by Sarah Moss
‘A special commission,’ Tatsuo murmurs. ‘A great geisha.’
Tom feels himself tensing. Geisha. Not exactly prostitutes, he’s heard. Hardly patrons of the arts. Although there are four men at work, there has been no visible expansion of the colours since he first looked.
‘How long does it take?’ he asks.
‘The whole or the—the embroidering?’
‘Say the whole.’
‘To spin, to weave, to dye, to embroider, to sew? Many months. Half a year.’
Good God. They need factories. Mechanised spinners and looms, sewing machines. Mass production. You could make hundreds in a couple of days. If they can build trains and lighthouses, why on earth do they still have old men working wooden looms with their hands and feet? It is medieval. And what does it cost, he thinks, what are these men paid and what is the price of the silk and what does the geisha pay at the end? He is here, after all, as a possible customer. There must be a way of asking. He has never bought a work of art before.
They retreat down the ladder, Tatsuo facing forward with one hand on the rails, Tom backwards, feeling with each foot for the step below and painfully aware of his large European behind progressing through the mid-air of the room beneath. The director, dressed in loose black trousers and tunic with white insignia on the shoulder and back, awaits Tom’s descent. As Tom adjusts his jacket and his dignity, the director bows and speaks. He is offering tea, Tom realises. He nods and bows back.
‘Arigato,’ he says. ‘Domo arigato.’ He can feel the grin spreading across his face.
The three men sit cross-legged around a black lacquer table facing the workshop’s courtyard garden. A piece of charcoal falls in the stove behind Tom and he can feel its heat in his back and shoulders; one advantage of sitting on the floor is that one is at the height of the fire. The screens are open far enough to show a stripe of snow on grey stones, the white shading to grey with the curve of each rock, and the black twigs of a pine tree also bearing their own ghosts in snow. Tom accepts a translucent bowl of green tea, noticing the single frond of pine painted grey on its ridged white side. The accompanying sweet, the same colour as the tea, echoes the shape of the cones on the tree.
‘Arigato,’ he says again. Thank you. He forgets about the transaction, about the shopping.
When they leave—arigato, sayonara—it is snowing again in the cobbled street, and the mountains have vanished behind the clouds. Two women walk under umbrellas, their geta silenced by the snow on the ground. The curved roofs are white, only their curved ridgepoles and gable ends dark against the paper sky, and the blue and white banners hang motionless in the still air. He finds himself holding his breath, as if to stop time, to make it forever now, here.
AUBADE IN YELLOW
There is a fog outside, wrapped so thickly through the branches of the plane tree that she can’t see the ground or the people who are probably walking along the pavement, so thickly that she could be high in a tower, with many storeys of Aunt Mary’s carpets and hearths between her and the world. She has been rocking the chair as she reads and the blanket over her lap has slipped down; she pulls it back up to her waist, noticing the new silk edging. Ally is reading Browne again, reflecting on his suggestion that some ‘lunatics’ are simply not capable of functioning outside the asylum although apparently sane within it. The appearance of sanity in such cases, he argues, depends upon the protection afforded by the asylum and ends with that protection: these are the patients who relapse repeatedly on discharge, only to satisfy all conditions of release almost immediately on readmission. Browne does not suggest, nor, apparently, seek a solution to this conundrum. These patients are simply people who should live in lunatic asylums. But what, Ally thinks, if there is something in the environment to which they return that drives them back to madness, that reawakens the intolerable voices in their minds? It is hardly a new idea that certain situations induce insanity. That being told repeatedly over many months that one is mad will make one so, for the person who believes herself to be insane must be insane. A medical version of the Cretan paradox: all lunatics are deluded and I am a lunatic; is it possible that what I say about myself is true? It is not these games of words that will cure hurt minds.
