The Russian Concubine (18 page)

15

Chang An Lo travelled by night. It was safer. His foot still pained him, and in the mountains his progress was slow. His return journey took too long. They almost caught him.

He heard their breath. The sigh of their horses. The patter of the rain on their goatskin capes. He stilled his heart and lay facedown in the mud, their hooves only inches from his head, but the darkness saved him. He gave thanks to Ch’ang O, goddess of the moon, for turning her face away that night. After that he stole a mule from an unguarded barn in a village at the bottom of the valley, but he left a cupful of silver in its place.

It was just after dawn, when the wind off the great northern plain was driving the yellow loess dust into his nostrils and under his tongue, that the sprawl of houses that made up Junchow came into sight. From this distance Junchow looked disjointed. The Oriental jumbled alongside the Western, the soaring rooftops of the old town next to the solid blocks and straight lines of the International Settlement. Chang tried not to think of
her
in there or of what she must be thinking of him. Instead he tried to spit on the barren earth, but the dust had robbed his mouth of moisture, so instead he muttered, ‘A thousand curses on the
fanqui
invaders. China will soon piss on the Foreign Devils.’

Yet despite all his curses and his hatred of them, one Foreign Devil had invaded him and he didn’t want to drive her out any more than he would drive out his own soul. As he crouched in the depths of a spinney, his shadow merging with the trees, he ached for her, though he knew he was risking more than he had the right to lose.

Above him the red streaks in the sky looked like blood being spilled.

The water was cold. He was a strong swimmer, but the river currents were fierce and wrapped around his legs like tentacles, so he had to kick hard to be free of them. The foot that the fox girl had sewn up served him well, and he thanked the gods for her steady hands. The river meant that he avoided the sentries and the many eyes that watched the roads into Junchow. He had waited until dark. The sampans and junks that skittered downstream with black sails and no bow lights swept past him to their furtive assignations, and above him the clouds stole the stars from the sky. The river kept its secrets.

When he reached the far bank, he stood silent and motionless beside the rotting hull of an upturned boat, listening for sounds in the darkness, looking for shifting patterns of shadows. He was back in Junchow, near
her
once more. He felt his spirits lift, and after some time spent with only the rustle of rats for company, he slipped away, up into the town.

‘
Ai!
My eyes are glad to see you.’ The young man with the long scar down one side of his face greeted Chang with a rush of relief. ‘To have you back, alive and still cursing, my friend, it means I shall sleep tonight. Here, drink this, you look as if you need it.’

The light flickered as the torch flames hissed and spat like live creatures on the wall.

‘Yuesheng, I thank you. They came close, this time, the grey scorpions of Chiang Kai-shek. Someone had whispered in their ear.’ Chang drank the small glass of rice wine in one swallow and felt it burn life back into his chilled bones. He helped himself to another.

‘Whoever it was will have his tongue cut out.’

They were in a cellar. The stone walls dripped with water and were covered in vivid-coloured lichen, but it was large and the sounds of the printing press were deadened by the thick walls and the heavy ceiling. Above them stood a textile factory where machines rattled all day, but only the foreman knew of the machine under his workers’ feet. He was a trade union man, a Communist, a fighter for the cause, and he supplied oil and ink and buckets of raw rice wine to the nighttime activists. Since the Kuomintang Nationalists had swept into power and Chiang Kai-shek swore to wipe the Communist threat off the face of China, each breath was a danger, each pamphlet an invitation to the executioner’s sword. Half a dozen determined young faces clustered around the presses, half a dozen young lives on a thread.

Yuesheng pulled a strip of dried fish from his bag and handed it to Chang. ‘Eat, my friend. You will need your strength.’

Chang ate, his first food in more than three days. ‘The latest posters are good, the ones demanding new laws on child labour,’ he said. ‘I saw several on my way here, one even on the council chamber’s door.’

‘Yes.’ Yuesheng laughed. ‘That one was Kuan’s doing.’

At the mention of her name a slender young woman glanced up from where she was stacking pamphlets into sacks and gave Chang a nod.

‘Tell me, Kuan, how do you always manage to find the most insulting places to stick your posters, right under Feng Tu Hong’s nose?’ Chang called above the clattering noise of the press. ‘Do you fly with the night spirits, unseen by human eye?’

