s just got himself elected Prime Minister over there. He wants me to come home.’

  Thaniel stared at him. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘There’s a liner going out on Thursday. It only takes twelve days now, so we’ll be there for Christmas.’ Mori smiled a little. ‘That’s why I’m here. If you’d – like to go together, that is.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ Thaniel said, and couldn’t summon up anything else at first. He had to clench his hands under the table, ludicrously close to crying with relief. ‘You never said?’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure any of this was happening until a few weeks ago, and then I got stuck in Paris. Flu or something. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You might have given me a bit of warning, before it was a certain thing? Steepleton, look sharp, you might be moving to Japan?’

  Mori looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t … want to think about it too much. I know that’s stupid, but it’s always odd. Going home.’ His black eyes came up again, full of awkward apology. By odd, he meant deeply unnerving.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Thaniel said, annoyed with himself.

  Mori inclined his head unwillingly. ‘Well; my house is haunted in bad weather.’

  Thaniel hadn’t known that Mori believed in ghosts, but he was never surprised anymore when they hit little pockets of difference like that. It would have been much stranger if they’d grown up six thousand miles apart and agreed about everything. Besides, at this precise moment, Mori could have announced he often had high tea with a talking fox and Thaniel would have gone along with it. ‘No wonder it’s not your favourite place.’

  Mori smiled and shook his head once. ‘It’s nice, though. An estate in Yokohama. That’s the posh residential bit on the edge of Tokyo. Good air, by the sea.’ He twisted back to take something from the drawer of post he never bothered to open. It was a postcard. ‘This is it.’

  When Mori had said house, Thaniel had imagined one of those tall neat places in Belgravia, but maybe with rickshaws going to and fro outside instead of hansom cabs. On the postcard, though, was a photograph of a sprawling ramble of beautiful traditional buildings among lush gardens and pools that steamed, and cherry trees that snowed their petals onto the curved rooftops. The name was printed in Japanese in the corner on the other side of the card. Yoruji: it meant The Evening Temple. And then, in small sepia print, Yokohama residence of House Mori.

  ‘Christ,’ said Thaniel, who had gone straight from impressed to uneasy. That kind of money was like a bright light. It showed every single rough edge in horrible detail. Even just sitting and holding an image of the place, he was acutely aware of being made of rough edges. ‘Sure they’ll let me in? I’m not – really your sort.’

  Mori’s shoulders flickered with something like incredulity. When he spoke, his voice was full of smoke. ‘What? You’re exactly my sort.’

  Thaniel had to laugh. Whatever nerves he might have about high society, it was hardly a bad problem to have. Going together was better than anything he’d thought of, or even hoped. ‘So – Japan, then.’

  Mori smiled, shy like he always was if anyone was too pleased about something he’d said. ‘I think that deserves a toast.’

  There was a hum from upstairs as Six turned on her generator to power her lightbulb collection, and then a squeaking that must have been the new addition going into a socket. Thaniel fetched down the brandy and a pair of glasses. As he set them down, he caught the smell of lemon soap from Mori’s clothes. It was on his skin too, hotter. Mori looked back as Thaniel leaned forward to kiss his cheek. He touched their heads together, just cradling the base of Thaniel’s skull for a careful moment before he kissed him back. Thaniel felt a flood of white hot relief.

  He had never known what the agreement was. It was an unbearable thing to ask him. If Thaniel tapped on Mori’s door at night, he always let him in, but he never touched Thaniel first, and never spoke about it; no endearments, no promises, and no discussion. Thaniel liked it that way, but he was always afraid. Mori was from a generation and a country where carrying on with a friend was unremarkable, something you could do idly for a summer or two, or, worse, submit politely to even if you didn’t much want it, like a boring work dinner, for the sake of a bit of company. Thaniel had decided a long time ago he could live without knowing.

  FIVE

  Eight o’clock had just begun to chime when Six fetched Thaniel to read. The attic ran the length of the house. There was a trapdoor above the landing and a brass-fitted ladder that unfolded itself when the hatch opened. She hurried up ahead of him. Thaniel went more slowly. The insides of his elbows ached and he felt feverish.

  Six’s lightbulb collection had turned the rafters starry. The bulbs were all different sizes and shades, wired up at different heights, because where they were depended on what she had found to climb up on. There weren’t dolls or normal toys. She had yelled and hidden from the doll Thaniel’s sister had once tried to give her. Instead, winking like sequins all across her desk were rows and rows of minuscule cogs she’d filed down herself. She loved going with Mori to the factory where you could buy them rough in bulk. She was making a naval chronometer.

  Mori was there ahead of them, building a pyramid of kindling in the fireplace. He never let her go without a fire even if there was only a little chill in the air, and Thaniel loved him a lot for that. Growing up, his own father had had an unbreakable rule that there would only be a fire in the tiny gamekeeper’s cabin on days when you had to crack the ice on the water pitcher. It had been fair enough, but Thaniel had never hated anything like he’d hated winter then, except maybe his father, who hadn’t done it because of the cost – the cabin was right next to the woods and firewood was free as part of the job – but on principle. Really it had been a healthy experience, because now he knew that if anyone said ‘it’s the principle of the thing’ then the correct response was to punch that person in the throat, but he was glad that Six wasn’t having to learn that way.

