Three Views of Crystal Water. Katherine Govier
in the funeral parlour. She did not like the way Hinchcliffe had taken over, but then who was to do it? Her mind spun with the nursery rhymes her mother had read to her. Parlour, she thought, come into my parlour said the spider to the fly. Hark, hark, the dogs do bark. Wednesday’s child is full of woe. The parlour was all burgundy and varnished wood and there was no air in it. There was no smell of the sea, not even in Grandfather’s clothes, because Keiko had cleaned everything so well.
The minister came; he hugged Vera and said that it was very hard, so soon after her mother’s death. The Captain did not go to the church the way her mother had. But he had lived a good life.
‘A good life?’ protested Vera. What could the insipid word ‘good’ mean in the days of James Lowinger? Did they mean he should have been content to die, as if he’d taken a large helping of life and ought not to be greedy? In fact his life was huge and sometimes horrible, but marvellous, and not to be taken away from her. She had asked for his stories but she could not piece it all together, or make a wholeness out of it.
‘He saw a great deal of the world, I suppose,’ said the minister dubiously.
Keiko knelt beside the coffin. Although they tried, no one could displace her. She sat on her heels and her face was on her hands, which were flat on the floor, folded up like a fan. She raised her body from time to time, and bowed, and then went back down, with no expression on her face. Like the women in the prints, Vera thought.
Vera’s schoolteacher got down on his knees beside her, trying to shake her hand.
‘Miss Tanaka?’ he said. He alone had troubled to discover her name.
When she wouldn’t raise her head he put his down on the floor beside hers and said loudly, as if to wake a sleeper, ‘Thank you so much for taking good care of Vera.’
He was the only one.
But it was because he thought that it was over, Keiko’s taking care of Vera.
‘I suppose her father will come,’ said the neighbours.
No one had thought of Hamilton Drew.
‘And your father? Will he be coming home?’ asked the minister.
Vera looked at Hinchcliffe.
‘We are attempting to locate him,’ the secretary said with a firm smile. ‘I have wired. I have also sent a letter. I am not certain where he is…’
And then they all went home.
And it was silent.
James Lowinger did not wake up and shake the house with his morning sneezes. And there was no bustle to get his morning tea or his shoes and no secret laughter coming from that room and no secret tears either, which was what Vera hoped for. She wanted Keiko to suffer. She wanted Keiko to show on her face the desolation of Vera’s insides. Since she had the temerity to love the old man, she might as well pay the price. What did she expect, taking up with a man so much older? She had to know he would die, didn’t she?
Vera’s pathetic hymns of grief, her English nursery rhymes, swirled in her head. London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down. The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow, what shall we do then? He had died; old men do that, that was what they did. Maybe it was even Keiko’s fault. There were many cruel things she planned to say to Keiko, but when she saw her, head bent over the little iron grill on the back step to cook fish, something moved inside of Vera and she could not.
She went to Lowinger and McBean after school. There was, temporarily, a sense of urgency in the warehouse. The captains came in their blue caps and Hinchcliffe talked to them tersely; they left again. There was no word from Hamilton Drew. Vera was curious, but not heartbroken. She did not remember the man, anyway. The business would have to keep on running, said Hinchcliffe; it could not close because they were always in the middle of a shipment, or an order, and there was no right time to stop. Vera nonetheless hoped that every day would be Miss Hinchcliffe’s last. That she would stand up from her desk and put on her coat and hand over the key to Vera. But no. Hinchcliffe showed no signs of going away.
The flurry of visits soon ended. Vera planned to ransack her grandfather’s office. But Hinchcliffe was there, letting nothing out in the open. She appeared to be very busy with filing and typing letters with two sheets of blue carbon paper behind them. Vera walked slowly across in front of her desk.
Was Miss Hinchcliffe sad?
Hadn’t she too been in love with her grandfather?
Vera used to think that. But now she did not.
She wanted to ask her if she’d seen any signs of the book he was writing, or was going to write, the book that put him in the famous conflict between truth and loyalty, but on entering the door once more after school she thought better of it. She did not want to alert Miss Hinchcliffe. She thought of her grandfather’s impish face, his long chin with the permanent dimple, his finger laid alongside his nose, and she wanted to cry, but she did not.
She wondered if the mythical Mr McBean would appear. She wondered if her father would come. Miss Hinchcliffe divulged nothing. Vera sped past her and disappeared into the back. The pictures lay where she’d left them.
Three Views of Crystal Water. She ran her fingers over the paper, the way he had the day she and her grandfather had looked at the pictures together. She told herself the story again. A stranger surprised the beautiful diving women taking their ease on the beach. A man and a woman crossed paths under cover of midnight on the arch of a bridge, and a letter changed hands. And then the third, conflagration: the pagoda in flames, the samurai at the gate, the women fleeing.
* * *
One day Keiko came to the warehouse with Vera. She presented herself to Hinchcliffe, bowing. Hinchcliffe barely looked up.
‘Honourable Miss Hinchcliffe,’ Keiko began. She was still bowing.
There was no response. Hinchcliffe’s neck tendons showed more definitely under her chin, that was all.
Keiko looked to Vera for guidance. ‘We come to you,’ she began.
Vera nudged her to stand up straight. Hinchcliffe was gazing intently at a letter she was typing.
‘Hinchcliffe!’ said Vera, like someone prompting a rude child.
Hinchcliffe blushed red.
‘She’s pretending we’re not here,’ said Vera to Keiko by way of explanation. Keiko understood Vera’s English, but then so too did Hinchcliffe. This riled the secretary. She looked up.
‘Yes, Miss Tanaka, what can I do for you?’ she asked.
‘We must talk about what James left for us,’ said Keiko. ‘He told me–’
‘I have my instructions.’ Hinchcliffe’s face was elaborately innocent. Vera examined it closely enough however to be certain that the woman was struggling against tears.
‘Instructions from who?’ said Vera innocently.
‘I really cannot discuss it.’
‘What work are you doing now?’ asked Vera with equal innocence, nodding at the typewriter.
Hinchcliffe whipped her head around. She let her jaw drop in imitation–conscious? Or not?–of the insolent way Vera had previously let her jaw drop in their altercations. The pink of her face powder stood out like crayon on her cheeks, as her complexion took on the chalky pallor of anger.
‘How can you ask that? I have been keeping this business going for years, while the Captain…’ She raised her eyebrows in the general direction of Keiko. ‘Don’t you know it would all be nothing if it weren’t for me?’
Keiko was not giving up. She stood very firmly in front of the desk.
‘We have come to you.’
‘Yes?’
‘We have come.’
Keiko