With My Little Eye (15 page)

‘So I am!’

‘I think maybe you need someone to look after you.’

This prompted me to tell her of Joy’s imminent and sudden departure. When I had finished, she shook her head in anger. ‘I think this not good. You pay her too much and now she behaves with no consideration.’ How did she know how much we had been paying her? Laura could not possibly have told her. Perhaps she had told Mrs Kawasaki, who had then told Miss Morita. ‘I never like that person. But I did not wish to tell. She is English and so maybe you become upset by my criticism.’

When she was leaving, she put a hand to the brim of her straw hat and looked out at me from under it: ‘If you require me for anything, please, please let me know. I am very happy to help. Shopping. Looking after Puppy-chan. With Hoover. I am not a good cook but I can cook a little, Japanese style. Please telephone if you need me. Any time. I am happy.’ She gave her little bow. ‘So I say
sayonara
. Do not be too sad. So much in this world is good and beautiful. So much.’

I am walking, at my usually slow pace, stick in hand, down Kensington High Street. It is foolish of me to do so, because today is a Saturday and on Saturdays the High Street is crowded with people, aimlessly drifting, suddenly zigzagging across my path or walking three or four abreast, in a way that makes me feel defenceless and disorientated.

Ahead of me I see an elderly man in dark glasses, old Army greatcoat, peaked cap and flowing red-and-white Arsenal scarf, dramatically swaying from side to side and bowing up and down as he plays the violin outside Boots. There is a pewter mug on the ground and beside it, as though accidentally
dropped
there, a piece of cardboard with ‘Give generously’ scrawled in untidy script and then below that, in capitals, ‘BLIND!’. Usually I hurry past such people, making the excuse to myself that they are probably frauds and that it is far better to give to bona fide charities – as Laura and I do from time to time.

He is playing the Londonderry Air with an incompetence, all erratic intonation and clumsy portamenti, that at first grates on me. Then I halt, chilled and moved by the bleak pathos of the frail, solitary figure, the indifferent crowds and the plaintive tune. I often tell myself about my own condition: Well, it could be worse, much worse. Here is the confirmation of that. I put my hand in my coat pocket and find a pound coin. I stoop and drop it, with a clink, into the mug on the ground beside him. As I straighten, he croaks something. For a brief moment I hear, because of that previous experience of the man with the cropped hair, dirty trainers and long, black overcoat, ‘OK’. Then I realise that what he has said is, ‘Oh, thanks.’ I look over my shoulder. I want to see him better with my little eye. How old is he? Is he wearing mittens? Yes, I think that he is but, peering through my little eye, I cannot be sure. I peer again. Then I hurry on – and in doing so walk straight into a woman.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ The impact has been jarring. Then I hasten to explain. ‘I have virtually no peripheral vision, I’m afraid. It’s as
though I were looking at you through a tunnel. It’s an awful nuisance. Sorry,’ I repeat. ‘Are you all right?’

I now see that she is pulling behind her a little wicker trolley and that sitting upright in it is a small terrier – Lakeland, Border, Yorkshire? – its head tilted to one side and its ears pricked. The woman is middle-aged with carefully waved grey hair, grey eyes and a large mouth.

She does not answer my question. Instead she cries out, ‘Oh, you poor dear! Then she adds, ‘Would you like me to see you home?’

‘Oh, no. No. Thank you. I can manage quite well. If I take my time.’

‘I’d be happy to oblige. I’ve done everything I had to do – which was taking my little boy to the vet for an overdue injection.’

I walk on and then turn up Church Street for home, feeling suddenly happy. I even whistle for a moment, a few bars of
Sakura
that, so long forgotten, has suddenly and inexplicably come into my head. As I approach our gate, the man whom Laura and I call ‘The Colonel’ emerges, with his strutting walk, through the next-door one. He isn’t really a retired colonel but a retired dealer in second-hand cars. But because of his
exaggeratedly
clipped, booming voice, his well-trimmed white
moustache
and his white hair decisively parted in the middle, he might easily be mistaken for one.

