Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

farm, if you stay in the city? He has tried, holding Brunton’s book on his lap and gazing out of the window, to think of an English equivalent. One might not wish to marry into a family showing hereditary insanity, but that is a practical concern about the health of resulting children, well supported by science and probably obtaining also in Japan. Most families prefer alliances within their own class but there is no magic involved, no supernatural element. A Catholic, he thinks, marrying a Protestant, an English girl with an Indian man, but it is not the same thing. The shapeshifters and witches left Britain long ago.

The train is slowing, but Makoto has gone back to his book. Tom clears his throat. ‘Makoto? Who is Mr. Senhouse?’

Makoto’s glance slides across Tom to the window. ‘A teacher. At the new business college. He is here with his wife and they have a large house. They had a railway engineer, last year.’

Makoto pushes his book into his bag, begins to fasten his coat and scarf. Tom stands up, his breakfast soup and rice still curdled in his stomach. A teacher and his family, he himself the next in a sequence of visiting engineers. He wishes there were a way for Makoto to say what he has done wrong, to say Tom, I think we are good enough friends for me to tell you that I would not have been so confidential without the shochu and that I hope we need never refer to it again. Or Tom, old chap, I know you meant no harm but the way you said goodbye to my family was not quite right. Maybe, it occurs to him, Makoto is saying such things in some way that Tom is unable to intuit. It is not fair, he thinks. He has intended no wrong, no insult.

He thinks hard about his tone of voice, about the rhythm of what he is about to say. ‘I enjoyed the guesthouse. It would seem less strange now.’

Makoto stands back to let Tom walk first to the door. ‘You will want a place to work. A desk and chair. It is not the custom to spend more than two or three days in such an inn.’

But I want to, he thinks. But the Japanese have been working without desks and chairs since the dawn of time, since Izanagi and Izanami came to a world without form and void. But I will be back to feather-beds and stuffed armchairs, to meat pies and suet puddings, soon enough and for the rest of my life.

There is a sound like horses crossing a bridge as all the clog-wearers on the train walk along the platform. Tom waits for Makoto to join him. He has seen some Europeans’ houses that look as if they were imported, foundation to ridgepole, from suburban London. ‘Mr. Senhouse has a Japanese house?’

‘The arrangement is made by the Ministry. As the Minister judges best. There is a restaurant near here, if you would like to eat. And then this afternoon I must return to the department.’

‘But are you hungry, Makoto?’

‘You would like to eat lunch?’

‘As you prefer.’

Checkmate, Tom thinks. Tag. You’re it.

They end up in a noodle place, where Makoto allows his gaze to linger just a moment on the spots of soup that soon fleck Tom’s shirt.

They’re crossing the bridge, heading up towards the European quarter which is to become Tom’s rightful home, when he sees the obelisk set beside the river, a great stone like the ones raised across Yorkshire by ancient Britons. A flood marker? Some remnant of the people who farmed and fished here never imagining that one day the emperor would bring his court to Tokyo and the city swell around it? He leans forward to ask the jinrikisha man to stop. Makoto in his own jinrikisha may keep going if he wishes. The man drops the traces and watches as Tom clambers awkwardly down. The stone is darker than he has seen here, cut as smoothly as wood, with a script that seems curvier than Japanese swooping down each side. People have stuck pieces of paper in slots on its sides. Wishes, probably, or prayers, like the notes stuck up around altars on street corners as if the gods could read and would engage in correspondence. He touches the stone.

Makoto joins him, does not meet his gaze. ‘The stone interests you? They are notes for missing children.’

Tom can feel the relief on his face, relief that Makoto is again sufficiently well disposed to volunteer information. There is, he knows, a Japanese god especially concerned with infants. ‘Prayers?’

‘No. If you seek a child, or sometimes any person, you leave a letter here, on this side. If you find a lost child, you leave a note here, so the seeker can find. The lost can be returned.’

‘Do many children get lost?’

He counts the papers, more for the lost than the found. Ten, fifteen.

‘The city is growing week by week. If they leave their own neighbourhood, who would know them?’

‘Who cares for the children in the meanwhile?’

Makoto shrugs. ‘The finder, perhaps. Or there are special places now.’

Tom remembers the street children in parts of London. Not lost, so far as he knew. Not visibly distressed. Someone probably knew where they were, more or less. No-one, Ally said, was looking for them, nor, very often, looking after them. It is a national sin, she said, that there are children there for anyone’s taking, for anyone’s pleasure or pain. The dogs of England, she said, are better protected in law than the wives and children. And yet she has married him. Become his wife. She may bear his child. He imagines being a child in limbo, missing and not missed, found and not sought. He lifts his hand again to the stone marker, as if by touch he will learn more than by gazing on what he cannot read.

Makoto touches his arm, friendship—somehow, perhaps—re-established. ‘Come. Mr. Senhouse expects you,