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

rail with his hand. Downstairs is in darkness, as always except in the middle of the day, and he goes down the stone step to the front door, the bare earth of the entrance hall soft and dry underfoot, and pushes the door open far enough to see out. Dawn is near, the eastern sky pale, and the air damp with dew and the smell of spring. He reaches for his coat and shoes and steps out into the street.

There are three people out already, hurrying hunched—to work so early? To buy breakfast? He closes the door behind him. It’s still too dark to tell what the weather will be, but the sky feels low and the cobbles are greased with dew. The three people are going north, which is also the way to the hills where it would be no more than eccentric to head for an early morning walk. He might see the sunrise from a mountainside above Kyoto, the sort of thing regularly recorded by the writers of artistic travel books. He loses sight of the first of his neighbours but the other two turn right at the crossroads and pass the lamp-maker’s studio and the grocer, both still shuttered and dark. They disappear between two houses, and when Tom reaches the gap he sees a high stone arch, a gateway fringed by bamboo black in the dim light. He advances and stands in the shadows, the bamboo waving at shoulder height. What is he doing here, standing in an alley with his pyjamas under his coat and his feet bare inside his shoes? Go home, he thinks, go home and take a bath and begin this day again. And then red lanterns bob across the courtyard in the front of him and he sees faces and robes streaming to the temple. The gong sounds as the sun rises and he stands still, neither here or there, like a leper watching the divine service through a hole in the wall.

When he returns to the house he knows as soon as he opens the door that Makiko is there, that there is another being breathing and moving within his walls. She comes from the kitchen to the hallway, her face full of question. What are you doing? Have you been out all night? She’s wearing the grey kimono with the white birds around the hem and back.

‘I went for a walk,’ he says.

She bows.

‘To see the sunrise. Though it’s too cloudy, really. I should try again another day.’

She murmurs something—yes, it’s dull today or it’s good to start the day with a walk—and bows again, gestures him in to the house.

‘Tatsuo’s taking me to see a silk workshop today. They make embroidered hangings, mostly for temples but apparently the Emperor himself has bought some. He gave one as a gift to President Hayes.’

He should stop. Makiko looks worried. A curved tortoiseshell ornament holds up her shining hair and the collar of her kimono has tilted back to frame the curve of her neck. He thinks she is the daughter-in-law of the family whose annex is this house, but she may be an unmarried sister or even a serving girl. He cannot pretend he has not wondered, has not looked for a Japanese equivalent of the wedding ring.

‘Tatsuo-san?’ she asks.

He bows. ‘Yes, Tatsuo-san. He’s taking me out today.’

She bites her lip. He must stop. She will think there is an emergency, that he requires Tatsuo to be summoned immediately.

‘If I can order some hangings from this place, maybe three or four, I’ve more or less fulfilled my commission. At the end of the week I’ll be able to go to Yokohama and arrange my passage home.’

She raises a hand, a gesture that in Europe might mean I give up or please stop talking and he finds himself reaching out to touch her palm, to feel the warmth of her skin, the lines in her hand. He pulls his arm back and bows deeply, hiding his face, hoping she thinks the half-salute was some foreign sign of respect. Of honour. When he stands up he nods to her and goes to kneel at the table where she has set out breakfast for him. He sits still enough to hear her footsteps on the tatami mat and the sliding of the door as she returns to her own quarters where her own family waits for her to serve breakfast.

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She takes her morning tea, made with Aunt Mary’s smoky leaves still dry in their tin, into the garden and sits on the doorstep with the door open behind her and the house, she hopes, inhaling the sea air and exhaling the winter’s damp. Even the sheets left on the bed are mildewed, and the curtains mottled and frayed where they have rested all winter against the cold glass. Before Tom comes, she must arrange for painting and new curtains and the washing of blankets and quilts. She will herself hang the carpets and cushions over the washing line and beat them with a carpet-beater that she will buy, a chore offering a satisfying combination of violence and housewifely virtue. She will write to Aunt Mary for advice about the curtains: nothing of Papa’s design, and nothing too dark. White is not practical, but perhaps a very pale grey with white sprigs or fleur-de-lys. Ally prefers small geometric patterns to Papa’s botanical outbursts. Maybe if Aunt Mary chooses fabrics she will be persuaded to come and see the results.

It is too cold, really, to sit out here, and it will be some time before the sun touches the camellia blossoms and opens the daisies in the grass. She cups her hands around the cooling tea. Seagulls wheel and cry overhead, and there are two grey chicks on the ridgepole of Greenbank House, open-mouthed with need and severely ignored by the sentinel on the chimney. Until they woke her at dawn, she had forgotten this, the gulls’ lives played out in three dimensions above