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

her mind, May’s legs bound by her twisting wet skirts and May’s hair floating out above her face as she sinks and her mouth opens, surprise or some final speech, I didn’t mean this or I love you or—

‘Ally?’

‘Sorry, Tom. I’m sorry.’

No crying. He does not need this: weakness, hysteria, nerves, on his last day. He knows her strong. He married a doctor, not a patient. She bites her lips.

‘Did you find out how long you will be in Singapore?’

He pats her hand. ‘It will depend, I think, on the weather and what speed we make. But probably several days. Penvenick will cover a hotel so I can leave the ship. He said I would be ready enough to walk out by then. And of course I will be able to send letters.’

She nods. Tom stepping out, his jaunty gait under a tropical sky, his feet safe on foreign ground.

‘You will like to see the city.’

She imagines herself there too, holding his arm and catching the scents of strange fruits and flowers under a tropical sky. Herself at the rail of a ship watching a new land rising over the horizon, a warm wind on her face. But he does not ask.

Even the seagulls are sleeping, but through the gap in the curtains he can see that the night is beginning to fade. It is today. His trunk is the shape that stands waiting by the door. Ally lies tightly curled, her back to him as if he is already gone, as if there were no comfort for her. It is a betrayal, this journey. Even though they both knew about their separation before agreeing to marry, even though she has said nothing about wanting him to stay and knows that it would be impossible for Penvenick’s plans to change, it is a betrayal. Instead of creeping out into the night, to breathe the dew on the grass and the red roses at the gate and feel Cornwall solid under his feet, he curls around his wife, tucks her into his arms, cradles her breast in his hand and her head against his chest for what may, what very well may, be the last time.

A

N

A

RRANGEMENT OF

P

LANTS AND

S

TONES

The screens are open a few inches and in the gap is outside, a stripe of leaves and bark and rain between the paper windows which remind him of pages, of the blank expanses of unwritten letters. The leaves, some in red lace as well as a variety of fleshy greens, bounce like struck cymbals as the raindrops hit them. As well as the patter of rain there is the chiming of running water, which must come from the bamboo gutters he noticed earlier, or perhaps there is a fountain out there. He reaches out to open the screen, hesitates. The taut paper looks fragile. The woman, whose name he could not say even if he had heard it clearly, probably set her windows just as she wants them. Who is he, to go around rearranging her house? He puts his eye to the gap instead, a child peering in to a room he is not allowed to enter, a servant at the keyhole. It is—probably—a garden. It must take a human mind and hands to make such an arrangement of plants and stones. His eye measures the spaces between wavering branches and crouching rocks, notes how the curves of the gravel path pull the beholder into the intricacy of green shadows under the bushes. No flowers, or flowerbeds. No straight lines, but a garden nevertheless. He feels a gaze on his back, and she is standing there, in her slippers. He will have to get used to that, to the way these buildings are silent about their occupants’ movements. You can see everything at once, if you keep looking, but if you’re not looking you won’t hear anything until it’s too late.

She kneels and bows her head almost to the floor, as if pretending he’s one of her idols. His knees creak and his trousers tighten across his thighs as he reciprocates: even if it is incorrect, he hopes that mimicry at least suggests the right intentions. Her hair stays in perfect place. All the women’s hair is blue-black, the shade of bad bruises, and it all looks cold to the touch. He straightens up. His knees hurt. They practice these postures, he has read, from infancy, but even so he does not see how a human body can remain so folded without damage. Muscles, bones and vasculature are surely the same everywhere?

She murmurs and sits back on her heels, gestures. Food? Are there meal-times in Japan? There was a drink that seemed a little like both coffee and tea when he awoke, and a bowl of sticky rice and some kind of clear soup. When the student arrives, he will ask. Tell me from the beginning, he will say. Take me for a savage, for a child raised by wolves, and tell me how to wake and sleep, to empty my bladder and bowels, to bathe. Tell me what to eat and when and how, and in return I will advise you on the building of lighthouses. It does not seem much of a bargain. She smiles at him, rises smoothly to her feet, and leaves, silent as a cat. He has no idea what is happening, but he seems to have succeeded in his present ambition, which is not to give offence. He does not know when the student will arrive; Makoto will call on you tomorrow, he was told. He would like to go out, begin to feel Japan under his feet and smell its air and hear its birdsong and the wind in its leaves. He is hungry. He lowers himself onto one of the square cushions on the floor and takes out Fulham’s Structural Engineering, his prize copy inscribed by Professor Fulham himself. For now, he must wait.

He waits.

The light in the room has changed by the