She begins to rock again, the book still open on her lap. She returns to her original question: what of those whose home situations are maddening, so maddening that a lunatic asylum appears by comparison a sane and healthful place? It is a possibility that does not seem to have occurred to Browne: it is not that some people’s minds are so fragile that they require the permanent protection of an institution but that some people’s homes are crazier than institutions for the mad. Some households do not tolerate sanity. Perhaps such an understanding of domestic life is exactly what a woman brings to medicine. Ally sighs. It is an idea unlikely to be well received by the medical profession and indeed by the general public, especially when presented by a woman doctor. An unnatural, undomesticated being, very probably subject to mental instability herself, for why else would a woman declare herself unsatisfied by her own family life and seek to usurp the masculine role? It is axiomatic that a woman with a professional life cannot speak of domestic happiness. It is almost lunchtime. Ally sets aside her blanket, checks her hair in the mirror and goes downstairs.
Aunt Mary is in the hall, also looking at herself in the mirror. Ally sees Aunt Mary’s reflected face change to the guilty expression of the person surprised in the act of self-regard.
‘You are still beautiful, Aunt Mary.’
Aunt Mary shakes her head. Seen from above, there is more grey.
‘I was never that. And I’m not wearing so badly, but then why should I? I’m not out all hours and all weathers, living on bread and water like Elizabeth. I wasn’t contemplating mortality, darling, only wondering if this lovely green is a little trying to a winter complexion. What do you think?’
Ally comes down the remaining stairs and shakes her head. Through the fanlight over the front door, she sees the fog eddy and re-gather. ‘Ask Uncle James. Or Annie.’
Aunt Mary turns away from the mirror. ‘He said he’d be home to lunch today, but with this fog, I don’t know whether to wait. You know how he likes us to lunch together. But there’s rice with the chicken, it won’t improve with keeping and Cook will be cross.’
Ally smiles at her. ‘Well, are you more afraid of your cook or your husband?’
‘Cook. Without a doubt. Do you know how hard it is to replace a good cook? Let’s go in and eat.’
Ally and Aunt Mary have almost finished their chicken and rice when they hear the front door open and close. Uncle James comes in, droplets of fog clinging to his beard.
‘Sorry to be late, dearest. The post came just as I was leaving. The fog, you know. Lunch smells delicious, is that paprika and mushrooms in the sauce?’
Uncle James is more interested in food than anyone Ally knows, except perhaps Aubrey. Maybe there is something in the discriminating eye of the artist connected to a similar exactitude about the palate. Paprika and mushrooms. She remembers the mutton hash, the rusks.
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘Splendid.’
Fanny comes in, but Uncle James waves her away and begins to eat. ‘Wine, Ally?’
She shakes her head. She takes a glass in the evening, sometimes, when Uncle James is especially persuasive.
‘Suit yourself. It’s a good bottle.’
Aunt Mary accepts half a glass. Their eyes meet and they lift their glasses to each other, husband and wife, Uncle James’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, remembering something that makes Aunt Mary blush and suppress a smile. Still, at their age, friends and lovers.
Uncle James is still smiling at Aunt Mary. ‘Ally, are you busy this afternoon?’
The kind of question best answered with caution. ‘I was planning to study. Why?’
‘Three new paintings
came in. Aubrey West.’ He and Aunt Mary exchange more sober glances; they must have talked about this. ‘We thought you might like to see them. Well, see one of them again in particular. Before it disappears back into private hands.’
She knows, of course, that there are images of herself and her sister on walls, in houses, around the country and even, now, in America. She knows that her face, versions of her face, and versions of May’s face watch over other people’s meals and parties and solitary moments, drift in other people’s dreams and memories. She has no picture of May.
‘May?’ she asks. ‘You have one of Aubrey’s paintings of May, in your office now?’
He sips his wine. ‘Yes.’
