The Japanese Lantern (16 page)

“Yes, Mrs. Tate, I’m here,” Jonquil said weakly.

“Then what have you been doing? Have you kept track of Edward?”

J
onquil tried to think of something reassuring
to say.

“
I
—
I think so,” she managed.

“Think so!” the old lady exclaimed. Think so! Have you seen them?”

“Oh, yes,” Jonquil reassured her. “I
’
ve seen Edward twice, and Mitchi Boko is with me now.
”

There was a pause at the other end.

“I never thought I’d enjoy anything so much,
”
Mrs. Tate said at last. “This suspense has given me a new interest. Don’t you find it exciting?
”

Jonquil remembered with dismay the weakness that was apt to go to her knees whenever she thought about it.

“No,” she said frankly.

She could hear Mrs. Tate chuckling to herself.

“That’s the trouble with young people today, the old lady told her. “No stamina! No hearts at all! Why, in my young days wed have been
de
lighted to have been included in such a thing. Nothing timid about us!”

Jonquil had no intention of arguing with her. At the moment it seemed only too true, for, with the thought of the lantern left haphazard in the boot of Jason’s car, she was only too willing to concede that her stamina was not at all what it should have been!

She wondered whether she ought to tell the old lady about Mitchi Boko’s confession, but that smacked too much of a betrayal of confidence and so she waited uneasily for the old lady to continue
.

“I hear Jason has to come back to Tokyo to finish off his business here. So it will be up to you to keep Edward and Mitchi Boko in Kyoto, my dear. We can’t afford to let them slip back with
hi
m
, can we? I thought Jason was so tiresome before, dashing off to Kyoto like that. I can’t think why he did it!”

“No,” Jonquil agreed meekly.

The old lady chuckled again.

“Ah, well,” she said, “we must expect these little setbacks. How will you manage?”

Jonquil found herself smiling.

“I don’t think we need have any particular plan,” she said. “I’ll just do whatever occurs to me, and that way we keep the situation fluid.”

Mrs
.
Tate considered that.

“I think you’re right,” she agreed reluctantly,
“
though I should have liked to know what was happening. You’ll have to tell me afterwards.”

“Yes, I shall, and don’t forget you will have to look after Jason.”

Appeased, Mrs. Tate fastened on this and after a little while rang off. Jonquil replaced the receiver
w
ith a sigh of relief and went to find the stranded Mitchi Boko. She wondered how it was that Mrs. Tate could possibly be enjoying all the excitement, even though she must often have been lonely and bored, tied as she was to her wheel
chair and relying on all her friends to come and relay to her all the latest gossip.

Mitchi Boko was in the garage, poking about
in
the oddments that invariably collect in the far corners
.

“It is not here,” she told Jonquil. “I thought maybe Jason-san turn it out.”

“He may have left it in Tokyo,” Jonquil re
m
inded her.

Boko looked appalled.

“Cannot be!”

“What did you put in the note?” Jonquil asked, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her to ask before.

“Name of laboratory assistant who help Jason-san with formula. He boast about it to friends. Easy to find out who he is.”

Their eyes met. Very easy, Jonquil hazarded. Why, oh, why weren’t people more careful?

“I shall have to tell Jason,” she said.

Mitchi Boko looked upset.

“They talk all the time about new alloy,” she said desperately. “Other people might have overheard too.” She looked hopefully at Jonquil, who only frowned and began a new search of the garage with renewed vigour.

“It must be in the car still,” Jonquil said regretfully. “We shall just have to wait until Jason gets b
a
ck
.”

Fortunately they did not have long to wait, for Jason arrived almost immediately, sweeping into the garage with an ease born of long practice and almost running the two of them over.

“Whatever are you doing?” he asked through
the open window.

“Oh, Jason,” Jonquil cried out, overjoyed to see him. “What did you do with my lantern—you know, the one I left in your car?”

He gave her a shrewd look, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Have you only just thought of it?” he asked her.

She nodded her head, not looking at him, because somehow she found his scrutiny rather embarrassing.

“Hullo, Boko,” he greeted the Japanese girl.

Mitchi Boko gave him a hasty and rather perfunctory bow.

