The Russian Concubine

23

Chang stood in the dark. Still as stone. They were there, all around him. He could hear them. The rustle of a sleeve, the brush of thigh against wall, the scrape of shoe on gravel. It had been a risk. To show himself at the funeral. It meant they would track him down, he knew that. But it would have brought dishonour on him if he had shunned Yuesheng’s final moment. Yuesheng was his blood companion and he owed him respect, especially as it could so easily have been Chang’s own body lying dead in the cellar that night when the Kuomintang attacked. So now the Black Snakes were here. Death lay in the shadows, awaiting its feast.

He was in a cobbled square in the old town, his back pressed to a studded oak door, inset under an arch. Black figures flicked from one street to another, crouched and coming fast from all directions. Movement in doorways. Sharp eyes seeking him. No moon to highlight the blades in their fists but he had no doubt that they were there, hungry for blood.

He counted six of them in all, but could hear more. One was standing tight against a wall no more than ten paces to his right, guarding the entrance to a narrow hutong, an alleyway that led deep into the maze of back streets. He had a harsh way of breathing. With a silent leap and an upward slam of his heel, Chang put an end to it, but before the body had even touched the ground, he was into the hutong and running, low and lithe. Above him in an upstairs window a light flooded on and a shout sounded from behind, but he didn’t turn.

He moved faster. Ducked into deeper darkness. Feet skidding on rotting filth. He led them on through the alleys, stringing them out as they fought for speed, so that when the fastest man found himself at a crossroads twenty feet ahead of his companions, he had no idea what flew out of the shadows and thudded into his chest, snapping ribs like twigs, until it was too late and he couldn’t breathe.

Chang swept through the darkness. Winding and twisting. Ambushing. One man lost the use of a leg and another the sight in one eye. But a nighttime honey wagon, the cart piled high with human manure and the stench enough to choke a man, blocked his path and he was forced to swerve left down a slope that led nowhere.

A death trap.

Sheer walls on three sides of a rough courtyard. One way in. One way out. Six men spread behind him, breathing hard and spitting venom. Three of them carried knives, two wielded swords, but one held a gun and it was pointed straight at Chang’s chest. He said something guttural and a sword carrier stepped forward. He came at Chang and the long blade sang through the air. Chang stilled his breathing, drew on the energy racing through his blood, and in one fluid movement swept a leg under his attacker. A sting of pain skittered down his side, but he took three rapid steps and leaped into the air at the back wall, struggled for a fingerhold, slipped, caught again, and then swung his heels over his head in a full arc. On the roof but not safe. A bullet tore past his ear.

A howl of anger down in the courtyard and the man with the gun seized the swordsman’s weapon and sliced it down in a blow that disembowelled the sword’s owner. The wounded man fell forward to his knees, clutching at his writhing innards as they spilled from his body, a high wailing scream rising from his mouth. A second blow from the sword silenced the scream and sent his head rolling into the gutter. The gun pointed once more at the roof. But Chang was gone.

Lydia had time to think. The stretch of twenty-two yards at the centre of the pitch was wearing thin, but around it the turf spread out like a shimmering lake of green. The grass was trimmed with precision and treated with a respect that baffled her because the men seemed to pay more attention to its welfare than they did to their children’s. But she loved to watch cricket. She liked to imagine this same scene taking place on the other side of the world in England. At this very moment in every town and village the weekend was being besieged by men in white flannels strutting around with pads and bats, knocking hell out of a small hard ball. It was so wonderfully pointless. Especially in this heat. Only people with nothing to do all day could think up a game so bizarre.

Men in white.

To one nation it means a game. To another it means death. Worlds apart. Oceans adrift. But what happens to someone caught in the middle? Do they drown?

‘More tea, dear? You look miles away.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Mason.’ Lydia accepted the tea, drew her thoughts away from Chang An Lo, and helped herself to another cucumber sandwich, which she added to the plate balanced on the arm of her deckchair.

Polly’s mother was wearing heavy sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with roses from her garden, but neither quite hid the bruise around her left eye or the swelling on her cheekbone. ‘I tripped over Achilles, Christopher’s lazy old cat, and banged into a door, silly me,’ Lydia had heard her laugh to the other wives, but it was obvious from their expressions that no one believed the lie. Lydia looked at her with new respect. To come here today for the match and face up to this humiliation with such a firm smile and a steady hand as she dispensed tea, that took courage.

‘Mrs Mason,’ she said in a loud voice, ‘that is such a pretty dress, it really suits you.’ It was frilly and floral, the kind of dress only an Englishwoman would wear.

