by Spence, Alan
The American had run across, sobered in an instant, looked down at the man’s remains. One stroke had filleted him, another had severed his head. The American had thrown up on the spot.
‘He should be grateful for his own squeamishness,’ said Walsh. ‘If he’d given chase, he’d have ended up in pieces too. Or in two pieces!’
‘Hunt was rather brutal with the natives,’ said Glover. ‘Maybe this was by way of reprisal.’
One wit from another firm had said Hunt’s name was obviously rhyming slang. Glover would tell that to Walsh, but not now.
‘I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said Walsh. ‘Sounds like he should have been heading for the Russian rest house instead of Maruyama!’
‘It’s a vile business,’ said Mackenzie, serious, changing the tone. ‘It smacks of Takashi and his crew.’
‘That bugger!’ said Glover. ‘I’m sure I saw him a week ago, glaring at me out the shadows, down by the warehouse. Then I looked again and he was gone.’
Mackenzie sounded even more serious, looked at Glover intently. ‘You want to be careful of that one, Tom, mind your back. He’s a fanatic, and if he’s got you in his sights, it’s a matter for concern.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Glover. ‘What has he got against me personally?’
‘I’m sure just the sight of you was enough,’ said Mackenzie, ‘that first time he saw you, the day you arrived.’
‘Hate at first sight,’ said Walsh.
‘More or less,’ said Mackenzie. ‘He’s a member of a group called sonno-joi, hardline traditionalists, resolutely opposed to any interaction with the West.’
‘And pledged to rid Japan of all foreign scum,’ said Walsh.
‘Or die in the attempt,’ said Mackenzie. ‘They take a fearful blood-oath, promise to end their own lives if they go back on it.’
‘Sounds a bit like your Freemasons!’ said Walsh, laughing.
‘With one difference,’ said Mackenzie, tightlipped. ‘For these men it’s more than symbolic. They really will kill, and die, for their beliefs.’
‘And the Masons won’t?’ said Walsh. ‘You disappoint me.’
Mackenzie ignored him, wouldn’t be deflected by his levity, spoke again directly to Glover.
‘It is serious, Tom. Don’t be in any doubt about it. They’ll often pursue an individual. It’s like what the Italians call a vendetta, and it’s a matter of honour.’
‘Isn’t it always?’ asked Walsh.
‘So it is personal?’ said Glover.
‘Randomly so,’ said Mackenzie. ‘As I said, the very sight of you that first day would be an affront to him, a threat to everything he believes in.’
‘You do loom large,’ said Walsh, ‘stand out in a crowd. Especially here.’
‘And for Takashi it would be a matter of pride to cut you down to size,’ said Mackenzie.
‘With two strokes of that sword,’ said Walsh.
‘Bloody hell!’ said Glover.
‘Well,’ said Mackenzie, ‘there’s folk would say, Hell mend you for leaving Bridge of Don! I’m not saying you should go around in fear and trepidation every minute of the day.’
‘Just keep your wits about you,’ said Walsh.
‘Did you ever learn to use a pistol?’ asked Mackenzie.
‘As a boy, aye. My father taught me. Just in case.’
‘Aye, well, we keep a few on the premises, for security. It might be no bad idea for you to have one.’
‘Just in case!’ said Walsh.
*
The rapidity of Glover’s rise to prominence was breathtaking. He seemed to hit his stride early on, grow in confidence with every step. In spite of his youthfulness, or perhaps because of it, he had a swagger about him, an assurance. That, allied to sheer physical presence, rendered him formidable, but it was tempered by an innate affability and graciousness, an easy charm.
Mackenzie entrusted him with ever more responsibility until he was effectively running the Nagasaki operation, freeing Mackenzie himself to make trips to Shanghai for meetings at Jardine’s offices there, the hub of their empire.