Kuan walked over. She was wearing the loose blue jacket and trousers of a peasant farmer, though she had recently graduated from Peking University with a degree in law. She had serious black eyes. She did not believe in the soft smiles that most Junchow women offered to the world. When her parents threw her out of the family home because she humiliated them by cutting her hair short and taking a job in a factory, it only sharpened her desire to fight for women, so that they would no longer be owned like dogs by fathers or by husbands, to be kicked at will. She possessed the fearlessness of the fox girl but inside her there was no flame, no light that burned so bright it lit up a room, no heat so fierce that lizards scurried to be near her.

Where was Lydia now? Cursing him, he had no doubt. The image of her fox eyes, narrowed and waiting for him full of fury, sent a laugh through him and Kuan mistook his pleasure. She gave Chang one of her rare smiles.

‘That camel-faced chairman of the council, Feng Tu Hong, deserves such special treatment,’ she said.

‘Tell me. What is new while I’ve been gone?’

The smile faded. ‘Yesterday he ordered a purge of the metal-workers in the iron foundry, those who were asking for safer conditions at the furnaces.’

‘Twelve were beheaded in the yard. As a warning to others,’ Yuesheng spat out and ran a hand down the sword scar on his own face. It seemed to pulsate and darken.

A surge of rage tore through Chang. He closed his eyes and focused his mind. Now was not the time. This moment was surrounded by fire. He needed control, with danger so close.

‘Feng Tu Hong’s time will come,’ he said quietly. ‘I promise you that. And this will bring it faster.’ He pulled a piece of paper from a leather pouch that hung from his neck.

Yuesheng snatched it up, read it through, and nodded with satisfaction. ‘It’s a promissory note,’ he announced to the others. ‘For rifles, Winchesters. A hundred of them.’

Six faces found smiles and one young man punched an ink-stained fist into the air in salute.

‘You have done well,’ Yuesheng said, pride in his voice.

Chang was pleased. He and Yuesheng were almost brothers in their friendship. It was the rock on which they stood. He placed a hand on Yuesheng’s shoulder and their eyes met in understanding. Each breath was one they earned.

‘The news from the south is good,’ Chang told him.

‘Mao Tse-tung? Is our leader still evading the grey bellies’ snares?’

‘He narrowly escaped capture last month. But his military camp in Jiangxi is expanding every day, where they come like bees to a hive from all over the country. Some with no more than a hoe in their hand and belief in their heart. The time is coming closer when Chiang Kai-shek will discover that his treachery and betrayal of our country have signed his own death warrant.’

‘Is it true there was another skirmish near Canton last week?’ Kuan asked.

‘Yes,’ Chang said. ‘A train full of Kuomintang troops was blown up and . . .’

A loud crash drowned out his voice and the sound of the press as the metal door burst open at the top of the stairs and a boy hurled himself into the cellar, eyes huge with panic.

‘They’re here,’ he screamed. ‘The troops are . . .’

A shot cracked through the cellar and the boy collapsed facedown on the earthen floor, a bright red stain etched on the back of his jacket.

Instantly the cellar was full of movement. Each knew what to do. Yuesheng had prepared for this moment. Torches were doused. In the darkness enemy boots pounded down the stairs, voices raised, commands thrown at shadows, and two more shots made the walls sing. But in the far corner a ladder was ready. Well-oiled bolts slid back. A hatch was thrown open. But the square of night sky was paler, leaving the figures silhouetted against the opening as they started to slip through it one by one.

Standing last at the base of the ladder beside Yuesheng, Chang saw the dim outline of a soldier approach from the stairs, and with a lightning kick he tore the man’s jaw from its socket and heard a high whinny of pain. In a flash Chang had seized his rifle and was sending a blast of bullets screaming around the cellar.

‘Go,’ he shouted at Yuesheng.

‘No. You leave first.’

Chang touched his friend’s arm. ‘Go.’

Yuesheng delayed no longer and sped up the ladder. Chang fired once more and felt a Kuomintang bullet whistle through his hair in reply, and then he leaped up the rungs right on Yuesheng’s heels. Bullets tore into the hatch opening from below and suddenly Chang felt a dead weight crash down on him. It was as if his own heart had been torn out.

