Three Views of Crystal Water (23 page)

The next time James Lowinger saw Miss McBean it was half a world away and he had grown into manhood. Or thought he had. It was in Panama City. His papa had sent him to assess the prospects of doing business there.

He sat at a bar in the centre of the square, the palm trees over him, the grand, white-painted and columned government buildings of the little republic eerily aglow in the setting sun. At a distance little children ran along the sea wall and women hung laundry on iron balconies. On the street, bicycles dodged men carrying bushel weights of provisions down the narrow, poor streets. Beside him was the national theatre, cheek by jowl with the armoury, and the official residence of the President, making a complete set for a new country all within a few minutes’ walk.

James had just returned from the Pearl Islands in the Gulf of Papagayo. In his mind he prepared his report.

The waters were so clear that the Panama divers could distinguish an oyster from the surface at sixty feet. The season ran from June to October. The divers went out in canoes, four to a boat. They dived from one hour before low water, to one hour after and if there were many oysters they sank a basket between them. One diver could get ten dozen oysters a day. They claimed to go down twelve fathoms and be under for one minute, and even as long as one and a half minutes.

Or so they told him. The men were fugitive Mexicans, pursued
at home for some crime. You could see them on their days off, in silk shirts and Panama hats, strutting barefoot, with brand new shoes hanging around their shoulders, a sign of their upward mobility. They were paid $250 for a season, but lost whatever they earned by drinking cane sugar alcohol. And why save it? They did not have long to live. The climate was deadly. There was no fresh water. Yellow fever, or sun stroke would kill them. Many of them were only boys, younger than James himself.

James was hardened to it now. He had walked the length of the coral islands until he found a diver who had a house, and a family who looked well fed. He asked him how he managed. The man said he worked for no master, and opened his own oysters. James had the depressing thought that Avery McBean had been right in his unwelcome advice back in Ceylon, his father should deal with individual divers, contracting with them to retrieve and to open the shells, and to dispose of the oysters.

He was to sail the following morning. Appearing at a table were several gentlemen from New York, one of them an engineer. Mr Hartley was thin with a tropical suit made of linen that crumpled around him. Coupled with his heat flush, it gave him a look of distress. Mr Tiffany, his partner, was a jeweller. On they sat, in the tropical evening. They were most elegant and wellspoken men. They bought quantities of drink. The three had a sumptuous dinner and saw native women dance, and were offered services James might have been tempted to accept, except that the conversation was so stimulating.

These men proposed to revolutionise the pearl fishery. They would dispense with the divers altogether.

‘How could the divers be replaced?’ James asked, ‘with what? A dredge?’

‘No, nothing so plebian.’

They proposed a water-tight vehicle that could go down to sit on the ocean floor allowing the men to exit, walk around on the ocean bed, and pick up the oysters. A submersible. Never mind how the men would walk; they’d have lead boots of course, and metal helmets. Hartley laughed at the general lack of imagination
that had led all involved in this business until now to overlook this fine option.

James laughed in turn. ‘I think you’ve been reading too much Jules Verne.’

‘But how could you be so heartless?’ said Hartley. ‘Do you not see the suffering of the divers? Do you not know that the
tintero,
the shark, is constantly circling?’

‘Well, even if you are heartless, which I don’t for a minute believe,’ said Tiffany, ‘think of the practical savings, Mr Lowinger. The economies involved. A diver may make twelve or even twenty-four descents in a day. What if we could eliminate their taxing plunges and again their resurfacing? Take six men down in a submarine boat. They could work ten hours a day, from the fixed container full of air, on the bottom. In the submarine boat six men could do ten hours a day. Therefore six men would do the work of three hundred.’

‘Yes, but,’ said James, ‘the shark would still be there if the men were taken by ship to the bottom, and elevated again in a ship. And not be deterred by any metal hats.’

They had an answer for everything.

‘But, young man, I’m surprised you’re not aware: it is the rapid flight of the divers upward that incenses the shark and causes it to bite – did you not know that?’