With Mackenzie’s help, and on his recommendation, Glover negotiated his first loan from the company, invested it immediately, on Harrison’s advice, in a warehouse property in Oura, right on the waterfront. There was living accommodation to the rear, and he moved in there himself. He still worked five or six hours a day for Jardine’s, but the rest of the time he was building his own business, tramping the streets and the back alleys, purchasing for himself some of the commodities he would export, the silk and tea, seaweed and dried fish, anything that would turn a profit. In his warehouse he stored the goods he imported, to sell in Nagasaki and its hinterland, herbs and medicines, quantities of cotton. He took advantage of Groom’s financial expertise, made quick gains on a few swift currency exchanges, cashing in on the time it took to transfer funds from Yokohama, or Shanghai. He made money, but not on the scale to which he aspired. He wanted to make a killing.
He spoke to Ringer, took his advice on the tea trade.
‘There’s definitely money to be made,’ said Ringer. ‘Japan exports 4,000 tons of tea in the season, and half of that goes through Nagasaki. There’s definitely money to be made.’
‘Is there any way we could steal a march on the competition?’ he asked. ‘Make the business more efficient?’
Ringer looked thoughtful. ‘The tea is picked in the interior,’ he said, ‘on hillsides that won’t support rice. It’s part-time work for the farm women. The leaves have to be dried before being shipped out, otherwise it’s damp and it just rots in the cargo hold on the long haul to Europe or America. The women do the drying out after the crop’s been picked, just heat the leaves over open-air fires.’
‘I’d imagine that’s slow,’ said Glover.
‘And not entirely effective. I’ve often thought if we established a factory where the tea could be thoroughly dried in large quantities, it would transform the industry.’
‘Well then,’ said Glover, ‘we shall do exactly that.’
*
He registered the company in his own name, had a sign painted and mounted on the front of the warehouse. Glover & Co. Groom and Harrison would be junior partners, Ringer his adviser on the tea trade. Shibata and Nakajimo would work for him parttime while continuing to hold down their jobs with Jardine’s. Mackenzie would continue to steer him clear of troubled waters, and Walsh would continue to head him right back into them, urge him to take risks.
They all stood outside the new premises, drinking a toast to the company as the sign was unveiled. Walsh had provided champagne, courtesy of Wang-Li. Their glasses sparkled and fizzed, overflowed.
‘Glover and Co!’ said Walsh.
‘Glover and Co!’
A week later Glover was woken in the middle of the night by alarm bells ringing, shouting in the street. A hammering at his door had him reaching for his pistol, but it was Nakajimo telling him there was a fire and it was spreading and he should get out quick. He could smell burning, taste it, acrid, at the back of his throat. He threw on his clothes, ran through to the warehouse, swept the contents of his desk into a canvas bag and rushed out into the street.
Mackenzie was hurrying towards him, wide-eyed and manic, his grey hair dishevelled.
‘Thank God, Tom!’ he said. ‘I thought you might have been incinerated!’
They stood back, saw the flames lick the roof of the warehouse, sparks spiralling into the night air.
‘The bastards!’ shouted Mackenzie. ‘It started two buildings away, in Arnold’s office.’ Arnold’s were another British trading house, like Glover recently established. ‘Bloody firemen stood back and watched, waited to see what would happen. As soon as the sparks started flying they were on the alert, and the first flicker of flame on Japanese property was doused double-quick. But when it reached your warehouse they stood back again, let it burn.’ He screamed at the firemen lolling back, indolent, taking in the
scene. ‘Bastards!’
They stared back at him, moved with desultory slowness, cranked a trickle of water from a hand-operated pump, prodded at the collapsing walls with hooks attached to long bamboo poles, watched the building cave in on itself in clouds of smoke, flares of flame.
‘Dancing Horse,’ said Nakajimo, watching the conflagration. ‘Is what we call fire.’
They watched it leap, dance the building down.
Next morning they stood in the gap where the warehouse had been, smoke still rising from the blackened site, nothing left but charred beams, ash.
‘I blame the fucking Shogun,’ said Mackenzie, ‘and his fucking Bakufu advisers.’
‘I hardly think they came skulking down here in person,’ said Glover, ‘mobhanded, torched the place in the middle of the night!’
