The Japanese Girl

by Winston Graham

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  Contents

  Winston Graham

  The Japanese Girl

  The Medici Ear-Ring

  Cotty’s Cove

  The Island

  Gibb

  At The Chalet Lartrec

  Vive Le Roi

  The Cornish Farm

  Chapter 10

  The Wigwam

  The Old Boys

  I Had Known Sam Taylor For Years

  The Basket Chair

  Jacka’s Fight

  But For The Grace Of God

  Winston Graham

  The Japanese Girl

  Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was published in 1933. His first ‘Poldark’ novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.

  Aside from the Poldark series, Graham’s most successful work was Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham’s other books were filmed, including The Walking Stick, Night Without Stars and Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.

  The Japanese Girl

  I didn’t notice anything special about her at first. I didn’t even notice she was foreign. You get in a crowded train and think yourself lucky to find a corner seat, and it doesn’t occur to you to take any particular notice of the person opposite.

  So I’d been sitting there maybe twenty minutes before I noticed this book she was reading. I’d been looking through the evening paper looking at the cricket scores and wondering if Surrey would have time to win, when I happened to glance up and look at her eyes. You couldn’t tell what the book was because it had one of these fancy leather holders on it like you hardly ever see now; but the peculiar thing was her eyes weren’t going from side to side, they were going up and down.

  I watched for a bit, and it occurred to me to wonder if she was adding up figures, the way I do all day Song; but it didn’t look like that. You can tell when people are calculating. And then she turned over a page, and I wondered if she was left-handed or I was going crackers and was seeing things in a mirror because she turned back instead of forwards. In other words she was reading the book from back to front.

  Just at that minute she happened to glance up, and she met my eyes and I looked away, and I realized then she was an oriental. It wasn’t much: so many girls pencil their eyes that way these days; and her skin was just pale, a bit sallow; but again make-up hardly allowed it to show.

  I’d never seen anyone read a book like that, and didn’t even know they did read that way, and I couldn’t keep my eyes from going up every now and then and watching her.

  So we were in Brighton almost before I knew it, and the train was emptying. She had a lot of parcels and getting out she dropped one and I picked it up for her and she thanked me. Then I followed her down the platform and out into the street.

  It was a windy day, with a lot of April cloud scudding across the sky. I’d not been to Brighton since I was a kid, so I had to ask my way, and presently I found myself queueing for a bus about three people behind her.

  She was a small girl, and quite slight but not thin, and her hair was black, but not that dead blackness you often see in the East; in fact when the wind lifted it it seemed to shine and glisten like it might have been wet. You couldn’t call her good-looking but just something about her appealed to me and made me feel queer, and God knows I’m no womanizer: usually these days I’ve no time to bother looking around. But it just happened with this girl just then.

  And getting into the bus she dropped the same parcel, so I trod on the toe of the fat man in front of me trying to get to it, and he thought I was attempting to get on the bus ahead of him and was quite nasty about it. This time she gave me a very nice smile indeed with a little personality about it. The first time it had been a lifting of the lips and a ‘Thank you’ with eyes that didn’t properly look. This time they looked and recognized, and they smiled too and she said ‘Please excuse me.’ She didn’t actually say ‘ prease’ but it was half way between an R and an L.

  I took the seat next to her in the bus and tried hard to think of something to say, and while I was still thinking and nothing coming at all the conductor came up and I asked him for Melton Street, and would he tell me when we got there. Then she said: ‘Oh, I’m getting out there. I’ll tell you.’ All I could think to say was ‘Thank you,’ and I sweated and took off my glasses to polish them and put them back, and the bus jolted along and we sat in silence.

  Then it was time to get off and this did give me a chance. I said: ‘Perhaps you’d let me – as I’ve …’ and took hold of the parcel I’d picked up twice already, and she smiled and let me.

  Off the bus I said: ‘I’m a stranger to Brighton, but if we’re going the same way, perhaps I could carry it for you,’ and she said: ‘ Well, yes, partly the same way. Melton Street is nearer to the sea.’

  We walked along in the afternoon sunlight with the wind blowing strong between the houses and smelling sweet and salty. I’m not exactly a he-man to look at but I was a lot bigger than her, and it gave me a good feeling to be walking beside her. Good, did I call it? Wonderful. But mentally I was tearing my hair out how to capitalize on this bit of luck.

  ‘D’you live in Brighton?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I work here. Do you? But of course not – you are not knowing it.’

  ‘I live in London,’ I said. ‘ I work in the City. I’m just here for the afternoon to visit a sick colleague. He’s just been taken ill. He’s lived here for years. Lucky man.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a nice place,’ she said. ‘I have only been here four years but it’s a nice place.’