Aunt Mary leans forward. ‘We weren’t sure whether to tell you, darling. Whether it would upset you, when you have been so recently troubled. But we thought—James thought—that the auction is next week and there is no knowing when you might be able to see it again. We thought you should choose. But you know that it is quite up to you. It will make no difference to anyone else, no difference whatsoever, and you must do just as you think will be best for you. But we thought you should decide for yourself. And I will accompany you if you like me to, and not if you don’t.’
Ally puts down her knife and fork. The chicken was too rich, rises in her stomach.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I should do.’
No, she thinks, no, she does not want to see May, whose voice and step flit through her dreams, whose words mock and goad, who has been dead and gone and taunting her—no, that is not fair—almost these ten years.
‘Which one is it? Which painting?’
Uncle James takes more rice. ‘Aubade in Yellow. 1873.’
‘Oh.’
May was twelve. Ally was busy with her schoolwork, still, then hoping to go to Edinburgh, because the Edinburgh Seven were working their way through the medical syllabus there and the university had not yet moved to close the loophole that had allowed women to take examinations. It was the worst year for her attacks of hysteria, and also therefore the worst year for Mamma’s attempts to cure her of nervous weakness by blistering, early rising and constant domestic chores. Hysteria, Alethea, is an outward symptom of under-occupation and unfettered self-regard. She was not even sharing May’s room for much of the year, since Mamma feared that Ally’s bad dreams and early rising would disturb her sister’s rest. May was always good at spending a great deal of time at the houses of other girls from the school, and often managed to elicit Papa’s permission for outings with Aubrey without seeming to consult Mamma at all; it is not entirely surprising that Ally has only a vague memory of this painting. Aubade, dawn. Did May spend a night with Aubrey?
Fanny comes to clear the plates. ‘You’re finished, Miss Ally?’
She’s given up trying to devise something for Fanny to call her. ‘Yes, thank you, Fanny.’
Aunt Mary shakes her head. ‘You must try to eat more, darling. Or at this rate we’ll have to have all your dresses altered and Tom will come home and find you quite wasted away.’
He wants her strong. Really, Alethea, says Mamma in her head. If you had wished to honour your sister you would have fulfilled your obligations to her Welfare Centre; this gadding around to see paintings is mere self-indulgence, luxuriating in your own sorrow and the attention it brings you.
Stop it. Stop it. She must stop allowing Mamma to live in her head.
‘Yes, please. I would like to see the painting.’
There is apple snow to follow the chicken, and then Uncle James toys with the end of the Christmas stilton and water biscuits. The cheese is crumbling on its special plate, the edges turning brown as if it were a dying leaf, and the heat of the fire crackling behind Aunt Mary’s chair lifts the smell across the room, somehow familiar but associated with work, with the Women’s Hospital. Decomposition, she thinks. It smells of mortality.
‘Would you excuse me, Aunt Mary.’
They look up as she hurries from the room. They will think her flighty, unstable. Perhaps that she should not see the painting after all. She stops in the hall, where the draught creeping under the front door brings chill and the grey breath of the fog that presses against the glass panels and the fanlight. She wants to stay in her white room in the attic, safe with her rocking chair and her books. She stands at the bottom of the stairs. Apart from a couple of walks in the park, she has barely left the house since she arrived from Manchester. Regardless of Aubrey’s picture, she thinks, she should accompany Uncle James for the air and exercise. Or perhaps Mamma’s voice is right, perhaps the wish to go out is a foolish yearning for diversion and distraction, for the attention of others. Ally catches sight of herself in the mirror, pale and wide-eyed. Stop this. The question of whether to walk out this afternoon does not merit such alarm. Why don’t you just do what you wish to do, enquires May’s voice. It will be much simpler that way and actually, Al, nobody else cares. Study when you get back. Or not; it’s not as if you have more examinations. Or even as if you haven’t read that book before. In fact, it’s not really studying at all, is it, Al?
The eyes in the mirror dilate. All that is required is the strength of mind not to listen, to remember that May is dead and Mamma far away and that their voices are phantasms. But there is no arguing with the distant and the dead, she thinks. There is no possibility of winning. One must live with their voices.
