This world is ours, p.3
This World is Ours, page 3
“What is wrong with my feet?” I asked Callum. He rubbed his nose in a familiar gesture of worry, and I knew at once I wasn’t going to like his answer.
“There is nothing at all wrong with your feet,” Callum’s mother, Catriona, broke in. “You have very elegant feet. It’s the abominable habit of binding women’s feet that’s wrong.”
She was obviously angry. I could see that Alexander, my father-in-law, was made anxious by her tone. He raised his hands in a supplicating gesture, but Catriona was not to be placated.
“Don’t you try and shush me, husband,” she snapped. “Foot binding is an insult to the poor girls it’s inflicted on. Do you know what they do to them?” Understanding the question was aimed at me, I shook my head quickly. “They wait until the poor children are around four years old, sometimes as old as nine, and then they mutilate their feet. And to make matters even worse, it’s often the child’s own mother who tortures them. They soak the girls’ feet in herbs and hot water, and then curl their toes right under their foot, and bash them so hard the toes are actually broken. If it’s thought the nails are ugly, they shove bits of tiles in the sides, so they infect and fall off eventually.” I curled my own toes in sympathy. “And not content with that, they then bind the feet tightly, so the entire shape of the foot is altered and it’s kept tiny. Once bound, they stay bound forever. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what pain it causes to literally walk on your toes all your life?” I swallowed nausea. I had heard of the process when I was a child in Japan, but I had never actually seen a bound foot. “Not only do the feet stay very small, they’re bent out of shape entirely. The most favored shape and size is called the Lotus Foot. I’ve seen so-called Lotus Feet, and I can tell you they are hideous. They look like nothing more than a child’s drawing of a shoe with a heel. And of course, the poor girl can never walk properly afterward. And why do they do it? Because some fool of an emperor hundreds of years ago liked tiny feet. Or so they say,” she added darkly.
“Catriona, please,” Alexander pleaded, obviously embarrassed. But she was in full flow and not about to be distracted.
“I’ve heard it’s still done to show that the family is so rich the women don’t have to work for a living. That’s rubbish, of course. Lots of the peasant women have bound feet and they have to work in the fields all day, no matter how much it hurts their poor feet. No, it’s all down to sex.” I blinked in surprise. Catriona’s face was flushed with anger, her lips pinched into straight lines. I glanced at Callum and my father-in-law and—if Catriona hadn’t been so very serious—I would have laughed out loud at their embarrassed expressions. “Because the girls can’t walk properly with mutilated feet, it means they have to move with their hips tipped forward all the time. That throws them off balance, of course, and means that they have to keep their vaginal muscles tightly clenched to try and compensate. Great fun for the menfolk, but just an additional nuisance for the poor girls.”
Alexander stared miserably at the floor. “Catriona, dear. I know you feel strongly about it, but it’s nothing to do with our mission here. And the locals get very angry when you try and stop some ma from doing what she thinks is the best thing for her daughter.” He smiled briefly at me. “It’s very difficult for a girl with unbound feet to find a husband, so it’s very rare to find a girl with natural feet. That’s why they can’t understand why a lovely girl like you has normal feet, Tara.”
I understood at once. What girl child would dare refuse to have her feet bound if it meant she would live her life as an old maid, dependent on the charity of her family?
Catriona was obviously not appeased. She was sewing, turning the cuffs on one of Alexander’s shirts to make it wear for longer. She took her anger out on the sleeve, jabbing her needle into the cloth viciously. In spite of her indignation, I found her homely money-saving device curiously moving. After all, there was no need for her to practice the minor economy. Callum was Marquess of Kyle. He owned estates that were so large that a man on a good horse could not ride across them in a week. His lands were fertile, his herds productive. It was said in Kyle that even the salmon flocked to his rivers in preference to his neighbors. He was a very rich man. When he had been in the British army, fighting in the Crimea, his men had called him “Romany Cal.” Not just a reference to his deep blue eyes and black hair; those could, I suppose, make him look a little like a gypsy. But really the nickname was in honor of his supposed good luck. As one of the men under his command had explained to me, “You always get told a good fortune from a Romany. And your man is always lucky.” But Callum should never have inherited the title. Truly, it belonged to his father. But that good man had refused to accept it, insisting that he had been chosen by God to do His work as a missionary, and a mere title and great wealth would not distract him from that purpose.
