The Gossamer Fly – 1979

John Murray (Publishers) Ltd

Extract

From Chapter One

That Summer was a first growing up.  And after it the rustle of grass, the view of the bay, each th ing she touched were never the same, but filled with the menace of a dark adult world.  Like a ceiling upon a tall room. 

Then, it was the tick of the clock, unswerving, going on after everything stopped, which possessed her nightmares.  That, and the russet iron faces of Japanese armour standing in her father’s study.  These walked forever towards her, slowly.  Each step a clump of metallic scales and a ripple of shoulder flaps, as if a wind was caught beneath.  Their faces, carved in flanges and ridges, were ferocious as the wind god.  The blue-laced one had a sparse white beard, the other a hog hair moustache.  But their eyes were the same, empty dead slits, blacker than their faces.

In her mind everything began on that first day, when she found the new maid, Hiroko, in the kitchen, with chopsticks pulling white flakes of fish from the bones, eating her lunch.  The room smelled of yellow radish pickle and the fish, charred on a wire stand over a flame.  Hiroko picked up a slice of pickle between wooden chopsticks. And took a sharp bite.  She did this exactly, taking her time, ignoring Natsuko who had come into the room and stood near the table.  Finally, she raised her head. 

‘Are you the daughter?  You look like your mother.’ Her eyes were still, without expression, staring across the table.

Is your mother American or English?  It’s strange you’re blond like her and don’t have your father’s Japanese hair.  My sister once worked in an orphanage for half-blood Japanese children, after the war.  I went there once.  I must have been your age, nine or ten.  I saw all kind of weird faces, especially the ones with Negro fathers.  But I never saw any with hair like yours.’ Hiroko looked at Natsuko critically, and gave a sudden harsh laugh.