The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

by Natasha Pulley

  ‘Fair. No photos. Photography does steal your soul, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Without seasoning. Raw silver nitrate and paper.’

  Thaniel made himself laugh. He went to the balcony doors.

  They led out into a garden. It was small but dense with contorted trees and tiny gravel lanes, and beginning almost right outside the door were cloudy pools that steamed. They were warm even from the doorway. A fox was sitting on the edge of the nearest, studying the glass windows above theirs and evidently waiting for more birds to knock themselves out on the panes. There was already a collection of downy bodies around its paws, and feathers on the window ledges. He heard children’s voices at the far end; Six had found a little boy over that way, a gardener, unless he carried round a spade of his own accord. He looked serious and puzzled, broke into a chesty baby giggle, and then they ran off down one of the steep paths. It was a relief. Thaniel had been worried that all the new things would be too much for her and he’d have to spend the afternoon coaxing her out from under a table.

  Mori came back with a kettle. When he turned to set it down on the low table, Katsu was coiled around his arm. Mori put him on the floor, where he hurried off towards the nearest pool. There was a splash as he dived in. A few seconds later he climbed out on the other side and left tentacle-and-wheel tracks on the slate before disappearing into the grass. The fox rushed away.

  Everything was incredibly, unrealistically clean. The reed mats were perfect, the paper walls looked brand new, and there was no clutter. Nothing, not even curtains. Just the table, the tea things, and a tall cupboard where Suzuki had explained all the bedding was kept in the daytime. The floor was warm. There must have been hot pipes just underneath. It was wonderful. Thaniel felt like something fleabitten Mori had brought in off the sea shore.

  ‘They’re for people too,’ Mori said. ‘The onsen. Springs,’ he translated, when Thaniel hesitated.

  ‘I imagine there’s something complicated you have to do first.’

  ‘Suzuki’s coming to show you now. I’d go in with you but I just want this tea before I have to get dressed.’ He said it as if he were talking about starting on another long journey.

  Suzuki glided back in with towels and a host of other things, soap and razors and combs. There was a whole ritual to it, one Thaniel didn’t like at first, but the process forced his whole mind to slow down. It was too complicated to stray onto thoughts about Mrs Pepperharrow in the background, but straightforward enough not to be difficult.

  ‘I’m sure we can make you presentable yet,’ Suzuki said. He didn’t look like he thought so.

  At the low table, Mori had fallen still. He looked less like he was holding himself upright than resting exactly on the balance of his spine.

  ‘Now then,’ said Suzuki, ‘the pool nearest to us is the coolest, but I recommend the farthest. There is an excellent view over the bay and it would perhaps be best to make use of it before the other gentlemen arrive for the hunt.’

  ‘A hunt?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Do you ride?’

  ‘No,’ said Thaniel. He’d never liked horses except to talk to. They were more than clever enough to work out who they didn’t like and find a strategic fence to sling him over.

  Suzuki lifted his eyebrows. If Thaniel had said he didn’t know about crockery and usually ate off the floor, he would have pulled the same expression. ‘It is edifying to watch. Of course you’ll attend.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ said Thaniel, starting to enjoy meeting such a caricature of a person.

  Mori was pouring himself another cup of tea, slowly, all his concentration on the iron kettle. Once he had set it down again, he sat holding the cup, very still and breathing the steam. A bloom of women’s laughter came from somewhere above them. Thaniel wondered where Mrs Pepperharrow’s balcony was.

  Suzuki shepherded Thaniel outside. The five pools were scattered about among the rocks and under the trellises, which were set just far enough back for most of the falling leaves to miss the water. The last pool was right on the cliff edge. Steps carved into the rock led down into the water, and then to stone benches all the way around so that you could sit looking out over the bay.

  The feeling that he was being watched got ten times stronger. It was ridiculous. The steam was so dense that nobody could possibly have seen much of him even from four feet away.

  ‘I’ll take that for you,’ Suzuki said, and held out his hands for the towel.

  ‘I’ll keep it.’

  Suzuki frowned. ‘You’ll do no such thing, it would be vulgar.’