His wife is long dead and his numerous children have been scattered to the four corners of the world. As a result, starved of company and having far too little to do, he likes to waylay anyone, even a stranger, during the hours before he marches into the pub at the bottom of the road at exactly noon.

‘Hello, old chap! How are you getting along then? Is the sight any better?’

I have already told him and innumerable other kind enquirers that it will never be better. But this time I cannot be bothered to tell him that yet again. Instead I say, ‘Not very much, I’m afraid. I just live in hope.’

‘Well, that’s what most of us live in. I certainly do. Poor chap! It must be rather inconvenient for you.’

‘Oh, I’m adapting.’

Then, because it is clear that he has nothing to do with the
twenty or so minutes before twelve o’clock and because the incident with the woman has made me feel so unaccountably happy, I tell him about it. He listens attentively, stroking his moustache, his small, hooded eyes fixed on me. At the end, ‘Good God!’ he exclaims. ‘D’you think she was a tart?’

I laugh. ‘She was a decent, kind Kensington woman.’

‘A lot of decent, kind Kensington women are tarts. That’s how they can afford to be Kensington women.’ Is he being serious or joking? I cannot be certain.

‘I’m sure that this one was never a tart.’

‘Well, bless my soul! Well, I daresay you know best.’

It was barely ten o’clock. Sitting at my late breakfast, I heard the rubbish cart out in the street. It stopped, grunted and gasped to a halt, and then moved on. I turned my head and saw that the bin in the recess beside the refrigerator was
overflowing
with garbage. I should have put it out. But in my misery, everything seemed too much trouble to do at once and so was deferred from day to day. Soon, I thought, the kitchen would be infested not merely with cockroaches but with rats. I pushed my half-drunk cup of Nescafé away from me – Laura always insisted that we drink only ‘real’ coffee but I had not been able to find any at the ramshackle little store at the end of the road – and stretched out for the bottle of Gordon’s gin, bought in Kobe from a lascar who had smuggled it, probably stolen, off the liner on which he worked. I did not bother to pour out a shot but raised the bottle to my lips and gulped. I bent down and looked at Bruin under the table at my feet. ‘I’m in danger of becoming a drunk,’ I told him. He returned my look and wagged his tail.

At that moment the bell rang and rang again. Who the hell could it be at such an hour? Might it be one of the dustmen, always so efficient, to ask what had happened to our bin? I was not expecting Miss Morita until the afternoon.

Bruin padded after me and began to bark as soon as I had opened the door.

Rex was standing there, in the kind of flowered summer shirt all too common today in hot weather but then rare except on a beach or in the countryside. His plump, exposed forearms were red from the sun, as was his forehead. Involuntarily I covered my mouth with my hand, in typically Japanese manner. Would he smell the gin on my breath?

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘No come in, come in.’

‘Is this a new acquisition?’ He nervously looked down at
Bruin, who had abandoned his barking to snuffle away at what I hoped was not a flea.

‘A foundling. Thrown over the wall.’

‘Oh, we’ve had some of those. We take them straight to the vet for what’s called mercy killing. But when one thinks of it, it’s really merciless killing – having one of God’s creatures put down. We always feel guilty and ashamed. But the truth is we’re not dog people at all.’

In the sitting room he told me the object of his errand. The Council were sending dear old Eric Newton out on a tour – to lecture about modern English painting. He was rather past it now, poor old chap, but the CV was pretty impressive. Of course he and I were involved in different fields of art. But perhaps that was no bad thing – since each of us might have things of interest to impart to the other.

I already knew what was to follow. Like many lazy but
successful
people in positions of authority, Rex had a genius for delegating. He could not be bothered to escort this
distinguished
visitor from gallery to gallery, museum to museum, temple to temple and lecture to lecture. Who better to
press-gang
into doing that than myself?

‘I’m afraid I know so little about art. Music is my thing really. If you could spare the time… All expenses paid of course.’ He laughed. ‘Generously.’