‘Why, thank you, Lydia,’ Anthea Mason said, and for one ghastly moment Lydia thought she was going to cry, but instead she popped a smile on her face and an extra sandwich on Lydia’s plate.

Out on the field Christopher Mason hit another four, but Lydia refused to join in the ripple of applause. Beside her Polly beamed with delight and fondled her puppy’s head to cheer him up. He was sulking at being kept on a lead when the ball was just asking to be fetched.

‘Isn’t Daddy clever, Toby? He’ll be in such a good mood today.’

Lydia wouldn’t look at her.

‘You’ll get yourself killed, Lyd.’

‘Don’t talk such poppycock. It was only a funeral.’

‘But why? No one goes to Chinese functions. The natives here keep to themselves and we do the same. That way everyone stays happy. You’ve got to accept that they don’t like us, Lyd, and they’re different from us. Mixing together. It can’t be done.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because it can’t. Everyone knows that.’

‘You’re wrong. Chang and I are…,’ Lydia sought for a word that wouldn’t shock Polly, ‘… friends. We talk about… well, about things, and I see no reason why we can’t mix. Look at all the children who have amahs as nannies to look after them when they’re little and they really love them. So why does it have to change just because the children grow up?’

‘Because they have different rules from us.’

‘So you’re saying it only works when they adopt our rules and live as we live.’

‘Yes.’

‘But they’re just people, Polly. Like us. You should have seen and heard their grief at the funeral. They were hurting just like we do. Cut them and they bleed. So what do rules matter?’

‘Oh, Lyd, this Chang An Lo is getting you all muddled up. You must forget about him. Though I must admit Mr Theo seems to make it work with his beautiful Chinese woman.’

‘But he hasn’t married her, has he?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And when Anna Calpin was young she used to love her amah, but now she makes her sit on the toilet seat for ten minutes when it’s cold in winter to warm it up before Anna uses it.’

‘I know. But you’ve never had Chinese servants, Lyd. You don’t understand.’

‘No, Polly. I don’t.’

The street seemed normal. A Chinese vendor stood on the corner trying to sell sunflower seeds and hot water, a boy was playing marbles in the gutter, and an old Russian babushka was sitting in a rocking chair in her doorway, plucking a guinea fowl. At her feet two filthy street urchins were snatching at feathers as they fell and stuffing them into a pillowcase. The big wheels of a rickshaw rattled down the road kicking up grit.

Lydia tried to work out what had made her halt. It was the street where she lived. She’d walked it a million times. It was hot, she was dusty, and her dress was sticking to her skin. She needed a cold drink. Only twenty yards to her own front door. So what was it? What made her hesitate?

Be watchful, Lydia Ivanova. Don’t sleep while you walk. They let you go once but not a second time. Chang’s words to her. Well, she was being watchful all right, keeping alert, yet she could see nothing to be nervous about. Oh hell, maybe Polly was right. Maybe he was getting her head all muddled over nothing. She hurried down the street, impatient with herself, and it was as she was unlocking the front door that she sensed the movement behind her. Not that she saw or heard anything. More a sudden shifting of the air at her back. She didn’t turn. Just threw herself over the threshold and slammed the door behind her. She leaned heavily against it, not breathing. Listening.

Nothing. A car’s klaxon, a child’s laugh, the savage shriek of a gull overhead.

She took a deep breath. Had she imagined it?

She waited while the minutes ticked by, and still her pulse thudded in her ears.

‘Lydia, moi vorobushek, come here, come.’ It was Mrs Zarya beckoning at the end of the hall. She was wearing a bright pink kimono, and her hair was wrapped up in wire curlers. ‘I have a piece of yam for your Mr Sun Yat-sen. Here, take it.’

Lydia moved, but her feet felt heavy. ‘That’s kind, Mrs Zarya. Sun Yat-sen will like that.’ She remembered the clutch of grass that she’d sneaked from the cricket club. It was scrunched tight in her hand. ‘Going somewhere special tonight?’

‘Da, yes. To a soirée.’ Mrs Zarya said it proudly. ‘A poetry reading at General Manlikov’s villa. He was a friend of my husband and he is a fine man who has not forgotten his old comrade’s widow.’

‘Have a good time.’ Lydia scampered up the stairs. ‘Thanks for the yam. Spasibo.’