So Callum had inherited the title and the vast estates that went with it while his parents remained impoverished missionaries here in Shanghai. The thought made me very uneasy. It felt wrong to me. The more so as I watched his mother glance around for a pair of scissors, and finding none, break the thread with her teeth. The scissors were close at her side, but she had not seen them. I could tell from the way fine lines were forming at the bridge of her nose that she should wear spectacles, and I also guessed that she did not wear them because she felt the family’s money could be better spent elsewhere and not from vanity.
I felt a sudden surge of love for Catriona, for her care not just for her own family but also for the poor girls with their bound feet who meant nothing to her. And to think that only a few weeks before I had been terrified of meeting my new parents. My eyes grew misty as I remembered standing in front of their modest door, my hand clasped firmly in Callum’s fingers as we waited for our knock to be answered.
“Where are we?” I asked, more for something to say than because I really wanted to know.
“Dream Flower Street,” Callum said.
I stared around at the packed street, pulsing with people and carts and stray dogs slinking furtively past in expectation of a kick. The noise was deafening, the smell of so many unwashed bodies nauseating. This was Dream Flower Street? I almost laughed in disbelief.
“You’re shaking,” he said softly, tightening his grip. “Don’t worry. My parents know all about you. They’ll love you, just as I do.”
I wished I could share his certainty. My first mother-in-law had hated me. She had always regarded me as what Virginia society called me behind my back— a high yellow negro. She never forgave me for marrying her only son. I left her well provided for when I ran away from the family’s plantation with Callum after my first husband died, but I still doubted if she ever gave me a fond thought. As if he had read my mind, Callum put his arm around me and squeezed me tightly. I leaned against him and jumped as the door swung open.
“Welcome! Callum, what are you thinking of, knocking on your own door like a stranger. Come away in, the both of you.”
I smiled. The Scottish brogue was loud. If I had not gotten used to it in the time I had spent in the Highlands, I doubt I would have understood a word. And to hear it here, in the middle of Shanghai, was amazing.
“Da, it is very good to see you.” Callum sounded oddly formal. Suddenly, I realized that in spite of his reassuring words he, too, was nervous.
I peered around as the door was shut behind us. The inside of the house was very dark after the bright sunshine, and my eyes were slow to adjust. I was disorientated as well. I had expected to find that Shanghai—being the closest Chinese city to Japan—would be much like my beloved Edo. But it was not. Certainly, it was as thronged with people, all seeming to be talking at the top of their voices at the same time. But the streets were laid out differently, and where I had been expecting single-story houses built of wood, with silk or paper door screens and windows, a surprising number of these houses were two and even three stories high, and many were constructed of stone. They seemed to my bewildered eyes to look more like European homes than Japanese. The people who thronged the streets did look more Japanese than European, but at the same time they were different enough to be disturbing. Oddly, the resonating Scottish tones of Callum’s father were more homely to me than the rabble outside.
“Well, dear. As my great hulk of a son seems to be tongue-tied, I must guess that you are my new daughter.” Callum’s father mocked him gently, and I began to relax a little. “Welcome to our home, Tara dear. I’m delighted to see you here at long last.”
Out of both habit and respect, I bowed deeply.
“Och, away with all that formality. I’m Alexander. But I would be very happy if you would call me Da.”
