Page 57 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘Silk shirt?’ Thaniel asked.

‘Yes.’ Pringle brightened. ‘New, actually. Got it for an absolute steal at a charming little place in Kabuki-cho. You must go. If you mention my name you might get a discount, the store girl seems rather keen on me.’

Thaniel had to concentrate not to interrupt him. He did like Pringle, but it was difficult sometimes to separate Pringle himself from Pringle’s packaging. He had differently coloured handkerchiefs for every day of the week, ironed between two sheets of crepe paper into origami tulips. Thaniel’s soul cramped whenever he thought about paying so much attention to something meant for sneezing on. ‘I mean you’re a conductor. Better change into cotton.’

Pringle smiled and nodded too much. ‘Ah! Yes, sir.’

Thaniel nodded once, slightly, to make him do it less. Pringle copied him. Thaniel felt proud of him. However badly Eton and Oxford had tangled him up, Pringle did try hard.

‘Sir?’ Pringle said. ‘Is there anything in the papers about the weather?’

‘Is there?’ Thaniel said to them all, because they were meant to be learning Japanese too.

‘It’s too hard to read,’ one of the others mumbled.

‘Anything about science is deuced difficult,’ Pringle put in.

Thaniel relented. It was too cold to be a school-master. ‘Everyone’s saying it’s the mountain,’ he said, motioning towards the window where Fuji would have been visible in clearer weather. ‘Something about iron in the rock.’ He picked up one of the ironed newspapers and flicked through to the weather section. ‘Yes. The Met Office says—’

‘Our Met Office?’ Pringle chipped in.

‘No, the Tokyo Met Office.’

‘They’ve got one here?’

‘No, they’ve got a shaman who forecasts the weather with a special dance.’

Pringle looked uncertain, then laughed experimentally. Thaniel smiled to show he’d got it right.

‘The Met Office thinks that in the right conditions you’ll get this kind of thing every so often within a certain radius of Fuji.’ He scanned the dense print. ‘Increased electromagnetism when the volcano is active. They’re not too sure.’

‘I can’t believe you know the kanji for electromagnetism,’ Pringle said.

Thaniel showed him the article. Pringle giggled when he saw that the sign for magnet was just the sign for stone with wiggly lines coming off it. Behind them, the ashes smoked sadly. The tea-towel was a black web now.

The butler leaned in. ‘Sir, there’s a gentleman to see you. He says he’s misplaced his wife.’ He spoke quietly, exuding apology for interrupting again.

‘A gentleman? Ah – he needs Mr Vaulker, not me.’

‘He asked for you by name.’

Thaniel stood up, puzzled, because he didn’t know anyone in Tokyo who would come to see him here. His heart tightened wondering if it was Mori. He stopped still when he saw his ex-wife’s new husband studying the paintings in the hall.

‘Matsumoto.’ He hadn’t thought he’d expected Mori enough to feel disappointed, but he did. It felt like being punched unexpectedly, when you were still tying on your gloves. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Oh, hullo,’ Matsumoto said. He was handsome and impermeably cheerful, and exactly the same as he had been the last time Thaniel had seen him four years ago. He always wore beautiful suits from Paris, pitch-perfectly chic, and he always had shoelaces that were a different colour to his shoes. Today, they were a pleasing shade of kingfisher blue. They sounded like a girl singing a high note.

When the question arrived, it was a peculiar one. ‘You haven’t seen Grace, have you?’

‘What? No, we’re not really … on speaking terms. Why?’

Matsumoto hung his hat on the banister of the stairs while he took off his scarf. He smelled, even a few feet away, of vanilla. ‘I seem to have lost her. Or put her somewhere, I really don’t know. But never mind. She’s not turned up here?’

‘No,’ Thaniel said, bewildered. ‘Sorry, how can you lose her?’

‘Oh, you know what she’s like. One minute she’s at the university and then she’s gone off to the States to talk to Tesla about his magic tower. I lose track.’ He paused. ‘She thinks it’s nosy if I ask what she’s doing too often.’

‘I haven’t seen her,’ Thaniel said again. He frowned when he remembered that her father had been asking after her at the Foreign Office.