No, he didn’t know. He was green, green, green. In their suit jackets and white trousers the Americans loomed large, futuristic. They were offering James his fortune. He was lucky to be here. James found himself thinking again of McBean.

I could best him, he thought, swelling a little. And wouldn’t Papa be delighted? Wouldn’t McBean have loved to be part of this? But no, the opportunity had come to him, young James Lowinger, and there was no chance on earth he would share the good fortune with old McBean. It was time the old Scot got paid back for his scheming in Ceylon, for the catch of pearls he’d stolen from his father.

Hartley and Tiffany were leaning on the table; they were asking for his word.

But perhaps he was being hasty.

He really ought to think it over, sleep on it, he told Hartley. To avoid their pressing eyes, he glanced away from his companions.

And then he saw her.

Recognised her, perhaps, because her father had been in his mind.

The plump, pouting Miss McBean.

She stood in the light on the columned staircase in front of the National Theatre. They were white columns and it was a marble staircase and behind it was a carved wooden door, very tall. She too was with a group, Europeans in evening dress. Men and women together, chattering, with a sense of their separate, foreign glamour in the setting. They were the kind of men and women who intimidated James. He’d spent most of his youth on ships and beaches. He was not glib then – though he would be, later – or self-assured. And he took a dislike to anyone who was. He would not have got on with her friends, he was certain. They were, he imagined, smug, rich, glittering, and indifferent to the natives, altogether superior in their imperial grandeur.

And she was with them. No less redoubtable at twenty than she had been at ten. A face had developed out of that childish set of cheeks, lips and liquid eyes. Her lips were long, firm and had a high, pointed bow. Her eyes were wide apart, deep set and calm, but no less righteous. Her forehead was also wide and judicious. She was pale, as if that red umbrella, now invisible, had been over her head against the sun for the past ten years. She was not so much tall as erect: her back, in the tightly-buttoned evening jacket, appearing to soar out of the same full frothy kind of skirt – he had no words for fashion – she’d worn as a child.

James excused himself from his entrepreneurial cohorts and took the marble steps at a run.

‘How do you do, Miss McBean,’ he said, and introduced himself. ‘Our fathers are both in the business of pearls. I last met you on the beach at Condatchey Bay.’ All this tumbled out of
his mouth. He could see a mild sort of amusement in her eyes as she replied.

‘Of course, you are James Lowinger,’ she said. ‘I’d have known you anywhere. You rescued me from that buffalo.’

‘I did not,’ he said. ‘Although I tried to.’

The other men laughed and one of them said, ‘You’re too honest, my young friend. Say you did; it will go better for you.’

Which threw him back and made him wonder if he was ridiculous and what it was about his face and person that was so indelible from that day in the bright sun. She stood smiling, without surprise. She had a coolness about her on that tropical night. The girl who did not run from a charging buffalo was not about to wink an eyelash at him, James could see. But she took pity on his confusion and they talked a little.

She was in Panama with her father; he was up at the Pearl Islands. James was surprised that he had not met up with McBean in the islands. In his heart he was dashed: how did this Scot manage to turn up in front of him, just when James thought he had left him behind? But chagrin was mixed with the pleasure of meeting this beautiful young woman who felt, absurdly, like a dear friend. He asked her if she often travelled with her father and she said yes, that he relied on her, and her mother could not be spared.

Relied on her for what? he was rude enough to ask, and she threw him a haughty glance but said only that she had ‘much experience of matters to do with the business’.

The friends were set to move on and so he bade her goodbye and returned to his North American partners, because that is what they had become in the few moments he’d turned his back on them. They had lost a little of their lustre.

‘So you are acquainted with Miss McBean, the pearling queen,’ Hartley said, with narrowed eyes. ‘We’ve heard it said she has an eye for a good pearl.’

James knew that McBean’s strongest suit was appraisal. He had a genius for choosing a beauty that was disguised by dirt or blemish, and having it skinned or doctored so that it was perfect. An unerring eye, they said, to see what was within.

He watched Miss McBean glide across the shining stones of the square as if on a small set of wheels – like a dancer in a Chinese opera, feet invisible and no distinguishable step. She turned as the group stepped into a horse carriage – turned back to smile at him and raised her hand as if it were a signal.