Tears made my vision shimmer. I could remember my own father, of course. But it was very many years since I had last seen him, and I remembered him as a withdrawn, rather fierce sort of man. Certainly, he had never spoken kindly to me. Of course not. I was merely a worthless girl child. A useless mouth to feed. I had been only eleven years old when Auntie came to take me away to the Green Tea House, where I was to become a maiko, and finally a geisha. My mother had told me firmly that if I went with Auntie, then the whole family would eat well for a long time, so I was proud to go with her. But on that day, Father had been hard at work in the fields, together with all my brothers, so I had never had the chance to say goodbye to him. Suddenly, I felt the loss of my family all over again and my heart ached. I had no words, and simply stepped forward to my new father and leaned against him, sagging with joy and relief when he put his arms around me and embraced me warmly.
Callum was a tall man with a muscular build to match his height. He towered head and shoulders above me. Because of that, I had assumed that his father would also be tall. But he was not. He was taller than me, certainly. But that wasn’t difficult! I had seen at once that he was below middling height, and comfortably built. In a few years’ time, I guessed he would become fat if he wasn’t careful not to eat too much rice. Perhaps Callum had inherited his great-grandfather’s height? The thought fled as I buried my head gratefully into my father-in-law’s shoulder.
“Put the poor girl down, Alex.”
My fears arose anew. The woman’s accent was as richly Scottish as Alexander’s, but I thought she sounded abrupt and not at all welcoming. My impression was reinforced at once as Alexander hurriedly took his arms away from me and stood back, as if he regretted his warm greeting.
“Just welcoming our lovely daughter, my dear Catriona. And isn’t she a beauty?” he added happily. My eyes widened with surprise as I stared at my new mother-in-law.
Callum’s mother was very tall for a woman. Tall and as slender as a bamboo. Even in the darkness of the hall, her hair glowed so blonde that it was almost as if it shone with its own light. She was as out of place here in dark Shanghai as I had been in Virginia. The thought gave me courage, and I managed a shy smile. She studied me carefully for a moment, and then nodded as if I had passed some unknown test.
“Tara. It is very good to see you. I’m Catriona.” She smiled warmly, but I noticed she did not invite me to call her Ma. “And you, my son. What do you have to say for yourself?”
She turned her attention to Callum and her face changed at once. Genuine delight lifted her expression. Her eyes were deep blue, just the same color as Callum’s. His black hair came from his father, I realized, and I wondered at the perfection of the combination. Suddenly, she sounded horrified.
“My God! What has happened to your eye!” She leaned forward and stroked Callum’s eye gently, her fingertip tracing the terrible scar that puckered the skin from his eyebrow down through his eyelid to his cheekbone. “Can you see? What happened to you?”
Irrationally, I expected that she would blame me for poor Callum’s wound, and I shrank back toward Alexander.
“Shrapnel,” Callum said briefly. “I was too close to an exploding shell in the Crimean war. But it doesn’t matter. I can see perfectly well. And I rather thought it gave me a certain roguish charm,” he added hopefully.
There was silence for a moment, and then Alexander began to laugh. He sounded rather short of breath, almost like a pair of bagpipes that had run out of wind, and the thought made me laugh with him. Callum’s mother glanced from Alexander to me, and her stern expression faded.
“Fool of a son that you are.” She pretended to tap his face in anger and shook her head fondly. I stopped laughing and held my breath as I saw the beauty she must have been before time and self-imposed hardship had worn away all the softness in her features. “Tara-chan. What on earth persuaded you to marry this great oaf of a son of mine?”
She held her hand out to me. I took it gladly and she held it and stared at me for a moment before she nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Come away ben, both of you.”
I followed her down the gloomy passage, smiling as I remembered the Highland greeting. Strange as it was to hear it here in China, it was a comforting reminder of the place I had come to think of as home.
