Page 21 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘They all seem to think it’s very edgy and exciting to have a woman on the stage at all.’

‘Oh, right. Yes. I’ve seen you in the paper as well, but I don’t think I … yeah. Listen, I didn’t mean to have to be rescued like a little twerp; you don’t have to calm me down or make friends. I’ll let you get on.’ She started to edge away.

‘I can see that, but I only did it so you could rescue me. Kuroda’s going to spend this whole thing yelling in my ear unless I find someone else to sit with.’ He looked awkward. ‘Would you mind?’

‘I’m not a prostitute,’ she half snapped.

‘I know,’ he said. He bowed, just as low as he would have to a lady of his own rank. It made her hesitate. It wasn’t how men behaved when they expected things. ‘I’m Keita Mori.’

‘Takiko,’ she said, and paused, because she knew he was only going to say pardon when she said Pepperharrow, and she didn’t want to explain to yet another person that actually she was a bit foreign but yes she did talk properly thanks, and yes, that was probably why she was ugly. ‘Pepperharrow.’

‘Good to meet you, Miss Pepperharrow,’ he said, and didn’t even stumble over the pronunciation. He had a British accent in English. ‘Would you…?’She meant to say no, and get out, but he looked nearly as helpless as she must have a minute ago. ‘All right.’

Takiko tried to stay sceptical, because there must be another shoe about to drop.

She always remembered how he’d seemed on that first afternoon, sitting in the auditorium in a sunbeam. It was a strange quality, but Mori distinctly didn’t belong in a place with steam engines. If you had taken away his modern clothes and put him in courtly black, he could have come straight from the council at the old palace in Kyoto – the sort of man you might have found, once, on one of the fabulous gilded bridges with their vaulted roofs, and who the ladies watched in the mirror water while they pretended to look at a convenient heron.

‘I’ve never seen you here before,’ she said. He was even giving her a good amount of space, sitting fully an arm’s length away. ‘Are you a fan of kabuki?’

‘I hate kabuki,’ he confessed. He looked guilty about admitting it, but not confident enough in his own ability to lie to say anything else. ‘The dances always look a lot like a cat trying to wrestle a sock puppet; I’ve never really understood. But this is what Countess Kuroda wanted to do, so, here we are.’ He paused. Two rows down from them, Count Kuroda was still talking hopefully about the sumo. ‘What was all that, by the way? With that man before.’

‘He’s the theatre master,’ she explained. ‘We don’t have a licence to perform this play, and he doesn’t like me, so he gave me the title role. I think he wants to report me to the censor’s office and have me disbarred from the Guild. That would mean a lifetime acting ban. So I thought I’d duck out, then go to the censor’s office myself and get him disbarred.’

Mori laughed. ‘Brilliant.’

‘And then I thought I’d threaten to disbar all of them unless they make me a gift of a controlling share in the company.’ She pressed on the sore place on the back of her head again. ‘I’ve lost patience with sewing.’

He thought about it. ‘How are you going to stop them all beating you up behind the bins?’

‘If they do that, I’ll shut the theatre.’

He smiled again. There wasn’t even a flicker of disapproval in him. He glanced towards the stage a few seconds before the announcer arrived.

‘I’m afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s been a last-minute change of casting—’

‘Get the fuck on with it!’ Kuroda called. He had a klaxon voice. Beside him, his beautiful wife winced. Takiko recognised them both from the papers. They were ten times more vivid in real life. The Countess was wearing a green dress that was probably worth about what Takiko earned in fifteen years.

‘—but the performance will begin in a very few minutes!’ the announcer said hysterically.

‘Believe it when I see it, mate!’ Kuroda shouted.

Mori had bought some candied nuts for them to share. Takiko threw a walnut at Kuroda’s head. ‘Hey. You. Be quiet. They’re doing their best.’

Kuroda swung round and started to say something, but then he saw Mori, who was laughing, and started laughing too. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

She had a stupid suffusion of belonging and tried to squash it down. If you let yourself believe you belonged with people like this, you drowned, because they were sirens and they breathed another element. Mori must have noticed she’d stopped smiling too quickly, because he was watching her. She had to look away. There was too much song in his eyes.

That evening, after she had watched the suited men from the censor’s office serve up an official Guild revocation of Ayame’s name, Mori bought her a bottle of champagne. Kuroda came along too, and the Countess, and all their brightly coloured friends. Kuroda shook up the bottle so that the bubbles poured everywhere. Mori touched their glasses together with a quiet low cheers. Kuroda whooped. He had, far from disapproving when Mori explained what she’d done, thought it was funny.

‘To Kali the Destroyer!’

She laughed, embarrassed and happy at the same time, and lonely despite it all. That was the trouble with the floating world that artists and geisha and actors made. You sat on a raft on clear water, snatching glimpses of a life that wasn’t yours. There was a sort of grace you had to learn, one that let you see it all and dive down for a few minutes, but then come back up and watch the tide go out without feeling resentful. She wasn’t very good at it.

In fact Mori came back every Saturday, with all his friends. Then more wealthy people followed, and then, one day, the princesses. Partly because she loved it and partly because she was scared of getting above herself now she had money, Takiko still lived in the little room in the playhouse attic, but it wasn’t a place where you could make tea for a princess. With an unhappy, dragging reluctance, she started to look for houses. She could buy one outright. She ought to have been ecstatic – she could hear her mother’s voice saying so – but she didn’t want to go. The attic was never quiet, voices always filtered up, and sometimes someone hurried in to ask about costumes or switching roles, and it meant there was never the awful, dead silence that would hang over a detached house with a fine garden somewhere proper. She was lonely enough as it was, among all the reassuring theatre sounds. She’d go mad without them. She said as much one evening to Mori, who didn’t care where he drank his tea as long as it was warm. He was sitting in front of her tiny stove, his back propped against a broken mannequin.

‘I’ve been trying to get someone to buy the east wing at Yoruji. I don’t need all the space and it bloody echoes.’

‘You can’t break up that lovely house.’