The Russian Concubine

31

Christmas Day was difficult. Lydia got through it. Her mother had a hangover, so hardly spoke, and Alfred was ill at ease playing host in his small and rather gloomy bachelor flat across the road from the French Quarter.

‘I should have booked a restaurant,’ he said for the third time as they sat at the table while his cook presented them with an overcooked goose.

‘No, angel, this is more homey,’ Valentina assured him. She managed a smile.

Angel? Homey? Lydia cringed. She pulled her Christmas cracker with him and tried to look pleased when he placed a paper hat on her head.

Two high points made the rest almost bearable.

‘Here, Lydia,’ Alfred said as he held out a large flat box wrapped in fancy paper and satin ribbon. ‘Merry Christmas, my dear.’

It was a coat, a soft greyish-blue. Beautifully tailored, heavy and warm, and instantly Lydia knew her mother had chosen it.

‘I hope you like it,’ he said.

‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’

It had a wide wrapover collar and there was a pair of navy gloves in the pocket. She put them all on and felt wonderful. Alfred was beaming at her, expecting more, and it made her want to explain to him, Just because you gave me a coat, it doesn’t make you my father. Instead she stepped forward, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cleanly shaven cheek that smelled of sandalwood. But it was the wrong thing to do. She could see in his eyes that he believed things between them had changed.

Did he really think he could buy her that easily?

The other highlight of the day was the electric wireless. Not the cat’s whisker kind, but a real wireless. It was made of polished oak and had a brown material mesh in the shape of a bird over the speaker at the front. Lydia adored it. She spent most of the afternoon beside it, fiddling with its knobs, flicking between stations, filling the room with the strident voice of Al Jolson or the honey-smooth tones of Noel Coward singing ‘A Room with a View.’ She let Alfred’s attempts at conversation flow unheeded most of the time, but after an item of news about Prime Minister Baldwin, he started on about the wisdom of signing a tariff agreement and officially recognising Chiang Kai-shek’s government, proud that Britain was one of the first countries to do so.

‘But it’s Josef Stalin, not us Brits,’ he said, ‘who has had the foresight to pour military advisers and money into Chiang’s Kuomintang Nationalists. And now Chiang Kai-shek has decided to get rid of the Russkies, more fool him.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Lydia muttered, one ear still tuned to Adele Astaire and ‘Fascinating Rhythm.’ ‘Stalin is a Communist. Why would he be helping the Kuomintang who are killing off the Communists here in China?’

Alfred polished his spectacles. ‘You must see, my dear, that he is backing the force he believes will be the victor in this power struggle between Mao Tse-tung’s forces and Chiang Kai-shek’s government. It may seem a contradictory choice for Stalin to make, but in this case I must say I think he’s right.’

‘He’s expelled Leon Trotsky from Russia. How can that be right?’

‘Russia, like China, needs a united government and Trotsky was causing factions and divisions, so… ’

‘Shut up,’ Valentina snapped suddenly. ‘The pair of you, shut up about Russia. What do either of you know?’ She stood up, poured herself another full glass of port. ‘It’s Christmas. Let’s be happy.’

She glared at them and sipped her drink.

They left early, but didn’t speak on the way home. Both had thoughts it was best not to share.

It was on New Year’s Day that everything changed.

The moment Lydia stepped into the clearing at Lizard Creek, she knew. The money was gone. The sky was a clear-swept blue and the air so cold it seemed to take bites out of her lungs, but wrapped up warm and snug in her new coat and gloves she didn’t care. The trees bordering the narrow strip of sand were bare and spiky, their branches white as skeletons, and the water a dazzling surge of energy beneath. Lydia had come intending to add yet another mark to the flat rock, a thin scratched line, to show that she had been here again, however pointless it may seem.

But the cairn was gone.

The mound of pebbles she’d built at the base of the rock. Destroyed. Scattered. Gone. The spot of earth where it had stood looked grey and rumpled. She felt a thud in her chest and tasted a burst of adrenaline on her tongue. She dropped to her knees, tore off her gloves, and scrabbled with her hands in the sandy soil. Though the earth elsewhere was frozen hard, here it was soft and crumbly. Recently disturbed. The glass jar was still there. Ice cold in her fingers. But no money inside. The thirty dollars gone. Relief crashed through her. He was alive. Chang was alive.

Alive.

Here.

He had come.

In a clumsy rush she unscrewed the metal lid of the jar, pushed her hand inside, and withdrew its new contents. A single white feather, soft and perfect as a snowflake. She laid it on the palm of her hand and stared at it. What did it mean?

White. Chinese white. For mourning. Did that mean he was dead? Dying? Her mouth turned dry as dirt.

Or…

White. A dove’s feather. For peace. For hope. A sign of the future.

