TIME OUT OF TIME
A Short Story by West Coaster

Rory MacIntyre walked quickly through the narrow lanes. It was June and the monsoon season was at its height. It was nearly midnight and, although it was not raining at the moment, the cobbles were wet and slick underfoot. It was almost completely dark but occasionally the moon shone between dark, racing, clouds. In her note Miyoko had said she would meet him at the Spectacle Bridge and, as he turned the last corner, he saw her there. She was wearing a dark cloak over her kimono and, although her face was half hidden by the hood of the cloak, he knew it was her. Junko, her maid, was standing in a nearby shadowed doorway discreetly awaiting her mistress’ bidding. Miyoko heard his heavy tread on the cobbles and looked up at him as he approached.

“Miyoko-chan”, he said, “you are here. Are you sure this is not too public?”
Miyoko Watanabe, daughter of the provincial governor of western Japan, looked into Rory’s eyes and smiled.
“Do not worry Rory-san, another girl meeting her lover at midnight on the Spectacle Bridge will not arouse too much interest.”
They stood close to each other, not touching. Rory wanted with all his heart to hold her tightly to him but he knew that she would not allow it.
“They are calling me back to Tokyo”, he said. “And then I’m on the next available ship to England.”
“I know”, she said. “My father told me.”
“What will happen with you?” He asked.
“I am to go to Kyoto to live with my aunt until this scandal, as my father calls it, has blown over.”
“Does your father know you are here?”
“I don’t know Rory-san, and I don’t care. I only know I had to see you again.”
Rory saw that she was crying. He made to embrace her but she drew back and turned her head away from him. He waited, and in a moment she turned back , her face composed.

Rory recalled the first time that he saw her at the consulate reception. It was April 1939 and in Europe there was nervous talk of war. Rory’s father, Air Marshal ‘Jock’ MacIntyre, had delayed his retirement in order to strengthen the RAF’s strategic planning department at the War Office. In Japan, for now at least, there was a patina of normality overlying diplomatic relations with Britain, and the consul was hosting this gathering to introduce the new attache for trade. Rory, the new consular assistant, was on official duty.

He remembered looking across the crowded room at the pretty girl in her formal kimono. She was standing alone on the balcony looking out at the old port city. Her face was, he thought, like the most delicate flower and, when he had wangled an introduction, her smile, so unlike other young Japanese women that he had met, was open and direct. She was twenty two years old and the only child of the most powerful man in the western province. Her father, Yasuo Watanabe, was an industrialist, a politician, and an aristocrat. He also saw himself as a moderniser and he had sent his daughter to the United States to complete her education. Miyoko had studied art history in New York. Rory was delighted to meet a young woman who was near to his own age and who also spoke perfect English. Miyoko, in turn, was captivated by this handsome, red-haired Scotsman. They spent the rest of that first evening talking, and she laughed readily at his jokes and the way he affectionately mimicked some of the pomposities of his superiors. Rory loved the way Miyoko spoke, and he gently mocked, while she pretended to be offended, her American accent. It seemed as if they could see into each other’s hearts, as if they had always known each other. He confided to her how his father had wanted Rory to follow him into the Royal Air Force but he had resisted, entering the Foreign Service instead. She told him of her dream, to be able to study art in Venice. She did not want, in spite of her parents’ pleadings, to settle down to life as the dutiful Japanese wife. Her father, she wryly explained, blamed her mother for not being firm enough and her mother blamed her father for encouraging these notions in the first place. Rory knew they had to meet again and she, although bound by convention, encouraged him.

They met discreetly at first and then more openly, although there was always the quiet presence in the background of Junko-chan. One night, some two months after they had first met, she told him to meet her at her friend’s house. When Rory arrived he saw that, apart from Junko, they were alone. Miyoko had said that she wanted to make him tea and, knowing that her friend was away, had contrived this private rendezvous. Rory knew they were both being reckless but he also knew that there was something between them which was somehow fated. They kissed for the first time and, as their lips met, the universe was reduced to only them, and at its centre was this kiss. Junko was gone and they were finally, truly, alone. Miyoko took Rory’s hand and led him from the living room to the adjacent tatame room.
“I love you, Miyoko-chan”, he said when they lay together.
He undressed her, always looking into her eyes, his hands worshipping her perfect, pale, smooth skin. She kissed his face and neck then arched forward, pushing herself into him.
“I love you, Rory-san”, she said. “Please don’t stop.”

It couldn’t last, and in their hearts they both knew it, but they kept meeting, with the ever discreet Junko as a kind of chaperone, but always, eventually, managing to be alone.
“We are not living in the real world Rory-san”, she said to him one night.
“This is time out of time Miyoko-chan”, he said, believing that they could live, for now at least, outside of the real world. “No-one can touch us here, and who knows how things will turn out later. Let us just live this now”.

When her father eventually found out about them he was furious. In the present political climate his daughter’s entanglement with this minor diplomat, this gai-jin, could not be tolerated. The consul was summoned, the ambassador in Tokyo informed. Rory was told his career would be finished if he did not follow orders. The word, it seemed, had also reached his father. Events were moving and Rory was being moved with them as surely as if he was on a train.

Now they were here on the Spectacle Bridge, meeting for the last time.
“I love you Miyoko-chan”, he said.
“I love you too, Rory-san, but this love hurts too much”.
She could not help herself and moved closer to him. Rory wrapped his arms around her as she held her face up close to his. The rain was beginning to fall again. Rory knew then, at last, that there was no such thing as time out of time. There is only time and it washes over you like a wave and then it passes. He knew, because some logic told him so, that some day he would not feel this pain, but at this moment he did not want to believe it. He wanted this ache in his heart to be always with him, because it would be all that was left to him of this time and the love of this beautiful girl, and when the ache ceased then so would life itself. He kissed her and the rain mingled with their tears and the roar of the river rose up and surrounded them like the coming storm.
“Goodbye Miyoko-chan. Sayonara”.
“Goodbye Rory-san”.
She kissed him on the lips one last time. He let her go then and she turned quickly and walked away. Rory stood on the Spectacle Bridge and watched her until she was out of sight behind the small wooden buildings of Nagasaki.