With My Little Eye Read Online Free Page A

father, a collector of Japanese art, a hoard of paintings and objects that she had decided must be displayed in a setting appropriate for them. In building the house for her son, she had therefore instructed its architect that, though it would be in Western style, she must have an annexe to it that was Japanese. When her son and his wife and children had eventually departed, she had then decreed that the tenants that followed them should not enter the Japanese annexe. This was because, even though everything of any real value had long ago been removed for storage in the family kura or godown, she thought it prudent to avoid any possibility of damage either to so flimsy a structure or to the artefacts and scroll-paintings that it still contained.
    We were later to complain fretfully, as the summer temperature inexorably soared, of the thick carpets and heavy cretonne curtains, the cumbrous sofas and armchairs, and the four-poster bed in the main bedroom with its elaborate swathes of velvet and ruchings of net. But now there was genuine delight in Laura’s ‘One might be back in England!’ She peered at a foxed print of a Constable painting of Salisbury Cathedral on one wall and then turned her attention to an indifferent watercolour opposite to it, of cows out at pasture. Her delight mounted. Off the bedroom there was a dressing room. Perfect for Mark! There was even a washbasin in it. Oh, and there was a real bathroom – by that, she meant not a Japanese one, to be used communally, as at the boarding house, but one in which one could lie for as long as one wished, at full length, with high brass taps at one’s feet and a rusty shower contraption above one. And in the kitchen – look, look, there was a gas cooker and a really large sink! When she opened the door to the downstairs lavatory, she even peered into the bowl to announce triumphantly that the manufacture was English.
    ‘I could make this my study,’ I exclaimed in no less delight when Mrs Kawasaki ushered us into a small octagonal tower room at the top of the house. ‘Look – one can see Mount Hiei. Well – just.’
    Mrs Kawasaki smiled. Unlike the young girl in thephotographs, smiling was something that she did not now do often. ‘My son used this room for his research when he lived here. He always said that it was too small. But he loved it.’
    ‘Is he a scientist?’
    ‘Yes, a scientist. Both a scientist and a doctor. He has made some interesting discoveries. His speciality is dermatology.’
    Before that she had remained impassive and silent, only speaking when we put a direct question to her and then only perfunctorily. Pride in her son’s achievements had animated her.
    Our inspection over, she looked first at me and then at Laura, head tilted to one side: ‘So – what do you young people think?’
    ‘Wonderful!’ Laura said.
    I was no less enthusiastic. ‘Just what we’ve been looking for.’
    ‘Now you must go away and discuss it all.’ She gave another of those all too rare smiles. ‘It’s never good to rush into things.’
    ‘But we’ve made up our minds,’ Laura said.
    ‘Don’t you first want to …?’ Mrs Kawasaki looked towards me.
    Laura shook her head decisively. ‘I know my husband feels as I do. Don’t you, darling?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, very much so.’
    I guessed that, despite all her years in America, Mrs Kawasaki was surprised that it should be the wife, not the husband, who was the first to announce a decision as important as this one.
    ‘I don’t know if Mrs Katinka has told you the rent?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ I answered. ‘Well, an approximate sum. She couldn’t be exact, she said.’
    Now Mrs Kawasaki named the figure. It was marginally less than Katinka’s. ‘That’s expensive, I know. But houses like this are not common in Kyoto. Western-style, many rooms, furnished , a big garden. A good district. The last tenants – they moved out two weeks ago – were the director of the American Hospital, Mr Anson, and