The Russian Concubine (47 page)

50

Lydia heard the click of her bedroom door. Quiet footsteps padded across the floor. She opened her eyes a slit but could see nothing in the darkness. She didn’t need to see.

‘What is it, Mama?’

‘I can’t sleep, darling.’

‘Go and disturb Alfred.’

‘He needs his sleep.’

‘So do I.’

‘Poof, you can sleep in class tomorrow.’

‘Mama!’

‘Hush, I shall tell you about the Flamingo nightclub. One lucky woman was wearing a Fabergé brooch but her frock was quite frightful. Move over.’

Lydia shifted position in the bed and Valentina lay down on it, under the eiderdown but on top of the blankets, just the way Lydia had done at first with Chang An Lo.

‘Did you have a good time tonight?’

‘It was bearable. That’s about all.’

‘Did you dance?’

‘Of course I did. It was the best part. When you’re old enough I’ll take you to a dance and you’ll discover what fun it is. The band played the new jazz with . . .’

But Lydia didn’t listen. She leaned her cheek against her mother’s shoulder, let her musky perfume filter into her head. She wondered if Chang An Lo was awake. What was he thinking? She was frightened he’d leave. Just up and go. Without her. But they both knew that in the state he was in, he’d be caught. That he needed her. As she needed him. It was going to be hard. Of course it was. She wasn’t blind to that fact or to the uncertainty of the future for them, but to be together even for a few months while he healed would give them time. Breathing space. While they worked out the next step.

‘So?’

Dimly Lydia became aware that Valentina had stopped speaking.

‘So?’

‘So what, Mama?’

‘I said, so who is this Chinese Bolshevik of yours?’

‘His name is Chang An Lo and he’s a Communist. But,’ she added quickly, ‘he comes from a wealthy family under the last emperor and is well educated. A bit like yourself in a way . . .’

‘I am
not
a Communist and never will be.’ She spat out the words. ‘The Communists take a country that is great and noble and they smash it down with their hammers and sickles to the lowest level of a peasant. Look at my poor broken Russia,
Rusmatushka.
’

‘Mama,’ Lydia spoke gently, ‘the Communists have only just started. Give them time. First they have to rid us of tyranny. Of the brutality that’s existed for hundreds of years. That’s what they’re doing right now in Russia. And that’s what China needs too. They are the only ones who will build a fair society where everyone has a voice. You wait, they will become the greatest countries in the world.’

‘Ah, you’re crazy, darling. That Bolshevik boy has poisoned your mind and filled it with gutter slime, so that you don’t see straight anymore.’

‘No, you’re so wrong. I see clearer now.’

‘Poof! It is a two-minute infatuation.’

‘No, Mama, no. I love him.’

Valentina drew in a quick breath. ‘Don’t be absurd. You are too young to know what love is.’

‘You were only seventeen when you ran off and married Papa. You loved him, you know you did. So don’t you dare tell me I don’t love Chang An Lo.’

There was a silence. The darkness grew heavy around them, pressing down on Lydia’s eyes, but she refused to let it into her head. She reached out to Chang An Lo with her mind and found him so easily, it was hard to believe he wasn’t in the room with her. The connection was instant. And she was certain he was lying awake in Mr Theo’s house, seeking her out. She smiled and felt the inside of her head open up into a big bright airy room, full of sunlight, and the sound of Lizard Creek’s water trickled through it. A place where she could breathe.

‘Listen to me, Mama.’

It was easy. At last to talk about him. She told her mother all about Chang An Lo. How he’d saved her in the alleyway and how she’d sewn up his foot at Lizard Creek. She told Valentina everything, the Chinese funeral and the search for him, even the quarrel in the burned-out house and the arguments over some of the savage methods the Communists used to achieve their aims. It all came spilling out. Everything. Well, almost everything. Two things she left out. The ruby necklace and the lovemaking. She managed to hang on to those. She wasn’t
that
stupid.

When she’d finished, she felt as if she were floating.

‘Oh my sweet daughter.’ Valentina turned and kissed Lydia’s cheek. ‘You are such a fool.’

‘I love him, Mama. And he loves me.’

