An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful (7 page)

‘What about your mother?’

‘She could never understand it. That was why she hated Japan. People were killing her with kindness yet she felt so guilty.
Anyway
, we’re here now.’

‘Where?’

‘Where I live.’

He was amazed to discover there had been a direction to their meandering. Now, he stood in a pillared doorway of what must be a grand Georgian mansion. He could just make out the black-
and-white
tiled steps.

‘I’d like to see you again,’ she said, searching in her satchel for a pen. ‘Do you have a telephone at your digs?’

He shook his head.

‘OK. You can telephone me then.’ She wrote down the
number
on one of her flyers. ‘You can find your way back?’

‘I think so.’

‘Just keep going east. That way.’

Her lips brushed his cheek. Then awkwardly, they were face to face, her eyes darting nervously. Her fingers played with a button of his jacket. He kissed her. It was such a spontaneous action. For if he had thought about it, he would never have done it. But there he was. Kissing her. Full on the mouth. Her lips cold and dry, yet wonderfully pliant. The sensation ethereal. Like wisps of fog.

That brief kiss lingered for days. He thought he could still feel the imprint as he lifted the receiver of the public telephone at the White Lion, fumbled with his coins, pressed button ‘A’, then ‘B’ on connection.

‘I’m afraid Miss Collingwood is not at home,’ said a cool female voice.

He felt a droplet of sweat trickle down his ribcage. ‘Do you know when she will be back?’

‘I do not have that information. I am only the housekeeper.’

‘Will she be back for dinner?’

‘That I do not know.’

‘Well, when would be a good time to call?’

‘That I also do not know. Sometimes she is here. Sometimes she isn’t.’

‘Can you tell her Eddie called?’

‘Is there a number where she can reach you?’

‘No, that’s the problem. Wait. Give her this number. It is a
public
telephone at the White Lion. She knows where it is. I will make sure I am here. At nine p.m. Can you tell her to call at nine p.m.?’

‘Miss Collingwood knows of such a place?’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘And you want her to call this White Lion tonight at nine p.m.?’

‘Yes. But it doesn’t have to be tonight. Any night this week.’

‘I will pass on the message.’

The White Lion became his study and his observation post. A table by the fire, the very same table where he had first sat with her. But the telephone never rang for him. After three days, he called once more only to be rebuffed again by the housekeeper. After five days, the end of her exhibition closed off another avenue of
opportunity
. He became more agitated as his mood rapidly disintegrated from hope to dejection. After a week, he decided he had no choice but to visit her at home.

It took him a while to find the house. He had remembered the number, etched in elegant black on both pillars, from the night of the kiss, but in his excitement he had forgotten to search for the street name. Just as he began to panic that even this connection had been snatched away by the fog, Mayfair revealed her secret to him. For an hour, he set up a vigil across the street. He hunted the lighted
windows
for a glimpse of her, imagined her in one of the topmost rooms busy at her easel or with canvas stretched across the floor. When that endeavour ended fruitless, he went back into Mayfair until he found a flower-seller, purchased the finest bouquet he could afford. Suitably armed, he approached the impressive Georgian doorway and rang the bell. Where he had expected a housekeeper, an elderly gentleman in a maroon smoking jacket answered the door.

‘Is Miss Collingwood in?’ Edward asked.

The man looked suspiciously at the bunch of flowers. ‘Are these for my wife?’

‘I am looking for a Miss Collingwood.’

‘No one of that name lives here.’

‘A Mr Collingwood? He is on the staff at the American Embassy.’

‘I am afraid you have made a mistake.’

‘But that is impossible. She brought me to this door.’

‘A mistake.’

The door began to close on him. He wanted to push by this doddery gatekeeper, to announce his arrival, to demand to be seen.

‘A mistake.’ And with a final click, Edward was left standing alone on the step.

‘Misery loves company, does it not?’

Edward looked up from the Japanese textbook, which had become no more than hazy scratches before his eyes. Aldous stood before him in a pinstriped suit spattered with raindrops. A pink rose hung limp from a lapel. A raindrop ran down his cheek.

‘Aldous. I didn’t know you drank in here.’

‘I don’t. But I saw your glum face as I passed by the window. I bring you more of the same poison.’ He placed a pint of bitter on the table, a glass of whisky for himself.

