The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary
he had meant to her. Having no country of her own, she was neither friend of Britain nor enemy of Japan. She was, as Keith Cairns had been, a romantic, seduced by the thought of danger, trying to prove, without any hope that the proof would be made public, that life for her was more than bed, board and baubles. She was, in the most hazardous way, still looking for respectability.
‘I got some extra fish on the black market,’ said Yuri Suzuki, coming up from the village. ‘But we are running out of money.’
She was a round little woman, a dumpling spiced with iron filings; Natasha had never discovered her age: she could have been anything between forty and sixty. She had been Keith Cairns’s housekeeper for five years when he had brought Natasha home; they had met like two wives over the still-warm body of a bigamist. But when Keith had died, Yuri had, as if there was no longer anything to fight over, abruptly changed her attitude; she had taken over as Natasha’s surrogate mother. Short-tempered, ungracious, she nevertheless had a motherly instinct she could not deny: she had a need to take care of someone.
‘I have nothing else to sell,’ said Natasha.
She had already sold the jewelry that her admirers in Hong Kong had given her. She had always kept it hidden while Keith had been alive, not wanting to remind him blatantly of what she had been before she had met him. After his death she had brought it out and, piece by piece, had found buyers for it. Now all she and Yuri had to live on was the small pension that the university, with punctilious regard for its dead professor, still paid her. Keith had died after a bungled operation for appendicitis, a mundane death for an agent, and the university authorities had suffered a loss of face in that it was one of their own medical professors who had performed the fatal operation. The pension payment arrived each month like a penance.
‘You should ask your friends to send money.’
Yuri knew of the short-wave radio hidden in the secret cellar of their house. She had never made any comment on Cairnssan’s extracurricular work as a spy, as if it were just another bachelor’s peccadillo, on a par with his drinking and his bringing home women who were no better than they should have been. When Natasha had taken over the broadcasting, Yuri had continued to make no comment, treating it as if it were the normal pan of running a household. Natasha sometimes felt uneasy about her, but she had no alternative but to trust her.
‘Yuri, how can they do that? Cable it to the General Post Office? One hundred pounds payable on the order of the British Government?’
‘They should pay you for what you are doing,’ said Yuri stubbornly. She was not thinking of the risk, but only of the actual work being done. ‘Work should be paid for.’
‘You sound like a trade unionist.’ Natasha had learned from Keith, a born Tory, of the blight one could find in Britain.
‘What’s that?’ sniffed Yuri, and on the other side of the world Keir Hardie and company went on strike in their graves.
Then Natasha saw the local sergeant of police and a stout man in civilian clothes coming up the path towards them. Nayora was a private resort village that had been developed by a group of upper-middle-class professionals just before World War One: government officials, lawyers, doctors who did not want to have to mix in their holiday time with the rapidly expanding lower middle class. All the villas stood in what had once been carefully tended gardens; now, in the present war, one elderly gardener ran an arthritic-gaited race against galloping grass and exploding shrubs. Some of the old families still lived here, though they did not mix with the alien residents who had been foisted on them. Nayora had always been a law-abiding community and even with the advent of the aliens the authorities had seen no need to enlarge the village force of Sergeant Masuda and his rather dull-witted constable.
Sergeant Masuda, who had got where he was by being obsequious, almost contorted himself in his deference to the man he brought to the gate of Natasha’s villa. ‘Major Nagata is from Tokyo, a very important man. We are honoured that he should visit us.’
Nagata, who wrote bad poetry, saw all this as snow falling on Mount Fuji: praise, if taken with proper grace, can only make a man look better. He smiled at Natasha as if to make her feel she was properly honoured by his arrival. ‘Mrs Cairns, forgive my manners. I should have warned you I was coming. But, unfortunately, in my profession warnings are often misunderstood. Or taken advantage of.’
‘What is your profession, Major Nagata?’
‘He is from the kempei,’ said Sergeant Masuda, rolling his eyes as if he were introducing one of the Kuni-Tsu-Kami, the gods of the earth.
‘It is difficult for the secret police to be secret when one is accompanied by a Greek chorus,’ said Nagata. ‘Go and arrest someone, sergeant. Leave me alone with Mrs Cairns.’
Masuda backed off with a bow that bent him double, then went lolloping down the path with his peculiar loose-kneed gait. Nagata looked after him, then turned back to Natasha and Yuri.
‘You may dismiss your servant.’
Yuri snorted, showing what she thought of the police, secret or otherwise, then, without a bow, she turned and marched up into the house. Nagata looked after her too.
‘Does she give you any trouble?’
‘If she does, I tolerate it.’ Natasha felt far less comfortable than she sounded. ‘What do you want, major?’
It suddenly struck her that, for all his fawning towards Nagata, Sergeant Masuda had taken a grave risk in identifying the secret policeman. The kempei was never spoken of openly; certainly not between an official and a woman like Natasha. The sergeant owed her nothing and she wondered why he had put himself at risk by warning her who Nagata was. Did he know about the radio set in the secret cellar?
‘Do you have a pass to leave Nayora, Mrs Cairns?’
‘Yes, a twelve-hour one, once a week. I report to Sergeant Masuda before I leave and when I return.’
‘Where do you go to?’
‘To Tokyo.’
‘What do you do there?’
‘Go shopping, mostly.’
‘On the black market?’ He smiled, to show he did not think it was a major crime. Though his teeth were not coated, they had a yellow tint, like an old man’s.
‘Of course.’ She also smiled.
‘Do you visit anyone? Friends?’
She thought of only Professor Kambe as a friend; the others had been friends of Keith’s and still tolerated her, mainly because the men amongst them admired her beauty and some of them, she knew, had dreams that some day she might be their mistress. Her vanity was very clear-sighted, enabling her to see others’ weaknesses as well as her own assets.
‘Some people at the university.’
‘Some who work for the government and the military?’
‘They may.’ She knew exactly who did; but she was certain that Nagata also knew them. She had the sudden feeling that he knew all about her, that his questions were designed not to give him information but to trip her up. ‘But you know, major, that men never discuss their work with women, especially women who are not their wives.’
‘Did Professor Cairns ever discuss his work with you?’
‘Never. He was Scottish – they are as bad as the Japanese. Do you discuss your work with your wife?’ She was uneasy, but she had always believed that attack was the best form of defence. Especially if it was accompanied by what Keith used to call her whore’s smile. In his cruel moments he could be as loving as a rugby forward, which he had once been.
‘Hardly,’ said Nagata, with a policeman’s smile. Then, still showing his yellow teeth, like a bamboo blade, he said, ‘Do you ever visit a woman called Eastern Pearl?’
Natasha frowned, wondering where this question was supposed to lead. ‘Eastern Pearl? Is she a geisha or some sort of entertainer?’