The Bound Heart (18 page)

“Wear this,” Okazaki said.

“No. I have a shift in my bag.” Olive stood her ground in the confines of the bathhouse.

Mrs. Okazaki, was turning out to be a tyrant. Olive’s skin had never felt so clean. Her hair was washed and her scalp rubbed. The last person to give her a bath had been her sister when she couldn’t help herself, when her muscles ached, and she couldn’t move her legs from the infantile paralysis. She and her brother had been like puppets, helpless for almost everything until the fever passed.

“I’d like my bag.”

“You’re clothes are all wet.”

“Wet?” Her voice rose. “They are my personal things!”

Mrs. Okazaki, thrust out the blue and white cotton robe again, indicating she should put it on.

“I washed them all.”

“I need clothes tomorrow. I must look for work.”

The battle-ax raised her eyebrows. And handed over the robe.

“Where is my brace?”

“I’ll help you to your room, the brace will be ready tomorrow.”

Olive felt faint. She reached out and grabbed hold of the side of the bath. Her heart beat too fast and it was hard to breath despite the small rope on her calf.

“I need my brace.” Her voice was tight.

The robe slipped around her as she wobbled on her feet. The front tugged tight and overlapped. Then the belt wrapped around her once, twice, in tight firm pulls around her middle.

The fog lifted. Her head stilled.

She looked at the woman before her, eyes gauging her every reaction.

“Better?” Okazaki said.

“Yes.” The sound a breath of relief.

Those black, oriental eyes looked at her, looked at her chest where the belt was wrapped tight then lifted back to her face. Olive could feel the hot flush roll up her neck.

“Good, good,” Okazaki said, and then said something in her own language and looked at her. Olive sensed that something had shifted. That she had passed a test of some kind. Whatever test you could pass being washed and manhandled into a cotton dressing gown and then belted up.

But her hands still trembled and her breath was tight as she wondered where the brace was.

There was another tie in Okazaki’s hand.

“Can you tie that on my leg?”

There was an unexpected smile on Okazaki’s face.

“Hai, Olive-san.” She knelt down. In a few moments, the last fabric tie was wound around Olive’s calf in a soft firm hug.

“Hai, that means yes then, Mrs. Okazaki?”

Okazaki stood. “Hai.”

Olive grinned. She had learned an oriental word.

They moved out of the bathhouse.
“Thank you for the loan of the bathrobe.”

“Not bathrobe. It’s Japanese nightwear.

“Oh. The pattern is wonderful. What is your traditional dress called; it’s very beautiful.”

Okazaki didn’t stop, but turned away from the house. “I am wearing traditional Japanese dress called a Kimono. This”—she tapped a wide belt that was beautifully tied at the back—”is an Obi.”

“I like to use fabrics and stitches for my repairs and to make some of my clothes feel new.”

In all those months bed ridden, she’d sewed for her mom, the repairs she got with the laundry she took in, but also for herself. Small insects, birds, and flowers in secret places in her clothes. She couldn’t believe her luck when she got the job at the thread shop. All the offcuts, the discarded, not quite finished spools of thread the other girls started to collect for her in exchange for small pieces. An embroidered collar or cuffs, a brightening up of a fabric belt. For some of the older girls, they wanted it on their pantaloons and camisoles.

“I will show you some traditional clothes and stitches if there is time tomorrow.” They had come to a small wooden house that was tucked at the back of the long narrow garden. A stone acted as the step up into the house and Okazaki slide the door to the side to open it.

Okazaki stepped up and slipped off her wooden shoes. Olive did the same then stepped up into the house proper.

It was like nothing she had seen before. Minimal, as if everything had a space to radiate out its own unique beauty. Despite it being so foreign it felt immediately like home.

It was strange waking in the small room Mrs. Okazaki said she could use. Stranger still, to be sleeping on the floor. On a futon, Mrs. Okazaki called it.

When Olive got out of bed, her heart jumped. Her brace wasn’t anywhere in the room.

Nerves sizzled into heat and her heart was beating very fast. Her brace. She couldn’t go out and look for work without her brace.

The door opened and Mrs. Okazaki stood, cleaned and waxed brace in hand, with her clothes over her arm. She gave a look of assessment and a small nod, nothing that could be called approval.

Outside was still dark. They were women who knew by their internal clock the sun’s path and their place in the world to be about before it woke.

“I have breakfast in the kitchen.”

“You don’t have to. Some bread will do.”

Mrs. Okazaki did the pff sound she did last night when she said she didn’t need help with the bath.

