Page 45 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

Countess Kuroda was at Yoruji more than she was at home. Visiting the Baroness, she said, but really avoiding him. He’d tried to make Mori send her home. Mori had said that Kuroda was welcome to take it up with Mrs Pepperharrow. Since Mrs Pepperharrow wasn’t above running political satires at her extremely well-attended playhouse, he’d decided he probably shouldn’t. So at Yoruji the Countess stayed. He was starting to wonder if she’d made it a permanent thing. Most of her clothes were here now, her jewellery, even the accounts ledgers.

The ledgers were a bad sign. She spent a couple of hours most mornings working on them, meticulous about the running of the household in Tokyo even in her physical absence, every sen and every bar of soap accounted for in her lacy handwriting. The steward sent her twice-daily telegrams. She kept them pinned together at the back of the ledgers, beside another pinned pile of right-angle-aligned receipts. He had thought it was forced conscientiousness for a long time, before he noticed how she ate. She peeled apples, always clockwise, and always in one smooth, perfect spiral.

He almost wouldn’t have minded the under-handed little shuffle she’d done across to Yoruji – almost – but somehow everyone knew. Some of the gossip columns (they never named names, but they made such specific jokes that it was obvious who they meant) were even suggesting some kind of amazing, scandalous ménage-à-trois with Mori and Mrs Pepperharrow.

‘Well, they do know that you probably shouldn’t sell huge swathes of government land for tuppence to your definitely- not-mafia friends in Osaka,’ Mori said fairly. Somewhere, the peculiar house creaked.

‘What’s this to you? It isn’t as though someone handed me an envelope under a bloody table. It was put to the ministerial council and we all agreed.’

‘The council knows how to watch you shoot yourself in the foot,’ Mori said, amused. ‘They’re sending some accountants round tonight. Should be here soon.’

‘So much for hiding out here. And I bet you find all this hysterical,’ Kuroda snapped. He poured himself a third cup, then lost patience with the cup and drank from the bottle instead. ‘You could have said something while it was happening. If there’s one thing I’d bet my life on it’s that you saw this coming miles away.’

Mori set the paper on his knee again. ‘Why should I point out a pothole you can see perfectly well?’

Kuroda drained the last of the sake from the bottle and slung it at him. Mori leaned backwards without looking. It smashed on the wall next to him. Mori lifted a shard of it out of his cup and flicked it back. He didn’t do it pointedly, only with fun in his eyes. Kuroda slumped down next to him. Mori gave him a cup of tea and watched too seriously as he poured a shot of brandy into it.

Kuroda smacked him over the head, or tried to, but Mori caught his wrist and bent it backwards until the bone creaked and he had to snarl and snatch his hand back. It hurt. But it was reassuring, too, wonderful, to smash up against a thing that wouldn’t move even if he hurled his whole being at it. Abruptly he needed to test it again, to make sure. Before he had even drawn his fist back, Mori caught his throat and squeezed hard. His knuckles were criss-crossed with parallel white scars. He anticipated the coming punch in the gut, because he picked up the kettle with his free hand and tipped it until it was a fraction away from pouring boiling water into Kuroda’s lap. Close up, he smelled of heat and the sea. He must have been on the beach before.

‘Fuck you,’ Kuroda wheezed, and kissed his cheek.

Takiko saw the men fighting through the two windows.

‘It’s like having dogs, isn’t it,’ the Countess said, and poured Takiko some more tea. She always took over the tea. Takiko, she said, was shocking at it. ‘I think Kuroda’s a bit in love with him, don’t you?’

‘He’s fine, I’m not worried about Mori’s honour.’

‘So this play,’ the Countess said. She was glittering in the lamplight. It was one of the things that Takiko liked about her, that she insisted on dressing for dinner and after-dinner tea in the evenings, even if nobody was around to see except Takiko and the owls. ‘You’ll start the new run when? Only you know Akiko, whose husband is that irritating education fellow who wants to abolish kanji? She’s just started at The Times.’

‘Isn’t that in English?’

‘One has to start somewhere.’

Takiko snorted and the Countess sparkled.

‘But it would be good to give her an interview, give her a world of help. I thought we could invite her to court.’

‘We? I don’t get invited to court, I’m the scum of the earth,’ Takiko laughed.

The Countess looked worried. ‘No, but I thought you didn’t like to go?’

Takiko had to smile into the tea. The Countess thought she wasn’t a snob, because her father had been a lawyer and she’d married upward, but she was, and she had the upper-class habit of assuming that if you didn’t do things, it was because they hadn’t struck your fancy. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you’d put in a good word for me. Not that I – you know. I don’t want to collapse at your feet and be all, please Lady Kuroda sort out my awkward social career, but …’

‘Oh, obviously,’ said the Countess, who had a brilliant way of puffing up like a cross partridge when she was indignant. Takiko could never work out how she did it, because she was a very slim person. ‘The Empress would be delighted. She’s dull as bloody ditchwater, but she would be delighted.’

‘Is she actually?’

The Countess inclined her head and gave Takiko a wry look. ‘She has written,’ she said, making an elegant, broad gesture with her tea that suggested some kind of art or ballet, ‘a collection of poetry.’

‘Is it good?’

‘No,’ the Countess said. ‘It’s a pile of absolute cack, Pepperharrow, you’ll have to see it to believe it.’ She straightened suddenly and preened. ‘Oh, but we simply must support the young ladies of the court, even though life is simply dreadful for me, and look I wrote a poem, and I might have cut myself with a razor because of the dreadful anxiety of it all, but only a teeny bit because, you know, it would be dreadfully irresponsible, and this poem, well, it’s about life and experience and by heaven if she wouldn’t be improved with a chopstick in the eye. I mean I shouldn’t say that, it’s sad. She’s got everything a person could possibly need, but she’s got nowhere to channel herself, and it’s making her peculiar and stupid. But the point is, don’t turn all shy and working-class. You would be an edifying force in that room.’

Takiko grinned, feeling herself starting to colour. ‘I don’t know if I want to go now, thanks.’

‘Tough it, you’re going, and then I won’t have to,’ the Countess said firmly. ‘I’ve been wanting to get away for a while now. She always has it in the mornings and I’ve been feeling ill in the mornings.’

Takiko edged the plate of little cakes over to her. She didn’t know what to say. All her sisters had had children, but all she’d learned from it was that people with children turned inward. She didn’t see any of them anymore. Congratulations would have been the right thing to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She just felt lonely in advance. ‘Oh, right. How are you doing with it?’ she asked at last.