He seized Yuesheng’s body on his shoulder, sprang through the hatch, and raced away into the darkness.

16

‘More wine, Lydia?’

‘Thank you, Mr Parker.’

‘Do you think she should, Alfred? She’s only sixteen.’

‘Oh, Mama, I’m grown up now.’

‘Not as grown up as you think, darling.’

Alfred Parker smiled indulgently, his spectacles sparkling at Lydia in the candlelight. ‘I think just this once. Tonight is special, after all.’

‘Special?’ Valentina raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘In what way?’

‘Because this is our first meal together like this. The first of many, I trust, when I am honoured to be in the company of two such beautiful women.’ He lifted his glass briefly to Lydia and then to Valentina.

Valentina lowered her eyes for a moment, ran a finger slowly down the pale skin of her throat as if considering the suggestion, and then flashed her gaze up to his face. Like springing a trap, Lydia thought as she watched with interest the effect it had on Alfred Parker. He turned quite pink with pleasure. Her mother’s sensuous dark eyes and parted lips were churning up his brain and robbing him of far more than Lydia had ever tried to take from him.

‘Garçon,’
he called. ‘Another bottle of Burgundy, please.’

They were in a restaurant in the French Quarter and Lydia had ordered s
teak au poivre.
The French maitre d’ had bowed to her as if she were someone important, someone who could afford a meal like this. In a restaurant like this. She was wearing the dress, of course, her apricot one from the concert, and she made a point of looking around the room at the other diners as indifferently as if she did this every day.

No one could guess this was a series of firsts. First time in a restaurant. First time eating steak. First time drinking wine.

‘Trust you to choose something fiery, darling,’ Valentina had laughed.

Lydia watched Parker closely, copied his table etiquette when it came to the startling array of silver cutlery on the stiff white tablecloth, and noticed the way he dabbed genteelly at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. She’d been surprised when her mother told her Alfred had invited her to join them for supper. Another first. No other man friend had ever included Lydia in their arrangements, and it sent alarm bells clanging through her head, but her desire to eat in a restaurant outweighed her instinct to keep as far away from Mr Parker as possible.

‘Very well,’ she’d said to her mother, ‘I’ll come. But only if he doesn’t lecture me.’

‘He won’t lecture you.’ She took Lydia’s chin in her hand and gave it an urgent little shake. ‘But be good. Be nice. Sugar and spice, even if it kills you. This is important to me, darling.’

‘But what about Antoine?’

‘Bugger Antoine.’

Everything had gone well so far. Only one little slipup. It happened when Parker kindly offered her one of his snails to taste and she had said without thinking, ‘No, thanks. I’ve eaten enough snails to last me a lifetime.’

Valentina had glared at Lydia. A sharp kick under the table.

‘Really?’ Parker looked surprised.

‘Oh yes,’ Lydia said quickly, ‘at my friend Polly’s house. Her mother is mad about them.’

‘I don’t blame her. Smothered in garlic and butter?’

‘Mmm, delicious.’ She laughed wickedly. ‘Aren’t they, Mama?’

Valentina rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She didn’t want to be reminded of the times they’d spent scrabbling around in the rain, rooting snails out from under bushes and off back lawns at night. Even the occasional worm or frog. The stink of them all in the cooking pot.

Lydia turned a sugar-and-spice smile on Alfred Parker. ‘Mama tells me you are a newspaperman, Mr Parker. That must be very interesting.’

She heard her mother’s little sigh of approval.

‘A journalist, yes, on the
Daily Herald
. This is a very disturbed period in China’s history but a very crucial one, with Chiang Kai-shek at last bringing some kind of sanity and order to this unhappy country, thank God. So yes, it is extremely interesting work.’ He beamed at her.

She beamed back.

‘Tell me, Lydia, do you read the newspaper?’

Lydia blinked. Didn’t this man realise that for the price of a newspaper you could buy two
baos
and have a full stomach?

‘I’m usually too busy doing my homework.’

‘Ah yes, of course, highly commendable. But it would do you good to read a newspaper now and then, to know what’s going on in this place. Broaden your young mind, you know, and give you the facts.’

‘My mind is broad enough, thank you. And I learn facts every day.’

Another kick.

‘Lydia is at the Willoughby Academy,’ Valentina said with a glare at her daughter. ‘She won a scholarship there.’