‘So what ails the young these days?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Aldous laughed. ‘Then it must be a woman.’

He refused to answer.

‘Young men pine for only one thing. The illusion of love. Am I right?’

‘I grudgingly admit it.’

‘Then please tell.’

And he did. To an almost complete stranger. But who else had he to narrate his tale in this lonely metropolis? Unfortunately, Aldous was not a sympathetic listener.

‘So that’s it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She deceived you with the wrong address and you consider this to be the end of the world?’

‘She hasn’t returned one call in two weeks. And the
housekeeper
refuses to give me the right address.’

‘Have you tried the embassy?’

‘The guards won’t let me get near Collingwood unless I am on official business.’

‘I think this Macy is just trying to weave a little web of mystery.’

‘A little web of misery is more like it.’

‘That may be the case. But look at the bright side. She gave you the right telephone number. It seems she is reeling you in with the one hand, pushing you away with the other. The classic ruse of seduction.’

‘Well, it’s working.’

‘So, I see. Well, let’s have another drink to celebrate your
tortured
soul. This Scotch is rather nice. More of the same, Edward. More of the same.’

By the closing bell, Edward was quite drunk. His companion suggested a nightcap at his place, offering commodious yet warm rooms above the meagre offices of
The Londinium
as the lure. Along with a decanter of the finest single malt.

The stairway to these apartments was dark and steep, rendered more treacherous by the smoothness of the well-worn steps. Using a hand-over-hand grip on the banister, Edward managed the first landing to the door of
The Londinium
, then needed Aldous to haul him the rest of the way.

‘Onwards and upwards, dear boy. Onwards and upwards.’

Edward had not asked if there was a Mrs Aldous, assumed for some reason there wouldn’t be. And he was proved right. Instead there was a ginger cat, which leapt to greet him, almost tripping him over on the threshold.

‘Don’t mind, Macavity,’ Aldous said, stroking the creature into a purring frenzy. ‘He is the most read-to cat in Christendom.’

The flat was large with doors leading off the hallway into
cavernous
, high-ceilinged rooms. But any sense of space was reduced by the presence of books. They appeared everywhere, not just on the layers upon layers of shelves but on every vacant surface, tucked into every available niche, slotted into drawers, bowls, even
footwear
.
The floor of the living room was stacked with several
tottering
towers of magazines, copies of
The
Londinium
mostly,
presenting
a serious obstacle course between Edward and the sofa, which at this point was his necessary destination. He just had to sit down, settle the wooziness inside his head.

He watched Aldous stoke up the coals in the grate until a fierce fire blazed – the only light in the room apart from the glow off the street lamps through the windows. A hand stroked his shoulder, then a glass brimful of whisky appeared. Aldous settled in an
armchair
opposite, lit up a cigarette, and for a while they did nothing but sip at their malts, gaze into the fire.

‘What you should do is write about it,’ Aldous said. The fire had tired and the man was a lean shadow in his chair, located by the purring cat, the arc of his cigarette describing the movement of his arm.

‘Write what about what?’ Edward’s head ached, his eyes drooped heavy, giving him little patience for Aldous’ circumlocutions, which he had discovered marked the man’s discourse style. Either that or the complete opposite. Direct and downright rudeness.

‘A short story. About your… how can I say…? Your little tragedy.’

‘You are making fun of me.’

‘No, I am merely making a creative suggestion.’

‘I should write a short story about Macy?’

‘No, no. That would be terribly boring. An awful self-
indulgence
. No, first you should choose your overriding feeling. For all good fiction must be about something. Some underlying theme.’

‘Well, that’s easy. Anger. That is my overriding feeling.’

‘And why are you angry?’

‘Because I have been rejected.’

‘Good. Then write about rejection.’

‘About Macy rejecting me?’

‘As I said, that would just be autobiographical slush of no
interest
to anyone but yourself. No, you must find a vehicle for your rejection. A disguise through which you can vent your feelings.’

‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’

‘I think you do. It is just that you are a little worse for wear.’

‘Aldous?’

‘Yes, my dear boy.’

‘I am tired. Awfully tired.’

‘Then you must sleep here. That sofa has a well-used history. I will bring you some blankets.’