Olive dressed in her clean cloths, Billie’s brace back where it belonged on her leg and picked up her coat, then made her way to breakfast. The kitchen was at the back of the main house. She entered the small space. Dishes were on a small, square, wooden table set against a large window overlooking the shrubs planted between the house and the small wooden bathhouse she’s used the night before.

“Sit, sit.”

Olive felt her brow crease as she looked at all the foreign food, the smells although appealing were odd, new. She wouldn’t complain. It was a feast with more food than she could remember placed in front of her. It could be the strangest thing on earth and she would eat it with pleasure.

Mrs. Okazaki brought over a pot of tea. Their eyes met and the smell of it carried into the air between them. They both smiled; it was English.

Mrs. Okazaki nodded. “Japanese like English tea too.”

The cup was poured and Mrs. Okazaki explained the dishes and showed her how to eat those things out of her experience.

The meal done, Mrs. Okazaki reach over, across the small table and ran her finger over small butterflies along the fold of Olive’s jacket sleeve where it ended at her wrist with the fabric twisted up to show the inside and a vibrant flash of color.

“Very pretty, did you sew them?”

The body of the butterfly ran along the fold to sew frayed edges, which had opened. The butterfly wings were just decorative, one wing on the outside, the color a very close match to the green, tweed fabric, but the wing on the inside was as colorful as the yarn and fabric Olive could find.

“Yes. I like to collect and use the threads from the yarn shop and any offcuts of fabrics I can find. But I don’t work there anymore. Your jacket, did you sew that?”

Okazaki, nodded. “I will show you after breakfast. I have many.” Then she got up and started to clear the table.

Olive stood. “I would love that, but I have to go out. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

The water started to fill the sink and the old pipes groaned for a few moments and then were still.

Olive took over the last of the dishes and Mrs.Okazaki started to wash them.

“If you have left things behind, we can organize for someone to pick them up?” Mrs. Okazaki said.

Outside, the sun had come out and she heard the sounds of a few birds. It would be nice to be able to just stay and not worry about the world.

“I have to find work and new accommodation. This is not the right part of town for me either. I don’t belong here. No shops will take me here and I am no good for service.”

Mrs. Okazaki continued to wash their morning dishes.

“I will tell Edwards-sama.”

“Sa-ma?”

“It is a Japanese Mr. but is very respectful. He is master of the house and pays the bills, which keep us.”

Olive picked up the tea towel and started drying.

“Sa-ma. And Jamie called you something else last night.”

“San. It is everyday honorific. I would call you Olive-san; you would call me Okazaki-san. But you do not introduce yourself with san; someone uses it when they speak to you. I would say I am Okazaki.”

She had not imagined this world all those times when she wondered where Jamie lived and what he was doing. Even when Evie showed her the photos, even seeing his house, he was different in her mind even then, but not this. Not this totally other world.

Where did the moody bookbinder fit in? Why had he been at the workshop all this time when he had this? He had other work that obviously paid so much more than at the bookbinding workshop.

The night air a cool wash over her face as she walked. It was one of the best things about spring that coolness. The fog was light but later tonight would most likely be so thick you wouldn’t be able to see through it. Right now Olive could see if by the halo on the gas lamps. Lucky she was almost there.

Finally, Jamie’s house came into view.

Olive went down the side path, past the hydrangea, the camellia and the ivy that ran across and up the wall.

Her hip ached from all the walking, she was cold and hungry and no work options had unfolded.

She put the key Okazaki had given her this morning into the large gate opened it and walked through. A wave of tension washing off her shoulders as she stepped through.

“It’s late.”

Olive yelped.

Her heart raced in her chest then slowed.

“Don’t do that!”

Jamie stepped out from the shadows as she closed the side gate.

Her body rippled at the sight of him, softened and tensing in different ways. She knew those feeling. She’d fallen for men before, knew all the signs. It was no surprise that it would grow being here at his home, being a part of the world he showed no one.

“What are you doing lurking in the shadows? Mrs. Okazaki gave me a gate key so I wouldn’t disturb anyone coming back.”

“It’s past ten; it’s been dark for hours.” His voice had a tight, disapproving tone when he wasn’t happy. It made her feel all jumpy. That strange need to want to please him and yet the thread of excitement at his darker moods.

“Look, you live a long way from where I need to be to find work and lodgings. And I had to tell my family where I am.” She held up her hands to silence him. “Don’t mistake me, I am very grateful to be here. It’s beautiful and well worth the time and cost to get back. It just so happens that the connections on the carriage buses aren’t good. And I can’t afford them all the way, if I have to go back and forth till I work things out and find somewhere closer.”

