Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  ‘What? What did you say, Geraldine?’

  ‘Never mind, never mind. Now, look Mother who I have brought to see you. Mr Wilcox, father’s friend.

  ‘Wilcox? Wilcox? Never heard of him.’ Maud Bingham expelled her false teeth into her hand. ‘You forgot to help me take them out after dinner,’ she complained. Her lips sank in upon her gums and lay gathered like slack leather.

  ‘Mr Wilcox, Mother, used to play billiards with Father in the club.’ Geraldine dropped the teeth in a glass of water. A speck of cabbage floated free.

  ‘Clair de lune, madam. We always ended an evening with Clair de lune. I accompanied you on the flute. Surely you remember those wonderful evenings, all Kobe used to come.’

  ‘Flute? Clair de lune? That was young Arthur. Always played off tune. Can’t remember a Wilcox.’

  The curtains were drawn now, the candle sent shadows skating over the walls and there was a warm glow. She began to relax, the dryness eased from her throat.

  ‘I am he, madam. I am he, young Arthur.’ He moved about on his toes at the memory of his youthfulness.

  Maud scrutinised him suspiciously. ‘Young Arthur had no moustache. Young Arthur was red-headed.’

  ‘Alas, madam. Time moves on.’ He stroked his grey hair.

  ‘Now, Mother, Mr Wilcox is writing a little pamphlet for the centenary of the club. After that he is going to write a history of the foreign community in Kobe. Now, isn’t that exciting? Mr Wilcox thinks you might be able to provide him with a lot of material, Mother. He is anxious to have a talk with you about old times.’ Geraldine bent near her mother’s ear, speaking loudly. Arthur observed the lustrous collar of pearls about her neck and the dark dividing wedge in the scoop of her low-cut dress.

  ‘Well, I can’t say it wouldn’t be pleasant to have someone to talk to me for once. Old times, eh? Well, come here then young Arthur, or Wilcox, or whoever you are.’ Maud patted the bed beside her and fussed at a ribbon under her chin. Her teeth watched, suspended, in an endless smile from the glass beside her bed.

  3

  The candle went out as they finished binding up Sister Elaine’s broken rib.

  ‘There are no matches here, I’ll go down,’ said Akiko.

  ‘I’d better come too. The children must be running wild. Will you be all right now, Sister Elaine? Just lie quietly, try not to move,’ Eva instructed. She and Akiko groped their way from the dark room.

  The blackness settled about Sister Elaine, but it was not like the darkness of the wild night outside; this darkness was restful and supportive. She felt emptied, as if some solid thing had been squeezed from her. She could not explain; the world seemed remade. It felt like her cheek was touching the pillow for the first time. She sighed at the end of her tight swaddled body. Outside, somewhere distant, the wind battled on. She shut her eyes and slept.

  Small bobbing flames and the closing of the door woke her. They walked in a line towards her, three of them. The flames of the candles cracked the black room and soft blurred shadows melted the walls. Their faces appeared skeletal, like ancient manikins above the lights.

  ‘We brought you some candles,’ said Kenichi. Behind him the small figure of Kimiko clutched a soggy blue rabbit. She held it up to Sister Elaine.

  ‘Kenichi saved it. He’s my friend now.’

  Jiro carried a second candle. ‘They all want to be his friend now. I have drawn a picture of you at the bottom of the ravine.’

  They stood the candles on the bedside table and a shelf. The room smelled suddenly of melting wax, shadows moved fluidly to the rhythm of the flames. The wind swelled on outside, within it great fractured crashing sounds that were the boil of the sea and waves. Jiro went to the window and pulled open the curtains a slit. Light from the room behind him lit part of the view.

  ‘The sea is all over the road, the waves are huge. It looks like part of the sea-wall has broken, everywhere is flooded,’ he said excitedly, repeating possibilities he had heard the adults discussing.

  ‘Come away. Don’t watch, don’t worry. We’re all safe now. Nothing can happen,’ said Sister Elaine.

  ‘Does it still hurt?’ Kenichi asked. She nodded.

  ‘But not quite so much. They have bandaged me up very tightly,’ she told him. He seemed a different child, aggression was gone from his face; the other children had made a hero of him.

  ‘We all wanted to come up to see you. But they said only three of us could come. We were chosen,’ Kenichi said gravely, stressing the we with pride. He was dressed in a shaggy heather sweater from which his legs obtruded nudely. Jiro wore a similar article in lemon yellow and Kimiko was lavishly attired in beaded black angora. Sister Elaine began to laugh and stopped at once in pain.

