The Ginger Tree (21 page)

We didn’t for a long time talk about anything personal to either of us, the conversation stilted. It was plain that she had to force herself to come here today, which is entirely my fault for, from the moment when Kentaro came back, I made no attempt to get in touch with her. I have earned her contempt as the woman who was prepared to sit behind a wooden fence waiting her Lord’s pleasure. She knows as well as I do that
if Tomo had been left to me I would still be sitting behind that fence.

We were talking about nothing really, I think it was the food in the hospital, when suddenly what has happened hit me again as it does often still when I think I am on guard against feeling. I just want Tomo. I cried out, as though it was torn from me: ‘What have they done with him, Aiko?’

She had not been looking at me, but did then. It seemed as though there was something like fear in her eyes. It was quite a long time before she said: ‘Didn’t Kurihama ever give you a hint what he meant for the boy?’ I shook my head. I told her that it had been a joy to me that he seemed so fond of Tomo, accepting him.

Aiko began to talk, quite fast. It was my misfortune that the Count had accepted my son by him, because this meant accepting Tomo as a Kurihama. Legitimacy does not matter in the least in Japan. What might have mattered would have been a son who looked like a Westerner. If I had been ginger-haired and green-eyed and Tomo had been born with both these things the Baron would never have acknowledged him as Kurihama blood. I had lost my baby because he looked completely like a Japanese. An accepted son of the Count was a candidate for adoption into a good family, probably somewhere away from the capital, Kyoto perhaps, or Osaka. He would become a
yoshi
, an adopted son, and as such take the family name of his adoptive parents and in due course marry their daughter. Aiko, being almost brutal about it, outlined what I had known vaguely from reading, that all the better families were
prepared
to keep their names going in this way. And there were few in the country, on the outlook for an adopted heir to their line, who would turn away from a baby of the Kurihama blood even though the mother was a foreigner.

The sickness I felt then made my protest feeble: ‘Women have no rights at all in this country?’ Aiko’s answer was harsh. ‘No. And not too many in yours, either. You lost your daughter, didn’t you?’

I have not wept often since Tomo was taken. Once or twice I seemed to wake up crying, my cheeks wet, but mostly it was as though the terrible bleakness of my thoughts dried up tears, denying me that relief. But with
Aiko sitting opposite I began to cry, not noisily, not with any retching sobs, but still something I couldn’t control. Quite suddenly she got up and came over to kneel by my chair. I was leaning forward and she put an arm around my shoulder. She said: ‘Mary, Mary,’ and then, awkwardly, almost as though it was something she had never done before, or had done to her, pulled my head down on to her shoulder. And that was how I wept, for what seemed a long time. My misery was eased a little.

St Luke’s Hospital, Tokyo
February 3rd, 1906

The British Embassy got my letter all right and after considering it for two weeks have returned it to me inside a large, important-looking envelope. Before I opened it I stared at King Edward’s embossed crest, wondering if any of his subjects had ever got further from their monarch in mind and body than I have. The pages I had written under stress fell out to rebuke me for having appealed to officialdom in highly personal language. Their letter continued the rebuke. It was not from Sir Claude, but signed by the First Secretary, who hoped that I would find my communication to His Excellency enclosed and then went on in polite, formal language to state that His Britannic Majesty’s Plenipotentiary in Japan was washing his hands of any responsibility of any kind for Mary Mackenzie, or Mary Collingsworth, or whatever she might now call herself. I am recommended to approach the British Consul who, under certain circumstances, is in the position to arrange the repatriation of British subjects to the homeland. It is pointed out that my son is a Japanese by birth, as well as by an admitted paternity, which could not be contested, and in these circumstances according to both British and Japanese legal practice the nationality of the mother is irrelevant. In the view of the First Secretary my son has not disappeared, but has been removed from the custody of his mother by a person, or persons, with the authority to do this. I will appreciate that the situation is complicated by the fact that the child is illegitimate and can only be legitimised at some future date if he remains in this country. For the British Embassy in
any way to interfere in such a situation is totally out of the question as the Secretary is sure I will, on reflection, appreciate. He repeats his earlier suggestion that my present distresses might be alleviated, at least to some extent, by making immediate contact with the British Consul.

