Bill for the Use of a Body (20 page)

During the night he was twice sick again, but at last fell asleep. When he woke it was daylight, and, although the ship was still heaving, the sea was much calmer. For a
while he lay there again deploring the wretched situation into which Bill Urata had tricked him. All hope of redeeming Merri through the cupidity of Hayashi to possess the Kuan-yin was gone. Her only chance of survival now lay in Tilly Sang's agreeing to come to Kyoto. Since she was so convinced that Hayashi meant to kill her if she did, the chances that she would sacrifice herself for her daughter seemed slender. And, while Julian would willingly have undergone the extreme discomfort and privation that for the next two or three weeks were to be his portion could that have in any way helped Merri, to know that he must face them without its doing so galled him unbearably.

After a time it suddenly impinged on his mind that, although the ship was still lifting and falling, her engines had stopped and she was no longer moving forward. Owing to his parlous state the previous evening, he had ignored the cotton pyjamas that had been found for him and thrown himself down on the bunk fully dressed. Getting up, he went to the door of the cabin, opened it and looked out. To his surprise he saw that the ship was at anchor and lying about a mile off a wooded promontory.

Instantly new hope flared in his mind. The coast off which they were lying could only be Japan. Evidently the previous night's storm had been so severe that Captain Dosen had decided that he must run for shelter to the nearest bay. The morning was fine and the ship still tossing only owing to a heavy swell that was the aftermath of the storm. But now the tempest had subsided it seemed certain that at any moment Dosen would start the ship's engines again and resume his voyage to Honolulu.

For a few minutes Julian's mind was racked with awful indecision. If, as the Captain claimed, he had known nothing of Bill Urata's intention to ship him to Honolulu, he had only to ask for a boat to be got out to put him ashore. But if Dosen was in the plot he would certainly not agree to do that. Instead, Julian realised grimly, directly
he made his request he would forcibly be conducted back to his cabin and locked in there. And the only alternative to asking for a boat was to endeavour to swim ashore.

A small harbour off which the
Matabura
lay did not look more than a mile away, but Julian knew that such estimates of distance across water could prove disastrously deceptive. He was a good swimmer, but even a mile when fully dressed would tax his strength to the utmost. Yet to ask the Captain for a boat was to run a very grave risk of his hope of getting back to Kyoto ending in dismal failure, and failure meant not only his having to submit to a wretched voyage to Honolulu, but that Merri's life might be forfeited by it. He knew then that he must risk his own.

Stepping back into the cabin, he took off his shoes, then his coat and wrapped them in it. Tearing strips from a towel he tied the bundle to the small of his back, then stepped out on to the deck. After a quick glance round to make certain that no-one was about, he climbed the rail, hovered there for a moment, took a deep breath and dived overboard.

His dive was a good one; so he hit the water with hardly a splash, but the height from which he had gone in was such that he went down, down, down until he thought he would never stop. By thrusting fiercely against the water he at last began to come up, but by the time he surfaced his lungs were nearly bursting. As he shook the water from his eyes, he could no longer see the shore; but he struck out resolutely with a good steady stroke.

He had been swimming for about five minutes when he heard a shout behind him. Looking back, he saw that a deck hand had spotted him and was gesticulating wildly. Ignoring the man's shouts, he swam on; but when next he looked over his shoulder he saw that several men were clustered about a boat and making ready to lower it. The sight filled him with alarm, as it was evident that they meant to come after him. However, the boat was chocked
up inboard and still had its canvas cover on; so he tried to comfort himself with the thought that it would be quite a time before they could get it into the water.

For a quarter of an hour he made steady progress; but each time the swell carried him high enough to glimpse the harbour it seemed no nearer, and the distance he still had to swim more frightening. By then the boat had been lowered and was about to be cast off. Knowing that the crew would soon be rowing all-out in pursuit of him, he was greatly tempted to increase his pace, but resisted the impulse from dread that he would tire more quickly and perhaps drown before either he could reach the shore or the boat could come up with him.