  ‘I’ll be vulgar then, thank you.’

  Suzuki watched him. ‘Very well. But there are people of quality here. The Prime Minister is here.’ He pointed away beyond the pools, to the next level along, where a man dressed in a plain dark suit was pacing on the verandah outside another room, with the distinct bump of a gun under his jacket. A bodyguard.

  ‘Kuroda, really,’ Thaniel said, only half listening. He’d known that already. Mori had warned him there would be a welcome party. He was still scanning the steam, certain he was going to see someone.

  He sighed. He’d known it would be odd, coming so far from home to somewhere so different, but he really had had higher hopes for his own nerves than total failure in the first fifteen minutes after arriving.

  ‘Yes, really.’ Suzuki pointed to a corner of the pool which had a clear view over the sea and the roofs of the monastery next door. ‘That is the Baroness’s favourite place. She has excellent taste.’

  Thaniel waited until he’d gone before he stepped down into the pool, not where Suzuki had suggested. He sat down slowly on the stone bench underwater. The heat burned at first but then worked into his spine. It was good – much better than an ordinary bath.

  The steam from the water carried an edge of sulphur with it, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It only smelled of heat. Whether it was that or some rocky mineral in the water, it tasted much cleaner and fresher than normal steam. When he lifted his arms out and onto the side of the pool, his skin felt polished. Now that he was by himself, he let his neck bend while he waited to stop feeling like the whole place had punched him.

  In the background somewhere was a faint, odd, crackly beeping. He frowned, because it had the rhythm of Morse, but he’d never known a house to have its own telegraph, and anyway, there were no telegraph lines. The tiny sound made little starry lights. It stopped, and after a moment he wasn’t sure he’d heard it at all. He wondered if he was hallucinating telegraphy. He hoped not. If you were going to hallucinate something, Morse was very dull.

  Voices came from the open doors behind him: Mori and Suzuki, arguing about clothes. Suzuki won. Through the space under the curving trees and the verandah roof, Thaniel watched Suzuki unwrap the packets he had brought until the floor was covered in geometrically folded paper. Inside were traditional robes, layers of them. They went on thinnest first and Thaniel understood why Mori hadn’t wanted to bother; dressing was a long process, and he must have been cold at first. Each layer had its own belt, tied with a ceremony that made the knots look like they meant something, and then the final layer, which would have been a coat in the West, was like nothing Thaniel had ever seen, even in a painting. It was thousands of pounds’ worth of silk if it was a penny, with black on black embroidery that shone where it caught the light. He couldn’t make out the patterns from so far away, but he could see that they were there. The last belt was sacerdotal red. As Mori turned around to chase the end of it from Suzuki, he was starker and neater than human. Not the Mori he knew at all.

  ‘And the foreign gentleman—’

  ‘Will be left well alone,’ Mori said.

  Suzuki seemed to see that he couldn’t have a total victory. ‘Very well,’ he said smoothly, and set to folding up all the pieces of rice paper individually.

  When Mori came out into the sun, the black silk writhed with naphtha colours. He stepped over the stones between the pools without breaking his pace, thoug
h the hem of his coat brushed the water.

  ‘Careful,’ Thaniel said. It was a banal thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

  ‘If Suzuki wants me to wear it, he’ll have to put up with my actually wearing it. Anyway, it’s not supposed to be clean, it’s riding gear for this bloody hunt.’ He knelt down on the slate edge of the pool. The brocade was a riot of bird patterns; blackbirds, flocking from left to right. It must have been designed to be seen only by the person wearing it or someone sitting right next to him, because it had been obscure even from a few feet away. The collar of each layer was starched so well that they didn’t move when he did. They left a hollow at the back of his neck. At home, Thaniel’s sister had a silk scarf she never wore. It stayed wrapped in tissue in the top cupboard. It was probably an offcut of something like what Mori was wearing now. If someone had suggested she take it anywhere near a horse, she would have spat. ‘You’re invited. I didn’t say that before, did I? Pepper’s got half of Tokyo staying.’

  ‘Suzuki told me,’ Thaniel pointed out.