  She gave Thaniel the generator instruction manual and bumped Mori hard on her way by him, which made Thaniel pay attention even before she did anything else. She rolled a die along her desk, looked at the number and folded her arms. She was holding something else. Thaniel couldn’t see what it was. Mori jumped as if a huge noise had gone off in his face, even though there was nothing but the skitter of the die. He didn’t say anything.

  She rolled the die again. Mori flinched hard, then eased when it landed on four.

  ‘Six,’ Thaniel said, slowly, because he had just understood what she was doing.

  A die had exac
tly even sides. Mori had no way of knowing on which side it would fall, since nothing was more likely than anything else. Exactly even chances, one in six. Random was random whether you were a clairvoyant or not. Coins, dice, and lightning: that was the random trinity. Mori could watch a thunderstorm or a game of roulette for hours, just for the novelty of having no idea what was going to happen next.

  The die landed on a six.

  She slung down what looked like a teabag, but when it hit the floor, it went off with a bang much too loud for the attic.

  ‘Christ,’ Thaniel said, taken right off guard. She had always done peculiar things, but fireworks indoors weren’t something he’d ever expected. He had a feeling that she would be a lot older before she understood the ordinary rules most people took for granted. No stealing, no staring too hard, no firecrackers in the face. ‘What are you doing? You can’t have those in here.’

  ‘But they’re mainly only potential firecrackers,’ Six reasoned evenly.

  Mori clenched his hands hard on his knees. ‘I think three times is enough, don’t you?’ he said quietly through the chemical smoke. The die had landed right on the edge of the desk and now it fell into his lap. He jerked back from it like most people would have from a spider. Thaniel heard his breath catch.

  ‘No more dice,’ Thaniel decided. He picked it up and slung it in the fire. It made her squeak. He knelt down to her so he wasn’t looming over her. ‘Come on, Six, if you’re angry, you have to tell people, you can’t throw dice and firecrackers. That’s not very …’ He stopped, because he had been going to say ‘ladylike’, but ladylikeness was the reason Mori thought women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. ‘Honourable.’

  She hid under the bed before he was even halfway through speaking. Mori was staring at the fire as if he were worried the die wouldn’t burn but crawl back out of its own accord. When Thaniel touched his shoulder, his bones were so tight they thrummed. He seemed not to feel it.

  ‘Kei,’ Thaniel said.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ Mori said. ‘It’s just – it’s …’ He let his breath out. He was much more bothered than he should have been by a firecracker.

  Thaniel pulled him gently to make him move away from the fire. Mori let him, but only by a couple of inches.

  ‘I didn’t mean it to be that bad!’ Six said anxiously. She sounded near to crying. Thaniel’s heart squeezed. She had no middle ground; she was either content, or so deeply ashamed it scared him.

  ‘I know that, roku-chan. Come out,’ Mori said. He wound up one of her clockwork mice and scooted it under the bed to her. ‘The decent thing is to stand up straight and look someone in the eye.’

  She sniffed.

  Mori leaned down. He kept his hands clasped, holding himself just on the strength of his spine, though he had to go low enough for his hair to brush the floor. ‘I can’t do that if you don’t come out.’

  She hesitated, then edged out. There was real fear in her. She expected a cane or worse, even now, though Mori had never so much as raised his voice at her. Mori pushed gently on her chest to make her uncurl, because she tipped forward over her knees when somebody had told her she was in the wrong. She would do it even when she was standing up. Usually she would find a corner first, and then creep down the wall. It was appalling and animal. Thaniel hoped she didn’t remember why she did it anymore.

  Mori bowed where he was kneeling. ‘I’m sorry I left you for so long.’

  She stared, then nodded and bowed back. ‘I’m sorry I let off fireworks inside.’

  ‘Square?’

  ‘Square,’ she agreed, broadcasting relief.

  Not all of Mori’s colour had come back. Thaniel propped Six into his lap and opened the generator manual. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to try Princess Kaguya tonight?’ he tried.

  Six shook her head. ‘I already know how princesses work.’

  When they went downstairs, Mori opened the kitchen door just as the Haverly boys kicked a rugby ball right over the fence. He caught it, but rather than give it back, he threw a firecracker back at them and then pulled the door shut. There was a bang and a lot of yelling. Thaniel poured them both some more brandy. Mori gave the ball to Katsu, who whirred delightedly and hurried off with it.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Thaniel asked.

  Mori was unsettled enough to have been thrown out with his timing. He answered the next question – has something happened? – rather than the present one. ‘Nothing—’

  ‘What will happen, then?’ Thaniel said. He frowned. ‘Is someone going to blow something up again?’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t the firecracker. It was the die.’

