The Samurai's Daughter by Lesley Downer Page B

mouth, as if to suggest that this sort of place was really rather below him. His hair was glossy, cut in the modish
jangiri
style, cropped short with a side parting like a westerner’s and sleekly combed. While her brother and his friends mixed Japanese and western – a western jacket over flowing hakama trousers or a Japanese robe topped with a bowler hat, Masuda-
sama
was western from head to toe. He was wearing a suit that looked very expensive, with a waistcoat, a neatly folded handkerchief poking from his top pocket, a necktie and shiny leather shoes, and seemed perfectly at ease in it all.
    The cicadas droned, the sun beat down and the courtyard shimmered in the heat. Beads of sweat were trickling down his face. He scowled and took a big handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped them away with the ferocity of a warrior beating back the enemy.
    ‘He must be sweltering in all those clothes,’ Taka whispered to Okatsu. She could see he was the sort of man her mother would think quite perfect – young, cocky, well dressed and extremely rich.
    Besides Masuda-
sama
there were a couple of bewhiskered men who Taka guessed must be the marriage broker, Hashimoto-
sama
, and Masuda-
sama
’s father, and a broad-faced younger man with a determined expression who, according to protocol, was probably his brother. She was taken aback to see a woman too. Women didn’t usually attend these formal events. It showed the family must be really very progressive indeed. The woman was in her middle years, a forbidding-looking dowager with a scowl, a noticeably receding chin and a pair of glasses on a stick which she held to her eyes as she looked around. They were all dressed in formal western clothes, the men in high-collared suits, the woman in a day dress with a train and a large bonnet.
    Taka knew very well that once she was married to this youth, it would be his mother, not him, whom she would see on a daily basis. She would have to serve her until the day one or other of them died. If she was kind, Taka’s life would be easy; but most mothers-in-law were far from that. Taka watched, her heart sinking, as the woman swung round and snapped at a servant who apparently wasn’t holding the parasol precisely where she wanted it.
    As for Masuda-
sama
, it really didn’t matter what he looked like or what sort of person he was. Of course, it would be a brilliant match. Her friends would be eaten up with envy. When they left school, they all bragged about the wealthy young men they had captured and their expensive wedding kimonos and lavish palanquins; and she, Taka, it seemed, was to marry the wealthiest and most eligible of the lot.
    But once they were married she’d hardly ever see him any more. Somehow they would produce children, but other than that he’d amuse himself in the pleasure quarters and geisha districts and no doubt keep a flotilla of mistresses, as men of his wealth and standing did – as her own father did. That was why all the other girls accepted whatever husband their parents chose for them, partly because it was what they were expected to do and also because in the end all that mattered was that he should be a man who could support a wife in the proper style. His character was irrelevant. Their relationship would be purely formal.
    But in that case she could make the same compromise – except that while he was busy with his work and his mistresses, she would be imprisoned at home with his mother. That was the future she dreaded – and there was no escaping it.
    Peeking through the screens, she felt such a sense of inevitability that she sank back on her heels, speechless. She was utterly trapped. Before, her life had stretched ahead of her, full of possibilities. Now that freedom, those possibilities, had all come to an abrupt end.
    The little group was walking across the courtyard, servants scurrying alongside, holding parasols over their heads.
    ‘Okatsu, go and welcome them. I can’t,’ said Taka.