Three! She seemed to be saying. That’s three times we’ve met in faraway lands. Where next?

And she was gone.

He realised he did not even know her first name.

All the more reason for investing in the Pacific Pearl Company with W. B. Hartley, President, and William Henry Tiffany, as secretary. Business was to be ‘prosecuted’ by means of a submarine boat allowing six men to do the work of three hundred. It was Pie in the Sky. Or rather, Pie in the Sea. The worst of it was they weren’t even pulling his leg. Lowinger was the only investor. The submersible was never launched.

Hanako and Keiko’s nephew Tamio took Vera to school, that first winter.

They had to wear black uniforms, skirts with a sailor top with white trim for the girls, and trousers for the boys. It was a child’s uniform, and Vera felt foolish in hers. The others submitted without complaint.

At the school gate they separated. Vera was to stay with younger children who were learning to read. By now she could understand much of what was said. She wanted to write; the characters were so beautiful. She was not taught to write. The first morning and every morning after, the schoolmaster read from
The Cardinal Principles of Japanese Life.
The children followed along in a copy on their desks.

One story was ‘All the World Under Japan’s Roof’.

People in all countries of Asia would be happier and better off with Japan as their ruler. In order to rule Asia, Japan would need many soldiers. Every child should strive to develop his body and mind so that he could pass the examinations and join the army or the navy so that he could defend his country. What about the girls? Vera wanted to ask. But she was afraid she could not say it properly. Still it must have showed in her eyes. But it soon became clear. The girls were to be strong to support the men and raise the new generation. The most important lesson each child had to learn was to be obedient to his superior. The teacher looked with contempt at Vera who loomed over her desk, her knees knocking up against its underside.

In the afternoon all the students went outside and stood in rows. They had to do military drills. The girls wore a white apron over their black, and waved their arms. Vera felt like a scarecrow. The older boys had weapons; Vera saw them, skinny bodies struggling with heavy bayonets.

‘I don’t like school,’ Vera said to Keiko. ‘It isn’t really school. It’s a cross between church and cadets. I don’t like what we have to learn. The teacher doesn’t want me there anyway.’

‘Just ignore what he says and learn your characters,’ said Keiko without conviction.

‘He stares at me in a funny way.’

Keiko laughed. ‘Maybe he does,’ she said. ‘But you must be quiet. If you say anything bad, the military police will threaten you, or point a gun. They will think I said it and take my job away.’

But in the evening, after dinner, Vera begged. ‘I can go to work with you. I want to be an
ama.’

Outside the village was dark because the streets were not lit now. No one walked abroad after the early dark.

‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘There was nowhere else to go. I needed to work and this was the only place I could. Remember? There was no one else.’

In Vera’s mind she saw the letters from her father. On the envelope was the return address, ‘Kobe, Japan’. She had left the letters to Miss Hinchcliffe. But he did not write again. He must not have got her reply, she thought, for the hundredth time.

‘My father wanted to come but couldn’t,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t make a difference,’ said Keiko.

‘It makes a difference,’ Vera shouted. ‘If he knew I needed him, wouldn’t he have come?’

She had put her reply into Miss Hinchcliffe’s hands. Those white, beringed hands had closed over the envelopes. Vera tried to think of what had happened next. In her mind, the letters disappeared, from that moment. Did Hinchcliffe put on stamps; did she run off to the post box? No, she did not. Now it seemed very obvious. There was no further addressing, no mailbox, no search. Miss Hinchcliffe had not sent Vera’s letter. But why?

Could she have hated Hamilton Drew that much? Or hated Vera? Perhaps she was acting on instructions from that mysterious authority to which she sometimes referred.

And where and who was McBean?

Keiko lowered her eyes but not without Vera seeing something there. What did Keiko think? That they had been tricked? Or that Vera just wanted to believe her father would have come for her, when really, Keiko knew better? It made Vera furious. ‘And anyway, where is Kobe, Japan?’ she shouted. ‘Maybe I can go there and find him.’