The Bound Heart (26 page)

Jamie slipped the bag of embroidery threads into the inside pocket of his coat. He had two bags sitting at home already. It was too late to think himself a fool, he’d proven that.

Olive had been gone four days now and Okazaki refused to tell him where she was. He’d gone to her sister’s, Evie’s, and the boarding house she’d been in before and no one had seen her.

‘Best you let her go if you don’t want her,’ was all Okazaki would say.

He’d let it be. Knew there were a few things he had to sort out in himself before he saw her again. She deserved that from him.

Today was one of those things.

There was something haunting about walking down the old streets again. The last couple of times had been to drop Olive off. Her sister lived just a few blocks from the Split Tart where he was born. He hadn’t come back to the brothel after he walked out of it. Anyone he needed to see, he sent for, and they either came or they didn’t, but he never went back.

Until today.

Olive was a weight in his chest, and his heart, if he wasn’t such a lying bastard. He had treated her abominably. She had no idea what she had done; but now that she had unlocked him, the feel he had all day was the soft pocket of her around his dick. It was a throbbing memory he tried to wipe out with alcohol, with rope, and work. However, she sat there wrapped around him, a soft heat that had washed his mind of every rational thought.

His steps slowed as he saw the brothel up ahead. He stopped. Inside his chest, his heart beat overly hard and his breath was shallow and tight.

Men slipped into the alley that led to the Split Tart. Some looked around before they entered, and others strolled right in.

His mother was long gone, but he had a couple of half-sisters and a young brother. They would all be there. Sex was a family calling, it seemed.

Entering the courtyard out back were the old brown stairs, which led to the upper rooms. Laundry hung down the stairs and across the opening between the two buildings above. Sheets, children’s clothing, and feminine undergarments.

It was all smaller and homier than he remembered.

To a child, it had seemed a large place where men skulked in and out, and the women called from the doorways taunting them.

“Who you lookin for, mista?”

Jamie looked down to see a young lad sitting on an overturned laundry tub. His leg was crossed over his knee and he wore a little waistcoat with odd buttons. But he sat up straight, confident in his position.

The boy tilted his small head indicating Jamie should speak. It made him chuckle.

“Mary Anne Beth. Is she working?”

“She’s busy. You can have Doxie; I’ll take you to her. She has big tits.” His hands came out in an exaggeration in front of him as he started to lead Jamie into the courtyard and toward the step.

Jamie reached out, grabbed his little coat, and dragged him to a standstill.

“Mary Anne Beth?”

The little fellow scowled.

It was clear he was not at all happy that she was getting customers.

“I’m her half-brother, Jamie.” He pulled out a coin and gave it to the kid. “Go tell her, her brother’s here.”

The kid looked up at him, all bravado forgotten. “You’re Jamie?”

That took him aback.

“Yes.”

The boy stretched out his little hand. “I’m your brother, Charlie.”

Charlie. His mum had died bringing him into the world. He’d sent funds but not come. They all knew how he felt about the place the day he left.

Jamie reached out his hand and took Charlie’s into his.

“Nice to meet you, brother. Now, how about you tell our sister I’m here.”

There was a shrill scream and he knew that was no longer necessary.

“Jamie.” The yell across the courtyard and a bundle of white petticoats and black stockings came hurtling toward him.

Her arms came around him and she exploded against him with the force of her run. It made him laugh.

Her hands came up to his face; she kissed him as if he were the most welcome of guests, of loved ones. Her brother who never came.

“Jamie, love, I can’t believe my eyes.” Tears were in them, those big, brown pearls just like his mum’s.

“Have ya met Charlie? Charlie, this is ya brother, Jamie. He’s famous, does real fancy stuff.”

Just then, a man came out of the upstairs rooms.

Mary Anne Beth put her plump, little hands on her hips and swaggered forward.

“Have a bit, did ya? Next time, we should see if you could take more than one. What a man like you would be into. Dream of it, love, one on each hand.”

The man laughed as he came down the stairs pulling on his worn jacket.

“Oh, yes, a sucker for what you girls have between them sweaty thighs. Mary, my dear.”

“Oh, yes, he’s a sucker all right,” called the girl leaning against the door he’d just came out. “Near sucked me right of the bed, didn’t ya, love?”

The man wiped his hand over his mouth and grinned at Mary Anne Beth. “Jealous, love?”

“Not a chance, she threw back.” Mary Anne looked down at Charlie. “You wait, you’ll be lining up with them fellas, tongue out for it, just like the ‘johns’.”

Words straight out of him mum’s mouth. Jamie felt the horror of the memories, all the jeering, his resolve to never, ever be a man who was a slave to what lay between a woman’s legs.

And until Olive, he wasn’t.