Which?

Which one?

She remained for a long time kneeling beside the small hole in the earth. The feather lay wrapped between her carefully cupped hands like a baby bird, while the wind knifed in off the river and straight into her face. But she barely noticed and eventually placed the feather in her handkerchief, folded it into a neat package, and tucked it into her blouse. Then she drew the penknife from her pocket, cut a lock of her hair from her head and dropped it into the jar. She screwed the lid up tight and reburied it. Built another cairn.

To her eyes it looked like a grave marker.

A noise in the undergrowth behind her made her swing around as two magpies clattered into the air with a raucous cry of alarm and a flash of blue-black wing. Hairs rose on her neck. A smile and a cry of delight leaped to her lips and she took a step forward to greet him.

It wasn’t Chang.

Disappointment tore through her.

A long-fingered hand with yellow nails thrust aside a low holly branch to enter the clearing, and for no more than a split second Lydia glimpsed a tall thin figure clothed in rags.

It wasn’t Chang.

Then the figure was gone. Lydia moved fast. She raced after him, charging through the bushes, indifferent to thorns and scratches. The track was little more than an animal run, narrow and winding beneath the birch trees, but patches of dense shrub offered places to hide.

She couldn’t see him. She stopped running. Stood still, listening, but could hear nothing but her own heart pounding in her ears. Her breath rasped in the cold air. She waited. A kestrel high overhead hovered and waited with her. Her eyes scoured the stretch of woodland for movement, and then she saw a single branch flutter and grow still. It was over to her left in a thick clump of elder and ivy where a smattering of frozen berries clung to the stalks and a finch hopped from branch to branch.

Did the bird cause the flutter?

She edged forward. Her fingers closed over the penknife in her pocket, eased it out, and flicked open the blade. She moved nearer, watching every tangle of brushwood and hollow of shade, and just when she was thinking she had lost him, a man leaped out from almost under her feet and started to run. But his movement was erratic. He stumbled and swerved. Easily she out-paced him, raced up behind him with her heart thumping, and touched his shoulder, but just that slight extra weight tipped him forward and he sprawled facedown on the hard earth. Instantly she crouched beside him, knife in hand. Whether she could use it was something she didn’t care to think about right now.

But the slumped figure offered no resistance. He tipped himself over on his back and raised his hands above his head in surrender, so Lydia was able to take a good look at him. He was painfully thin. Cheekbones like razor blades. With skin that was yellow and eyes that seemed to roll and float loose in his head. She had no idea of his age. Twenty? Thirty? Yet the cracked and peeling skin on his hands looked much older and there were raw lesions on his face.

She seized hold of the cloth of his filthy tunic, ragged and fraying and stinking of stale urine, and wound it tight around her fist in case this fleshless stork should suddenly take it into its head to fly.

‘Tell me,’ she said speaking slowly and clearly, in the hope he could understand English. ‘Where is Chang An Lo?’

He nodded, eyes fixed on her face. ‘Chang An Lo.’ He raised a bony finger and pointed it at her. ‘Leeja?’

‘Yes.’ Her heart lifted. Only Chang could have told him her name. ‘I’m Lydia.’ With a heave she yanked him to his feet, but despite his height his skin-and-bone frame was so light they both almost toppled over. ‘Chang An Lo?’ she asked once more and cursed her lack of Mandarin.

‘Tan Wah,’ he pointed to himself with his yellow fingernail.

‘You are Tan Wah? Please, Tan Wah, take me to Chang An Lo.’ She gestured toward the town.

He bobbed his scruffy black head in understanding and set off at an uneven pace through the undergrowth. Lydia kept one hand on his tunic. Her skin prickled with impatience.

They were heading down to the harbour. So it seemed she had been searching in the right place. In the world of no-names. No laws. Where weapons ruled and money talked. Yes, Mr Liu had been right. Chang was here. Close. She could feel him waiting for her. Breathing in her mind. She tugged at Tan Wah’s tunic to hurry him because without Liev at her side she was uneasy down in this world. The risk was high.

She had grown accustomed to the smell of the streets now. The quayside was teeming with people, pushing and jostling each other, dodging around rickshaw wheels, shouting and spitting, heaped wheelbarrows and shoulderpoles barging a path, all a swaying seething mass. Lydia wasn’t looking at their faces this time. That’s why she didn’t see it coming. An old man, bent double under a mound of firewood on his back and with lank sparse hair falling around his face, merged into the grey swirl of humanity around her. She didn’t even glance at him. Not until he stopped right in their path. Then she noticed the black eyes looking up at her bright with greed. His head was twisted sideways to peer around the massive bundle on his back.

He made no sound. Just swept out a thin-bladed knife from under his padded tunic and without a word sank it up to the hilt in Tan Wah’s stomach.