‘They might as well have done!’ said Mackenzie. ‘God knows I’m fond of this damned country, but they have to wake up. They can’t do anything about the fact that we’re here, so they should fling the doors wide open, allow complete freedom of trade instead of this shilly-shallying, welcoming us in and trying to drive us away, allowing us to do business then making it impossible to function.’
‘It’s early days,’ said Glover. ‘It’ll come right in time.’ He looked around him. ‘You know, in this instance I think they’ve done me a favour. The warehouse was ramshackle, falling to bits. Ideally I’d have liked to tear it down and build something more substantial. Well, now they’ve forced the issue.’
Mackenzie shook his head, laughed. ‘You really are quite something, Tom. I doubt if this place is ready for you just yet!’
*
There were lulls, longueurs, long lazy days between consignments when the pace of life slowed down and nothing much was happening. Glover was restless at such times, would walk along the waterfront, taking everything in, supervise the work on his new building. It amazed him to see the workmen, barefoot, go shinning up thin bamboo poles tied together to make flimsy scaffolding, leap and step across it with a breathtaking agility. He would wave to them, call out. ‘Good work! Ganbatte.’ And one or two might catch his eye, nod to him, but never faltering or breaking stride.
He had purchased another warehouse, again on Harrison’s advice, in the street behind the Bund. This would replace the building destroyed by the fire, had the same basic construction, clapboard, with simple living quarters at the back. He moved in, settled, set up once more his little shrine. He had rescued his good luck tokens, the paper butterfly and the rest, when he’d swept up the contents of his desk as the fire approached. Not that he was superstitious, but it did no harm to placate the gods of fortune.
During one quiet spell, the days long and time hanging heavy, he prepared to ride into the interior, visit some of the hillside villages where they harvested and dried the tea, packed it for shipping.
Mackenzie was wary. ‘You’ll be at risk,’ he said. ‘Outside the city you’ll stand out even more.’
But Glover was determined, said he could look after himself. He would carry his pistol, be accompanied by Nakajimo who would translate for him, had an ear also for the rough guttural dialect of the country folk.
‘Otherwise,’ said Mackenzie, ‘you’d be like an Englishman trying to talk to a Glaswegian, or, for that matter, an Aberdonian!’
‘Aye,’ said Glover. ‘Fit like!’
Mackenzie also insisted a bodyguard travel with him, a young samurai by the name of Matsuo. He was from the Choshu clan, spoke no English, maintained a stonefaced reticence, spoke only when directly addressed. But Mackenzie said he was alert, conscious of his duty and adept in the use of the two swords he carried at all times.
‘Isn’t it beneath his dignity,’ said Glover, ‘to be minding out for the likes of us?’
‘You would think so,’ said Mackenzie. ‘He had some dealings with Nakajimo here, and seems to have been impressed. Nakajimo asked if we might employ him from time to time in situations where his samurai demeanour would be a distinct advantage.’
‘As a deterrent?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And he agreed?’
‘After consultation with his clan leadership. I think they felt it might be to their advantage to have one of their number observe us at close quarters.’
‘Intriguing.’
Glover, Nakajimo and Matsuo saddled up, a packhorse in tow, laden with supplies.
‘Well shod,’ said Mackenzie. ‘You know, it’s no time at all since the Japanese shod their horses with straw. Then the westerners arrived, and their horses had iron shoes. One bold Japanese blacksmith asked if he could borrow one of the shoes, have a look. He copied it, passed on his expertise, and in a matter of months iron horseshoes were in use right across the country.’
‘Impressive.’
‘It’s the nature of their genius,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Learn quickly, copy, adapt.’
‘We can work with that,’ said Glover.
Walsh had turned up to bid Glover a safe journey up country, into the interior.
‘I hear it’s a different world,’ he said. ‘Oh, but one thing will be to your liking. I hear the women work near naked!’ He cupped his hands in front of his chest, laughed.
‘I see plenty of that in Nagasaki,’ said Glover.
