‘I have to go shopping,’ Keiko said. ‘But–’ she pulled out the cloth bag she kept tied to a band around her waist. ‘Money is none.’
‘He had it in his desk,’ said Vera. She went into his office and tried to slide open the wide, shallow drawer under her grandfather’s desk, but it was locked.
‘Money is none?’ said Hinchcliffe.
‘He always kept the coffee money there.’
Hinchcliffe reached into her desk and pulled out ten dollars. ‘Coffee money I have. There’s coffee money.’
‘Coffee money is good,’ said Keiko, bowing again graciously. ‘And now we like to have fish money. Rice money. Coal money.’
Hinchcliffe produced several hundred dollars. It was a small fortune. And Keiko rolled it carefully and placed it in her cloth bag. Enough for two more months.
Vera watched carefully where it came from. And she recognised in the quick, practised gesture a habit, and she understood with a cold feeling around her heart, that it was the same gesture with which Hinchcliffe had given money to her grandfather.
‘Of course, I understand,’ said Keiko, bowing.
‘Maybe Mr McBean will come,’ Vera said.
There was something there under all of this but she didn’t understand it, not yet. Someday she would; it was a knot to untangle.
‘McBean?’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘What do you know of McBean? There is no Mr McBean, I have told you many times.’
And Vera thought perhaps this was true. There was no Mr McBean.
Hinchcliffe dusted her hands in a gesture that clearly meant, ‘I am through with you’. Once, twice, three times, the palms together, passing each other, as if she were removing traces of a noxious substance.
Hinchcliffe was the picture of the fierce loyal retainer behind the desk, a figure all too familiar in the lore of Japan. Keiko stood up to her full five feet in height now; the bowing was over. And while Hinchcliffe was still sputtering, now Keiko the humble widow was fully in control of the situation.
‘Understood. Understood. Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘Thank you. We are grateful. Vera and I so grateful.’ She bowed again.
Watching Miss Hinchcliffe dispense with Keiko gave Vera her first inklings of a sorrow that was not entirely selfish. She saw the hands, dusted together; she saw the firm little knot of Hinchcliffe’s lips, that oh so wasp Canadian, ‘Well what did you expect? You had it coming’, and she felt sorry for Keiko. She was her grandfather’s wife, sort of, Vera supposed. Which made her a sort of grandmother. Except that she was younger than her mother had been. Vera hadn’t thought much about Keiko’s age before.
‘How old are you, Keiko?’ she asked.
‘Two times as you,’ said Keiko, smiling shyly.
Thirty.
That night she watched Keiko slowly, carefully cooking the dried fish that she had soaked all day. And she ate it, to please her. Keiko did not smile too broadly. But she looked into Vera’s eyes and nodded, and gave a little bow. Then she got a haughty look on her face and dusted her hands. There was the soft sound of her palms brushing against each other, once, twice, three times. It was her first joke.
Vera burst out laughing. They laughed until tears got the better of them, and put their arms awkwardly over each other’s shoulders and sat, heads down, over the kitchen table. They were stuck with each other.
‘What we will do?’ asked Keiko.
‘I won’t leave you,’ Vera said. Her grandfather would want her to stay with Keiko. ‘All my life,’ he had said. ‘I wanted a deep diver.’ That was a very long time to want.
‘I won’t leave you,’ repeated Keiko.
Vera knew it was true.
The days crawled by, the weeks crawled by; she watched the size of Keiko’s cloth bag shrink. She returned by herself to Hinchcliffe.
‘We need to buy food. And pay for the bills,’ Vera said. ‘Where is the money for that?’
Hinchcliffe had not recovered from the fact that Keiko had got the better of her. ‘She is not his wife.’
Aisho.
‘He must have left money for her. And for me,’ said Vera.
‘It is better to wait until your father comes back,’ said Hinchcliffe.
‘And what if he doesn’t?’ asked Vera.
Miss Hinchcliffe said that since she first wrote about Captain Lowinger’s death, her father had not answered the telegrams.
In retrospect, it seems preposterous that they did not press her more. That they did not ask for a will. That no adult other than Keiko inquired about provisions. That no one questioned the ownership of the company. That the unknown person who had given Miss Hinchcliffe instructions did not appear, or at least give more instructions. That Hamilton Drew did not answer the telegrams.
But many things were mysteries and they were not to be solved because James Lowinger had died. And no matter what the neighbours called her, Keiko was not Mrs Lowinger. She did not speak good English and she was Japanese.
And Vera was no longer a child, but not quite an adult.
‘How will you live? Who will you live with?’ her teacher asked her. ‘Did Captain Lowinger provide for your schooling?’
‘I will get a job,’ said Vera.
The teacher mentioned the Depression. Men out of work everywhere.
‘I do know it’s a depression,’ said Vera. I’m not an idiot.’
You couldn’t tell her anything, the teacher remarked to his colleagues.
The doors of the neighbouring houses remained closed and few people expressed curiosity about how they were managing.
By mutual agreement, Vera and Keiko had arrived at the conclusion that it was beneath their dignity to go in front of Hindicliffe again.
‘I will find a job,’ said Keiko. Her eyes were round and bright. Vera read the newspapers to see what was available. But there were no jobs. And men came to the door almost every day asking for work, asking for food.
Keiko went to the dry cleaners and offered her services: they were Chinese. No no no, they said. Chinese workers were dying of starvation. And China was the enemy of Japan.
In Japantown her friends told her to go to the fishing boats. So Vera and Keiko took a long bus ride to Horseshoe Bay. They stood on the docks there and sniffed the air. It smelled of gasoline and kelp. But it also smelled of ocean and timber and wilder places farther north and they were excited. Keiko waited for the boats to arrive and spoke to the men in Japanese. She said she could dive. She said she could clean fish, scrub boats, anything. She said she was ama. But the men who ran the ships laughed. If they had jobs they had to give them to a man, with a family.
By then even the kindliest neighbours said, ‘But surely the girl’s father will come?’
But Hamilton Drew did not come.
Vera went again to the warehouse, which now was like a tomb; entering the door there was like entering a place of pain. ‘Where is my father?’ she asked.
This time Miss Hinchcliffe said she had heard from him. The letter was postmarked in Kobe, Japan, she said, emphasising the capitals. He wished to return and settle matters. But he was unable to do so at this time. She had confidence that he would. In the meantime he had asked her to carry on.
‘You are lying,’ said Vera. She was certain of