The Japanese Girl

Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

• 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 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.

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 knew 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.