The Concubine's Secret

29

Lydia was dancing. It was so long since she’d danced that she’d forgotten how intoxicating it could be. The music swayed through the air, soft and lilting in the grand room as a five-piece orchestra picked up a Strauss waltz and Dmitri Malofeyev spun her across the floor. Above her head a domed roof of intricate glass, stained a rich blue and green, gave Lydia the strange feeling that she was moving under the sea. The other dancers were as bright and fluid as fish, their gowns flitting past in purples and golds and rippling reds, their perfumes wafting like waves around her.

The delegation had been delayed. Dmitri didn’t say why and she hid her impatience, accepting his hand when he invited her to dance. He looked good in his evening jacket and smelled even better. Where his hand touched her back with no more weight than a feather, her skin grew hot under her white blouse. For some time they danced in silence until Lydia felt the need to offer her host some conversation.

‘You dance well, Dmitri.’

‘Thank you, Lydia. And you look lovely.’

‘The footwear isn’t mine.’

He looked down at Elena’s heavy green shoes and raised an amused eyebrow. ‘Exquisite.’

‘At least they fit.’

He laughed.

‘Dmitri, why are you doing this for me? Helping me.’

He slid his gaze off the huddle of army officers, locked deep in conversation over by one of the tall windows, and smiled at her. ‘Why do you think?’ he asked.

‘Out of the goodness of your heart?’

He laughed, that rich sound she liked but didn’t quite trust. ‘Don’t tease,’ he said. For a split second he stopped dancing. ‘I don’t think there’s much goodness in my heart, Lydia. I warn you.’

They stood still as stone for a moment, then he laughed and swept her up in his arms once more so that they became just another of the swirling couples. But Lydia’s stomach was turning, and turning in a way that had nothing to do with the sway of the music. He’s warned me. She couldn’t find a smile to give him, to make light of what he’d said. She turned her face aside and let her gaze drift sightlessly over the dazzling chandeliers.

‘Lydia.’

‘Yes?’

‘You are too easy to read.’

She tossed her head, annoyed. With him. With the Chinese delegation for being late. With the boy for biting her hand. With herself for needing him.

‘You’re still young,’ he said quietly. ‘Your eyes tell everything, however much you disguise it with a smile and a laugh, however enchanting you look.’

She turned directly to him. ‘Don’t be so sure.’

‘Ah, now you have me worried.’

He laughed again and this time she made herself laugh with him. His hand at her back increased its pressure, drawing her a fraction closer as he guided her expertly across the floor.

Kuan, where are you? Come quickly.

‘There are a lot of army people here tonight,’ she commented to distract him.

‘Yes, they are keen to talk to the Chinese delegation about Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army.’

‘A lot of power gathered in one room.’

‘More than you can imagine, Lydia. Be careful. These men would send you off to ten years’ hard labour for no more than smiling at the wrong person.’

‘Would you?’

He spun her past an elegant couple, both attired in raven-black, and nodded politely to them. Lydia could feel his shoulder muscles stiffen under her fingers. A rival on the ladder to the Politburo, perhaps?

‘Would I what?’

‘Send me to a prison camp for smiling at the wrong person?’

His mouth softened and his grey eyes were suddenly sad, changing colour like the sea when a fog rolls in. ‘No, Lydia, I wouldn’t.’

‘But you warned me.’

‘Yes. I did.’

Everything in her wanted to trust him and yet she couldn’t work out why.

‘Spasibo,’ she murmured. ‘For your help.’

He tightened his grip on her fingers. ‘Why am I doing it? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re not like them.’ He glanced with scorn at the other dancers. ‘Fear controls them. Jerks their limbs like puppets. In your neat little white blouse and green skirt and your borrowed shoes you’re not like them. There’s something still alive in you, something vibrating its wings. At times when I’m this close to you I can hear it.’

Lydia inhaled and felt a trickle of sweat on her neck. ‘I-’

‘Hello, Dmitri.’

Everything changed. It was as though the man she’d just been dancing with slipped from her grasp and another one took his place. This one was smooth and untouchable, the one with effortless charm and an easy smile, the one she’d first seen in the Liaison Office. For a moment Lydia was disconcerted. The man who was becoming her friend had gone.

‘Lydia,’ he said, ‘let me introduce you… to my dear wife, Antonina.’

Lydia swung round quickly and felt her cheeks flush red. The woman in front of her was dressed in a stylish beaded gown, her dark hair swept up on her head to emphasise her long pale neck. Her brown eyes were glittering with real amusement, so different from when Lydia had seen them in the hotel bathroom in Selyansk or on the station platform in Trovitsk.

‘Well, I do believe it’s young Lydia Ivanova,’ Antonina said. ‘The girl from the train.’

The words came out with a slight mocking edge but she extended a hand with what looked like genuine warmth. Lydia shook it, aware of the long white evening glove that covered the woman’s arm all the way to above her elbow.

‘Dmitri, darling, would you be an angel and fetch me a drink? And a glass of something for our young friend here. She looks as though she needs it.’

‘It would be my pleasure, Antonina,’ her husband said, taking her hand and kissing the back of the glove. Lydia was aware that something passed between them but she couldn’t make out what.

His tall figure disappeared into the crowd and Antonina drew Lydia aside, settling herself at one of the tables and slotting a cigarette into an ivory cigarette holder. Instantly a passing waiter lit it for her and she delayed speaking until he had moved away.

‘So,’ she said. Her deep-set eyes had shed their amusement. ‘My husband has been entertaining you, I see.’

‘No. He’s helping me.’

‘Oh?’

‘To find someone.’

‘Ah, that’s right. Your long lost half-brother, I assume.’

‘Alexei?’