But Charlie just laughed and threw it back. “Oh, they’ll be beggin’ me. Have you see what’s down here already?” He clutched his crotch and made some awkward swizzle that had the girls in stitches.

May Anne Beth turned to him, motioned with a flick of her head at the woman still in the open doorway. “She’s too sweet on him. He’s got a wife and kids up in York. He comes and eats her box, and she thinks he loves her.”

He just stood there and let all the chatter flow over him as what he’d just seen sank in. That had been played out repeatedly in his youth. It had made him mad. He never had Charlie’s cocky reply. He had sulked and growled back, which made them laugh as well. But in his mind, he was being made a fool of; and those poor bastards who paid to get there ends in…well, he was never going to be that. No, his dick was not going inside a woman’s box as long as he lived. Standing there, he should have seen what was blaring out. They jested to protect themselves. The johns didn’t care; they played back.

As the afternoon wore on and he sat with his family on a small bench at the side of the courtyard, it played out repeatedly. The girls needed to bolster tender hearts, wounded pride, all manner of things, and they did it with jeers and humor. The men laughed back and threw as good as they got, and Charlie was a part of it.

By the time he had been a young man, he had found rope, had found darker tastes, and wasn’t interested in revisiting the resolution he had made.

However, with Olive that had changed.

And here lay the source of his anger, and he found it to be a shadow.

Nothing but a flicker of the light that spooked him.

He paid for Mary Anne and Charlie to have dinner at a local pub. Pints and pork pies, and Charlie had a swig off both of them.

“I’m heading out of town for work. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“It’s all right, Jamie. You always had your own way, Mum used to say. I see that. You were never part of it here. I remember how you used to fold all our clothes, liked to put it all away. You got right stroppy if I dumped something on the chair or the floor. Always did your hair just so. Your britches always clean.”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh, you was worse. You never liked the jokes, took it all way to serious, made the girls riled at you all the harder when your face went all tense.”

Then his father died.

That had been the clincher. His father was trying to get his mum to leave the knock shop. She wouldn’t go. He came back drunk. The john she was with pushed his dad; he’d staggered back and fell backward off the balustrade.

The strange timing of it all, Jamie could still feel the way the ground under his feet had vibrated as his dad hit the ground right in front of him. The changes in his Dad’s face as he lay there.

Jamie pulled out a purse of funds. “It may be some time before I can send you money.” If he lost the competition which was highly likely given his estrangement with Olive. Al fund would need to be conserved until the next solid flow of cash was stabilized.

The sleeve of his jacket had pulled up as he stretched the purse across the table. Mary Anne Beth didn’t take the purse, but ran her hands on the tattoo on his wrist.

“You’re such a strange one, Jamie. These your dad’s marks?”

He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. She’d worried over the real bruises in the days that followed his father’s death, and before Kobayashi had come and taken him away.

“That China man looked after you then?”

“Yes, yes he did. He was from Japan.”

“You still holding onto that old stuff, love?”

He thought of Olive. The feel of her in his arms as she slept. How hard she worked on the ropes, the soft flutter of her eyelashes on his cheeks, his lips his nose. That was the most unexpected thing she could have done, that anyone could have done to him. It had suddenly disarmed him. Had found a fissure, and broke past an adulthood of successfully warding people off.

“Maybe a bit less than before.” He gave her a lopsided smile.

Okazaki wasn’t talking to him. There’d been no breakfast and Olive was somewhere under Okazaki’s wing until he redeemed himself.

Mary Anne pushed the money back at him.

“I’m happy doing what I do, Jamie. Like mum, this is what I like. I wouldn’t be no good for just one man. Mum had some money put aside and she kept all the money you gave her. Said she wanted there always to be a choice for me, you know? But they’re me people, Jamie. That’s the life I know, nothin else. Charlie here could be something better. School maybe?”

He pushed the purse back to her over the wooden table.

The pub noise was a hum around them, and many stopped by to throw banter at Mary Anne Beth. She was popular; she wasn’t very beautiful, but she shone from the inside.

“You have mum’s way with people.”

“Yea, I do, means something lives on, don’t it?”

She grabbed his hand.

“I don’t know what brought you down him Jamie, but I’m glad.” He squeezed her hand back.

“Now tell your sis all about them ropes of yours, I could learn a trick or two.”

He’d been a fool to stay away.

The paper door slid open into her small workroom. A room that was for “O & O Designs” run out of the dress shop Iwara-san ran.

“Thompson-san, you have a guest. Edwards-san”

Edwards-san… it took her a moment and then her heart was in her throat, Jamie.

Olive put down the embroidered velvet coat she was working on and stood up. Smoothed down her dress and caught her reflection in the mirror.