  ‘England, d’you mean or – or d’you mean Brighton?’

  ‘I was born in England.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘ Sorry.’ I had to go on then.‘You see, I just noticed on the train. I noticed that book you were reading. It wasn’t English, was it?’

  ‘No … No, it was Japanese. My mother and father were both Japanese.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see. I couldn’t think. That book, you see. You were reading it from back to front. And up and down. I never k
new Japanese was like that,’

  She laughed. A little tinkling laugh. ‘I have never been to Japan, but that was the first language I ever spoke.’

  We had come to a stop. Just a bit of a conversation but it was the most important thing that had happened to me in a very long time.

  ‘That’s your way,’ she said. ‘ To the end of the street where the traffic lights are, and Melton Street is next on your left.’

  ‘I’m in no hurry,’ I said. ‘Can I carry this parcel home for you?’

  ‘This is where I live.’

  ‘Oh, well …’ I hung on to the parcel and then had to give it up. ‘Do you often go to London?’

  ‘No. It is my half day. I go to visit my brother about once a month, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I expect I may be visiting Mr Armitage again. Next week or the week after. It’ll be a Saturday afternoon again. I’ll look out for you on the train – see if I can carry another parcel.’

  She laughed again and we separated. I watched her go up the steps to her house. I waited and saw her let herself in. She didn’t turn round. I went on to call on Mr Armitage.

  When I got home to Islington Hettie was looking fagged out. She nearly always did now.

  It’s a funny thing. It’s funny how fate treats you. As a young chap I was as fond of girls as the average fellow, but I never was a Don Juan, either in looks or in carrying on. For one thing I was short-sighted and for another I was shy. Yet I married one of the prettiest girls in the district. One of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. Hettie at 19 was a real pretty one: dark curly hair, big eyes, beautiful skin. Perhaps a shade delicate looking; but there were lots of boys after her and I was delighted and flattered when she chose me.

  And we were married and we were quite happy for a time. Setting up house, making love in an inexpert fashion; me in quite a good job that didn’t then look as dead-end as it was going to be, she still going out to work herself. I think it was as good as most people’s lives. And then she began to fade. There’s no other word for it. Just like a flower out of water. She was anaemic, the doctor said, but none of his pills made any difference. She wasn’t really ever seriously ill – it was just that her looks began to go at twenty-two instead of at forty-two. Her hair hung lank instead of curling, her eyes lost their lustre, her skin took on a sort of freckled look, only they weren’t natural freckles, it was more like a change in the skin. Not that this all happened in a year, but it happened in five years. She was like a may-fly or something, beautiful for a day.

  We didn’t have children. First it was because she wanted to go on working, then it was because she was too delicate. Of course I was still fond of her in a way, but it was in an anaemic way, as if her anaemia made it impossible for you to have strong feelings about her. Sometimes I felt trapped, shackled, pinned down by her and by my dead-end job. When I was a kid I’d had all sorts of dreams and ambitions – thought I’d travel, see life, make good. And I’m determined and a hard worker – with a break I could have made good. But the break didn’t come and I was on a tread-mill, tied to a quiet, mousy, delicate wife, who never complained but who made a virtue of not complaining. She was rather religious: it maddened me sometimes when she did voluntary work and neglected her own home.

  Of course it wouldn’t be true to say I felt this all the time, or even a large part of the time. Most days, most weeks, I hardly thought about it at all. Routine is deadening. And in the end comforting. You still have dreams but you – what’s the word? – sublimate them by filling up the pools and watching the telly.

  But I came home this night really swimming with excitement. Meeting this girl was the most stimulating thing that had happened to me in a year. Because since I married Hettie, and that was fourteen years ago, I’d hardly looked at another woman seriously. And suddenly out of the blue it was as if I had been stung.

  I slept badly. We slept in separate beds which we’d changed to three years ago because Hettie said my restlessness kept her awake. Tonight I was glad because I could toss and turn just as much as I pleased. Half awake and half asleep I went over my brief meeting with the Japanese girl and made up extra conversation that would have convinced her what a charming man I was.

  The thing was that I thought from the way she looked at me that she was attracted to me too. It was only in the light of morning when the pale sunlight began to show in nicks through the thin green chintz curtains that I faced up to the fact that I would probably never see her again.