I am putting all this down as I remember it because I was foolish enough to tear up the First Secretary’s letter the moment I had read it. There was also the suggestion that if, by any chance, I succeeded in finding my son and then attempted to take him out of the country, I could be committing a criminal offence under Japanese law. What he meant was that the Embassy wouldn’t be sending me any food parcels to the jail.

A fortnight ago, or even a week ago, that letter would have plunged me into the pit. Today I was almost ready for it. Everyone wants me out of Japan fast, even at the cost of the British taxpayer having to find the money for my Second Class passage on a P&O liner to London. I am
not
going. The Japanese can try to deport me if they like, but somehow I don’t think they will try that, because as a deportee I might manage to talk to a reporter of the
Japan Advertiser
whose editor is also the Tokyo correspondent of the London
Times
. Given publicity, my case just might make quite a nasty little footnote to the Treaty of Alliance and Friendship so recently signed between Great Britain and Japan. If that would seem to be making myself far too important, there is also the fact that the last thing Kentaro wants is a strong, harsh light beamed on himself and the Kurihama family. This appears very cold and calculating. It is how I must be now if I am to survive.

So far I am the only one who knows this, but I am leaving St Luke’s Hospital today. The clothes I had on when they brought me here are hanging in the wardrobe and during the quiet hour after lunch I shall put them on, then walk down to the entrance where there are always rickshas available.

Okatsu Hotel, Ekoro Machi, Azabu-Ku, Tokyo
February 4th, 1906

Aiko’s hotel is a very bad one, with a smell of frying greeting you in the entrance area. The bedroom in which I am writing this is not actually dirty, but it has an air of neglect, as though the maids really have no idea how to maintain ‘foreign’ furnishings. I will sleep tonight in the first bed I have used in Japan. This has a hair mattress and sagging springs. The only quite pretty things are the ewer and basin on the washstand, these of blue Dutch pottery, nicely shaped. I wonder how they got here? The walls are paper thin and someone with a cigarette cough is next door.

Aiko is in Sendai, as I knew, the reception clerk made a little uneasy by my query as to whether she would be back tomorrow. He will be even more uneasy when the police arrive with questions about me. Perhaps the same detective who watches over Aiko will do for us both now, though there is no need for the Japanese to economise with manpower.

Sitting here with my notebook open on a yellowed, machine lace tablecover, I ought to be feeling depressed, but I am not. The excitement which seemed to sweep me out of the hospital, and then on to the house Kentaro had rented for his foreign woman, still holds. It is almost like a picture I have seen of Hawaiian swimmers riding those boards on the crests of monster waves, the whole thing a matter of balance, the least loss of this toppling you off. I mean to keep my balance. I shall also keep the money Kentaro gave me and use it. I have earned it, after all.

As I had expected, Okuma San was in the little house acting as caretaker, her surprise and shock producing the first real expression I had seen on her face. She had no explanations from me, I simply went in and ordered her to bring to the downstairs room my little cabin trunk which had been stored in an outhouse. I packed the suitcase upstairs and carried it down myself. There was a bad moment when I was taking off its nail a scroll painting of storks I had bought at the night stalls; one of Tomo’s balls fell off a shelf and rolled over the matting. Then, on a ledge, I saw a row of those origami toys Kentaro had made for his son.

Okuma brought the trunk, panting and blowing, after which she
scuttled off without a word. A moment later I heard the clatter of her clogs crossing the courtyard and I went after her fast, in stockinged feet over the flagstones. She was trying to get the ricksha man to go away. I shouted the worst words I know in Japanese:
‘Dame! Bakayaro! Ike!’
She fled, probably for the police station. If she returned with a policeman it was to find the little house empty.

It will not, of course, take the police any time to find me, the reception clerk has probably already reported my arrival here, but I have no doubts at all that official red tape will work in my favour. Before any step is taken to keep me in semi-custody again the matter will have to be referred to Kentaro in Korea. An attempt to get me out of this hotel, even at night, could be a cause for scandal. Also, it will be known that I was in touch with the British Embassy, if to no avail. I think the police will receive instructions to do nothing meantime, except surveillance. The weapons available to me are flimsy, but I believe I am learning how to use them.