Dark circles hung under her eyes. How could there not be after she walked out of Jamie’s house, had slept in her small Japanese house alone with four rooms all to herself. A different woman looked back at her from the one she had seen for years in the mirror. She was well dressed, her hair coiled in a bun, a Japanese haori that had been fitted with darts to make a more fitted jacket around her torso.

Orders for obis for the London ladies were coming in, for her embroidered jackets for both the London ladies and the Japanese expatriates.

Mrs. Okazaki was her business partner who backed her financially, and they worked on ideas together while Olive made the proto types. Iwara’s seamstresses could be hired on a commission-by-commission basis and work was starting to flow. O & O Designs was underway. A ladies periodical was coming in for an interview when she returned from Paris.

Olive turned to head out to the receiving room and there he was at her workshop door. A parcel in hand.

The sight of him, tall, lean, his shiny dark hair pulled neatly back, and his shoulders wide and strong. Her hands still remembered the feel of them. He body remembered him. Her heart was desperately trying to forget.

“Jamie.”

She motioned to a small Japanese table with floor cushions.

He gave her his half smile and her chest felt like it was going to break.

“I’ll organize tea.”

“No, no need.” He sank down onto the cushion and she sat opposite him sitting down as her skirt billowed out around her.

His eyes creased as she pushed the air out of the skirt allowing it to settle flat around her but it wasn’t in her to smile back.

“I hear that your venture is doing well. Iwara-san is not easily impressed, and here you are under her roof.”

“Okazaki-san has been amazingly generous. O & O Designs is as much her as it is me.”

He nodded. “I knew the two of you would get on well.”

Silence fell between them. A pause between acts.

“You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping.”

“I have a lot of work keeping me up since we started the business…”

His eyebrows rose.

Heat flushed up her neck.

“Where are you staying?”

“What do you want Jamie. I left. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

He drew in a deep breath.

The silence fell again.

“I have something for you.” He placed his parcel on the table and slid it across the table. “I did them myself so I hope you’re not disappointed.”

She reached out and their fingers touched. That moment a world ago in the old bookbinding workshop when she showed him the black silk cord wavered between them. He wasn’t the mysterious Mr. Edwards anymore, and she wasn’t the determined naive girl.

She pulled her hand away.

“Open it.”

Olive ran her hand over the box. It was beautifully wrapped, but more so, the cords that bound it. They were so beautiful and decorative. Different colors threaded into each other knotted into an intricate pattern.

“Here, let me get you some scissors.”

“No! I’ll take my time, and undo it until I can slip it off.”

There was a softness in his eyes as he nodded.

You wouldn’t get an argument about sparing rope from a rope man.

It took a few minutes to get the bindings to a point where she could wriggle them over the corners and slide the package out. Then she unfolded the dark gray paper that wrapped it.

Inside was a box. Olive lifted the lid.

Looking down at the contents, cushioned in white tissue paper, heat stung at her eyes. Her throat tightened.

Inside the box were her old boots.

The ones she had long put aside.

They were beautifully restored, but not to the degree to lose the marks that were so familiar to her. The rub of where the leg irons had gone under the heel before she had given up wearing those and only wore the brace. The repair on the right shin, a piece of hide that was slightly darker.

The leather had been worked until it was so soft, rich in the oils it had soaked up, and subtle like the most expensive of boots. Stitched across the toes and up the ankle were beautiful patterns of coiled rope.

The heel on the right boot was higher to compensate for the different length of her leg. And the wooden heels were carved and painted with small thimbles and threads.

“You would have been working on these for weeks.” Long before their disagreement and her leaving.

His hand reached out for hers and she moved hers away.

“Come home, Olive.”

“I can’t…”

There was a flash of something across his face. Then his jaw tightened and his eyes shuttered.

He nodded.

“I saw my family at the Split Tart.”

“How did it go?”

He smiled. “Good. I’m looking for a boarding school for my half-brother, Charlie. You’d like him.”

“I look forward to it.”

His eyes focused on hers, darkened at the promised visit.

“He’s coming to see the house tomorrow.”

She almost laughed. But shook her head ‘no’.

“I have a few things I need to get done before Paris. Okazaki-san said she’d organize my tickets I can join you there just before the competition…”

Heat flushed up her neck. They were both thinking of the rope. There was no hiding in it.

“Olive… about that night… what I said…”

“How important is the competition in Paris?” She cut him off.

He face was impossible to read.

“What has Okazaki said?”

“She said not to worry, it was up to me if I wanted to pull out. If I did could you use Madeline?”

He shook his head. “The photo plates all have you in them and too late to make them with her or prepare her for the live demonstration.”

“So how important is it to you? You are both worried about something and hiding it from me.”

