The Concubine's Secret (8 page)

‘My lungs aren’t good,’ she said, ‘and there’s always smoke in my compartment. I need some clean air.’ She inhaled noisily to emphasise the point and felt the sleet nip at the back of her throat. It made her cough.

‘Well shut the door and open its window instead.’ His tone was friendly.

At that moment she spotted an elegant figure descending the steps further along the train. It was Antonina. She ducked her head against the rain that glistened on her furs like a shower of diamonds. Behind her the two uniformed companions were wrestling her luggage off the train, but Alexei had been wrong about her. She didn’t hurry. She took her time. She smoothed her soft grey leather gloves over her fingers, adjusted the angle of her hat, then with expressionless eyes she studied the wretched line of prisoners. She murmured something to one of the uniforms and instantly a small black umbrella was produced for her. She accepted it but held it too high above her head, indifferent to the sleet streaming in under it.

Lydia took a deep breath. She had a few brief seconds, a minute at most. No longer, before the train moved on. The soldier had his hand on the door, ready to slam it shut.

‘Antonina!’ she called.

The pair of deep-set eyes turned towards her, narrowed against the rain, and she gave a faint nod of recognition.

The soldier started to shut the carriage door. ‘Move back there.’

Lydia didn’t move. ‘Antonina,’ she called again.

With neat unhurried steps, the dove-grey boots crossed the wet platform and Antonina stood in front of her, appearing small from Lydia’s view high up on the steps of the train. The soldier moved away instantly with a smart salute. Clearly he knew who this woman was. In her furs and her carmine lipstick she looked much less approachable than in her burgundy dressing gown.

Lydia tried a friendly smile but the only response was a distant little grimace.

‘Before you even ask, young comrade,’ the woman said briskly, ‘the answer is no.’

‘The answer to what?’

‘To your question.’

‘I haven’t asked a question.’

‘But you were going to.’

Lydia said nothing.

‘Weren’t you?’ Antonina tipped back her umbrella and gave Lydia a long scrutiny, her beautifully groomed eyebrows arching into a mocking curve. ‘Yes, I can see you were.’

Her manner rattled Lydia. It was dismissive, it made her feel clumsy and childish. She wasn’t sure of her footing any more. There was something so sleek and slippery about this woman today that Lydia could feel herself sliding off with nothing to hold on to.

‘I just wanted to say goodbye,’ she murmured.

‘
Do svidania
, comrade.’

‘And…’

‘And what?’

‘And yes,… you are right. I want to ask something.’

‘Everyone always wants to ask me for something.’ Her dark gaze slid off to where the prisoners on the platform had bunched up, awaiting further orders. Their hair was plastered to their heads by the incessant rain and the man who had been sobbing noisily was quiet now, his face in his hands, his shoulders trembling.

Lydia looked away this time. It was too much.

‘Everyone,’ Antonina continued in a voice that sounded amused, though her eyes were sad and serious, ‘wants me to convey a parcel, to pass on a message, to beg my husband, the Commandant, for this or that for their loved one.’

Lydia shifted uneasily on the steps. ‘Mistakes are sometimes made,’ she said. ‘Not everyone is guilty.’

The woman gave a short hard laugh. ‘The OGPU decisions are always right.’

Time was running out.

Lydia said quickly, ‘I am searching for someone.’

‘Isn’t everybody?’

‘His name is Jens Friis. He was captured in 1917 but he shouldn’t be in a Russian prison at all because he’s Danish. I just need to know if he’s here in this camp. That’s all. Nothing more. To hear that…’

The woman’s eyes turned to her, smooth and cold as black ice, but the palms of her pale leather gloves were fretting against each other fiercely. She noticed the way Lydia glanced at them and for the first time she smiled, a small, angry smile, but still a smile.

‘Is this man your lover?’

‘No.’

‘So what is he to you?’

‘Please, Antonina?
Pozhalusta?
’ Lydia said in a rush and climbed down one step in her eagerness. The guard nearby was moving closer. ‘All I need is just one word from you.’

The train suddenly shuddered beneath her and heaved a great sigh, sending steam billowing down the platform. For one startling moment, the Commandant’s wife was enveloped in a cloud that obscured everything but her two hands in their ceaseless motion. When the steam cleared, Antonina had turned her back on Lydia, her long fur coat swaying as if the skins were still alive.