  The children watched her with an equal interest. She was clothed in one of Maud Bingham’s flannel nightdresses, her mud-plastered habit and veil removed to the nearest bath tub. A bright floral scarf of Geraldine’s was tied about her head. She did not mind their staring.

  ‘Do I look funny?’ She smiled at them.

  ‘Not funny. Different,’ Jiro answered diplomatically. ‘Shall I show you my drawing?’

  They sat beside her on the bed as Sister Elaine rested the open sketchbook on her chest. They waited in silent expectation. The dark forms of purgatory were before her again on the page. There was the river, sinuous and dense with textured currents beneath the black eye of the sky. Diminished and helpless within the darkness lay a small white bundle with a veil, the stick-like form of a child and a toy rabbit. All the figures were small and lost in the bold thick lines of earth and sky. It reminded her of Munch.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, we are all there.’

  It stuck in her anew, how close they had been to disaster. She looked at the faces pressed about her. In the flickering candlelight the three sets of eyes were dark and polished as wet stones, anxious and friendly. She stared as if seeing them for the first time.

  Why? Why was I saved? Why am I given the faces of these children, who have come to me like this, she thought. But the answer was there already in herself, like a pulse that glowed and beat in her breast. A feeling she thought she had lost. In the silent semicircle of eyes, something, it seemed, was being explained. She understood the answer although she could not yet comprehend the words. She closed her eyes on tears, then opened them on the sketch.

  ‘May I keep it?’ she asked. ‘To remind me.’

  The children nodded gravely, and Jiro tore out the page from the book.

  4

  The room flared with the candle on the bedside table in Maud Bingham’s room. Her skin glowed like ancient parchment stretched over the bones of her face. The flickering light cast her cadaverously, but her eyes were stirred and bright.

  ‘There was that time, young Arthur, do you not remember, when the club was accused of lese-majesty, because it was found that a particular flower, introduced into the wooden carved post of the grand staircase, bore some resemblance to the Imperial Chrysanthemum Crest. Oh yes. I remember it well.

  ‘Oh it is so good to talk to you again, young Arthur. How I wish dear Horace was with us just now. We could strike up once more with Clair de lune. La laa la laa ...’ Maud Bingham lay back, eyes closed upon the pillow, conducting gently with a withered hand. She felt deep and warmed inside. It was almost as if she was back again within those jewelled days. How nice of young Arthur to visit her.

  ‘By Jove, madam. Maud, yes. I may call you Maud again, may I not? For you did allow me that liberty once. Yes, good idea of Geraldine’s, that I should come and talk to you. Makes all the memories come racing back.

  ‘That chap who built the club, dashed short-sighted of him to throw in a royal chrysanthemum.’ Arthur scribbled hurried notes on paper supplied by Geraldine.

  ‘How I wish, young Arthur, you would expand to a history of the foreign community in Tokyo and Yokohama, where I grew up. For I have just remembered the balloon ascent in the field across from our old home. I was barely sevente
en. We watched from our balconies. We had a great number of guests, we passed around tea and persimmon cake. Our foreign faces and habits were a great oddity to the people on the field. They kept looking at us through their opera glasses and telescopes. We had to put up our bamboo blinds. Oh, and you should have seen the balloon. I have never set eyes on anything so huge, and made all of purple silk. I remember it as if it were yesterday, but how I do run on. Now tell me, young Arthur, about your billiards. Did you let Horace beat you again?’

  Arthur stretched his neck uncomfortably in the collar of his shirt. He was suddenly unsure of the shadowy room, and the animated skeleton in the bed.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ Maud Bingham closed her eyes on the pillow to rest for a moment from the sheer excitement of her memories. Her heart was throbbing, she felt years younger.

  ‘Do you know, young Arthur, Kobe has honourable mention by at least two famous writers. Rudyard Kipling in From Sea to Sea, devoted a page of praise to the original Oriental Hotel. And Somerset Maugham in a story called A Friend in Need, writes about the Tarumi beacon and some members of the old foreign community.’

  Her body was liquid inside, her limbs seemed no longer stiff. The blood raced in her veins with the memories and she closed her eyes to contain it all, for suddenly she felt a great fatigue. It was as if some whole sealed section of her mind had been blasted open. And the memories, like multicoloured confetti, swirled up in clouds, the light catching on their many facets, showering and dazzling and exhausting her. She settled her head more comfortably on the pillow and immediately fell asleep. Arthur Wilcox waited politely several minutes, and then tiptoed from the room.