  ‘You always look like someone who knows what’s going on,’ Mori said, looking sorry. ‘I never know what I have or haven’t mentioned.’

  Thaniel glanced up. ‘Any children you might have forgotten to bring up?’ It came out sounding much more forced than he’d wanted.

  ‘No,’ Mori said, laughing.

  ‘And Mrs Pepperharrow; she’s not going to be annoyed that I’m here?’

  ‘No? She’s half-English. She doesn’t mind foreigners.’

  Thaniel wanted to drown. ‘That’s good then.’

  He thought Mori would go, but he let himself drop flat onto his back on the warm slate. The red silk shone across his hips and the flocks of blackbirds shifted and shimmered. Yesterday, this morning even, Thaniel would have reached out to touch it.

  He sank further back, towards the middle of the pool. The water was too hot there, but he didn’t care. Actually burning was better than burning inside.

  The sounds of the house filtered out. In another garden just below them somewhere, some girls were putting out laundry. He could hear the creak of the pegs against the sheets. Someone was walking over the nightingale floor, which made a constellation of white squeaks.

  Out in the bay, the lighthouse flashed on, unpleasantly bright even in the daylight. Thaniel looked down at the water, hearing a kind of violin-high whine from the white blast. Mori’s hands flickered. The lighthouse had made him jump.

  ‘If the Baron is to be on time,’ Suzuki began, and then stopped, because from the lower garden came the odd but very distinctive sound of several people chiming handbells. ‘Oh, where’s the dratted …’

  Thaniel straightened up and watched, puzzled, as Suzuki took a bell of his own from a loop on his belt, shook it three times, and then put it back. He didn’t offer a word of explanation.

  ‘If the Baron is to be on time he had best come now,’ he finished.

  The last silvery-blue coils of the sound faded off into the rain. ‘What was that?’ Thaniel asked, wondering if it was some kind of ceremony he hadn’t heard of.

  Suzuki sighed. ‘Just a little fad of the Baroness’s.’

  Mori had jerked upright when the bells rang, and now he had turned too still, his hands balled to fists against his knees. Suzuki paid no attention and herded him back inside.

  Thaniel was still wondering about it when the Morse crackle sounded again, this time much nearer. He twisted around. A man in a dark suit had appeared right at the far end of the pools. He was pacing there now, and he was holding a strange little box, pressing a button like a telegraph key. It wasn’t wired to anything, but it was what was making the noise. Thaniel sat back a little. Real, wireless telegraphy; he’d never seen it before.

  ‘Hey,’ he said to the man. ‘Is that a radio?’

  The man looked round, and then seemed surprised when he saw who had spoken. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was a telegraphist for ages, I’ve never seen one. Can I have a look?’

  ‘No, lad. Government property.’ He looked amused. ‘I can’t go round showing it to random gaijin.’

  Thaniel nodded and sank back in the water again, a bit disappointed but not surprised. The man was sending another message. Now he was close, Thaniel could hear it quite clearly. The man mustn’t have been used to telegraphy, because he was slow and easy to follow.

  He’s inside still, east wing. All well.

  Thaniel felt a little cheered up. It was bloody impressive. According to every dispatch he’d ever read, Kuroda was a terrible choice for Prime Minister, but it was hard to completely disapprove of someone who invested in new inventions like that. Six would love it.

  TWELVE

  At the back of the house, a wide courtyard was full of horses and men. Thaniel recognised the Prime Minister from photographs in the newspapers. He’d always been suspicious of the man, because Kuroda’s favourite hobby seemed to be war with Korea. And ‘Kuroda’ meant ‘Blackfield’, and anybody who walked around central government sounding like a pirate couldn’t have been wonderful news for anyone. Thaniel thought he was probably being unfair, especially given the wonderful radio things, and started out willing to be proven wrong, but, quite quickly, he was proven right.

  Kuroda wasn’t tall, but he was a bull of a man, and stable-boys were spraying away from him as he threw orders about. His voice was one of those that would carry across battlefields and he had the gruff clipped samurai way of talking that Thaniel could never understand first time round. Suzuki went ahead of them and murmured to him. He swung round. Kuroda had an open face and neat short hair, and wide, serious eyes. He was dressed just as well as Mori, in fantastically expensive-looking forest green. Beyond him were five men in dark suits, standing at the gates and doors. They were all watching.