“Jason-san,” she acknowledged.

“I saw your mother just now,” he told her. “She wants your help to choose her new kimono. I left her just round the
corner
in the draper’s shop.”

The Japanese girl looked helplessly at Jonquil.

“Will you find lantern?” she asked.

“Yes—yes, I’ll manage,” Jonquil reassured her. Not that it was going to be easy, she told herself, for she badly wanted to make a clean breast of it to Jason and leave the whole affair to him.

Jason waited for Mitchi Boko to say goodbye and to make her way reluctantly out to the road, turning back every few steps to bow once again in the hopes of being recalled to them.

“Now,” Jason said, as soon as she was gone, “suppose you tell me just what it’s all about?”

It was silly to play for time. She knew that even as she did so. With some people it was possible to get away with things like that, but with Jason it was useless to pretend. He had a way of looking at one as though he had expected something better and that was rather shaming.

“I — I was just telling Mitchi Boko about my lantern,” she said.

“And I suppose she had never seen one before?” he asked, the twinkle of amusement more pronounced now even than it had been.

“I suppose she must have done,” Jonquil admitted. “But I wanted to show her mine!”

Jason got out of the car and stood looking down at her.
“I think it’s time you and I had a little talk,” he said.

Her eyes widened at the tone
in
his voice. He didn’t sound angry exactly, but there was nothing casual about the way he had spoken, none of that easy drawl that he so often affected.

“Wh-what about?” she asked.

“Edward Keeving for a start. And Mitchi Boko. And, I rather think, my aunt.”

She blushed and found the courage to glance up
at him.

“Did you know all the time?” she asked.

“I still don’t,” he said. “But I can guess a good deal. I’ve known Mitchi Boko for a long time, my dear. Edward Keeving has always been a clumsy operator, preferring trickery to genuine hard research. These things are bound to get around
in
the trade, and so of course I knew something of him. I even made the mistake of mentioning him
to my aunt.”

“So that’s why
—
” she began, and broke off.
“Mitchi Boko didn’t give him any information
in
the end,” she said instead.

“Didn’t she?” The amusement was back
in
his voice again. “Poor little Jonquil, I should really be quite cross with you! Did you really think Edward was up to my weight? I can assure you that I’m quite capable of dealing with his type, with one hand tied behind my back if necessary.
”

Jonquil felt nettled.

“
I daresay you could. But how was I to know that you knew all about him all the time.
”

He laughed, throwing back his head and genuinely enjoying himself.

“You’re
a darling,” he told her.
“Tell me all about it.”

She told him the whole story, hesitantly at first, but then with greater confidence as he listened to
her
serio
us
ly, questioning her every now and again. She glossed over the par
t
when his aunt
had first spoken to her and how she had thought that Yoshiko had been listening outside the door.

“It could easily have been so,” he said slowly.
‘She was pretty jealous when she first heard you were coming here. She wanted badly to get from under her father’s feet before she was thrust into this marriage. She probably thought my aunt was cooking up some way of getting rid of her.”

“I never had anything much to go on,” Jonquil said wearily. “I was just frightened because of you.”

He looked at her hard then.

“Were you really frightened for me?” he asked.
“
That was very sweet of you.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “I shall take you up on that when I get back from Tokyo!”

She was aware of the sudden wild beating of her heart. It was too bad of him to say things like that, she thought. Didn’t he know how attractive he was? How much
any
girl would want to throw her arms round his neck when he looked at her in such a manner?

“It
wasn’t sweet of me at all,” she said curtly.
“
I just hated the thought of your being deceived—Mostly because of your sister, I think.”

The smile fell from his face and his eyes took on a more guarded expression.

“Well, that’s honest,
anyhow,” he said bleakly.
“
I think
I’ll
go and get packed, so I’ll say
goodbye now. If you want y
our lantern, you’ll find that it’s still
in
the boot where we left it!”

He turned on his heel and walked into the house, leaving her standing just where she was, amazed that she really could feel an actual physical pain
in
her heart. Automatically she went to
the rear of the
car and opened up the boot, gently lifting the mando out. It was still as pretty as she remembered it, but she knew that she would never be able to feel quite the same about it, and so slowly she took it down to the bonfire the gardener was having at the other end of the garden and put it on the flames. She couldn’t even feel regret when the hot coals tore at it and the whole thing went up in a sheet of orange. She didn’t think she would be able to feel anything ever again.