Parker looked impressed. ‘She must be very bright indeed.’ He turned back to Lydia. ‘I know your headmaster well. I shall mention you to him.’

‘No need.’

He laughed and patted her hand. ‘Don’t look so alarmed. I won’t mention how we met.’

Lydia picked up her glass, buried her nose in it, and wished him dead.

Valentina came to her rescue. ‘I think you are right about the newspaper, Alfred. It would do her good to widen her knowledge, and anyway,’ she gave him a slow smile, ‘it would amuse me to read what you write.’

‘Then I shall definitely make sure you receive the
Daily Herald
every day without fail, Valentina.’ He leaned closer to her, and Lydia was sure he was breathing in her perfume. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure.’

‘Mr Parker?’

Reluctantly he drew his gaze away from Valentina. ‘Yes, Lydia?’

‘Maybe I know more about what goes on in this place than you do.’

Parker sat back in his chair and studied her with a precision that made her wonder if she was underestimating him. ‘I am aware that your mother allows you a degree of freedom that means you get about more than most girls your age, but even so, that’s quite an assumption, Lydia, don’t you think? For a girl of sixteen.’

She should leave it there, she knew she should. Take another sip of the wonderful wine and let him carry on making sheep’s eyes at her mother. But she didn’t.

‘One thing I know is that your precious Chiang Kai-shek has tricked his followers,’ she said, ‘and betrayed the three principles on which the Republic of China was built by Sun Yat-sen.’

‘
Chyort vosmi!
Lydia!’

‘That’s absurd.’ Parker frowned at her. ‘Who’s been filling your head with such ridiculous lies?’

‘A friend.’
Was she out of her mind?
‘He’s Chinese.’

Valentina sat forward abruptly, her fingernails clicking on the stem of her glass. ‘And who exactly is this Chinese friend?’ Her voice was icy.

‘He saved my life.’

There was a shocked silence at the table, and then Valentina burst out laughing. ‘Darling, you are such a liar. Where did you really meet him?’

‘In the library.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Parker said. ‘That explains it. A left-wing intellectual. All talk and no action.’

‘You must stay away from him, darling. Look what the intellectuals did to Russia. Ideas are dangerous.’ She rapped her knuckles sharply on the table. ‘I absolutely forbid you to see this Chinese again.’

‘Oh, don’t fret, Mama. You needn’t worry. He might as well be dead for all I care.’

‘Miss Ivanova, I do believe. How very interesting to find you here of all places.’

Lydia had just left the ladies’ powder room and was threading her way back through the tables and the chatter when she heard the woman’s voice behind her. She turned and looked up into an amused cool pale blue stare.

‘Countess Serova,’ she said with surprise.

‘Still wearing that dress, I see.’

‘I like this dress.’

‘My dear, I like chocolate but I don’t eat it all the time. Let me introduce you to my son.’

She stepped to one side to give Lydia a full view of the young man behind her. He had a long face and was tall like his mother with her thick curling brown hair and the same haughty manner that made one side of his mouth curl up and his eyes half closed, as if the world weren’t worth the effort of opening them fully.

‘Alexei, this is young Lydia Ivanova. From St Petersburg also. Her mother is a piano player.’

‘A concert pianist, actually,’ Lydia corrected.

The countess conceded a smile.

‘Good evening, Miss Ivanova.’ His voice was crisp. He gave a fractional nod of his head and fixed his gaze somewhere around her hairline. ‘I hope you are enjoying a pleasant evening.’

‘I’m having a simply wonderful time, thank you. The food is so good here, don’t you think?’ It was the sort of thing she thought her mother might say, all light and gay and too good to be true.

But his reply was brief. ‘Yes.’

They hovered on the edge of an awkward silence.

‘Must dash,’ Lydia said quickly.

She turned back to the countess and caught her staring across the room directly at Valentina, who had her head bent close to Alfred Parker’s, talking softly. Lydia thought her mother looked more beautiful than ever tonight, so vivid in the navy and white dress, hair almost black in the soft lighting and piled on top of her head, her lips a carmine red. It was a surprise to Lydia that the whole restaurant wasn’t staring.

‘Nice to meet you again, Countess. Good evening.
Do svidania
.’