The ten minutes that followed were an agony. Even maintaining a steady pace now caused him to draw each breath with a gasp that seared his lungs. The clothes he was wearing increasingly impeded his movements and the sodden bundle on his back acted as a drag on him. Only one thing served to encourage him. The headland to the south of the little town kept its position; so he knew that no current was sweeping him seaward, and that if he had not greatly overestimated the distance from the ship to the harbour he must by now be well over half-way to it. The awful question was could he continue swimming for long enough to reach land and before the boat caught up with him? He would have given a year's income to be able, by turning on his back and floating for a while, to rest himself. But he dare not. The thought of being captured and carried off again was too unbearable.

A shout from behind told him that the boat could not be far away; but at the moment he heard it the swell carried him up so he saw that the pier of the harbour was now not far off and that well outside it a small fishing junk was just hoisting her concertina sail. If only he could attract the attention of the men in her they might save him from his pursuers.

With aching muscles and pain-pierced lungs he made a
desperate effort and covered the next hundred yards at a slightly increased pace. By then he was swallowing a lot of water and the boat was within ten yards of him; but the sailing junk was coming in his direction and one of the men in her began to shout and wave.

Another agonising three minutes passed. He was almost at the end of his tether. Then the two boats bore down on him almost simultaneously. A man in the junk threw him a rope. He grabbed it and with his remaining strength endeavoured to haul himself along it. But next moment the boat from the ship was almost on top of him. He was seised by the shoulders and dragged up into her.

Sprawled across one of the thwarts, he was too winded even to make a cry of protest or shout an appeal to the men in the junk to save him. While he fought to get back his breath he savoured all the bitterness of defeat. He had risked drowning in vain and must, after all, make the voyage to Honolulu with the heartbreaking knowledge that little Merri was lost to him forever.

Closing his eyes, he choked up some water. When he opened them again he saw Dosen's rugged face above his own. Bending lower, the Captain hissed at him, ‘Great foolish! You mad! Mad; mad! Have you wish drown?'

‘Oh, go to hell!' Julian wheezed weakly.

‘Hell yes, you near go.' Dosen shook his head. ‘I think you sleep. Good time you wakie. See ship make lie up from storm. Say me boat please. I give. Why no? Boat take you shore. To make swim is mad; mad!'

Julian could hardly believe his ears. If he could, the Captain had not been lying to him on the previous afternoon; so he had had his gruelling swim and risked his life quite unnecessarily. Then, as he struggled up into a sitting position, he saw that the little junk was now alongside, her concertina sail lowered and her crew of three men regarding him with evident curiosity.

Perhaps, he thought, that explained Dosen's attitude. The Captain had expected that he would put up a fight
rather than be taken unresisting back to the ship. Had he done so the fishermen would have witnessed it and, perhaps, reported the affair or, anyhow, could have been later called as witnesses against him. He might be on the level; but it was equally probable that the arrival of the junk had decided him against risking having to face a charge, that could be proved, of using violence to abduct a British subject.

Either way, all that mattered to Julian was that he had secured his freedom. Dosen, with the usual deep formal bows, made no objection to his transferring to the junk and a quarter of an hour later the fishermen put him ashore in the small harbour.

None of the three spoke a word of English, but as no attempt had been made to deprive Julian of his wallet he still had plenty of money on him. Producing some sodden notes, he rewarded the lean, grinning little men handsomely; then, indicating his sodden clothes, he pointed towards the town. The oldest of the men showed that he understood and led him through the main street to a small hotel.

Its bright-eyed little proprietor, like so many Japanese owing to the Occupation, spoke a strange brand of Americanese, and could not do enough for his unexpected guest. Fortified by a long draught of saki, Julian undressed while a bed-roll was laid out for him on the floor and padded coverlets provided to keep him warm. As he had slept for a good part of the night he felt tired only from his long swim, and that tiredness soon wore off; so he was able to enjoy a hearty breakfast of fresh crabmeat while his clothes were being dried. When he had finished he enquired of the landlord where he was and the quickest means of getting back to Kyoto.