‘
Nyet,
Lydia.’ She started to walk away, calling over her shoulder, ‘My answer is no.’

The soldier closed the door and the train began to move. Quickly Lydia opened the window and leaned out. ‘I’ll be in the hostel in Felanka,’ she shouted after the retreating woman. ‘You can leave a message for me there.’

Slowly the figures on the platform grew smaller. Lydia continued to stare at where they had been, long after the rain swallowed them.

‘Yob tvoyu mat!’ Liev Popkov swore suddenly and pushed his huge fist towards the window. ‘Look at that. It’s the stinking hell-hole.’

Alexei saw Lydia elbow him hard in the ribs to silence him, but it was too late. Every head in the carriage turned to stare at what he’d indicated and a young woman with a baby asleep in her arms started to weep silently. It was the camp. Trovitsk labour camp. It couldn’t be anything else, though from this distance it looked harmless enough, more like four dog kennels rising above the flat winter horizon. Those must be the tips of the watchtowers, but the rest of the camp was lost in a faint blur, secretive and secluded, too far away to make out anything of the communal huts or barbed wire fences.

‘God help the bastards,’ Alexei muttered.

The big woman opposite grimaced. ‘He hasn’t done much of a job of it so far.’

Lydia looked round at them both and frowned. Her tawny eyes were huge. A straggle of hair had crept out from under her hat and lay like a lick of flame on the collar of her coat. ‘The Soviet State is looking after those people,’ she said in a curt voice. ‘It does what is best. For all of us.’

Oh Lydia. But Alexei made a show of nodding agreement. ‘
Da
, we must never forget what we owe the State.’

‘As if we could,’ the big woman chuckled, and the chuckle grew until it was a loose rollicking laugh that shook her abundant bosom and sounded too loud in the tight confines of the carriage. Alexei eyed her with increasing caution.

At the other end of the carriage a man with a pipe and a bushy Stalin moustache banged his hand flat on his knee. ‘Those prisoners are here for good reason. Don’t let’s forget that, comrade. ’

Alexei let his eyes stray again to the window and a small shock ran through him. The landscape was monotonously flat, a naked terrain that betrayed the scars and stumps where a forest had once stood, but way off to one side, along the edge of a stand of pine trees which had somehow escaped the axe, eight men were bent double, hauling a wagon. It was stacked high with bare tree trunks and the men were yoked to it by chains. Beyond them, so small and colourless they were scarcely visible against the icy wasteland, other figures scuttled like ants across the Work Zone.

‘Yes,’ Alexei murmured, not taking his eyes off them. ‘That’s why they’re here. It’s the raw materials we need.’

‘For industry?’ the woman asked.

He nodded. ‘For Stalin’s great Five Year Plan.’

‘So what is it the prisoners do all the way up here?’

Still he watched them. Saw a man fall. ‘Mining. This region is rich in ore and coal.’

An uncomfortable silence descended, while the passengers pictured the prisoners, black-faced somewhere deep under the train’s wheels, swinging picks at a brutal coal seam, lungs filling up with heavy choking dust.

‘And timber,’ Alexei added softly.

Dear God, let Jens Friis be good with a saw.

‘This place is too tidy for us,’ Liev Popkov growled under his breath. ‘Too clean.’

For once the ox brain was right. The town of Felanka was not what Alexei had been expecting and not what he wanted. They were walking down the main street, Gorky Ulitsa, with Lydia tucked safely between them, taking a careful look at their surroundings. Where were the usual rows of ugly concrete apartment blocks? Most of the towns up here in the north were sprawling, indifferent places that had sprung into being to accommodate the recent enforced migration of Russia’s dissidents into these sparsely populated areas. No one would notice an extra few travellers in one of those. But this was different. This town felt loved.

Elegant buildings lined wide, graceful boulevards and everywhere there was an abundance of scrolled ironwork. Balconies and streetlamps, door and window settings, all curled and twined in an outbreak of wrought iron. Felanka was built on iron ore. It lived and breathed it. Some way off to the west of the town lay the massive brick-built foundry. It loomed like a giant black turtle on the horizon, belching foul-smelling smoke that turned the air into something you could touch. But today the east wind was keeping the smoke at bay and the town was parading its charms under a brittle blue sky.