‘Ah, so tonight you can speak Russian, it seems.’

Lydia had no intention of stepping into that trap, so she just smiled and headed back to her table, remembering Miss Roland’s instructions at school.
‘Lead with your hips
,
girls, at all times. If you want to walk like a lady, you must lead with your hip
s.’ As she sat down,Valentina looked up and noticed Countess Natalia Serova and her son across the room. Lydia saw her mother’s eyes widen and then turn abruptly away, and when the Serovas passed their table a few moments later, neither woman acknowledged the other.

Lydia picked up one of the mint chocolates that came with the coffee. She decided she could definitely get used to this.

They left her outside the front door.

‘Sleep well, darling.’

Valentina’s fingers waved through the front passenger window of Parker’s car as if they were trying to escape and then disappeared from view. The black Armstrong Siddeley trundled up to the corner, too big and boisterous for the narrow confines of the street, flashed its brake light at Lydia, and was gone. Off to a nightclub, they said. The Silver Slipper. She stood alone in the dark. The church clock struck eleven. She counted each stroke. The Silver Slipper. If you dance there after midnight, do you turn into a pumpkin? Or even a countess?

She pushed aside such strange thoughts, unlocked the door, and started up the stairs. Her legs felt lifeless now, as if she’d left it all behind in the restaurant, and there was a dull ache somewhere inside her head. She wasn’t sure if it was the heavy humid night air or the wine settling under her scalp like a layer of lead. She knew she should feel happy. She’d had an exciting evening, hadn’t she? Alfred Parker had been attentive and courteous. More to the point, he was generous. Exactly what they needed. Life was looking up. So why did she still feel so bad? What the hell was wrong with her? Why was there this sick weight in her stomach, there all the time as if she had influenza?

She pushed open the door to the attic. Parker wasn’t doing it for her, she knew that. He’d caught her thieving and he’d caught her lying. He was the kind of man who had principles the way their attic had cockroaches, and an unshakable grip on his belief in what was right and what was wrong. All that backbone-of-England stuff, for God and King Harry. A straight bat, isn’t that what the English called it? A good egg. She gave a sharp little huff of annoyance. A man like Parker romped around on the moral high ground because he could indulge himself, as thoughtlessly as he could indulge himself in a posh French restaurant. He wouldn’t bend.

Until now. Now he had met Valentina.

She struck a match in the dark, lit the solitary candle on the table, and instantly was surrounded by writhing shadows leaping up the wall and stalking the small circle of light. It was unbearably hot in the room. The window was partly open but she could hardly breathe. She yanked the dress impatiently over her head to let the sultry air touch her skin and maybe ease the hollow ache.

‘Don’t do that.’

Lydia gasped at the sound of the voice. Though it was soft, she knew it instantly and her heart tightened in her chest. She spun around but could make out no one in the room.

‘Who’s there?’ she shouted, her heart thumping. ‘Don’t skulk in the dark.’

‘I’m here.’ The curtain to her own bedroom area twitched.

She strode over and swept the curtain aside. It was Chang An Lo. He was sitting on her bed.

‘Get out.’

‘Listen to me, Lydia Ivanova. Listen to what I tell you.’

‘I
have
listened. You stole
my
ruby necklace, sold it down south somewhere, and gave the money away. I heard all right. And you expect me to believe you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a lying, thieving, rotten, conniving, unscrupulous, filthy rat.’ She was storming up and down the room, completely indifferent to the fact she was wearing only her underwear. ‘And I wish I’d let that policeman put a bullet through your black heart when I had the chance.’

‘I came to tell you . . .’

‘To tell me you robbed me. Well, thanks very much. Now leave.’ She pointed a finger at the door.

‘ . . . to tell you why I did it.’

The false-hearted toad was still standing in the centre of the room, as calm and cool as if he had brought her flowers instead of lies, and that just made her want to choke him. She’d trusted him, that’s how stupid she was, she’d trusted him, she who trusted no one. And what had he done? Just trailed her trust through the sewer and torn a raw hole in her insides.

‘Get out,’ she yelled. ‘Go on, get out of here. I know why you did it and I don’t want to hear a bunch of lies from you, so . . .’

A loud knock on the door stopped her. A voice called out, ‘Are you all right, Lydia?’