‘There was a letter in today’s Advertiser,’ said Mackenzie, ‘bemoaning that very phenomenon. It wondered that there could be any market here for Manchester cotton. And referring to the bathhouses, he said he never saw a place where the cleanliness of the fair sex was established on such unimpeachable ocular evidence.’
‘Stuffed shirt,’ said Walsh.
‘Fashioned from Manchester cotton!’ said Glover.
‘I say, Long live unimpeachable ocular evidence!’
*
He had never seen such countryside. The landscape back home had a harsh beauty of its own, a ruggedness, a craggy grandeur. This was lush, green, fragrant, mile after mile of wide open paddyfields, soft-contoured hills rising behind, covered with vegetation right to the top, and tucked away here and there, in the folds of the hills, castles that might be from the Middle Ages, stockaded and fortified, overlooking the domain of some daimyo, the local feudal lord.
Matsuo rode ahead, watchful, Glover behind him, Nakajimo following, the packhorse at the rear. The heat beat down. Glover sweated, rode in his shirtsleeves, a battered, widebrimmed straw hat jammed on his head to shield him from the sun.
From time to time they would pass through a village of low, thatched huts, and every man, woman, child, dog, cat, chicken would stop, gawp at him. The old folks, withered, leathery-faced scarecrows, looked stricken at the sight of him, confused. The young and middle-aged looked apprehensive, and perhaps fearful of Matsuo’s twin swords, the mark of the samurai, bowed their heads. The children, the animals, the poultry yelped and squawked, turned tail and ran, the children peeking out at him from a safe distance, behind a wall, on the other side of a ditch. Glover doffed his hat, waved to them, expansive, laughed, rode on.
They reached their destination towards evening. Ringer had said the tea produced here was finest quality, he had been here himself to check the supply. So the villagers had encountered the ketojin, barbarians, before. But that didn’t stop them staring at Glover.
‘I think is because you are so different,’ said Nakajimo. ‘Opposite.’
The elder of the village welcomed them, showed them to a ryokan, a tiny wayside inn where they could spend the night, then invited them to his own home to eat. It was basic fare, rice porridge, fish broth, a few vegetables, but Glover ate it hungrily, greedily, smacked his lips and made the appropriate noises of appreciation. The old man grinned, his wife twinkled.
Glover explained, through Nakajimo, what he had in mind, the quantities of tea he would require, the fact that the drying would no longer have to be done here, but in huge batches at the firing plant being built in Nagasaki. In fact some of the workforce from the village might want to come to the city to work for him, would ea
rn more in a season than they did now in two or three years.
The old man listened, nodded, occasionally grinned. He haggled over the price, and Glover allowed him to beat him down a little, so honour and dignity could be maintained. They bowed, Glover held out his hand and the old man shook it, then threw back his head and laughed. He brought out a flask of sake, poured generous measures for all of them.
*
Glover woke in the night, his bones one long ache, stretched out on the tatami mat on the hard floor, a harsh noise rasping, setting him on edge. The day’s travel, the sun on his head, the too much sake had all left him dazed, stupefied. The room smelled fetid, stale. He had a drouth on him he needed to slake, struggled to his feet. His eyes got used to the dark, the huddle in the other corner was Nakajimo, the noise was him snoring. Matsuo had said he would rest in the corridor, outside the room, would need only a little sleep. Glover slid open the shoji screen, saw Matsuo sitting there, cross-legged, head nodding forward. But startled by the noise, he reached for the sword at his feet, in one quick reflex movement unsheathed it and held the blade to Glover’s throat.
‘Matsuo-san!’ he shouted. ‘It’s me! Guraba desu!’
Matsuo stood up, lowered the sword, apologised, bowed deep.
In the morning neither of them mentioned the incident. Matsuo continued as before, contained, watchful, stonefaced.
At the elder’s home the old man’s wife brought them rice and broth, gave Glover a piece of fruit, a persimmon.
‘Itadakimasu!’ he said, and bit into the fruit. Its juices brimmed in his mouth, slavered down his chin.
‘Oishi desu!’ he said, laughing. ‘Delicious!’
The old woman cackled, handed him a cloth to wipe his face.