* * *
Aubrey used to like fog. And rain, so long as he could sit somewhere dry to paint, and snow. Twilight and candlelight. There would probably have been more aubades if he had been less certain that early rising was a bourgeois habit. Are there more paintings of sunset than sunrise because painters disdain the early hours of office workers and professional men? This fog is still so thick that she can see it stroking the pillars of next door’s portico, rubbing against the gaslamps and trailing along the iron railings of the square’s garden. Uncle James crooks his elbow and she takes it. She has not walked on a man’s arm since Tom left.
‘You are sure you are up to the walk on such a day? We could find a cab.’
There are tiny beads of water forming on the fibres of her wool coat, miniature as insects.
‘I doubt we could, Uncle James. But in any case I like to walk, and I have been too much indoors.’
‘You must tell me the moment you begin to tire, or to chill.’
If she had been Uncle James’s daughter, if she could have had Aunt Mary for her mother and grown up here—
‘You are too kind to me.’
‘Nonsense, my dear. I should say rather that others have not been kind enough.’
He squeezes her hand. It is, she is fairly sure, the first time he has spoken even implicitly of Mamma and Papa to her. He cannot have met them above two or three times. Uncle James grew up in Kent, where his parents died within a month of each other a few years ago. Mother did not want to go on without my father, Uncle James said. She died of grief.
The carriages have their lamps lit, but even so she can hear the horses before the lights come through the fog. She thinks of the ships in the estuary at home, creeping upriver with ears strained for all the notes in the symphony: ships’ bells and foghorns, waves on the rocks and further inland the rustle of trees or church bells chiming the hour. She remembers saying to Tom that in some ways Japan looks like Britain on a map, both archipelagic nations off the northern coasts of their continents, both moated by intricate coastlines and rocky seas. There will be fogs there too, and peril for those who go down to the sea in ships. When he leaves, there will still be weeks and oceans to cross, fogs and storms and the rocky shores of three continents. She shivers.
* * *
There is a fire in the stone hearth in the hall of Uncle James’s office, sending a flickering orange light across the marble chessboard floor. One of RDS’s paintings hangs over the mantel, from what Papa used to call his Tennyson phase, a
ll long-haired maidens and knights on horseback. Papa used to tease RDS about the weight of the armour in relation to the size of the horses.
‘May I take your coat, or will you keep it on while you warm up?’
She feels as if she’ll never warm up, as if the fog has got into her blood and bones. She should have walked faster. She should not have allowed herself to lose the habit of outdoor exercise. Somewhere in this building, behind one of these doors, is May’s face. Uncle James stands back, gestures for her to precede him into his office and it’s there, on the easel. She hears her own intake of breath.
But of course it’s not May’s face, not the face she can no longer recall. And she has seen the painting before, in Aubrey’s studio at one of the last parties she attended there. The dawn light streams through a bay window she doesn’t recognise, not Aubrey’s rooms or her parents’ house, onto a daffodil-yellow sofa where a young girl lies asleep, her blonde hair tumbled across a pale green cushion and her bare arms and legs flung out from under a yellow drape. The swirl of sunlight and hair are roughly painted, and the painter has given his exact attention not to the girl’s sleeping face but to the white straps crossing her collarbones and bisecting the shadowed curve of her shoulders. He’s made the viewer want to push the straps off.
‘Where was it painted?’ she demands.
‘I don’t know. I can write to West and ask. Or of course you could.’
She last wrote to thank him for his wedding present, an exquisitely framed design for a fan that showed the beginning of Aubrey’s interest in Japanese objects but also invoked the submarine shapes of waves, weeds and shells in a way that Ally found hard to forgive. It is in a chest in the attic in Cornwall, well wrapped but inevitably not fully protected from the damp. She does not want to write to him again, especially not to suggest the old tenderness about him and May.