She didn’t know how long she had been standing there when she heard Alexander come running towards her.

“Aren’t you never coming to lunch?” he asked. “ ’Cos it’s past two o’clock and I’m starved. I’m awfully wet too,” he added.

He tugged at her arm and she realized that he was indeed “awfully wet”!

“What have you been doing?” she asked him.

He smiled up at her winningly, using every scrap of charm that he could summon to his aid.

“I fell in the fish pond,” he confessed.

Jonquil felt a moment’s sheer panic. He might have been drowned, she thought. She should never have allowed Jason to persuade her to leave him. She had been employed to look after Alexander, not amuse herself—or to get herself involved in Jason’s affairs, she added to herself bitterly.

“Was it very deep?” she asked.

Alexander considered that carefully.

“Not very deep. But,” he added, unable to resist the best bit of information, “it came right over my head. I’d have shouted like anything if Uncle Jason hadn’t told me to keep away from it!”

Jonquil gave him a harassed look that made him feel even more important.

“Do you think I might have become a mermaid? Do you think one could, if one practised staying under water for long enough? Do you think one could stay under for
mi
nutes
?”

“You’d better come in at once and change into some dry clothes,” she said weakly. She knew that she ought to punish him in some way for disobeying his uncle so blatantly, but she hadn’t the heart to. Instead she pushed him ahead of her into the
house, straight into Jason’s arms.

He summed up the situation at once and called Alexander over to
him.

“I think we’ll go to your room,” he said to the child. “You can wait in the living room,” he added coldly to Jonquil.

“No!” Jonquil exclaimed, sure that he was going to hit the child. “I won’t let you!”

But he ignored her protests, leading the way to Alexander’s room with the small boy reluctantly following behind him.

There was silence. Jonquil went into the living room because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, and waited for the ordeal to be over.

When they came back, they both looked remarkably cheerful, and Alexander was completely clad in dry clothing. Looking at them, Jonquil felt quite unreasonably angry. How dared they look so pleased with themselves? Then Jason smiled at her and she found herself smiling back at
him
and everything was all right again. This is quite dreadful, she thought, I’m making a complete fool of myself! It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember Yoshiko. In fact one way and another
i
t was rather a relief when he packed his bags into the back of the car and it began to look as though he really was going at last.

“Will you miss me?” he asked her as he climbed into the driving seat.

She couldn’t answer. All she could do was to stand foolishly by the car and wish that she had more aplomb.

“Never mind,” he teased her. “I’ll collect an answer next week!”

She found her tongue then.

“Oh, I hate you, Jason Tate,” she said hotly, but the car had already slipped away from her.

It had seemed a very long afternoon. Jonquil
a
nd Alexander had played cowboys and Indians in the garden, to the dismay of the gardener, although they were both exceedingly careful not to do any harm to any of the flowers. Alexander didn’t mention what had passed between himse
lf
and his uncle and Jonquil didn’t like to ask him. It was clear that they had emerged the best o
f
friends and she had to be content with that.

At last it had been time to put Alexander to bed. Nobuko had made him a special supper to make up for the loss of his uncle and he had teased them both by spinning it out for as long as it was humanly possible.

Then there had been the lengthy evening. Nobuko had explained that she had no idea when Yoshiko would be coming in, if at all, and Jonquil was not really expecting her, for she knew that she would want to spend her father
’
s first evening home with him.

So she had gone to bed quite
early and
slept almost immediately. She hadn
’
t let herself think about Jason at all. If she had done so, she knew that she would have burst into tears. She had seldom cried until she had come to Japan, but now she felt that
she
would never be able to stop. Tears of sorrow and tears of joy both seemed very close to the surface, as muddled as her thoughts and her emotions. She felt as though she had gone in off the deep end, without ever having really learned to swim. Growing pains. she told herself firmly. Even now
she
wouldn
’
t admit that she had fallen
,
very deeply,
in
love.