I think I understand Kentaro a lot better than he understands me. I tried to hate him for a time, to escape from pain that way, but I wasn’t able to. He knew perfectly well that he could never have reasoned me into accepting the idea of Tomo being adopted into a Japanese family, so he did his duty again, and it may be that the way he timed it, just before he was posted, means that he could not bear to be here to see the suffering he had to inflict on me. I may be flattering myself that he cares as much as that. It could be that he is hoping that in time I will come to understand why he had to do what he did. I understand it now, but what I cannot do, and never will be able to do, is believe that it was for the best, which is why I cannot live under his protection any longer, and never will again.

I have gone back to praying, not for myself, as on that ship in a typhoon, but for Tomo. I have no sense that these prayers are being answered. When I think about it, I don’t believe that I ever prayed for Jane, even when most miserable about her. Perhaps it was from a feeling that anyone who is being looked after by the Collingsworths of Norfolk has no need for God’s succour as well.

Okatsu Hotel, Tokyo
February 6th

Aiko completely disapproves of my plans, her objections might well be Mama’s. Aiko would be willing to die for any principle to which she was totally committed but her dedication is still set very firmly against a background of family origins and her place in society. In spite of her divorce she remains
the
Baroness Sannotera, obviously regarding the new Baroness as a woman of little account beyond her function of childbearing. Behind all Aiko’s zeal I sense a kind of charity, good works done by a superior for her inferiors. Privately, too, I am sure she regards most Japanese women as stupidly cow-like in their docility to the male; she would like to lead them in great processions with banners flying, and they stay home sewing up their kimonos and sweeping the matting, refusing to march behind anyone. Her mild respect for my brave gesture of leaving Kentaro’s protection would be completely destroyed if she realised I am still paying for board and lodging with his money, and will continue to do so until my little hoard of this is used up, only declaring my independence by refusing to accept any
more
money from him if he offers it. Though she approves of my getting some kind of work – and even being paid for that work – it must still be something suitable for a woman of my class. What she declines to see is that, if I ever had a class in her sense, I stepped right outside it by becoming Kentaro’s lover.

I must have her help in my plans, for I need an interpreter. I also need the Baroness’s grand manner to help me batter down the opposition, which I am sure will be formidable. A grand manner is something I am no good at as yet, and doubt if I ever will be, which would have been a real disadvantage as a Collingsworth wife. The ladies in those Mannington portraits look as though, with advancing years, they had all grown into dragons established behind the family solid silver tea service. The people who appear to take to me do so because I seem such a nice little thing, totally unlikely ever to challenge them in any way, or to fight for my status according to protocols. I can see now that there was this in my friendship with Marie, no threat at all from me to the queen of Peking society who
was acknowledged as such by all the men, if none of the women.

It is so easy to love those who can never menace us. I think now of that dreadful supper up at the temple when both Marie and Armand knew I had just come from my lover, and Marie’s stony ignoring of me through the meal. She was outraged not by a moral lapse so much as the idea that someone on whom she had bestowed her affection had dared to step right outside the role assigned them. I think she also found Kentaro attractive and couldn’t understand what he saw in me. Perhaps I was later forgiven when she guessed at what may be the truth, that the Count Kurihama simply took what was on offer. Still, he must have found me acceptable, I have his poem though I have lost his son.

Okatsu Hotel, Tokyo
February 10th

I was quite exhausted when we got back here after what was clearly Aiko’s triumph against great odds. It is when I am weakened by tiredness like this that all I want is my baby back, at any price to me personally. I took off the things I had put on so carefully for our appointment at Matsuzakara’s Department Store and lay along the bed. I have no photograph of my son and I took nothing that had been his from the house, I will never see Tomo grow, I will never see the changing face moving out of childhood towards the man. Already he is recognising someone else as his mother. I hate Kentaro. I
hate
him!