Jon Cleary - The Phoenix Tree

‘I am interned out at Nayora. I am allowed only one pass a week to come into Tokyo.’ That was not true: she now had Major Nagata’s promise of a pass any time she wished it. ‘I usually spend the day with friends at the University.’

‘We must see you more often at General Imamaru’s.’ He glanced at Madame Tolstoy, who tilted her head as if to say ‘maybe’. Natasha wondered if he was Madame Tolstoy’s lover; then she further wondered what General Imamaru would think of that. ‘You are a close friend of Professor Kambe’s, Mrs Cairns?’

She hedged on that one, suddenly wondering if he was one of Major Nagata’s superiors from the kempei . But if he were he would not be wearing his present uniform; he was on the General Staff. ‘The professor was a close friend of my husband.’

Hayashi nodded; not understandingly but more as if he appreciated a shrewd noncommittal answer. He gazed steadily at her for a long moment, then abruptly picked up his cap from a nearby table and bowed to both women.

‘I must be going,’ he said and left, going out so quickly and without ceremony that he might have been alone when he had decided to leave.

Thrown off-balance by his abrupt departure, Natasha blurted out, ‘Who is he?’

‘A friend,’ Madame Tolstoy had not even glanced at the door through which Colonel Hayashi had disappeared. She stood very still and composed, the straight lines of the cheong-sam seeming to accentuate her stillness. ‘The point is, Mrs Cairns, who are you?’

It was a frontal attack and it made up Natasha’s mind for her. All evening she had been wondering how she would approach Madame Tolstoy about their relationship. At every opportunity, when she had felt she herself was not being observed, she had looked closely at the other woman. She could see a resemblance to herself: they had been cut from the same fine but strong bone, their lips had the same fullness (‘inviting kisses’, Keith had said of hers), each had a trick of holding her head so that the curve of the neck was gracefully emphasized. Only the eyes were different: Madame Tolstoy’s had more slant to them, they were darker and more calculating. Natasha did not think her own were calculating, but the last thing one ever did was look deeply into one’s own eyes. Or at least she never had, and now she wondered if it had been cowardice, not wanting to see the truth.

‘Madame Tolstoy, did you ever know a Mr Henry Greenway in Shanghai?’

It was as if they had collided, though the older woman did not move. But the impact was there in her face, the eyes were no longer calculating: they had had a calculated guess confirmed. Her lips thinned, then she nodded.

‘You’ve been troubling me all evening. Yes, I knew Henry. You’re his daughter.’

Natasha had had no experience of motherhood or mother love, but she had not expected an answer like that . As if Madame Tolstoy, or Mrs Greenway, or whatever she had called herself in those days, had been no more than a vending machine, delivering a baby like those chocolate machines one found on railway stations. She laughed, though she did not feel in the least humoured.

‘Yes, I’m his daughter. And yours too.’

It only struck Natasha later that, though neither of them wanted the relationship right then, neither of them denied it. Lily Tolstoy was capable of emotion, though for most of her life she had manufactured it as the occasion demanded. But she had never experienced an occasion like this, indeed had never even contemplated that it might arise. She had occasionally thought of the child she had abandoned, but never with a true mother’s regret or grief. But now, if only for the moment, she felt what she had once felt, just as fleetingly, for Henry Greenway.

They had been speaking Japanese, though neither of them was really comfortable in the language. Now abruptly Lily said in Mandarin Chinese, ‘Do you want some tea?’

‘Not if we have to go through the ceremony,’ Natasha replied in the same language. She was amused that her mother should have reverted to her native language, as if it was the tongue she had taught Natasha at her knee. Since Lily had deserted her when she was only three months old, it was hardly likely they had exchanged any intelligible words. ‘Let’s have it English style. As a gesture to Father.’

Lily’s face had been almost masklike; but now she smiled. She liked ironic humour: she wore it as armour, to protect herself against some of the knights who had pursued her. She rang a bell for a servant. ‘English tea it shall be. I believe I have a tin of Earl Grey somewhere.’

She led Natasha into a side room furnished with the proper austerity of a tasteful looter: some French elegance from a banker’s home in Saigon. Only the walls were Japanese: Natasha, who had learned a little from Keith, recognized the two Sanraku prints. It was not a room for a warm reunion, and Natasha was glad.

‘General Imamaru treats you well,’ she said, looking about her.

‘He is charming.’ Never so much as when he was absent. Lily had early recognized the general’s drawbacks, but he was a general and he had wealth. One, not even a high-class mistress, could not ask for everything. ‘ Mrs Cairns? That means you were married?’

‘My husband is dead. He worked with Professor Kambe. Father died too, you know. He was killed in 1938. A warlord up in Sikang shot him.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ For a moment Lily was indeed sorry; not that she would miss Henry but that he should have died violently. He had never been a violent man. ‘I liked Henry. I just should not have married him. If your husband is dead, what do you live on?’

‘A small pension.’ And, as of this week, an informer’s pay from Major Nagata.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ said Lily, and for a moment felt slightly queasy with a mother’s pride. ‘You could do better than that.’

Natasha had never thought of herself as a whore; consequently, she did not think of herself as a reformed whore. So she did not feel sanctimonious, a consequence of reform. ‘Possibly – do you mind if I call you Mother?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Lily. ‘I’d never get used to it. Call me Lily.’

Natasha didn’t mind the rejection. She was still trying to sort out her feelings. She assumed she would have felt differently had her mother proved to be something like the romantic figure she had dreamed of; she might even have settled for one of the dull, motherly exiles from the Home Counties she had seen in Hong Kong. She could not, however, come to terms with the acceptance of Lily Tolstoy as her mother, though she knew now that it was a fact.

A servant, who must have had water boiling on call, brought in a silver tea service and exquisite bone-china cups and saucers: more loot. The tea was poured, without ceremony, and Lily offered a silver salver of Peek Frean’s biscuits. Henry Greenway would have felt right at home in the family circle.

‘I think I’d rather wait till the end of the war before I start accepting any favours,’ said Natasha. ‘My late husband taught me to take the long view.’

‘You think Japan will lose the war?’ Lily sipped her tea, little finger raised: she was a good secondrate actress.

Natasha took a risk: after all, Lily was her mother. Besides, tomorrow Major Nagata would ask her what she had learned and she would have to give him something for his money. ‘I listened to the men’s conversation this evening. None of them sounded optimistic.’

‘Natasha—’ It was the first time she had called her by name; it suggested she was prepared to be a little more intimate. ‘You probably have guessed what my life has been. Mistresses can never afford to take the long view. It is myopic for one to think one can.’