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 it; she could tell by the spots of red on the secretary’s cheeks. She backed away from the desk. ‘I will write to him myself.’ Then she ran out of the door into the evening gloom, so that the secretary could not see her crying.
‘What did she do before, in Japan?’ the kindliest neighbour asked Vera, about Keiko, encountering the two on the street.
‘I am a diver,’ Keiko said, understanding.
‘Oh,’ said the neighbour, her eyes jumping from Vera to Keiko. A furrow developed in her brow. Perhaps she thought that Keiko was a performing diver, like in a circus. ‘I don’t suppose there is much call for a diver here.’
Vera’s teacher advised Keiko to go to the aquarium; maybe Keiko could find a job cleaning tanks. This was a good idea, and they both went, but once again Keiko was refused. Men did that job.
They returned to Horseshoe Bay. ‘I am a good diver,’ said Keiko. ‘What I love to do. Go to shore I do it. Pick up shellfish under the water,’ she said.
They tried a strip of beach on Bowen Island. But even Keiko could not work underwater, not in Canada. It was too cold. One man told her to go to Australia, but she did not know how to get there. There was only one place she could dive. Japan.
And suddenly, more than anything, that was what Vera wanted. To go with Keiko to Japan. She was angry at Hamilton Drew. She did write to him, but all she could put for an address was Kobe, Japan. If her father came, if he at long last materialised, she wanted to be gone. To have disappeared somewhere, so that he would look for her, and mourn. Even better to have disappeared in the Far East, where he had disappeared himself.
She felt that she was a failure, a useless, unlovable girl. She had been insufficient to keep her mother alive, and no better at keeping her grandfather alive. Whatever it was they were fighting her father about, whatever it was the men were looking for, it was more important than she was: that was the message. She might as well go off to Japan, wherever that was: she was no good for anything else.
It happened quickly, after that.
Keiko’s fishmonger in Japantown would let her work to earn the money to get home to Japan. Only for three months, he said, she could clean fish. But you cannot take that girl with you, he said. She is white, and she will not be safe.
‘He must be crazy,’ said Keiko to Vera. ‘It is not so.’
‘Japan will have war with all the white people of the world,’ said the fishmonger. ‘It is you who are crazy.’
Because they knew it would be for the last time, they returned to Homer Street. Hinchcliffe was positively rigid, Keiko strangely poised.
‘Honourable Miss Hinchcliffe,’ she said, bowing deeply. Hinchcliffe could not see the little smile around her mouth because Keiko’s face was directed toward the green linoleum floor. ‘We have much use of money you before given. And now we come to say that we like to go shopping more.’
‘It is for me,’ said Vera. ‘Grandfather would not have wanted me to be hungry.’
‘No,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. ‘He would not. Whatever he left, it is for you. But he left nothing. I have looked.’
Vera felt as if she had lost him all over again.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she whispered.
Perhaps