‘Yes.’ Antonina registered Lydia’s expression of surprise. ‘Isn’t that who you mean?’

‘How do you know Alexei?’

‘I met him in Felanka. After you’d left. He was looking for you.’

In Felanka. After you’d left. Looking for you. Lydia clasped her hands together on her lap to stop them banging in fury on the table. All these weeks she’d believed Alexei had deserted her. When all the time the truth was that she’d walked out on him. She could hear a noise, an odd rasping sound, and it took a moment for her to realise it was her own breathing.

‘Are you all right?’ Antonina was leaning across the table, one white-gloved hand stretched out, but she cast a wary glance round the room. ‘Take care.’ She waited quietly while Lydia struggled for control. ‘Can I help?’

‘I… didn’t know.’

‘That he came back for you?’

Lydia ducked her head, her hair falling across her face. She tugged at a lock of it. ‘How was he?’ she whispered.

‘Alexei?’ Antonina took a long drag on the ivory holder and let smoke coil from her nose like a waking dragon. ‘Not in good shape, I’m afraid.’

‘Why?’

‘He’d been beaten up.’ She hesitated and something caught in her throat when she added, ‘Stabbed.’

Lydia refused to cry. ‘Was he badly hurt?’

‘The wound was healing, so don’t worry. But it must have been bad at first.’ Again that catch in her voice.

‘Did he receive my letter?’

‘What letter? I’m sorry, I know nothing about a letter.’

Lydia stared down at her own hands in her lap and shook her head.

‘Listen to me, Lydia.’ Antonina spoke fast, checking that no one was near. ‘I went to Felanka to find you, but you’d disappeared. I had the information you wanted. I told Alexei that Jens Friis had been transferred to Moscow. But,’ she flicked ash thoughtfully into a silver ashtray, ‘you obviously already know that and that’s why you’re here, I presume. You must have discovered he’s been moved out of Trovitsk camp.’

Lydia nodded.

‘Clever of you,’ Antonina murmured.

‘Where is Alexei now?’

‘I don’t know. I wish to God I did.’

It was the way she said it, rather than the words themselves. As if they hurt her. Enough to draw Lydia ’s attention from her own despair and focus it on her companion. She looked lovely. Cool and elegant with bare, fragile shoulders and a single strand of pearls around her long pale neck. Her face looked calm, serene as a doll’s, and it seemed to Lydia that this woman had learned to construct a hard shell between herself and the world that her husband was so convinced would one day be the Mecca of mankind’s happiness. Her eyes were cool and secretive but only her full carmine mouth gave her away. One small corner of it trembled beyond her control when she mentioned Lydia’s brother.

Lydia lifted her hand and hesitantly placed it on the white-gloved one where it lay on the table. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Nothing much. We met in Felanka… we talked. Then he left.’

‘To come to Moscow?’

‘That’s what he said. Something about having to go to the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer.’

‘I know Alexei. If that’s what he said, he will get here even if he has to drag himself by his fingernails.’

‘Really?’

One word. That’s all. But the unguarded eagerness in it told Lydia everything. So that was it, her brother and Antonina. It made her own loneliness even sharper, but she nodded and squeezed the hand under hers. ‘He’ll come. I know he’ll come.’

‘You’ll tell me when-’

‘Yes, of course.’

Lydia was aware of Dmitri’s tall figure approaching their table. So this was the man who for the last few years had controlled the brutal camp where her father was imprisoned. How could she bring herself to speak to him? How could she bear even to look at him?

‘Here you are, my darling,’ Dmitri said as he placed a glass of red wine in front of his wife. ‘And for you, young Lydia, a glass of champagne.’

‘Champagne,’ she said stiffly.

‘Yes. To celebrate.’

‘What am I celebrating?’

He studied her face for a moment and his expression struck her as sad, as if he knew he’d lost something. ‘The Chinese delegation has arrived.’

Lydia rose to her feet, her legs suddenly clumsy. She looked around the crowded room and made it seem as if it meant nothing to her. ‘Where are they?’

‘Some of them are over there with General Vasiliev. The others are…’

Antonina’s eyes widened as she focused on something over Lydia’s right shoulder. Lydia’s mouth went dry.

‘Behind you,’ Dmitri finished.

Lydia spun round, expecting Kuan. Her breathing stopped. Her heart split open. All the happiness stored inside it flooded through her veins. She was looking straight into the beautiful dark eyes of Chang An Lo.

There are times, Lydia knew, when life gives you more than you ask for. Oh yes, this was one. She wanted to shout a thousand spasibos to all his gods, to make it echo from the glass roof. Their abundant generosity took her breath away. She’d asked for Kuan tonight, but instead she was given Chang An Lo.

He was real. Not a figment this time. Her eyes feasted greedily on him. His lithe figure was tall and supple as a bamboo tree, his black hair longer than she’d seen it before but just as thick and energetic. And yes, he possessed that same stillness at his core that pulled at her heart. But his eyes… the eyes she’d kissed and bathed and even brushed with her own lashes, dark and intent and able to see right inside her soul… those black eyes had changed. They were more guarded and aloof. Withdrawn into himself.

He stood in front of her in a tunic and black trousers and she wanted to touch him so badly her hands were shaking. She forced them together in front of her and performed a polite bow of greeting.

‘It is good to see you again, Chang An Lo.’

Good to see you. How did she find such restrained words on her tongue? How did she speak at all when her heart was thundering in her throat? And that was when he presented Kuan to the gathering and Lydia felt something crack inside her. Kuan, dressed in a similar black tunic and trousers, possessed solemn brown eyes, hair cropped to jaw level and a determined, capable mouth that made Lydia wary. But worse – far, far worse – she possessed a piece of Chang An Lo. Her arm rested against his as if their flesh was fused.