Edward adjusted into a prone position, closed his eyes. The movement inside his head, the swaying darkness, began to settle, find its balance. Like waves inside a tub coming to rest. Lipping and lapping into stillness. A warm bath. The water settling gently over him. Playthings floating on the surface. Suds like clouds. A bar of soap slithering around his body. He let himself submerge into the liquidity and then re-emerge baptised with cleanliness. His mother stroking his wet hair. Yes, he liked that. Stroking his hair. So gentle. So soothing. Then a kiss upon his forehead. So light.

‘Goodnight, Edward.’

‘Goodnight, Aldous.’

Edward didn’t remember much of that drunken night but he did take Aldous’ advice. He wrote his story, found a vehicle for his
narrative
, a platform for his wounded voice. Rejection was his subject, and rejection was what he received. Nine times he submitted the manuscript to his new-found friend and nine times it was returned scarred with the red marks of aggressive revision. But the tenth effort Aldous accepted for publication in
The Londinium
. It told the story of an ex-soldier, rendered socially useless by the loss of an arm, who had taken to a life of begging on Brighton seafront. Each day, he watched a beautiful woman from one of the nearby Regency houses glide down to the promenade on her roller skates to perform elaborate dances in front of him. Of course, he fell in love with her. And she used that love to cruelly humiliate him in ways that Edward found hard to believe he was capable of
imagining
. Until she eventually rejected that poor beggar. As did the sea. For his body was found washed up with the pebbles on the shore.
The Girl on Roller Skates
was Edward’s first published work. And Aldous never paid him a penny for it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tokyo, Japan
•
2003

It was all around him. This ping-ding, flashing, Hello Kitty, Softbank-Sony,
pachinko-pachinko
, vending-machine, giant plasma screen, cartoon, Shibuya girls, 100 Megabits per second, nonsense. And the cars. Of course, he knew all about the cars. Even in
alphabetical
order. Daihatsu, Fuji, Hino, Honda, Isuzu, Mazda,
Mitsubishi
, Nissan, Suzuki, Toyota. The taxi driver had a stop-start
Buddha
patience for them while beside him Jerome appeared oblivious to the crazy world outside. It was noon yet electric lights rippled and spangled through the windows, staining the vehicle’s interior in shades of synthetic colours. Salary men in identical raincoats brushed past them. A girl with pink hair. A gigantic, lurid-green octopus painted on to the side of a building, its tentacles
strangling
the concrete. What was that all about? He didn’t belong in this jingle-jangle world. How did Aldous describe it? ‘The Japanese have an exquisite sense of what is beautiful and no sense at all of what is ugly.’ That was it. How these two sensibilities could exist in one culture was an enigma to him. He wondered how Jerome felt about all this rampant consumerism. After all, he had been in
MacArthur’s
advance party. He had seen first hand how Tokyo used to
be. A burnt-out firework with a few charred buildings left standing in the central district, most of which were instantly corralled by the military for their headquarters. It was an opportunity to build again, to create something magnificent.

‘What do you think of all this?’ Edward asked, waving a hand at the madness beyond the window.

‘A moment.’ Jerome blew loudly into his handkerchief. ‘It’s the air-con. Gets me every time. What were you saying?’

‘I was asking about Tokyo.’

‘Youth has taken over, Eddie. It’s not meant to be a place for old men. We’ve no right to criticise.’

‘All right then. But if you had to comment, what would you say?’

‘The crows got bigger.’

‘Is that it? The crows got bigger.’

‘You should see them now. They’re like vultures. Giant black eagles. Stealth bombers. It’s frightening.’

‘You exaggerate.’

‘Don’t bet on it. One of these days an enormous black bird is going to pick up a child, whisk him away. A shrieking, flapping
figure
fading away into a sky-high blot. That’s when the shit will hit the fan. When people will finally sit up and take notice.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Damn right, pal. That’s my metaphor for the free-market experiment. A population under attack from giant crows. Pure sci-fi. And you know how the Japanese respond to this airborne threat?’

‘I don’t know. Shoot them down with air rifles. Poison them.’

‘They lay out plastic bottles of water by the garbage collection points. Rows of fucking bottled water. Can you believe that? The light glinting off the liquid is supposed to scare off the predators. You gotta laugh. Talk about treating the symptoms and not the cause.’

