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Marshall Cavendish International - Chand Meira

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109 pages

English

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English doctor Eva Kraig has spent her life making a home for abandoned children. Twenty years ago, she herself had adopted the illegitimate, half-American daughter of Kyo, an orphan who had grown up in the home and then turned to prostitution. Now Eva may lose her beloved Akiko, for Kyo - ravaged by time and drink - has returned to claim her grown daughter in the hope that Akiko will support her. As the winds intensify, so do the private struggles of the characters. When the storm abruptly switches course, trapping everyone inside the orphanage, Akiko finds herself stranded with her adoptive mother, the natural mother she has never known and a troubled young American who has fallen in love with her. In the brief calm of the typhoon's eye, the group leaves the battered orphanage to guide the staff and children to the comparative safety of a wealthy English couple's concrete house. There they must wait out the violence of the last quadrant - the wildest part of the storm. As the refugees draw together in a fight for survival, their perceptions of themselves and each other take on new dimensions - and the terrible night becomes a turning point for each of them.

Informations

Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	16 juillet 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814828635
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Meira Chand 1981
First published in 1981 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd
This new edition published by Marshall Cavendish Editions in 2018
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196.
Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com
Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Name(s): Chand, Meira.
Title: Last quadrant / Meira Chand.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2018. | First published: John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, 1981.
Identifier(s): OCN 1037826463 | eISBN: 978 981 4828 63 5
Subject(s): LCSH: Orphanages--Japan--Fiction. | Typhoons--Fiction. | Japan--Fiction.
Classification: DDC 823.914--dc23
Printed in Singapore
Cover design by Lorraine Aw
For Kumar