  5

  The lounge moved and shimmered alive with the eyes of many candles. Nate Cooper and Daniel had the bigger boys organised in their distribution, directing them about the house. In the lounge heat and light radiated out, a smell of hot wax smouldered; without electricity and air-conditioning the room was growing hot.

  On the grand piano Dennis Denzel impressed his audience with the virtuosity of some Greig. Chords thundered and rattled like ammunition into the room, nearby candles shuddered, one on the piano top collapsed. There were squeals from the children, Eiko picked it up quickly and rubbed off warm wax with a fingernail. Eyes closed and body swaying, Dennis Denzel failed to notice. About him candles trembled on.

  Yoshiko emerged through the swing door of the kitchen with a tray of Coca-Cola. The word went round immediately. The orphans hurried forward and Dennis Denzel was left alone with Greig.

  ‘Don’t riot,’ laughed Yoshiko, the strain easing for a moment in her face.

  ‘Now, here we are.’ Geraldine came out of the kitchen followed by a maid. They placed platters of sandwiches and cake on the table. ‘Now, here are paper plates and napkins. Don’t wipe your hands on the furniture.’ The children crowded about her at the table. Hiroshi pushed himself to the front, using his plaster arm as a lever through the crush.

  ‘You’re a rude boy. You should let the smaller ones go first,’ Tami scolded. ‘Let Toshio go first. Come along Toshio.’ She pushed the child up to Geraldine, who gave him a plate. Tamiko began to pile it with sandwiches and cake.

  ‘No more, Tami, he’ll be sick. The others have also to eat,’ Eva said, steering Ruriko forward to a chair.

  ‘But the typhoon has made him hungry,’ Tamiko insisted. ‘Hasn’t it, Toshio?’ Toshio nodded obediently, his face was streaked and dirty with tears, his eyes were small and tired. In a corner Eva noticed Kimiko already curled up asleep.

  ‘We must get some of you to sleep after this,’ she decided.

  ‘No. No,’ Nobuo, Takeo and Jun spoke out together. ‘We want to stay up all night.’

  ‘All night?’ Eva questioned in mock horror. ‘After all this?’

  ‘All night,’ they insisted stoutly.

  Kimiko had curled up with a cushion on the floor. Annette Rouleau moved a foot to avoid contact with her, shrinking back into a corner of the settee, nervously fingering the silver pendants hanging from her numerous chains. Hartley came up and sat beside her. He looked down at Kimiko. ‘Poor kid, she’s exhausted.’

  ‘Get me another drink, Hart.’

  ‘Now, Annette.’

  ‘Oh come on Hart, give me a break.’ Annette’s face twitched in agitation. Hartley got up, shaking his head, and came back with a fresh gin and tonic.

  ‘Christ, Hart, when is this going to end? Have we got to put up with these kids all night? Why don’t they get them to bed?’

  ‘I guess they will as soon as they can. Can’t you understand what these kids have been through? They’ve got to eat, they’ve got to unwind before they’ll settle to sleep, except for the smallest of them.’ He nodded at the exhausted Kimiko. ‘Pull yourself together, Annette. They could use an extra hand, why don’t you do something to help? Look at Dennis, playing his heart out for them there.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Annette. ‘I’ve got pains in my stomach, I feel quite ill, Hart. And you know I can’t stand children. There is nothing I should be able to do.’

  ‘Get a hold on yourself, that’s all you need do. Think of the others instead of yourself, that’ll clear up your pains,’ Hartley said impatiently. He began to wonder what had drawn him to Annette in the first place. He looked at her hard, but Annette was staring in terror again at the wall of glass that impaled them upon the night, spreading the typhoon before them as if on a cinema screen.

  ‘Christ, Hart, why can’t she draw the curtains?’ Annette’s voice rose as a sod of earth was hurled against the window.

  ‘She told you, they’ve gone for dry cleaning. We’re all feeling like you, Annette, we’re all nervous. You’re not the only one, you’ve got to control it.’ Hartley stood up, walking off to Dennis who no longer played, but talked to Kyo who leaned towards him over the piano top. Annette Rouleau looked after him coldly, then turned back to concentrate on the storm, hugging herself in terror.