It was when she reached the last flight of stairs that she heard the voices coming from the attic. They seemed to strike her upturned face. She stood still. One was her mother’s, low and intense; the other was a man’s, raised in what sounded like anger. They were speaking Russian. She opened the door quietly. Two figures were together on the sofa, talking fast, hands gesturing through the air between them. Lydia felt a shiver of dismay and wanted to leave, but it was too late. It was the man from the police lineup, the big bearded bear with the black oily curls and the eye patch, the one with the wolf boots. Beside him Valentina looked like a tiny exotic creature perched on the edge of the seat. The man was staring straight at Lydia with his one dark eye and it was enough to turn her cheeks a fiery red.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said at once. ‘I didn’t mean to make the police come after you like that, I just…’

‘Lydia,’ her mother said quickly, ‘Liev Popkov speaks no English.’

‘Oh… well, tell him I apologise, Mama.’

Valentina spoke in rapid Russian.

He nodded slowly and rose to his feet, filling the attic room with his massive shoulders, ducking his head to avoid the low ceiling, and still he stared at Lydia. She wasn’t sure whether it was hostility or curiosity, but either way it made her uncomfortable. But what confused her was how on earth he had discovered where she lived. Chyort! She was jumpy as hell.

He walked over to the door where she was standing, and up close she feared he would tear off her head with one of his great paws.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said once more before he had the chance to unsheathe his claws, and she held out her hand.

To her surprise he took it, swallowed it up inside his own, and shook it gently. But his single black eye seemed to stare at her in disgust.

‘Do svidania,’ she said politely. Good-bye.

He grunted and shambled out of the room.

‘Mama, what did he want?’

But Valentina wasn’t listening. She was pouring herself a drink. Into a glass, not a cup, Lydia noticed, another sign of Alfred’s generosity.

Her mother walked over to the replaced mirror on the wall and stared at her reflection as she took a first taste of the vodka.

‘I am old,’ she murmured and ran a hand down her cheek and throat, over the rise of her breasts and hip. ‘Old and scrawny as a sewer dog with worms.’

‘Don’t, Mama. Don’t start that. You are beautiful, everyone says so, and you are only thirty-five.’

‘This stinking climate is destroying my skin.’ She put her face right up close to the mirror and ran a finger slowly around her eyes.

‘Vodka ruins your skin faster.’

Her mother said nothing, just tipped her head back and emptied the alcohol down her throat, and then for a brief moment she closed her eyes.

Lydia turned away and looked out the window instead. The old woman in the rocking chair had fallen asleep and the two urchins were trying to slide the half-plucked bird from her grasp, but even in sleep her fingers clung on. Lydia leaned out and shouted at them. They stopped their thieving and ran off down the street with their pillowcase of feathers. Above the rooftops the sky was streaked with lilac tendrils as the sun started to slide away from China, but Lydia was not to be distracted.

‘What did that man want, Mama?’

Valentina was at the table, refilling her glass. ‘Money. Isn’t that what everyone wants?’

‘You didn’t give him any.’

‘How could I give him money when I don’t have any?’

Lydia considered snatching the vodka bottle away and pouring it out the window, but she’d tried that once and knew it didn’t work. It was like pushing a stick into a wasp’s nest. It only made her worse.

‘I thought you were going to work at the hotel this evening.’

Valentina gave her a look that made it quite clear what she thought of work and hotels. ‘Not tonight, darling. They can stuff their work up their own fat backsides. I’m sick of it. Sick to bloody death of their groping hands and their thrashing hips. I want to chop them all up into tiny pieces, like steak tartare.’

‘It’s just a job, Mama. You don’t really hate it.’

‘I do. It’s true. They sweat. They stink. They put their hands where they shouldn’t and where they wouldn’t if I were one of their own kind. They want to fuck me.’

‘Mama!’

‘And Alfred too. That’s what he wants to do.’

‘I thought he came and bought all your dances to protect you from the others.’

‘When he can.’ She sipped her drink. The glass was fuller this time. ‘But often he has to work late for deadlines at his newspaper office.’ She fluttered her fingers in the air. ‘Such rubbish they all write. As if this colony were the centre of the universe.’

‘How did that Russian man find me here?’

Her mother shrugged eloquently. ‘How the hell should I know, darling? Use your head. From the police, I suppose.’

Valentina was wearing an old cotton dress that she hated but deigned to put on in the house to save her few other clothes for best. It always put her in a bad mood, and Lydia swore that tomorrow she would throw it in the trash. For now, she went over to the stove and started chopping up the piece of yam.

‘Dochenka, something occurred to me today.’

‘That vodka can kill you?’

‘Don’t be so impudent. No, it occurred to me to wonder where the money came from to redeem Alfred’s watch from the pawnbroker. Tell me.’

The knife hesitated in Lydia’s hand.

‘The truth, Lydia. No more lies.’