He considered her for a few moments.

“We didn’t want to pressure you. The meeting with Sato at Blackburn’s. Sato is claiming a right to my contract with The Collectors, which is part of my inheriting the lineage from Sensei. We didn’t come to an agreement so it’s a winner take all deal. Whoever scores the highest in the competition between us gets the contract.

“Although I have other sources of income that have earned and could again a solid income, the contract is the main source of money that supports the house, Okazaki, and our lifestyle. Losing it, we will have to make some substantial changes perhaps even sell the house if the loss of the contract means The Collectors stop using me for commission work.”

“No! How could you have agreed to that?”

“Olive, it’s The Collectors’ way. They are a very odd but powerful group. We could not resolve it amongst ourselves; and believe me, I am not prepared to give Sato anything, and Okazaki agrees. We know Sensei would not approve Sato representing his lineage in this way. Blackburn set the terms.”

“I thought Blackburn was your friend.”

He laughed.

“No, Blackburn doesn’t have friends. Just be thankful he doesn’t consider me a foe.”

“Thank you. You both should have told me sooner.”

Jamie stood.

“I can drop the tickets off at your home?”

“Here is fine.”

His eyes darkened and the broody Mr. Edwards stood in front of her as she rose to show him out. Despite the tension, the crackle that sat in the air he said nothing except polite farewells as he left.

The next morning as she slid open the door to her small house at the back of the Kanasaka’s back yard. A small bag hung from a rope from her doorframe.

She untied it and opened the cloth bag. It contained luminous embroidery threads. Her fingers itched to take them but…

Olive placed it back on the rope and left it there and went to work.

On returning that night the rope and threads were gone. There was nothing else on the doorstep. The house was dark and cold. She’d eaten with the girls at the shop as it seemed everyone worked late, not just her.

In about an hour the fire was lit in her room, she’d taken the futon out of the cupboard and made her bed ready for bed and her bath was run.

It still surprised her how she’d slipped into the Japanese cultural practices so comfortably. The dinners she was eating were Japanese, she was learning words and phrases. For her embroidery she was starting to look at some of the oriental designs that had strong appeal to the western women as much as the London-life landscapes had for the Japanese women.

There was a knock at the bathroom door.

“Okazaki-san?” Olive sat up I the bath, “Is something wrong?” Her mind immediately went to Jamie, had something happened?

The door slid open. “It’s me.”

Jamie stood silhouetted in shadows and steam.

Her heart beat fast and her skin flushed.

He waited for her to send him a way. She felt the words on her tongue. But the truth was she was miserable. Instead she sunk back in the bath.

He stepped in and slid the door closed behind him then slowly unbuttoned his shirt. She watched as he undressed, every familiar plan of his body revealed causing a tight knot in her belly.

He washed then she leaned forward as he slipped behind her in the bath his legs on either side of her as he guided her back against his chest, then wrapped his arms around her.

“Don’t think this means anything.” She whispered.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

They soaked in silence and after a while he began to talk.

“Did I ever tell you about how I came to live with Sensei?”

“No.” her heart picked up its beat.

He told her about the brothel, the way the knots fascinated him, the early days at the house with Okazaki and Sensei. There were stories that made her laugh despite her resolve not to, about Okazaki and how she used to chase him after he behaved badly, Sensei once tied him in a tree until he behaved.

Jamie came the next two nights, slid the bathroom door open and got in the bath with her. She had no idea how he knew when she came home and when she finished her home tasks to get into the bath.

He’d ask her about her day, share another story about his life. Layers of who he was, how he came to be the man he was revealed.

He’d dried her when they got out of the water and then tuck her into bed, a chased kiss and then he’d leave.

On the third night he’d made up a second futon next to hers.

She looked at him as he leaned against the door waiting for her response.

“I’m not going to…” her face felt hot. She would if he started something, they both knew that.

His mouth lifted on one side. That lopsided smile.

“Neither am I.”

She nodded a flurry still rushing through her as she slipped under the covers. He turned the gaslight off and slipped in next to her.

In the middle of the night she woke turned into his chest. His arms where around her warm and strong. His fingers were moving back and forth on her arm.

“Are you thinking about the competition?” she whispered.

“Yes… go back to sleep.”

They were leaving for Paris in a day, all the framed pictures, ropes and back drops were being shipped off today. Okazaki had drop of the tickets and said Jamie insisted they all travel together.

Her chest tightened.

“I know you love me,” she said.

Her heart suddenly raced and she stayed perfectly still.

His fingers didn’t falter, he moved, kissed the top of her head.

His chest took in a large breath and then slowly let it go.

“I do.”

His arms squeezed her closer.

“Now go to sleep.”