  ‘Mori,’ he said, brisk. ‘Here to help me with the Russians, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Mori said. ‘I absolutely am not. You’re going to have to try harder than that.’

  Kuroda gave him a stern look, but then engulfed him. He lifted him right off his feet, though Mori was taller, and spun him around twice. ‘You’re back! You’re back, you bastard, what were you doing out there? Watches, stupid waste of time …’ He dropped him again and thumped his shoulder. Thaniel had never seen anyone look more delighted. There was a sort of fever-excitement coming off the man in waves. His horse, which was just behind them, nudged at them both, wanting to know what all the fuss was. Kuroda looked over at Thaniel, full of frank interest, both hands still on Mori’s arms. ‘This your monkey?’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Thaniel offered.

  Kuroda blinked. ‘It can talk. How does it talk?’

  ‘The usual way, I should imagine,’ Mori said.

  Kuroda didn’t seem convinced. ‘Do you understand Japanese, then?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Thaniel said.

  ‘D’you ride?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Hm.’ He looked Thaniel over again, like he was trying to decide whether or not he really wanted him so close by, but then abruptly he lost interest.

  ‘Kuroda,’ Mori said, pointed but not quite sharp yet.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, of course,’ Kuroda said smoothly to Thaniel. He was plainly only in it to needle Mori; he had the glow of someone who had just been given such a wonderful toy to play with that he barely had any idea where to begin. In a child it would have been endearing. In a man it was unnerving.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Thaniel said.

  Kuroda laughed much too suddenly. ‘You’re fun.’ He turned away. ‘Mori. Got a nice horse for you. She’s a bit skittish yet, but you’re not bad with horses, are you?’

  A boy came out with a black mare. Thaniel couldn’t tell a thing about it except that it was expensive and strong. Mori wound the reins around his hand. ‘She seems all right to me.’ The horse nudged him.

  ‘Baroness!’ Kuroda shouted. It was klaxon loud and Thaniel saw purple splotches. ‘Where the he
ll is that beautiful woman of yours when I want to show off to her?’ he added to Mori. ‘She has a knack for vanishing.’

  Mori was leaning against the horse, which seemed to like him. ‘Just around you, is it?’

  Kuroda snorted. ‘There she is. Mrs Pepperharrow!’ It was too loud again. Thaniel blinked hard. It wasn’t a volume he would have thought a human could produce. If politics fell through for Kuroda, there would be a fine career in opera ready and waiting. ‘We’re all here! Come and hostess.’

  When she came, people hurried to get out of her way, though she was tiny. Thaniel wasn’t surprised it had taken her this long to get dressed; she was wearing more than he earned in a year. Her dress was all hummingbird colours that made Mori and Kuroda look austere. There were real jasmine flowers in her hair. Thaniel caught the smell of them, warm and sweet. Despite all that, she wasn’t a stunningly beautiful person. In ordinary clothes she would have been boyish.

  ‘Gentlemen, hello.’ She bowed a tiny doll’s bow. ‘Lovely to see you properly and not hanging out of a tree. Welcome home.’

  Mori bowed back to her, not half as formally as he had with Kuroda, but still full of gentility. She’d lit a candle in him somewhere, because he glowed a bit when he said thank you. ‘And this is Mr Steepleton.’

  She ducked her head to Thaniel, gradually, because the silver combs in her hair must have been as heavy as she was. ‘The musician, yes, wonderful; I’ve got the phonograph recording of your Mozart concert, it’s absolutely the best one there is.’

  ‘Baroness,’ he said, and felt real despair, because she wasn’t being false-charming. She really sounded honest.

  ‘No-o,’ she laughed. ‘Just Takiko, please.’

  ‘Nathaniel,’ he said bleakly.

  ‘You’ll watch the hunt, Baroness?’ Kuroda put in, clearly of the opinion that she wasn’t paying him enough attention.