In other circumstances I might have said that I was sorry, I was too busy. But in my loneliness, I welcomed the suggestion. However old and out of date, Newton, former friend of Sickert and Augustus John and present friend of Duncan Grant and Graham Sutherland, would no doubt prove an interesting companion.

‘Good show! I couldn’t be more grateful.’

‘Can I offer you anything? I’ve been remiss in not asking you earlier.’

He shook his head. ‘Many thanks. I’ve so much to do this morning. Miss Iwai is off with some sort of tummy bug. I often wonder how real her illnesses are.’ He got to his feet and peered out at the persimmon tree. ‘I love that tree. It’s so beautiful and yet it’s totally without any pretension.’ He turned: ‘You must be missing Laura.’

I had told him nothing of her recent departure. But he was a
man who not only knew everybody but also knew everything about them.

‘Yes, a lot.’

‘If I may ask – what made her go like that, so abruptly?’

‘Well…’ I didn’t really want to pursue the conversation. ‘Well… She couldn’t stand the heat. It was making her feel ill. And Mark kept getting these fevers and upsets of one kind and another.’

‘Will she back?’

‘I hope so.’ But I had no such hope.

‘You must be missing her. She’s a terrific character.’ He
lumbered
to his feet and made for the door. Bruin padded after him. ‘And I hear that Joy has left you, too?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’

‘That German couple are incredible bores. But that won’t trouble her, since she’s such a bore herself, poor dear.’

‘I don’t really miss her company, I must confess. But I do miss her cooking and cleaning.’

‘Yes, that corned beef hash! Isn’t that her trump card? And of course those sausage rolls, of which she’s always so proud! So – have you found a replacement?’

‘Not yet. I haven’t really looked for one.’

‘I’ll ask around, if you like.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘How about coming to a party I’m giving? I can see that you’re a little down. The day after tomorrow, six-thirty. It’s Masa’s birthday.’ Masa, I reminded myself, was Rex’s
diminutive
, perky, restless, relentlessly amiable ‘houseboy’. ‘God knows how old he’s going to be. It’s now this, now that. He didn’t go to Doshisha as soon as he left school. It was I who sent him there – when he was well into his twenties. His parents were too poor to do so. No presents, mind! You’ll come, won’t you?’

I hesitated for a moment. ‘Thanks. I’d like that.’

‘Your Miss Morita will be coming. She and Masa get on well. She uses our library a lot – not only when she’s digging out information for you.’

As I closed the door on him, I wondered what sort of gossip he had heard about Miss Morita and me. We had, after all,
been constantly together during the weeks of Laura’s self-isolation.

I told Miss Morita that, if she wished, I would drive her to Rex’s party. Then I wished that I had not done so. But for my invitation to her, I’d have made some late excuse and said that I could not come. I hated my isolation and yet the thought of company nauseated me. So far I had survived the day without a drop of booze. I kept telling myself that at the party I must not have more than one drink.

‘Oh, you are so smart!’ Miss Morita exclaimed when she saw me in the white linen suit, a present from Laura immediately before our departure for Japan, that I so rarely wore and in which I always felt a vague physical discomfort, as from
something
that did not quite fit, even though it had been impeccably tailored by Anderson and Sheppard.

‘You also!’ I was not flattering her. In her beige
crêpe
de
Chine
dress, with its pleated skirt, a dark-green silk scarf and high-heeled brown court shoes, she looked far more elegant than I had ever seen her. Her face was startling in the pallor of its make-up.

Giving a little bobbing curtsey, she looked up at me from under lowered lids. ‘You are too kind to me.’

‘Not at all. I mean it.’

‘My mother says that heels of these shoes are too high.’

‘Your mother is talking nonsense.’

‘You must not say such things!’ She raised a hand to her mouth – how I longed to pull it away! – and giggled behind it.

Masa opened the door of Rex’s flat to us. To my
astonishment
he at once put hands on my shoulders and, even as
involuntarily
I began to back off, planted a kiss on each of my cheeks. In those days for a man publicly to kiss another was extremely rare in England. For him to perform that action in Japan was virtually unknown.