‘It’s got to stop,
dochenka.
’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

Valentina’s hand took hold of Lydia’s under the eiderdown and held it as if in a vice. ‘I’m sorry, darling, your heart will break but there are worse things. You will survive it, believe me, you will. We have come this far, you and I. I am not letting you throw it all away just when I have set it up so that there is money for your education, for university. You could be a doctor or a lawyer or a professor, something great, something important. Something well paid. You’ll be proud of yourself and hold your head high. Never will you have to be dependent on a man to put bread on your table or rings on your fingers. Don’t ruin everything. Not now.’

‘Mama, did you listen when your parents told you the same?’

‘No, but . . .’

‘So neither will I.’

‘Lydia.’ Valentina sat up abruptly. ‘You will do as I say. And I say this business with the Chinese Bolshevik is over, even if I have to chain you to the bed and feed you bread and water for the rest of your life. You hear me?’

Lydia didn’t mean to say what she said next. But she was angry and hurt. So she struck back.

‘Maybe if I tell Alfred what I saw in the Buick today he would say the same to you.’

She heard Valentina cough. The sound she’d heard a chicken make when its neck is wrung. She wanted to cram the words back into her mouth. Valentina swung her legs to the floor but remained there, seated on the edge of the bed. Her back to Lydia. She said nothing.

‘Why, Mama? Why? You have Alfred.’

Her mother rustled in her dressing gown pocket and Lydia knew she was searching for a cigarette, but it was obviously empty because there was no snick of a lighter.

‘It’s none of your business,’ Valentina said at last in a tight voice.

Lydia rolled nearer and put out a hand. Her mother’s stiff figure was blacker than the surrounding blackness. She touched her mother’s shoulder and for a second had a flashback to reaching out and touching a male shoulder earlier this evening. Alexei Serov’s. He had seen her home and she’d had to admit he’d been quite decent about her mistake. Sweet Christ, she’d made such a fool of herself.
Filthy whore-boy. Lying bastard.
He had every right to fling her out into the street. But he didn’t. Just became even more arrogant with that conceited smile of his while she danced with him. Only one dance. She couldn’t stand any more.

She could feel the warm silk of her mother’s kimono under her fingers. ‘Why?’ she asked again.

Valentina shrugged, as if it were nothing. ‘A fling.’

‘Mama, I’ve seen you with him. You hate him.’

‘Of course I hate that devil, God rot his stinking soul.’

‘Was it because of the photographs?’

Valentina stopped breathing.

‘I’ve got them.’ Lydia stroked her mother’s back. ‘And the negatives.’

Valentina gave a brief sob. ‘How?’

‘I stole them.’

‘It’s what you are good at.’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you.’ It was a whisper.

‘So it is my business.’

‘Very well. You asked.’ Her mother took a deep breath. ‘There was no real scholarship to the Willoughby Academy. You’d spent four wasted years in the local charity school here and I knew you would just be smothered and die in that hellhole. So I sought out the best private school, the Willoughby Academy, and the chief officer for education in Junchow. Mr Mason. And I made him an offer. Create a scholarship. Award it to you. In exchange for . . .’

‘ . . . you?’

‘Yes.’

Lydia slid her arms around her mother and rocked her gently. ‘Oh, Mama.’

‘I couldn’t get rid of him even after I married. Because of the photographs.’

‘I’ll burn them.’

‘I’d burn him, if I could.’

‘Mama,’ Lydia moaned and tightened her embrace.

‘So now you will do as I ask?’ Valentina twisted around, her face close to her daughter’s, two dark eyeless shadows. ‘You’ll give up your Chinese Bolshevik?’

Lydia pulled her coat more firmly around her and stamped her cold feet on the rock-hard patch of lawn under the eucalyptus tree. She had been waiting an hour. The garage hid the house from her, just as it hid her from the house, and she’d had plenty of time to study the wall she was sheltering behind. It was made of red bricks and she’d counted how many lay in each row. Sixty-two. She had plucked three snails off the mortar and tossed them into the shrubbery, and watched a brown-legged spider cocoon a beetle that blundered into its web. There wasn’t much else to watch.

A crow took off above her from the eucalyptus tree, making the silver leaves quiver, and with two slow beats of its heavy wings it drifted over the tiles of the garage roof and up high into the chilly air. She squinted up at it. The sky was a milky blue, full of soft swirls of white that reminded Lydia of a marble she’d once owned. She’d found it in a gutter, a bright patch of blue sky buried among the filth. She’d kept it safe in her pocket for four days, but in the end was tempted into a game of marbles by a gang of boys in the playground. She’d played and lost. When she saw her marble bundled with a handful of others into a grubby pocket, she felt she’d betrayed it.