‘So why stay?’

‘I’m used to it, I guess.’

‘You’re used to it,’ Edward said resignedly, sinking back into the seat. ‘Never thought you’d get used to anything. Especially Japan.’

‘Why are you so critical? You were here at the beginning. You knew what was coming. The motor industry was probably the start of it all and they moved on from there.
Wakon-Yoshi
. Remember? Japanese spirit, Western ability. They’ve made a very rich living out of that, thank you very much. And what you see before you is the reward.’

‘That’s not what they do best at all. What they do best is find the beauty in the spaces, in the silences, in what’s in between. Not all this… how do you New Yorkers say it…? All this crap.’

‘Hey, Eddie, I know you’re a great author and everything. But you’re being a bit too Zen. You always had a very romantic notion of life here. Very
haiku
, shmaiku, you were. Yeah, you can still find what you’re talking about. You’ve just got to look much harder these days, that’s all. Scrape the surface with a bulldozer. Lob in a few grenades. Get underneath all this crap, as you say.’ Jerome leaned forward, tapped the driver’s shoulder, said something in
Japanese
. The driver just shrugged.

‘If we don’t get a move on, we’ll be late,’ Jerome said, turning back to him. ‘Don’t want to keep the dean waiting.’

Edward closed his eyes, breathed in deep, tried just for a few moments to shut out the noise and the lights, still himself against the anger that seemed to rise so quickly these days. And this sudden tiredness bearing down on him. So heavy and irresistible.

‘Are you OK, Eddie?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ he mumbled, shaking himself back into
consciousness
. ‘Must be the jet lag. Look, Jerome. I wanted to ask you a favour.’

‘Shoot, your lordship.’

Edward smiled. ‘Remember how you used to take all those photographs? With that little Brownie of yours?’

‘Still got it. Collectors’ item.’

‘What about the prints? Or the negatives? Do you have them too?’

‘Sure do. All filed away in my office on campus. They’re
collectors
’ items too. Sell a few every now and then.’

‘What about that day we went to Kamakura?’

‘Hey, Eddie. You were here a million lifetimes ago. How am I supposed to remember that?’

‘But if there were photographs, would you still have them?

‘Should be there somewhere.’

The taxi lurched forward, almost knocking down a bent-over crone who passed close to the window. It was the first elderly
person
Edward had seen since they set out from the station.

The campus actually boasted some trees. Even tall ones, which was so unusual for Tokyo. The fallen leaves forming a damp mat under Edward’s feet as he struggled out of the taxi in front of the Old Library, which according to Jerome had survived not only the
fire-bombing
but also the Great Kanto earthquake. Not surprising given the sturdiness of the red-brick building with its turrets and eaves that would not have been out of place on an English university campus. The air smelt sweet with decomposing foliage, resounded with the conversation of students as they moved purposefully towards their lecture halls. Universities always produced the same effect on him. A sense of hope gleaned from these young faces – the hope that maybe this was the generation that could really make a difference. He suddenly no longer resented Jerome bringing him here. This was where he needed to be. In the presence of fertile minds with fresh ideas. To suck at the marrow of their potential.

‘Eddie. This is our dean. Professor Watanabe.’

Where Edward expected to find some doddering relic of
Japanese
academia, he was confronted instead by an urbane gentleman, perhaps in his mid-fifties, immaculately fitted out in a blue mohair suit. The dean’s round face glowed with a healthy tan and bore a neatly trimmed goatee. His eyes glinted with bright intelligence, with humour. He looked like an affluent businessman at the helm of some company that would never go bankrupt. And no polite bows either. Watanabe’s hand was immediately offered in handshake.

‘Delighted to meet you, Sir Edward. We are so glad to have you attend our campus. Professor Fisk here said he might be able to
persuade
you to come, to accept our patronage, but I never dreamed it would be possible.’

Edward made the usual humble responses and, detecting the dean’s accent, inquired politely about it.

‘Stanford. I did my postgraduate work there. Education and linguistics.’

‘We couldn’t attract you to our shores then?’

Watanabe chuckled as he gently led him forward into the library building. Jerome had fallen a step or two behind.