‘Happy birthday!’ I held out my clumsily wrapped present of a box of Scottish shortbread bought some weeks before by Laura in Kobe.

Oddly, his response was an enthusiastic repetition of my good wishes: ‘Happy birthday!’

Miss Morita now held out what appeared to be a scroll, neatly wrapped in gold paper. ‘Please.’

‘In Japan we open presents later,’ he explained to me. Then he turned to her: ‘But I must know. What is it?’

‘I have painted you a picture. Old style. Arashiyama. I am afraid I am not a good painter.’

‘Beautiful!’ Since he had not looked at the picture, this judgement was also odd. He placed our presents, still unopened, on top of a chest and announced, ‘Now I introduce you.’

As at all Rex’s parties, there was every variety of guest. In the course of the evening, I met two Australians, handsome, healthy and happy, who were on their honeymoon; a faded American widow with a narrow, pinched face, who at once revealed to me that she was about to enter a Buddhist nunnery; three
obviously
queer English tourists from Leeds, huddled together, heads close and far from delighted when Masa interrupted them to introduce me; various consular officials or foreign businessmen with their wives; and a number of Japanese
professors
without them. Whenever I became separated from Miss Morita, she all too soon rejoined me.

Two waiters, one white-haired and heavily lined and the other crew-cut and youthful, carried round trays of minuscule canapés. At one point, as I took one, Masa touched my
shoulder
as he passed: ‘I make canapé. I hope OK?’

‘They’re terrific.’ But already he had moved out of earshot.

Greedily I grabbed glass after glass of champagne and drained each in a few feverish gulps. Suddenly I noticed the look of alarm on Miss Morita’s face as I stretched my hand out over her shoulder for yet another.

Rex came up to us. He had a glass of champagne in each hand. One tilted as he moved towards me and champagne splashed on my trouser leg. He made no apology, presumably unaware.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

‘Hugely.’

‘I wanted to cheer you up. When I called the other day, you seemed to be so down.’

‘I’m not down now. In fact I’m up. Very much up.’

Suddenly I realised that I was far up on the way to being drunk.

‘Well, that’s how we want it. Oh, by the way, you remember that I volunteered to look for someone to take the place of the joyless Joy? Well, I think that I’ve found the perfect person. I invited him to come this evening but he had to work late. He’s a barman at the Miyako hotel – that’s where I met him. But he isn’t getting on well with the manager and wants to move on. Before the Miyako he was houseboy to a French diplomat in Tokyo. He strikes me as a good egg. Would you like to see him?’

‘Why not?’

He put a hand on my shoulder, with a laugh. ‘Don’t look so apprehensive. He’s not in the least queer – as far as I can gather. When I try to flirt with him at the bar, he usually moves off and starts to polish glasses. So how about it?’

‘Fine. Thank you.’

‘Then I’ll give him your name and number. He speaks both French and English. Not at all badly. He graduated from Waseda – in English, I think.’

‘It’s odd that a Waseda graduate is a houseboy.’

He leaned forward and lowered his voice: ‘I think the
problem
may be that his family came from Korea – brought here before the war. Even today Koreans are very much second-class citizens in Japan – like West Indians back home. As no doubt you know.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘I must take these drinks to the Waterfords. They must be wondering what has happened to me. I do wish they would mix. They have such a look of bewildered superiority at all my parties.’ Waterford was American Consul-General in Osaka.

Miss Morita appeared yet again. ‘I think we must go.’ It was not an interrogative. She was clearly worried that I might in some way make a fool or an exhibition of myself.

I produced the usual protest of drunks in such
circumstances
: ‘But I’m just beginning to enjoy myself.’

She linked her arm in mine. ‘Please. Come.’

It was only as I began to drive the car down the main street of the city that I finally realised how drunk I was. She put a hand on my arm. ‘Take care!’ Jumping the lights just as they had changed, I had all but collided with a van.