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

Tom swirls the port around his glass, centrifugal force working against gravity. The first movement tends to overthrow, the second to restore equilibrium. He had hoped to be back home within six months.

‘Do you know where these workshops are, Mr. De Rivers?’

Mr. De Rivers blows smoke. ‘That would be part of your business. There are doubtless guides. I believe there is a part of Osaka known as the textile district.’

‘My commission would be to find these places, place an order and oversee its fulfilment? I might not depart until your hangings were finished, and you would wish me to bring them with me in my own luggage on my return?’

De Rivers taps ash onto a plate. Later, the scullery maid will clean it, probably cursing the thoughtlessness of gentlemen who have never had to see a woman scrub. ‘Exactly the situation. And if you have an enterprising bone in your body, young man, you’ll bring all you can to sell on your own account.’

The port swirls the other way. ‘It is intended to be a brief trip. Mr. Penvenick cannot spare me long.’

‘Penvenick! Come, Tom, we are none of us irreplaceable. If Penvenick can do without you for six months I dare say he will contrive to get through a few more weeks. In any case, you have not asked me to name the sum.’

He puts the glass down and looks up. Enough, he thinks, enough. He owes this man no duty. ‘That, Mr. De Rivers, is because I am happily not in such a case that I must necessarily think of money before paying heed to my profession and indeed to my wife.’

De Rivers smiles. ‘You have a temper indeed, like your wife. I foresee interesting times in your house, Cavendish. Take the girl with you if you cannot do without her. It is not as if you were going to Africa, Japan is a civilised country. Especially if her comparison is the Truro Asylum.’

Of course he has thought of it. Penvenick himself suggested it. The additional expense would be negligible. He has even tried to convince himself that Ally might practice in Japan, where there are several settlements including European women whose need for medical care is doubtless at least as acute as that of their sisters at home, or that she might observe the Japanese care of the insane, for there must, presumably, be madmen there as here. There were women doctors in India for many years before it was possible to qualify and practice in Britain. Japan is not India. The fact remains that she cannot accompany him on a tour of lighthouses and would, then, be left alone in some colony of expatriates for many weeks. The fact remains that she is eagerly anticipating her work in the asylum. There are stars out over the water.

‘It is impossible. And I cannot think that Mr. Penvenick would allow me to do as you ask.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Tom.’

De Rivers puts down his glass and names his figure.

J

ACOB’S

L

ADDER

The gulls are raucous. A ship’s horn sounds low, three times, from the harbour, probably the big steamer that came in two days ago signalling its departure. Ally, curled away from him, doesn’t stir. He watches the sheet move with her breathing. Her nightgown, which he unbuttoned sometime last night, has slipped over her shoulder. There is a pale mole he had not noticed before at the top of her shoulder blade. Perhaps everyone looks younger asleep than awake. She has tangled the sheet around her legs, her one bare calf shaded with gold fur in the morning sun, and left him with none. By the time he is accustomed to sharing his bed, he will be behind the guard-rail on a wooden berth, rocked by the waves. He has always slept well at sea.

The room is not much changed by Ally’s arrival. His two jackets now hang from the hook on the door, ousted from the mirrored wardrobe by her dresses. Her best shoes, too high for comfortable walking, lie under his chest of drawers, and the grey silk dress reclines as though faint in the hard-backed chair, but she will put them away this morning. Sunlight is strained by the striped curtain as it always was, and the counterpane his mother made for him when he first went to London is folded back over the foot-rail as it always was. He remembers Ally’s accounts of her father’s house, of the briar rose wallpaper her father designed especially for her and her sister May, the winter and summer curtains that changed the light and colours of the drawing room where the famous autumn wallpaper first hung. He has not seen the house, has not been invited, but even his mother recognised Alfred Moberley’s name. Oh, the bird curtains, she said. Mrs. Gummersall has them in the pink. Ally’s Uncle James’s house, where he met her, also had patterned papers and curtains, a profusion of lamps and soft chairs. Perhaps he should suggest that Ally redecorate the cottage, make it more like what she is used to. If he accepted De Rivers’ commission, there would be enough for that and more.

Careful not to disturb her, he slides from under the covers, steps over the creaking board by the door. He used sometimes to creep out of his mother’s house early on summer mornings, off to the river to fish or sometimes just for the pleasure of a secret outing, without the gaze of those who assume that a boy alone is up to no good. He has not had to move silently around this house before. Most of the garden is in the shade but there is sun on the roses at the gate and on the high brick wall between the cottage’s ope and the garden of number two. The basement kitchen is cool and dim, the flagged floor cold to his bare feet. It always used to feel dusty, until Ally came. He removes the whistle so it