The Concubine's Secret (10 page)

‘Exactly. That’s what your Cossack and I will start work on tonight.’

‘Alexei?’

Their footsteps slowed, finally halting on the edge of the frozen landscape that ranged for miles in every direction. Only the foundry itself was built in a sunken hollow, as though its creator had endeavoured to keep it as much out of sight as possible, its ugliness an affront to the splendour of his god. Now, with religion nothing more than a dirty word, just something the Politburo wiped their Communist boots on, the factories and foundries of Russia had become the new churches.

‘Alexei?’ Lydia said again, her finger tapping his arm insistently.

He nodded to indicate he was listening, but his eyes still scrutinised the approach road to the foundry. Somewhere unseen, the sound of a truck starting up drifted to their ears.

‘I’ve thought of an idea,’ she said.

She felt his arm stiffen. He looked at her quickly. ‘What idea?’

‘I need to help. At the moment it’s just you and Popkov sniffing out a guard and a foundry worker who will take a bribe, while I sit twiddling my thumbs, just waiting for you to-’

‘For God’s sake, Lydia, what do you expect? If you start putting your face about and asking questions, you’ll throw us all in danger.’ He tightened his grip on her hand. ‘Don’t!’ he said. His green eyes probed hers intently. ‘Whatever it is, don’t! Do you hear me? Don’t!’

There was a long silence between them, broken only by the truck engine approaching. Lydia was the first who looked away, not because she was nervous of him but because she didn’t want him to see how angry she was. She tried to remove her hand from his arm but he refused to release it. The sky was losing its colour and the first wings of darkness were gliding in from the west.

‘Let’s go back,’ Lydia said.

They turned and retraced their steps along the narrow streets in silence.

The truck overtook them. It was empty and bouncing along at speed, kicking up dust and trailing a foul odour in its wake, but just ahead a handcart had tumbled on to its side in the middle of the road, spewing out cabbages that rolled into the gutter like loose heads. The truck sounded its horn then juddered to a halt. As Lydia and Alexei approached, the blond young driver of the truck wound down his window, leaned out and treated Lydia to an inviting smile that displayed perfect teeth under the sparse beginnings of a moustache. He was wearing a navy woollen cap pulled down at an angle over one eye, giving him the air of an adventurer.

‘Hello, beautiful,’ he called. ‘Ti takaya krasivaya.’

Lydia felt Alexei bristle but nevertheless she looked up into the cab of the truck and gave the driver an answering smile. ‘Dobriy vecher,’ she responded. ‘Good evening.’

‘Want a lift?’

She let the question hang in the air and felt both men alert to her answer. Alexei still held her hand on his arm but made no attempt to speak, looking deliberately straight ahead at the cart being manhandled out of the way.

‘
Nyet.
But thanks anyway.’ She gave the driver a slow sideways glance and heard him laugh delightedly.

He leaned down in his cab and brought up something small in his hand, which he tossed out the window to her. It arced between them, spiralling and twisting, until Lydia snatched it out of the air with her free hand. It was just a metal disc, no bigger than a coin but polished to perfection, with the name
Kolya
engraved on it. The driver waved to her and drove on over the cabbages, leaving them with a belch of exhaust fumes and a long blast on his horn.

‘I bet he keeps one of those in his truck for every girl he passes,’ Alexei muttered, and it amused Lydia to see he was irritated by the little gift. She twirled the flat disc between her fingers and the last rays of sunlight turned it to fire.

‘It’s an omen,’ she laughed and swept off her ugly hat, letting her hair leap free.

She had learned about omens from Chang An Lo; how the gods sent them as a sign. Westerners had lost the skill of recognising them, but Chang had taught her how to feel for them with her fox spirit.

‘Lydia, there’s no such thing as-’

‘Of course there is.’ She spun the gleaming disc. ‘See the fire in it. It matches me. Don’t you see? It means I’m meant to be here. The omen burns so bright, it shows we’re destined for success. ’

Alexei had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at her, disbelief written all over his face. But she didn’t miss the laughter in his eyes.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘shall I tell you my idea?’

‘The answer is still no.’