Lydia put down the knife and turned to face her mother, but she was back in front of the mirror staring at her reflection. It seemed to give her no pleasure.

‘It happened when I was walking past the burned-out house in Melidan Road,’ Lydia said casually. ‘Two people were shouting at each other in there, a man and a woman.’

‘So? Are you saying these people gave you the money?’

‘Sort of. The woman threw a handful of silver at the man and then they both shouted some more and left. So I went in and picked up the money from the floor. It wasn’t stealing. It was just lying there for anyone to find.’

Valentina narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Is that the truth?’

‘Honestly.’

‘Very well. But it was wicked of you to steal the watch in the first place.’

‘I know, Mama. I’m sorry.’

Valentina turned and studied her daughter critically for a minute. She shook her head. ‘You look an awful mess. Quite horrible. What on earth have you been up to today?’

‘I went to a funeral.’

‘Looking like that!’

‘No, I borrowed some clothes.’

‘Whose funeral?’ She was turning back to the mirror, losing interest.

‘A friend of a friend. No one you know.’

Lydia finished chopping the yam and wrapped it in a scrap of old greaseproof paper, then took a large bowl of water into her bedroom and proceeded to strip off her damp dress and grimy shoes. She washed herself all over and brushed her hair till every last morsel of dirt and dust was out of it. She must make more effort with her appearance or Chang An Lo would never look at her the way he’d looked at the Chinese girl with the fine features and the short black hair at the funeral today. Their heads close together. Like lovers.

‘Better?’

‘My darling, you look adorable.’

Lydia had put on the concert dress and shoes. She wasn’t sure why.

‘I don’t look horrible anymore, do I, Mama?’

‘No, sweetheart, you look like peaches and cream.’ Valentina was wearing only her oyster-silk slip now, her long hair loose around her bare shoulders. She placed her empty glass on the table and came to stand in front of Lydia. Even half drunk she moved gracefully. But her eyes looked suspiciously red at the rims, as if she might have been crying silently while Lydia was behind her curtain, or it could just be the vodka talking. She cupped Lydia’s face in her hands and studied her daughter intently, a slight frown placing a crease between the finely arched eyebrows.

‘One day soon you will be truly beautiful.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mama. You will always be the beautiful one in this family.’

Valentina smiled, and Lydia knew she had said the right thing.

‘You will be pleased to hear, little one, that I have tonight decided to create a new me. A modern me.’

Her mother released her face and headed for the drawer beside the blackened stove. Lydia experienced a sudden unease. It was where the knives were kept. But it wasn’t a knife her mother picked out, but a pair of long-bladed scissors.

‘No, Mama, don’t, please don’t. You’ll see everything differently in the morning. It’s only the drink that’s…’

Valentina stood in front of the mirror, seized a great handful of her dark hair, and sliced it off at jaw level.

Neither spoke. Both were shocked by the image in the mirror. It was brutal. Lopsided and bewildered. The reflection of a woman who was lost between two worlds.

Lydia recovered first. ‘Let me finish it for you or you won’t get it straight. I’ll make it look smart, really chic.’

She gently took the scissors from her mother’s rigid hand and proceeded to cut. Each snip of the blades felt like treachery to her father. Valentina had always told her how he’d adored her long hair and described how he used to stand behind her each night before going to bed and brush it into a silky smooth curtain with long, slow strokes that set it crackling full of sparks. Like shooting stars in a night sky, he used to say. Now the soft waves lay like dead birds at her feet. When the act was finished, Lydia picked them up, wrapped them in a white scarf of her mother’s, and laid the slender bundle under her pillow. It deserved a proper funeral.

To her surprise, her mother was smiling. ‘Better,’ she said.

Valentina shook her head from side to side and her hair bounced and swung playfully, curving into the nape of her neck and emphasising her long white throat.

‘Much better,’ she said again. ‘And this is just the beginning of the new me.’

She lifted the half-empty bottle of Russian vodka off the table, walked over to the open window where the evening sky looked as if it were now on fire above the grey slate roofs, and stuck out her arm, tipping the clear liquid into the street without even a glance below.

Lydia watched.

‘Happy now?’ her mother asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. And no more dance hostess for me either.’

‘But we need that money for our rent. Don’t…’

‘No. I have decided.’

Lydia began to panic. ‘Perhaps I could do it instead. Become a dance hostess, I mean.’

‘Don’t be absurd, dochenka. You are too young.’

‘I could say I’m older than sixteen. And you know I dance well, you taught me.’

‘No. I am not having men touch you.’

‘Oh, Mama, don’t be silly. I know how to look after myself.’