‘Actually, Sir Edward, this university has strong connections with your Oxford. Certainly I could have conducted my research equally as well there as I did in California. But the United States presented me with a challenge. A young republic with a directness that is both frightening and exhilarating for us Japanese. I chose to take that challenge.’

The conversation had taken them to the bottom of a wide
stairway
. A large stained glass window dominated the mid-landing, demanding some attention, particularly as the oblique sunlight cast itself on to their little party. The design on the panes was an abstract, weak yellows surrendering to bold blues. Watanabe tilted his head slightly in the direction of the light, his skin no doubt drawn to the memory of some recent winter skiing trip or a holiday in Saipan. Jerome had closed his eyes to the glare and was gently rocking back and forth on his heels. Edward observed the veins of his own hands as they rested on his cane and they appeared to him not gnarled and ugly, but softened by the angle of illumination into the smoothness of youth. The light had lassoed them into a silence, warming them temporarily but profoundly with its rays. He felt it as an exquisite, uplifting moment, a holy pause in the hectic flow of life. But the beam dimmed and was gone, leaving him to shiver in the shadows.

‘Now, Sir Edward, let me explain our little schedule.’ Watanabe touched him lightly at the elbow, guiding him forward. ‘I have made it brief as I understand you only arrived yesterday. You must be tired, although the mountain air is so refreshing. First, my own speech and presentation of the honorary doctorate. If I may be so bold as to suggest, this will then be followed by a few words from your good self?’

‘Jerome did warn me.’

‘Very good. English for these guests will be quite appropriate so there will be no need for any tedious translations. A buffet lunch. Then, I believe, Professor Fisk has arranged a short question and answer session with some of our English Literature students. After that, we must allow time for the two of you to catch up. There will be many good memories, I am sure. And the early evening
entertainment
, Professor Fisk has also arranged.’

‘All arranged,’ Jerome confirmed.

‘Excellent,’ Watanabe said. ‘And now I would just like to say something of a more personal nature before we continue, Sir Edward. You did a great service for this country. We were
demonised
and demoralised after the war. Some of that was quite deserved. But you helped restore some of our self-esteem in the international realm. I will always be grateful to you for that.’

The guests clapped politely as Edward entered the Old Library. There must have been about fifty of them, faculty mostly, but also a generous attendance of students. The room, it appeared, had
survived
as a library in name only, the spacious hall being completely devoid of both shelves and books. A large table stood in the centre, on top of which rested a giant ice sculpture in the shape of a swan. Plates of sushi, sashimi and other cold dishes lay against the base of the frozen bird. As Dean Watanabe strode towards a microphone stand, Edward sat down, settled into position, careful to rest
forward
on his cane, to show his host the attention he deserved.

He had taken to the dean immediately. As he listened to him speak, he could see clearly how correct this man had been in his educational choice. Watanabe possessed all the refinement and grace of a Japanese gentleman, yet without the tightness and restriction that usually went with it. America had loosened him up, made him confident rather than reticent about his qualities, created a warm and direct human being. He wanted to befriend this man. And he
realised
it had been a long time since he had felt this way about anyone. When had he stopped trying to recruit new friends? Was it laziness that had kept him from forming new relationships? Had he become so complacent with the creation of his social orchestra, he was
prepared 
to let them die off one by one without replacement? Or was it mistrust that kept him aloof on his ever-depopulating island?

Watanabe finished his speech, called Edward to the floor. There was an awkward moment after heaving himself up on his cane when he had only the one free hand to accept both the
doctorate
scroll and the cloisonné bowl. He turned to the microphone, managed a small joke about how old age restricted the number of prizes he could receive, added his thanks to the dean, Jerome and the university. Then he found himself saying:

‘The time I spent in Japan has greatly informed my life and work, not just obviously as with
The Waterwheel
but in more
subtle
ways too. My Japanese experience added a broader dimension to my perspective on life, a different way of looking at things, a diminishing of the self in favour of the collective thrust of a
civilisation
. Sometimes that is not always a good thing, especially in an extreme form. But balanced with the overemphasis on the
individual
in my own culture, I feel I have become a better person for it. Thank you.’

He sat down, feeling quite moved by his own oration.

After lunch, Jerome led him to the classroom where the question and answer session had been set up. About twenty students sat around on chairs laid out in an informal horseshoe-shape. Again a light applause greeted him as he took a seat at its apex.