A car door slammed. It was somewhere farther down Walnut Road and an engine growled into life. That was good. People were waking up, going off to work at last. It wouldn’t be long now. It had been still dark when she’d put on her school uniform and slipped out of the house, a thin gleam of gold painted along the eastern horizon. She’d had the sense to leave a note.
Gone to library. To finish homework.
They wouldn’t know it didn’t open until eight-thirty, and actually it was a relief to skip breakfast with Alfred. He was awkward first thing in the morning and had a habit of looking up from his porridge with a frown, blinking hard behind his spectacles, as if wondering who on earth these two strangers were at his breakfast table.

Lydia thumped her gloved hands together and let out a long breath. Watched it curl away from her as solid as cigarette smoke. She drew in another deep breath, but it was an effort. Her lungs hurt. They just wouldn’t work properly. It was her mother’s words. They lay like a lead burden on her, crushing her chest.

It wasn’t right.

‘Mr Mason.’

‘Good God, girl, you startled me.’

He looked so smart, so upright. A fedora and alpaca coat. A black lizard-skin briefcase snug under his arm, car keys in hand. The picture of respectability. Pillar of society. Lydia wanted to tear his eyes out and feed them to the crow.

‘What are you doing loitering around my garage?’

‘I’m not loitering. I’m waiting to speak to you.’

‘Oh, not now. I’m in a hurry to get to the office.’

‘Yes, now.’

Something in her voice made him pause and look at her. His grey eyes grew wary. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No.’

‘Very well.’ He unlocked the garage and swung open the doors. The Buick’s big chrome headlights stared out at her.

‘I have the photographs.’

His hand dropped the car keys. He bent, picked them up, tried to bluff it out. ‘What photographs?’

‘Don’t.’

He pulled himself up tall, pushed out his chest, came and stood too close. ‘Look, young lady, I’m a busy man and I have no idea what you’re talking . . .’

She slapped him. A long swing with her arm and then her palm full on his cheek. The crack of it sounded loud in the still air. She was shocked, but not as shocked as he was. His eyes glazed for a moment. The red imprint of her hand with fingers splayed was stamped on his cheek. His fists came up but she stepped back out of reach.

‘That’s what it feels like. To be knocked about, you wife-beating pervert. Taking nude pictures of your own daughter . . .’

He lunged for her. She dodged.

‘What would Sir Edward Carlisle have to say about that?’

‘Now you get this straight, girl, it’s not . . .’

‘Don’t. I don’t want to hear your lies, you piece of slime. Sir Edward will sack you on the spot.’

His face grew ashen. He was having trouble swallowing, but his eyes remained shrewd. He held up one neatly manicured hand in a gesture of peace.

‘All right, Lydia. Let’s get down to business. You’re no fool. I’ll give you ten thousand dollars for the photographs and negatives. ’

Ten thousand dollars.

A fortune. Her head swayed.

‘You can have it in cash. This afternoon.’ He was watching her closely and suddenly reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He yanked out a thick wedge of notes and fanned them out like cards unsder her nose. ‘Here. Take this. As a starter.’

Ten thousand dollars.

Ten thousand dollars would buy anything. Everything. Passports. Visas. Pianos. First-class boat tickets. She could take her mother to England and flee. Oxford University, just as her mother wanted. It was all there, in Mason’s hand. All she had to do was say yes. And she could take Chang An Lo to safety with her.

But would he come? Leave China?

Mason’s lips pulled into a thin line. It was meant as a smile. ‘Agreed?’

She opened her mouth to say yes.

‘No.’

‘Don’t be a bloody stupid fool. This is your chance.’

‘But you’d have the photographs.’

‘I’d destroy them, I promise.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

She opened her hands to the sky, letting the money go. ‘Because you are scum. I don’t trust you. As long as I hang on to those negatives, I can be certain you will never lay a finger on Polly again. Or your wife. Or my mother. Do you understand me?’

He scowled, turned away. She watched the money return to the wallet. Her throat hurt.