  Thaniel felt like he was drifting even further out to sea. ‘Traumatic backgammon game?’ he hazarded.

  ‘No, but anything random – it’s a bit … you know, like someone jumping at you from behind the bins.’

  ‘When did that start?’ Thaniel said carefully. They had played with dice before and Mori had been fine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mori hedged. ‘Lately I suppose.’

  ‘The last time you were scared of anything, it was heights, and it turned out you were going to fall off a building.’

  ‘I’m not going to fall off any buildings.’

  ‘I think we both agree that that was such a specific truth it was really a lie, can’t we?’

  Mori laughed, though it was more like patience than humour. It just cracked the lines around his eyes. ‘I’m fine, I’ve just been a bit fragile the last few weeks. As I say, I – came down with something in Paris.’

  Thaniel thought about pushing, but Mori shied away when he overheard that future. ‘Listen, let’s ask Mrs Haverly to look in on Six. I’m taking you out.’

  Mori’s mind must have been elsewhere, because the idea seemed to clip him from the side. ‘Out, out where?’

  ‘To a show.’ Thaniel gave him his coat. ‘With humans and laughing, like normal people do. Jekyll and Hyde’s on at the Lyceum.’

  SIX

  London, 3rd December 1888

  The room was still dark when Thaniel woke up. Fog pressed against the diamond-paned window, but the fire was still glowing from last night, and his skin carried the warm, sherry and candied-almond smell of the theatre. At next door’s hearth – the two houses shared a chimney flue – Mrs Haverly was singing to her baby.

  It wasn’t until he shifted that he realised Mori wasn’t there. As he sat up, all the muscles between his ribs hurt. He must have been coughing in the night. He’d only just had time to worry he might have driven Mori out when Mori came in with two cups of tea.

  ‘God, thank you.’ Thaniel took it carefully, enjoying how it felt to hold it. His normal morning trajectory for the last nine months had been sink-clothes-Osei’s, with Six in tow. He hadn’t been bothering with tea until he reached the office, not because he didn’t want it, but because he’d developed a private hatred of making it just for himself.

  ‘Did I keep you awake?’ he said, embarrassed. Even when he didn’t have a cold, he was always acutely aware of just how much space he took up in this room, Mori’s room. Mori was a person who made society girls look doughy and huge, never mind someone who had a permanent locker at a boxing gym.

  ‘What? No.’ Mori leaned down over him and kissed his throat, and the awkwardness dropped away. ‘I’ve only been up five minutes.’ He folded down on the quilt and crossed his legs, facing the headboard. He could never get back into bed once he was up; he thought it was decadent. He was wearing a heavy Aran jumper with sleeves that came to his knuckles, and a green scarf Thaniel’s sister had sent at Christmas. The wool made him look soft, and it had caught the smell of woodsmoke. ‘They’re sending people home from the Foreign Office today. You could stay,’ he said. He tipped his eyes away as though despite everything, he wasn’t sure Thaniel would want to stay at home. ‘See Dr Haverly about that cough, maybe.’

  So Thaniel had coughed all night. ‘I will,’ Thaniel promised, and then hugged him, trying to communicate th
at he was sorry about what must have been quite a lot of lost sleep without having to mention it.

  Six creaked down the loft ladder then. Thaniel sat back fast and pulled yesterday’s shirt back on. The bolt of shame-fear woke him up much better than tea could.

  ‘There’s no school,’ Six reported from the doorway. She had her hands clamped around fistfuls of her dressing gown. As she spoke, she glanced wretchedly back along the corridor. ‘They said no school if there’s fog and –there’s fog.’

  Mori held up a piece of paper folded into a star.

  If Six moved at anything quicker than a walk, she looked off-balance, and so it was with a kind of tripping lurch that she hurried across. She took the paper star and opened it up. It was a schedule for the day, divided into half-hour slots. Her whole posture loosened and she touched her palm to Mori’s, which was the nearest she could manage to a hug when she’d been worried. Thaniel trapped his hands under his knees so he couldn’t scoop her up. Hers was always such a frail happiness that whenever he thought about sending her out into the world, his tongue turned to paper.

  The Haverlys lived next door at number twenty-nine, and they had six children, who were all terrible, and so getting a doctor’s opinion was really only a matter of leaning over the fence in the back garden and tapping on their kitchen window. Given the children, Dr Haverly didn’t charge.

  When Thaniel stepped into the garden, where the silver birches were mainly invisible under the chemical haze, Katsu hurried out ahead of him with a piece of toast. It was for the birds, although less out of octopussy good feeling for his fellow fauna than to catch one. He hadn’t managed to pin one down yet, but Thaniel doubted that he would do anything with it when he had. It was more a prestige thing for Katsu to hold over the Haverly cat.

  Thaniel blinked slowly as he reached over the fence to tap next door’s kitchen window. Now that he was up and moving about, he felt sluggish. Dr Haverly came out, sneaking, with a lit cigar.