1. Thursday
May I come in then? Kyo asked. She had not waited at the outer gate, but let herself in and approached the front steps, as if such familiarity was in order. It was twenty years since Eva last saw her.
In the fierce light of the doorstep Kyo s small figure was bright and hard as a chip of stone. Eva blocked the passage with an arm before the open door. From behind came the odour of stewing bones from the soup she was preparing, a bald and fetid smell. Escaping the kitchen it seeped out about her into the sun of the garden and borders of marigolds. Their colours were deep and velvet against the parched dry beds of soil. Eva stared over the half moons of her glasses, and shock flushed in a cold dry burn.
Dropping her arm from the doorway, Eva moved a few inches back. Kyo s cheap perfume sharpened her nostrils, before the cooking bones engulfed it. The cloying film of make-up was thicker than before, the lips pulped and soft from that secret life Eva knew little of. But suddenly she remembered the fine texture of Kyo s skin, stretched over the wide flat planes of her face, scrubbed and shiny, free of make-up, on that first day Eva brought her to the orphanage, more than twenty-five years before. Now she thought, how changed she is, how old she has become; she must be forty-five.
Kyo followed Eva into the room but stopped at its carpeted threshold. Not a thing has changed. She looked round in a deprecating way, and then stepped boldly forward.
Eva stood silently, one thought above all filling her head. Why has she come after all these years, when I thought of her as dead? Before her Kyo walked about, touching, appraising the small cramped room. Its frail oriental scale was unsuited to the Western adaption of carpets, chairs and tables. The reflective glass doors of the china cabinet mirrored Kyo s presence to her. Yes, Eva thought, the room was the same as when Kyo last saw it, except for the twenty years it contained.
Through those years Eva had continued to live on the hill, in charge of St Christopher s orphanage, and surrounded by the same neighbours. Some way further up the road resided the Englishman, Arthur John Wilcox. Far below, the fortress of the Coopers house possessed the narrow sea road along the beach at Suma. From these predestined points upon the hill they consumed a com-mon view, of the Inland Sea of Japan and the town of Kobe on Osaka bay. They dissolved within the same sunset and watched the same unfolding day brim upon the sea. In a small house beside the orphanage Eva Kraig had lived all this time with her daughter, Akiko, adopted from the woman, Kyo Matsumoto. The years had passed between them smooth as glass, until this moment of Kyo s return.
And the thought of Akiko pressed dark and thick then in Eva s head. For she feared she knew why Kyo had come, all that she would say. She was thankful Akiko had gone that morning, earlier than usual, across to the orphanage. Whatever the reason Kyo had come, Eva wished to absorb it alone.
Sit down, she suggested.
Kyo sat with one leg crossing the other. A backless shoe gaped from her foot, a blue vein traced her heel. Beneath the make-up her flesh had the bloodlessness of plants shut away from sun. For she spent her life within a nocturnal warren of bars. Eva knew. She slept through the day, a drained whisky glass beside a stale bed. That was the life she had chosen, of the bars and a night-time world.
Head on one side Kyo lit a cigarette, inhaling with narrowed eyes. She looked deeply at Eva a moment, as if choosing an instant to strike. And Eva waited, cold and fixed, stiff with the twenty years behind that held at their core fear of this moment she knew was about to come. Sometimes she had dreamed of it, and woken. But the child was always there beside her, sleeping, peaceful, safe. Kyo exhaled smoke in a soft whistled breath. It meandered up in gossamer strands through a ray of light. Heat overwhelmed the room already warmed by the bald odour of the cooking soup bones. Eva wished for strength to open the window. But she sat, apprehensive and tense on a high-backed chair, her eyes on the golden sphere of carpet that ended the ray of light. Within it a threadbare warp pushed through a flowered border. Eva kept her eyes there and did not look up. She waited for the words.
I want Akiko back.
It was easier once she had heard them. She raised her head calmly, everything in her stilled. She s not yours to have back. You relinquished that claim. Easily, gratefully. Have you forgotten? Is it convenient again to become her mother? You know I adopted her legally.
She knew then that the words had been buried within her through all the years behind, waiting, guarding against this moment. She held her breath and the words reverberated on, filling the room and her head. From the window the shaft of light, like a pale laser beam, divided the space between them. Behind the dusty shifting ray Kyo appeared untouchable.
Eva stood up. She pulled wide the curtains in a rush and clatter of hooks and threw up the window. At once the sinister beam dissolved in sun and the dry smell of hot soil rose from the garden. Beyond the window Eva glimpsed the glassy surface of the sea and the dark shape of Awaji island. That morning the heat was still and oppressive, as if the sky pressed it flat upon the earth. Summer still spread a net over Autumn, refusing to relinquish it.
Eva turned to face Kyo, her back to the window, and saw the woman defenceless. Kyo shaded her eyes against the light, hardness peeled from her face like the skin of a grape on the soft naked flesh beneath. And Eva saw again Kyo s face on a night she remembered so well, smashed and mobile then with terror. On the night Eva found her, battered, abandoned, flung into a dirty frozen gutter. Then she had taken the girl in her arms, wiped the bruising and blood. Remembering, pictures surged up, one after another, tumbling into her mind. She pushed them down, to concentrate on Akiko.
Akiko. Her daughter. She could not think of her as less. She could not think of her as Kyo s child. Already she was twenty-two, years had melted quickly. Often, since the time the child first came to her, they had walked together on the gritty strip of nearby beach, and Eva had seen their shadows mingled there in wet sand, holding hands. At her side the child s breath was almost her own, in frail shells they had listened for the sea. And at night the child s body, limp with sleep, hollowed her out with love. Akiko. Eva stiffened and looked coldly at Kyo s upturned face. Kyo was like bad flesh you cut away, or the rot of fallen fruit.
I was ill ... I am ill ... it s bad. They told me they can t say anything. Maybe they ll cure me. I don t know. I can t think any more about it. Kyo put a hand to her cheek. Eva saw fear and weariness, she saw the loneliness Kyo would never admit.
I haven t lived in Japan for twenty years. I ve come back because I m ill. The tone was defiant.
Where were you all this time? Where did you work? Eva asked defensively; she did not want to hear.
Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taiwan. Bars, massage parlours, cabarets. Need you ask? Japanese girls are always in demand. I made good money. Kyo shrugged. There were fine lines about the corners of her eyes.
And you never came back to Japan? Eva questioned, feeling suddenly tired, suddenly old. There was a weight behind her lids.
Sometimes, for visits. Kyo shrugged again.
But you didn t think then of Akiko? Eva controlled the anger replacing the first harsh shock.
She was all right. I knew you would look after her. Kyo brazened.
What makes the difference now? Eva kept her voice low. She remembered how Kyo s well-being had obsessed her long before, and felt a double anger. What a fool I am, she thought. Why did I let her in? She must not be allowed to destroy us.
I ve told you, I m ill. I can t work. I ve no mone