Callum and I sat side by side on a Western-style sofa. I was surprised. I had anticipated kneeling on the floor. I waited almost fearfully for the questions to begin, and rehearsed my responses carefully in my mind. Even to me, my history hardly sounded reputable. I was sold to a tea house at eleven. Trained to be a geisha and auctioned to the highest bidder—a man old enough to be my grandfather—for my mizuage ceremony, the ritual deflowering that all maiko must endure before they can become geisha. I was made pregnant by my gaijin lover, but I was forced to leave my beloved daughter behind me in Edo on the day she was born when I fled to America with my lover. There was a reason for all of it! I thought wildly. None of it was my fault!
“Tara, dear. Are you thirsty? Would you like some tea? Or perhaps we could offer you some mijui? It’s very similar to sake.”
My new da was smiling at me anxiously. I glanced around the shabby room uncertainly. I was confused. Callum was a very rich man, yet his parents appeared to live in something close to poverty. Callum had explained to me long ago that he had inherited the title of Marquess of Kyle, together with huge estates in the Highlands of Scotland, by a series of unfortunate accidents. His eldest uncle had died very soon after inheriting the title from Callum’s grandfather. His second uncle should then have become Marquess of Kyle, but he had died suddenly a few weeks before his elder brother. The title should then have passed to the third brother, Callum’s father, but he was already here in China, working as a missionary, and he had firmly refused the honor. Neither did Callum love the life of an aristocrat. In fact, he had been happier serving as an officer in the British army in the Crimea than he was as Lord Kyle. But my dear husband had a tender conscience, and he had agreed to take on the title reluctantly.
“You care more for the families who work on the estate than you do for yourself,” I teased him. For once, Callum wasn’t in a playful mood.
“I have to,” he explained earnestly. He waved his hand at our opulent drawing room. “I’ve got everything. Good food. A whole castle to call my own. So much land even I don’t know every bit of it. I’m never cold or worried where the next meal is coming from. But my tenants don’t have a fraction of this, and they depend on the Kyle estate for the little they do have. Most of their families have served us for centuries. The Marquess of Kyle owes it to them to take care of them. And apparently that is now me,” he added glumly.
I took him in my arms and held him very tightly. I sensed his frustration. Callum hated being Lord Kyle. He wanted to be free to live his own life. When I had first met him, he had simply been Callum Niaish. I had been drawn to him instinctively, but Virginian society was pleased to accept him as a slave trader, and I had been a slave myself for too long to countenance such cruelty. I wanted to hate him, but no matter how I tried, I could not. And then, after my husband died, I discovered Callum was actually working with the Underground Railroad and was freeing slaves, not buying them. We ran away from Virginia ourselves when Callum’s disguise was undone, just as the local plantation owners were about to set their bloodhounds on him.
By a twist of fate, once we left Virginia and returned to Scotland, Callum himself became the slave. The Kyle estates took him over, body and soul. He worked harder than any of his tenants, and when I told him so, he simply shrugged.
“It’s not mine,” he explained. “Me, my uncle, my grandfather. All of us, stretching back down the years. We all just look after things for the next generation. It’s just the way it is. I’m responsible for it, whether I want to be or not.”
I saw the hopeful look on his face when he spoke of the next generation and I closed my own eyes in pain. I told myself constantly it was no more than superstitious rubbish, but I didn’t even convince myself. I knew my dear daughter, Kazhua, was still alive. And equally did I know that until I found her again there would be no more children for me.
I realized Alexander was still waiting for my reply. I cleared my throat, worried that if I accepted his offer of mijui, they would go hungry as a result. Callum decided for me.
“Mijui, please. For both of us.” He grinned slyly. “Although I have to tell you, Da, that I have something rather special in my bags for you. A bottle of Edradour whisky. I’ve hoarded it for you all the long way down from the Crimea. And believe me, there were days when I longed to break the seal and take a dram for myself!”
I was amazed when it was Catriona who replied.
“Glory be! I have to say I’ve missed a wee dram now and then.”
Callum laughed and I joined in uncertainly. But at least the ice was broken. The mijui arrived and I sipped it happily. It was served warm, very like sake. For the first time, I began to feel as if Edo was no longer an impossible dream for me.