It transpired that the
Matabura
had taken shelter between two small islands that lay just inside the jutting headland west of the entrance to the Gulf of Isewan. The Gulf almost formed an inland lake forty miles long and, in
places, twenty broad, that ran up to the great port of Nagoya. Toba was the name of the little town at which Julian had landed, and by rail Kyoto was some seventy miles distant. A local train would take him to the larger town of Tsu, which was twenty miles up the Gulf, and from there he would be able to get a faster train for the longer part of his journey.

Not having realised that he had dived overboard as early as a little before seven o'clock, he was surprised to learn that it was still not yet nine; and a train was due to leave Toba at 9.30. His clothes had been quickly dried, so he decided to catch the train if he could. While he dressed the little landlord obligingly got out his car, then ran him the short distance to the station.

Unlike the expresses, the train was of pre-war vintage and consisted of only three coaches with hard seats; but Julian was so delighted to have regained his freedom that he thought nothing of its discomfort and responded as well as he could with his small stock of Japanese to the smiling advances of his fellow passengers. Although evidently greatly intrigued by this foreigner, who appeared to be rich yet was wearing such sadly crumpled clothes, they politely hid their curiosity while offering him fruit, rice balls and sweets from the packages they had brought with them.

This attitude made it almost impossible to believe that just such people, or their fathers, had, in many cases, behaved with shocking bestiality during the war; but Julian knew that the Japanese troops had shown a bravery in attack unrivalled by any other army, fearlessly dying by the thousand in attempts to storm almost impregnable positions. Allowance, therefore, had to be made for the difference between Western and Eastern mentalities.

The men of the West, when compelled to fight, did so, in most cases with reservations about not getting killed if they could help it and without feeling any positive hatred against their enemies. Whereas those of the East, once
committed, were seised with a demoniac fury that caused them to throw their lives away in battle and regard any prisoners they took as evil beings intent on destroying their country and their homes with a fanaticism equalling their own. One thing at least seemed to Julian beyond dispute: in peacetime the vast majority of the people in every country were by instinct kind, hospitable and peace-loving, and the average Japanese as much so as men of any other country.

The little train dawdled on through a pleasant countryside, where men and women in broad-brimmed straw hats were working tirelessly in the rice fields, digging deep trenches to irrigate them, ploughing with hump-backed oxen and making protective fences to shelter their plots with the straw of last year's rice, which would later be laid in the trenches as compost. After frequent stops the train pulled up at Tsu shortly before eleven o'clock and everyone got out.

There Julian found he had over an hour to wait, but at midday a train that had a comfortable first-class coach took him again on his way. It was not an express, and only Japanese food was to be had in the restaurant car, but he made a good meal of the ubiquitous prawns and a big dish of strawberries.

Meanwhile the train carried him away from the Gulf, up through well-wooded mountainous country: very different from the industrial scrap-heap that lay between Osaka and Kyoto. Frequently it ran through groves of huge graceful bamboos
and
now and then clattered through a densely populated township with many waving children, or past a picturesque curved-roof temple. But unlike the villages in many other countries there were no gaily painted buildings, and the predominant colours of the landscape were a monotonous blend of brown, grey and olive-green.

By two o'clock it was skirting the shore of Lake Biwa, with its resorts from which the population of Kyoto bathed
in summer, and by a quarter past it drew in to the fine modern station of the ancient capital. A quarter of an hour later Julian was back in his room at the Miyako.

Thankfully he got out of his crumpled suit, sent it to be cleaned and pressed, had a hot bath and went to bed. At six o'clock he was roused by his telephone ringing. On answering it, he was told that Mr. Yutaka Urata was down in the foyer asking to see him. For a moment he hesitated; then, tight-lipped, he said tersely, ‘Very well, send him up.'

That either of the Uratas should have the effrontery to ask him to receive him greatly surprised him, and how they should have known that he was back in Kyoto he could not imagine; but, considerably intrigued to hear what the elder Urata had to say, he got out of bed, sluiced his face, combed his hair and put on his dressing gown. He had only just finished these preparations when there was a knock on the door and, on his calling ‘Come in', the small, neat, bespectacled ship-owner presented himself.