‘Popkov.’ Alexei nodded towards a shop front they were passing. ‘In here.’

He wanted to get Lydia off the street. She’d been silent since leaving the train, and all through their registration at the hostel where they were shown into rooms that smelled of laundered sheets, she’d looked pale and listless. He wondered if she was sick. Or sick at heart.

He pushed open the door off the street. It was a printer’s shop, with heavy iron presses on the left and a huddle of men in deep discussion around them. The air held the tang of metal and ink. On the right side of the gloomy interior a high counter ran across the window, and this was what Alexei had spotted from outside. Here customers could buy a hot drink and stand while they waited for their print order. An old babushka with sparse grey hair scraped back into a bun sat sharp-eyed at the back of the shop, one hand resting possessively on the claw foot of the samovar beside her.

‘
Dobriy den
,’ Alexei greeted her politely. ‘Good afternoon.’

‘
Dobriy den
,’ she nodded, and gave him a toothless twist of her mouth that he assumed was a smile. He bought tea for himself and Popkov, hot chocolate for Lydia. They carried the glasses over to the wooden counter by the window and stood looking out at the street.

‘It’s too tidy,’ Popkov muttered again. ‘For us.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lydia asked. She was again positioned between them – that’s how it always was – but didn’t look at him, just wrapped her gloves around the hot glass in its metal
podstakanik
and stared at the flurry of trucks trailing past. There was no one else in their section of the shop and the noise from the printing press meant there was no danger of being overheard.

Popkov rummaged his fingers in his thick black beard. He was chewing a wad of tobacco and his teeth were so stained they merged with the black bristles. ‘They don’t need us.’

‘You mean our money?’ she asked.

‘
Da.’

She sank back into her silence, sipped her chocolate and blew steam at the window. Alexei could sense the shreds of hope slipping from her grasp. He placed his
podstakanik
down on the scratched surface with annoyance.

‘People always take money,’ he said firmly. ‘People
always take money. Don’t you know that yet?’

Lydia shrugged.

‘Listen, Lydia.’ Alexei leaned an elbow on the counter and concentrated on her face. It looked tired, dark shadows circling her eyes. ‘We’ve come this far. To Trovitsk camp. We’ve even laid eyes on some of the wretched prisoners, poor bastards.’ He saw her flinch, a tiny movement of the muscle beside her eye. That was all. She said nothing. He lowered his voice. ‘We always knew the next part would be difficult.’

‘Difficult?’ Popkov snorted. ‘Fucking dangerous, you mean.’

‘Not impossible though.’ Alexei was irritated and gave a sharp rap with his knuckles on the wood, as if he could knock some sense into their heads. ‘Jens Friis could still be there.’

He saw her tremble. Sometimes he forgot how vulnerable she was, how unguarded. He had to remind himself that he’d had years at a military training establishment in Japan where he’d learned levels of self-control, but she’d had… nothing. He took a mouthful of his chai. It was hot and burned a path down inside him, but couldn’t warm what lay deep in there, cold and untouched. He pushed himself upright, stretched his shoulders and faced the one-eyed Cossack.

‘Popkov, I thought you were a man who liked danger. Drank it in with your mother’s milk, I heard.’

He saw the one black eye flicker and dart quickly across to the girl between them. In that moment Alexei knew that if Popkov possessed any fear of danger – which he seriously doubted – it was not for himself. Alexei detested the man. Could never understand what bound Lydia to this lazy, stupid, drunken Cossack who stank like a bear and farted like a horse. But right now he needed him.

‘So, Popkov, I think it’s time you and I get going. Tonight. With a wad of roubles in our pockets and a vodka bottle to crack over a few heads.’

Alexei’s voice was amiable enough, but the look he gave the big man was cold and challenging. Popkov turned, eyeing him over the top of Lydia’s hat and baring his teeth in what could have been a smile or a snarl.

‘
Da.’

It was the way they’d done it before. A few bottles on offer, a few new friends in the back streets of a strange town. It was amazing what you could discover, what secrets tumbled off a loose tongue. Which officials were clean and which were dirty. Which one was fucking his boss’s wife and which one liked to pick up little boys in the dark alleyways. That’s what Popkov had meant when he complained Felanka was too tidy, too clean – but nowhere was
too clean
. Such places didn’t exist.