Signs for Lost Children Sarah Moss (best way to read books .TXT) 📖

found the colours quite remarkable, beyond anything I have seen in England. This piece is gold-coloured but somehow quite natural-seeming at the same time, with dark branches and the crimson maple leaves, and under the tree a doe and a fawn. Woven, in this case, but I have also some embroideries.’

She has put a lot of strawberry jam on her scone. ‘And you were told, perhaps, that this came from the household of a samurai warrior, where it has been venerated these hundred years and more?’

Her mother murmurs something, some restraint or protest.

‘No. It is new. Only the skills are old, such as we have not in Europe.’

She smiles and then dabs her lips with her napkin, as if to cover the smile. ‘I thought as much. I am afraid you will find, Mr. Cavendish, that the Japanese learnt the arts of these hangings, as you call them, from the French within the last twenty years. It is like your lighthouses, you know: they perceive a need, or perhaps a market, and bend their energies to learning. These ‘hangings’ are made only for Europeans, using methods picked up in Lyon by young men sent for the purpose. They learn our arts, you know, as well as our sciences, and render them back to us. You could as soon say that the Japanese railways are built to an ancient tradition. May I help you to cake, Mr. Cavendish? You are not eating.’

He pushes his plate away. ‘As you remarked, it is not my habit to take tea.’ Under the black hat, her hair is slipping down. He finds himself imagining how a bruise would look on the white skin between her collarbone and the neckline of her black dress, how it would bloom red, and then dark grey, as if she were smudged with coal, and over days turn purple, green and yellow, a stain of colour on her photographic black-and-white. In any case, Tom has fulfilled his commission, and he believes De Rivers will like the golden deer wherever the weaver learnt his trade.

‘We are perhaps beginning an era where a great many of our more interesting endeavours will result from international exchange of one kind or another,’ he says. ‘Although I cannot think of an instance where Europeans have learnt a new technology or branch of science from another continent.’

‘You think all things come of us, and of our own do they give us?’

It takes such sacrilege to rouse Mrs. Davis. ‘Louisa, please. Do not use those words so lightly.’

‘I did not mean them lightly, Mamma. Only to suggest that Mr. Cavendish seems to see his own kind as the creators of the world as we know it.’

He is confused; is it not she who has just told him that what he thought to be authentically Japanese is in fact a European fabrication?

‘As we know it,’ he says. ‘Perhaps the difficulty is not with the world and its creators but with our knowledge. Or at least, with my knowledge. I do not doubt that there are original Japanese arts and sciences, but it is easy to believe that I have not succeeded in apprehending them. I came here, after all, to assist in the building of lighthouses, and that I believe I have done to the satisfaction of all concerned.’

She nods. ‘A pleasing outcome indeed, then, Mr. Cavendish.’

He looks at her, but her eyes are downcast. Quite apart from the loss of her father, he thinks, she is a very unhappy woman. It is no wonder she is not married.

As soon as tea is over, he goes in search of the professor. The smoking room first, he thinks, for it has become rather as he imagines a gentleman’s club to be, a place of stale air, leather armchairs and prints hung too high to be of anything other than symbolic value. Drinks, he hears, are served at all hours of the day. He does not go there, and nor do the women.

Professor Baxter is asleep in a red armchair with a book open on his lap and his head lolling in the corner of the chair’s winged back. On the table beside him is a glass of something brown and clear. His mouth is open red and wet, a gash or an indecency in the shabby refinement of this room. It is the mouth that makes Tom wake him, coughing theatrically from one pace behind the chair. The professor shifts, swats at a non-existent fly and then snores once as his head falls back. His mouth opens again. His teeth are flecked with brown and there is a string of saliva between his lips.

‘Ah, Professor Baxter, there you are!’

He snorts, starts and sits up, blinking.

‘I am so sorry. I didn’t realise you were resting. Please, excuse me.’

‘What? What? Ah, Tom Cavendish. Dear me. I must have dropped off. And what was I reading?’ He turns over the book. ‘Dickens. I fear then that my dozing says little for my literary judgement. Only do you know, I hadn’t read it for years, not since I was a boy, and I thought: I remember reading that and I liked it, let’s try again. It’s not as if the library is full of temptation. Do sit down.’

Tom sits. ‘Bleak House is slow at the beginning,’ he says. ‘I’m sure the last two thirds would keep you awake.’

‘Let us say so, dear boy.’ He picks up his glass and sniffs it. ‘No point in wasting it, is there? Care for one yourself?’

Tom shakes his head. ‘After dinner, perhaps. Professor, may I ask you about something?’

‘Naturally. Anything in the world. I am at your disposal.’

The professor sits up and smooths his hair, takes on before Tom’s eyes the air of a man of authority.

‘I bought some hangings, embroidery on silk, as part of my commission.’

The professor nods. ‘Very popular with collectors. Some exquisite work. Quite remarkable.’

‘Miss Davis says they’re not Japanese. Well, that the Japanese make them in mimicry of the French. That they