Valentina gave a sharp high laugh. She dropped the bottle onto the floor and seized her daughter’s arm. She shook it hard.

‘You know nothing of men, Lydia Ivanova, nothing, and that’s the way I intend to keep it. So don’t even think about such a job.’ Her eyes were angry, and Lydia could not quite understand why.

‘All right, Mama, all right, calm down.’ She pulled her arm free and said carefully, ‘But maybe I could find some other job.’

‘No. We agreed a long time ago. You must get yourself an education.’

‘I know, and I will. But…’

‘No buts.’

‘Listen, Mama, I know we said the only way for us to climb out of this stinking hole is for me eventually to get a decent job, a proper career, but until then how are we going to…?’

‘It is not the only way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean there’s another way.’

‘How?’

‘Alfred Parker.’

Lydia blinked and felt a rush of sour saliva in her mouth. ‘No.’ It was no more than a whisper.

‘Yes.’ Her mother tossed her newly bobbed hair. ‘I have decided.’

‘No, Mama, please don’t.’ Lydia’s throat was dry. ‘He’s not good enough for you.’

‘Don’t be silly, my sweet. I’m sure his friends will say I’m not good enough for him.’

‘That’s rubbish.’

‘Is it? Listen to me, Lydia. He’s a good man. You never minded about Antoine, so why object to Alfred?’

‘You were never serious about Antoine.’

‘Well, I’m glad you realise I intend to be serious about Alfred.’ She said it gently and lifted a strand of her daughter’s shining hair between her fingers, as if to remember what long hair felt like. ‘I want you to be nice to him.’

‘Mama,’ Lydia shook her head, ‘I can’t… because…’

‘Because what?’

Lydia scraped the tip of one of her new shoes along the floor. ‘Because he’s not Papa.’

A strange little moan escaped Valentina’s lips. ‘Don’t, Lydia, don’t. That time is over. This is now.’

Lydia seized her mother’s arm. ‘I’ll get a job,’ she said urgently. ‘I’ll get us out of this mess, I promise, you don’t need Alfred, I don’t want him in our house. He’s pompous and silly and fiddles with his ears and rams his bible down our throats and…’ She took a breath.

‘Don’t stop now, dochenka. Let’s hear it all.’

‘He wears spectacles but still he can’t see how you twist him around your finger like a wisp of straw.’

Valentina gave an elegant shrug. ‘Hush now, my sweet. Give him time. You’ll get used to him.’

‘I don’t want to get used to him.’

‘Don’t you want to see me happy?’

‘You know I do, Mama, but not with him.’

‘He’s a fine Englishman.’

‘No, he’s too… ordinary for you. And he’ll change everything, he’ll make us as ordinary as he is.’

Valentina drew herself up to her full height. ‘That is insulting, Lydia, and I…’

‘Don’t you see,’ Lydia rushed on, ‘I only gave him back his stupid watch to get rid of him.’ Her voice was rising. ‘I used up all that precious money because I thought it would make him hate me so much, he’d go away and never ever come back. Don’t you see?’

Valentina stood very still. Her face drained bone white as she stared at her daughter. The air in the room was too brittle to breathe.

‘You underestimate me,’ her mother said at last. ‘He won’t leave.’

‘Don’t, Mama. Don’t do this to us.’

‘I have decided, Lydia.’

Suddenly Lydia could not bear to be in the same room with this new Valentina Ivanova. She snatched up the greaseproof package, rushed out of the room, and kicked the door savagely behind her.

‘Little sparrow, what are you doing out here in the dark?’

It was Mrs Zarya. She was wrapped in a long velvet cloak and wore an elaborate hat with a black ostrich feather curling around its crown. Diamond drop earrings caught the light from her window and sparkled like fireflies. This was not a Mrs Zarya that Lydia recognised.

‘Just feeding Sun Yat-sen,’ she muttered.

‘You have been feeding him for a very long time.’

Lydia said nothing. The rabbit was cradled in her arms and she could feel its rapid heartbeat against her chest.

‘Did he like the yam?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

There was a silence, neither quite sure where to go next. Somewhere in the street a pig started to squeal. It sounded like a night demon.

‘You look nice,’ Lydia said.

‘Thank you. I am off to General Manlikov’s soirée now.’

A soirée. A Russian soirée. It would be better than the room upstairs.

‘May I come with you, Mrs Zarya?’ Lydia asked politely. ‘I am wearing my smart dress.’

The Russian woman’s stiff and lonely old face softened into a delighted smile. ‘Da. Yes. You must come. You might learn something of the great country that bore you. Da.’

‘Spasibo,’ Lydia said. Thank you.