  I worked for Annerton’s, the big London dock firm. I was assistant cashier, under Mr Armitage (who had just been taken ill). It had looked a fair enough prospect when I joined the firm at 17: reasonable pay with good prospects of promotion. But although I’d moved up I’d not for some reason made the grade with them. Twice I’d been passed over and twice I’d nearly left. But somewhere at bottom in me is a streak of self-distrust – a dislike of anything new and a fear that the new may turn out worse than the old. I’m obstinate, people say, determined and ambitious. But they don’t understand the fear I have of the unknown.

  And Hettie always discouraged me from trying a new job. She really hadn’t any confidence in my initiative, and I suppose, God help her, she was reasonably comfortable in our shared house, knowing her neighbours, not wanting to move.

  The following Friday I went to see Mr Head and suggested he might like me to call on Mr Armitage again on the next Saturday. He seemed surprised, because Armitage and I had never got on specially well; but he said all right, if I felt like going down perhaps I could take these bank papers for Armitage to approve. I needn’t wait for them: Armitage could post them back at his leisure.

  I didn’t wait for them. I was in and out of Armitage’s house in twenty minutes, and then for three hours I moved around in the neighbourhood of the girl’s home.

  She looked quite startled when she saw me.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘well I said it might happen but I never thought it would. Haven’t you any parcels I can carry this evening?’

  She half laughed but didn’t look displeased and we stood there a minute or so. I said I had been seeing my sick colleague again and she said she had been to the afternoon showing of a movie and had stayed out for supper.

  I said: ‘ Well, it’s a bit cold here. Would you like a drink? That looks quite a nice pub.’

  She hesitated, and I knew this was the moment of decision. I’d planned this all beforehand, but it all fell to pieces if she said no.

  She didn’t say no, and that’s how it all began.

  We began to meet once a week, each Saturday afternoon. Her name was Yodi Okuma. Her parents were both dead. Her father had been a Japanese seaman whose ship had been unloading in Liverpool in 1941 and he had been interned. After the war he had come to London and married a Japanese girl and they had two children, Yodi and Takemoto – or Taki, as she called him – her younger brother. Taki was training to be a teacher at London University; Yodi worked in an upholstery firm in Brighton and with her wages was helping to support her brother through his college days. Taki, she said, was much more Japanese looking than she was, but he loved England and never wanted to leave it. His ambition was to become a tutor of Japanese at Oxford or Cambridge. Yodi on the contrary wanted to travel. She didn’t care how soon she could get away from England. She wanted to see Japan and all the world.

  This was an immediate bond between us. Her talk of travel lit up all my old ambitions. We went to the pictures three or four times, always to see travel films or movies set against glamorous backgrounds, such as Hawaii. We talked and talked, and always found more in common.

  And of course it wasn’t just talk. Every time we met the attraction grew, and soon I was kissing her goodbye. Then in no time it became a question not of how we could spend the afternoon but where we could spend it. The place she lived in was a hostel for girls, and the rules were still fairly strict.

  One day I took a half day off from the office and went to Brighton unknown to her and took a room in a bl
ock of flats in Kemptown. It was only a tiny bed-sitter and it cost £5 a week, but it was modern and light and private, right on the top floor. I’d got £300 in the Post Office and Hettie would never know I had drawn it out. Just spending the capital it would go a long way. I didn’t see beyond the end of the year.

  So I took her to the flat the next Saturday afternoon and we made love. She was quite different from Hettie – I didn’t know two women could be so different. She was so impulsively warm, so welcoming, that it made all the difference to me; I felt I was discovering a woman for the first time.

  Of course I had told her I was married, and she didn’t seem to mind that. She was a submissive little creature in some ways, as if generations of her forebears had left this as a mark on her, a mark of the inferior sex. Yet she had a distinct personality, quite strong, quite wayward, full of warmth and high spirits. She took things lightly, amiably, even ill-health. We hardly spoke of Hettie and she hardly spoke of her life before she met me. We both lived in the present, and we both talked of the future. She seemed to have no special friends among the girls she worked with or those she boarded with. She was devoted to her brother and wrote him every week. I don’t know if she had had boy friends, I was only happy that she had none now.

  All these weeks I had not, of course, been visiting Mr Armitage. He was still ill, and getting no better, but this news came by letter to the firm; there was no need for his assistant to go down. Him being away made a lot more work for me but I didn’t mind because every week was just a preparation for Saturday.

  I told Hettie I was still seeing Mr Armitage, but after a bit I thought, she’s just not going to swallow this much longer, so I told her one night I was going to the races in Plumpton on the next Saturday. I knew it would shock her because she didn’t approve of gambling, so I knew there was no risk of her wanting to come with me. I’d chosen racing partly for that reason and partly because I thought if she ever does find out about the £300, saying I’d lost it at the races was an easy way out.