  A few feet away from Annette, Daniel stood at the window, flashing his torch out into the night. Its sinewy gleam fell on the muddy bog of the lawn, its surface rippled with the wind. Upturned garden furniture lay rocking about, legs in the air, stiff and white as dead animals. Bits of debris and uprooted shrubs charged the window of the lounge. The beam of the torch cut into the night, and illuminated faintly a wall at the end of the lawn. Beyond it waves rose and crashed, sometimes towering up upon the wall itself, stalking the fragile human world inside the Cooper’s house.

  Geraldine glanced at the window nervously as she directed the maid with the clearing up, then hurried into the kitchen.

  ‘Now,’ she said firmly, emerging again a few minutes later, her hands full of a roll of pink paper. ‘Now we are going to play, pin the tail on the elephant. Yes, elephant, simply because I cannot draw a donkey. I can only draw an elephant. And here he is.’ She held up before her a large shocking pink paper elephant. The children came towards her.

  ‘He’s rather good, don’t you think? We can’t pin him on the wall because they’re concrete, we’ll have him on the floor.’ She spread the paper on the carpet and waved a stringy tail in the air, sitting back upon her heels. ‘Come along, my poppets. Who shall we blindfold first?’

  Arthur and Nate discussed typhoons, across the bamboo bar. Arthur sat sideways on his stool to keep an eye on Kyo, who talked to Dennis Denzel over the piano top. She was already drunk; he had seen her refill her glass several times at the bar when Nate was engaged with the candles. Dennis Denzel played up to her attention, bored with the uncle image he had portrayed since the children arrived.

  ‘I wan’ more whisky. You wan’ more whisky Den’is? I get us some.’ She pulled herself off the piano and turned unsteadily to Arthur and Nate at the bar.

  ‘One more,’ she said coquettishly, her head on one side. The red hair hung damp and stringy about her face, her eyes questioned pertly.

  Arthur cleared his throat. ‘I think you’ve had enough. Quite enough.’

  The pe
rtness turned to anger in Kyo’s narrow eyes. ‘You gimme some. Who are you to tell me no?’ she flared, her voice thickly slurred.

  ‘All right. All right. Just a little. We don’t want to upset the lady, Arthur. This is not the time for a quarrel.’ Nate poured a little whisky in her glass and filled it up with water.

  ‘It’s real weak,’ he said quietly to Arthur.

  ‘An’ one for my friend.’ Kyo indicated Dennis, who nodded to Nate from the piano stool. She swayed uncertainly back with the glasses to Dennis.

  ‘Come on. Let’s sit down over there. I wanna’ talk with you. I like you. You’re a nice man.’ She led Dennis to an empty sofa the other side of the room. He grinned back to Nate and Arthur, an apologetic grin.

  Arthur looked down into the amber well of his glass. He shook it absently, the ice clunked and knocked. He hated to see her like this. Kyo. He saw what she had become, but it made no difference to the feelings that stirred within him still. The wayward look in her slim dark eyes had only added to those hours they had shared so many years ago. Now that look had soured, hard as stone in her face. Yet still she drew him, and he suffered in the humiliation of her total disregard. He knew now for certain how little he had meant to her. Watching her on the sofa, playing up to Dennis Denzel, he wished as he had many times that evening, to take her and shake her. To tell her, it is I, Arthur. Arthur. But he knew there would be blankness in her eyes, until he reminded her of the circumstances of their encounters. And it would be that last time she remembered, not him. She would remember only the child, Akiko. Unable to look any longer he turned his back on her, and stared sadly at his glass, swirling the whisky over the ice. With an effort he attended to Nate Cooper, who was asking some question about the typhoon.

  Eva was relieved to relinquish part of the evening to Geraldine, whose plump, upraised posterior could be seen across the lounge, showing glimpses of sturdy thigh, leading the screams of laughter as the elephant’s tail was pinned to an eye. Eva sat in a chair near the bar and allowed Nate Cooper to give her a brandy. She sipped it slowly, and felt the coarse fire slip down into her. It seemed the night would never end. Soon they must get the children to sleep. Some were already bedded down in the lounge by Yoshiko and Eiko, and Yoshiko herself looked ready to collapse. But Eva could no longer apply fact to reality. Her feet did not seem to touch the ground, her body swam on through the night while she trailed some distance behind. She rested her head on her hand and watched Geraldine blindfold Mariko.