His brows came together, another one of his ‘I’m not happy’ signals.

His hand slipped around her upper arm.

“You should have asked for some funds for travel.”

She wasn’t going to warrant that with a response.

“Come on, let’s get you inside. Okazaki left some dinner for you.”

He guided her toward the back door passing the length of glass sliding doors to the Japanese room annexed to the back of the house.

“I grew up on those streets. I’m as safe as any of the people living there and safer than those who don’t.”

“I have no doubt what you say is true but I want your life to get better not worse with you living here.”

Jamie opened the back door.

The light was bright in her face. A wave of warmth and the traces of caramelized meats and sauces hung in the air.

“You have blue circles under your eyes,” he said.

“I’m just tired; it was a long day.” But a soft feeling went through her at his concern. Even when she was young, she couldn’t remember that kind of concern. When she and Billie had infantile paralysis, it was all about nuisance.

“And you’re cold. Come here.”

His hands started to rub vigorously up and down her arms over her coat, up and down her back. The movements sent warmth into her and made it hard to stand still with the rigor of his ministrations.

A sliding door sounded and Mrs. Okazaki started out of the small wooden house at the end of the garden. This was the last thing she wanted. Mrs. Okazaki had been so kind already, she didn’t want to be a bother.

Jamie must have read her face because he stopped what he was doing.

“Get settled in the kitchen. I’ll be back.”

Jamie left her. Olive could see him through the small window in the kitchen that gave a view of the back garden as he stopped Mrs. Okazaki before she exited. Olive heard him speak in her language, in Japanese.

Inside the lights in the small, back kitchen seemed much too bright.

She’d visited her sisters today, told them where she was.

‘Make him put some money on the table, Olive. He’ll not be keeping you and you shouldn’t be so proud that you give it away for free.’
Then they’d argued.

‘I’m not his whore.’
They’d laughed at her, said she was trading, and she didn’t even know it. She wasn’t. She wanted him. She had pushed him to take her.

‘Always the one who thinks she’s different to the rest of us. Where have all those hours gone, doing your thread pictures? Nowhere.’

Then they’d set in about the brace. It was worse when they were together and even more so if her mother was there. They hated that she refused to go out and earn with her body.
‘You make a mockery of Billie wearing that brace. You need your head looked at, Olive Thompson.’

Maybe she did.

Then they delivered the final angry taunts that always amounted to the same thing no matter what was actually said.
‘Don’t come crying back here when you have a bun in the oven and no money.’
They meant there was no hope. No matter what it might look like, how good her luck had been, it would all unravel.

It wasn’t that she thought she was better. It was just that as Billie’s and her small child muscles had contracted and cramped, she and Billie had reached out to each other across the space between their cots and had clutched their hands together. When the pain was too much to bear and they had squeezed each other’s fingers so hard they had cried, somewhere in that pain-filled haze the way she saw the world had reordered itself. Her mother said it was pure stubbornness to want what she wanted, no matter what others needed.

Maybe that was true. She was old enough to work the taverns and streets when her mum and sisters went out for extra money, but she couldn’t do it.

And it wasn’t that she was a prude; she’d had her share of sex with men. She was excited by the things she saw in The Velvet Basement as much as Evie tried to hide certain things from her. In truth, she had no problem with anything people wanted to do together. Now with Jamie, she was finding out a lot about what excited her and she felt no guilt at all.

Mrs. Okazaki came in with a dark-faced Jamie walking behind her.

“She insisted.”

Okazaki spoke again in Japanese and Jamie answered.

“I’ll run a bath. She’s worried I want to work with you tonight.”

“Do you?”

“I was waiting, but you’re tired.”

“I can manage…”

A smile pulled one side of his mouth up.

“Will you be about in the morning?”

“I should head back out to look for work.”

“Take a day. You’re rent-free for a little while. We should talk, I can help.”

He obviously didn’t know how dangerous letting yourself relax was. How a day of leisure made it all the harder to get back into the flow of working before the sun came up and getting home after it had long gone down. But he was right. They needed to talk about the arrangement. He’d want her to move on as soon as possible and costs may be associated with her staying here.

“We could talk now? I can get out of your way faster if I keep looking. “

His eyebrows came down over his eyes.

“Take it as a request from your host. Sleep, get rid of those dark circles, and tomorrow after breakfast, we’ll talk.”

It was on her tongue to argue with him. However, she was his guest and she could do with a good sleep.

“Tomorrow then.”

He nodded, pleased with her response and the left her in the kitchen with Mrs. Okazaki and the smell of something wonderful coming from the stove.