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Pinkerton’s departure, he had seen how tenderly she cared for Cho-Cho, anticipating her needs, small, bright eyes following her mistress’s every movement. But today her broad face was closed, she seemed distant.
    ‘Suzuki? Is something wrong?’
    ‘In one way, you could say so. In another, things could not be better.’
    He knew enough of the form to wait.
    ‘She is expecting a child.’
    This was an appalling indiscretion, as they were both aware. But Suzuki, less naïve than her mistress, was also aware of the realities involved.
    ‘If Lieutenant Pinkerton could be informed—’
    But Cho-Cho was approaching, and the conversation ceased.
    He should not have been surprised. Indeed, he was saddened rather than surprised. The girl’s future had narrowed.
    When the evidence was visible to all, Cho-Cho invited Sharpless to tea. She had not previously honoured him with the ceremony. Now he sat, legs folded under him, while she knelt, setting out the little cups, the scoop and powdered green tea and bowl; boiled the water, whisked and waited, concentrating on every movement.
    Self-consciously he smoothed back his lank hair, almost Japanese in its darkness – not a grey hair to be seen though he was nudging forty-five. His scrawny, weightless body settled comfortably into a posture foreigners usually found painful. He folded his hands and watched her precise movements, the way she honoured each act in turn.
    She had performed the tea ceremony for Pinkerton once,settling, as now, for the shorter version that lasted barely an hour, but it had not been one of their successes. He commented to Sharpless later, ‘Pretty long wait for a mouthful of dishwater.’
    Sharpless had tried to explain that the ceremony required years of training and practice: ‘ Chanoyu is an art, a ritual of mystical significance which must be performed in a studied, graceful manner.’
    He could enjoy it, he was enjoying it now, watching Cho-Cho’s small hands lifting, pouring, whisking the liquid to a froth. The bowl she used was precious, one of her few possessions, a relic of a once-prosperous family. Black Oribe ceramic, it could be three or four hundred years old. He admired its lack of symmetry, the rustic surface. Still, he guiltily found himself acknowledging that the whole point of this extended ceremony, its arcane complexity, detail and importance, was, as Pinkerton had implied, the making and serving of a cup of tea.
    After the ritual had been completed, the tea tasted, and the utensils carefully washed and dried and cleared away, Cho-Cho gave Sharpless her news. He offered his congratulations and told her he would write at once to inform Lieutenant Pinkerton that he was to be a father.
    ‘A big surprise!’ she said, smiling. ‘It will bring him pleasure.’
    Sharpless certainly agreed with the first statement. He was less sure about the second.
    When the reply arrived, a brief scrawl, the large, untidy handwriting covering the page, it was accompanied by dollar bills in large denominations. Pinkerton wrote that he was sending more than enough to cover the expenses of the confinement and extend the rental of the house. Cho-Cho, he added, was a working girl in good health, and as for the child, under the circumstances, who could know if it was even his? No personal message enclosed.
    Sharpless sat for a long time at his desk, feeling a greyness settle over him; a sense of failure, of defeat, though who or what had defeated him he could not have said. Next day he called on Cho-Cho, and told her he had heard from Pinkerton. The lieutenant was, of course, delighted by the news. He had sent money to cover all expenses.
    ‘And does he say when he will be returning?’
    ‘It was a brief communication, between duties. He must be extremely busy.’
    It was cowardly. It was also wrong, to continue to give her false hope. But he told himself that a woman expecting a child could not be expected also to handle news that would destroy all hope.