Lydia stood alone in her bedroom in the hostel, her limbs too stiff and unyielding to let her curl up on the bed and seek refuge in sleep. It was as if they took orders now from Alexei instead of from herself. She heard his words still rattling round inside her skull with a persistence that drove her to fret at the hat in her hands, pulling threads out of it when really what she wanted to do was pull threads out of Alexei.

The answer is still no.

That’s what he’d said, over and over again. ‘I will not allow you to go wandering off on your own. The answer is no.’

Her plan was straightforward, simple really. While he and Popkov spent the next few days or weeks – however long it took – combing through the detritus of the back streets, prodding and poking at it to find the weak points, she would return to the railway station and endeavour to buy a ticket to travel back the way they’d come, in the direction of Selyansk.

‘Why?’ he’d asked, eyes narrowed. ‘What would be the point of that?’

‘To travel past the prison camp’s Work Zone again.’

Alexei had exhaled sharply through his teeth, a low whistling sound she noticed he made only when caught off guard by a sudden strong emotion. It should have warned her.

‘You see,’ she rushed on, ‘I might be able to find a way to pass a message into the camp. Now we know that these trains carry prisoners in transit as well, I might find a way of contacting one and…’ She slowed the words to make him listen, she knew her brother hated disorder. ‘He might seek out Papa… Jens Friis,… and tell him he might…’

‘That’s a lot of mights.’

She felt a flush rise up her cheeks. ‘You and Popkov
might
not have success in bribing officials, who
might
just chuck you both straight into the prison camp instead, leaving me stranded here on my own. That,’ she’d said, snatching her hand away from his arm, ‘
might
happen. And then what?’

They were standing in the narrow street outside a house whose shutters hung on broken hinges, its roof patched unevenly. Darkness was beginning to roll down the centre of the road in long, strange-shaped shadows, a straggle of horse-drawn carts trundling along behind them.

‘Lydia.’ He did not attempt to retrieve her hand. ‘We must all three of us take care. Listen to me. I cannot do my task here properly if all the time I am looking over my shoulder, worried about what antics you’re getting up to.’

‘Antics?’

‘Call them what you will, but can’t you see that I have to be the one who asks the questions to-’

‘Why? Because you are a man?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not right.’

‘Right or wrong doesn’t come into it, Lydia. It’s the way it is. You are
ranimaya
just because you are a woman, and-’

‘What does
ranimaya
mean?’ She hated asking.

‘It means vulnerable.’

‘Well I think maybe the Communists have got it right.’

He studied her face with such concentration that she almost turned away.

‘And what exactly,’ he asked, ‘do you mean by that?’

‘That Communists give women greater equality, they recognise us as…’

A tiny child, impossible to tell whether girl or boy and with a mop of greasy curls and mucus encrusted under its nose, abruptly materialised at Lydia’s knee. Round, brown eyes stared up at her with the moist hopefulness of a puppy’s, but when she smiled at the child it tottered backwards and stuck a filthy thumb into its mouth.

‘We’re becoming a spectacle,’ Alexei murmured.

He released a long, exasperated sigh which annoyed Lydia, and glanced further along the street to where a man was propped against a windowsill, smoking a pipe. His eyes, behind a pair of spectacles bound together with black tape on the bridge of his nose, were observing them with quiet interest. Alexei took hold of Lydia’s upper arm and tried to propel her forward, but she refused to move. She pulled away from him and squatted down on the pavement in front of the child. From her pocket she extracted a coin, took the grubby hand that wasn’t otherwise occupied into her own, and wrapped the little fingers around the rouble. They felt as cold and slippery as tiny fish.

‘For something to eat,’ she smiled gently.

The child said nothing. But the thumb in the mouth suddenly popped out and ran down Lydia’s hair, past the side of her jaw and on to her neck. It was repeated twice. She wondered if the child expected the strands to be hot like fire. With no sound the curly creature turned and waddled with surprising speed towards an open door three houses away. Lydia rose to her feet and rejoined her brother. Side by side but no longer touching, she and Alexei continued up the street at a brisk pace.

‘If you hand out money to every filthy urchin we stumble over in the streets,’ he muttered, ‘we’ll have none left for ourselves. ’

For a long while they walked on in stiff silence, but just when they passed the park once more, where the wind was still chasing its tail and pursuing the sheets of newspaper, Lydia suddenly snapped, ‘The trouble with you, Alexei, is that you’ve never been poor.’

At the hostel they parted with few words. It was one of the new buildings, deprived of any iron scrollwork, faceless and totally forgettable. Others like it were springing up throughout the town to house the expanding workforce, but it was clean and anonymous which suited them both.

In the entrance hall someone had hung a large mirror, flecked with black age spots like the back of an old man’s hand, and in it Lydia caught sight of her and Alexei’s reflection. It took her by surprise, the image of the two of them. They both looked so… She struggled for the word, abandoned thinking in Russian and settled for so inappropriate. With a jolt she realised they didn’t blend in at all. Alexei was taller than she’d realised and, though his heavy coat was right in every respect and the way his gloves were patched on two fingers was perfect – she suspected he’d purposely torn and then sewn them up himself – nothing else about him fitted in with the dreary little entrance hall. Everything here was plain and utilitarian, whereas Alexei was elaborate and elegant, even when clothed in a drab overcoat. He was like that wrought ironwork outside, carefully crafted and irresistible to the eye.

The thought bothered her. For the first time she wondered if Liev Popkov was right. Alexei could be a danger to them because people noticed him. Yet tonight he was venturing out among the town’s lowlife to start asking questions and she wanted to tell him not to do it. Don’t. You might get hurt.

‘Alexei,’ she said in a low voice, ‘make certain you keep Popkov close by you tonight.’

He raised one eyebrow at her. That was all.

‘You might need him,’ she insisted.

But he took no notice and she knew he was still angry with her about the plan to return to Trovitsk Camp on her own. He was just too damn arrogant to let his little sister tell him what to do. Well, to hell with him. Let him get himself strung up by his thumbs for all she cared. She looked away and once again bumped into her own reflection in the mottled mirror. She swore under her breath.

‘
Chyort!’

The girl inside the mirror wasn’t her. Surely it wasn’t. That girl looked utterly dejected, her heart-shaped face thin and nervous. Her eyes were watchful and her hair far too colourful for her own good. Lydia quickly yanked her stupid hat from her pocket, pulled it on even though they were now indoors, and jammed her hair up under it with sharp little jabs that scraped her ears.

‘Alexei,’ she said and found him observing her with that cool scrutiny he was so adept at, ‘if you keep Popkov at your side this evening, I promise I’ll stay shut in my room and not put a foot outside the door until you’re back.’

Would he thank her? Would he appreciate that for once she was offering him peace of mind?

His slow infuriating smile crept up one side of his mouth and for a split second she was foolish enough to think he was going to laugh and accept her offer. Instead the green of his eyes turned a chilly mistrustful greyish shade that reminded her of the Peiho River in Junchow, which could catch you out in the blink of an eye just when you thought it was looking warm and inviting.

‘Lydia,’ he said, so softly no one else would have been able to detect the carefully controlled anger, ‘you’re lying to me.’

She spun on her heel and stalked off down the stubby brown corridor that led to the stairs, her boots clicking on the floorboards. He made her so mad she wanted to spit.

Lydia stayed in her room just as she’d promised. She didn’t want to but she did. It wasn’t because she’d given her word – yes, Alexei was right about that: in the past she’d never let something as trivial as a promise cramp her activities – but because Alexei didn’t believe she would. She was determined to prove him wrong.

The room was lugubrious and chilly, but clean. Two narrow single beds were squashed into the small space, but so far no one else had come to claim the second one. With luck it would remain empty. A mirror in an ornate metal frame hung on one wall but Lydia was careful to avoid it this time. Still wearing her hat and coat she paced up and down, fretting at her thoughts the way she’d fretted at the hat earlier.

She tried to concentrate on Alexei, to picture him donning his coat ready for the evening
sortie
, staring into his own ornate mirror with that look of eagerness, almost wantonness, that sprang into his eyes whenever there was some action in prospect. He always tried to hide it, of course, and she’d seen him disguise it with a yawn or an indifferent flick of his hand through his thick brown hair, as if bored by the world around him. But she knew. She recognised it for what it was.