Lydia screamed.

Tan Wah coughed and sank to his knees, his hands scrabbling at the sudden scarlet stain. Lydia seized his arm to support him, but as his face fell forward the old man sliced the blade expertly across his throat. Blood sprayed in a wide arc. Lydia felt it hit her face, obscenely warm in the cold air.

‘Tan Wah,’ she cried out and knelt on the filthy ground beside his limp body. His bloodshot eyes were still wide open and staring, but already the film of death had settled on them.

‘Tan Wah,’ she gasped.

A hand was tugging at her shoulder. She leaped to her feet, pulling free of the grip, and shouted out to the faces in motion around her.

‘Help me. This man is dead, he needs… Please, fetch police… I…’

A woman under a thick headscarf and a coolie hat was the only one to stop. She had a child strapped to her back. She ducked down, tapped Tan Wah’s cheek as if that could check whether his spirit had fled, and then started to rifle through the dead man’s rags, seeking his pockets. Lydia screamed at her, thrust her aside as rage ripped through her throat, robbing her of words, so that only a primitive animal growl escaped.

The woman melted back into the indifferent crowd. Hands were clutching at Lydia, but her mind was spinning and at first she thought the hands were there to help. To steady her. Then it dawned. The old man with the firewood was undoing her buttons. He was stealing her coat. Her coat. That’s what he wanted. Her coat. He had killed Tan Wah for a coat.

She spat at him, and from her pocket she yanked out the open penknife. With a separate part of her mind she registered that his blackened hands stank of tar as they tore at her buttons and that he hadn’t stabbed her because he didn’t want to ruin the coat. She drove the penknife with all her strength into the top of his arm and felt it scrape bone. His mouth opened in a high wailing toothless screech, but his hands released the coat.

Lydia threw her weight against the bundle of wood on his back, sending him sprawling onto the cobbles like an upended turtle. Then she turned and ran.

A white face. It leaped out at her. A Western long nose. Short blond hair greased flat on his head. A uniform. Among all the black oriental eyes, this pair of round blue ones made Lydia throw herself across the street and hold on to the arm of the man coming down the steps of a rowdy gaming house. She could smell whisky on him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, breath like fire in her chest. ‘I’m sorry but I… ’

‘Hey there, little lady, what’s got you all rattled? Ease up now.’

He was American. A sailor. U.S. Navy. She recognised the uniform. His hands soothed her as he would a fretful mare, stroking her back and patting her shoulder.

‘What’s up?’

‘A man. He killed my… my… my companion. For nothing. Stabbed him. He wanted my… ’

‘Calm down, you’re safe with me, honey.’

‘… wanted my coat.’

‘Fucking bandits. Come on, we’ll find a cop and get this mess sorted out. Don’t you fret yourself.’ He started walking her up the street. ‘Who was this companion of yours? I sure hope it was a guy because I’d hate to think of a pretty lady…’

‘It was a man. A Chinese.’

‘What! A goddamn Chink. Well, we’d better take a rethink here.’

He stopped walking and, with his arm firmly round her waist, elbowed his way past a goat that was dangling by its feet from a pole and bleating pathetically. He pulled her into an arched doorway where they could talk more easily.

‘You’ve had a fright, miss. But look, if it’s just a stinking Chink we’re talking about, you’d do better to let the local Chink cops sort this one out.’ He smiled, his blue eyes reassuring, his teeth white and well-cared for, his soft Southern accent as smooth as syrup.

Abruptly she tried to break away from his grip on her waist.

‘Let go of me, please,’ she said curtly. ‘If you won’t help me, then I’ll find a policeman myself.’

His mouth crushed down on hers.

Shock and revulsion rocked her. She fought wildly to free herself, dragged her nails down his cheek, but with a curse he pinned her arms behind her back, pressed her tight against the wall where the bricks crushed her wrists, and started to pull and yank at her skirt. She kicked and struggled. Writhed away from his hands. But it was like fighting against one of America’s battleships. His fingers were thrusting under the elastic of her underwear, his tongue invading her mouth like a slug.

She bit hard. Tasted blood.

‘Bitch,’ he growled and hit her.

‘Bastard,’ she hissed through the hand clamped over her mouth.

He laughed and snapped the elastic.

‘Stop right there.’ A male voice spoke coldly in the American’s ear.

All Lydia could see was the tip of a gun barrel pressed against his temple. The click of the hammer being cocked sounded like a cannon in the sudden silence in the doorway. She seized her chance. Lashed out, kicked hard, caught the American’s shin a vicious crack. He grunted and backed off.

‘Kneel down,’ the voice ordered.

The sailor knew better than to argue with a gun. He knelt. Lydia slipped out onto the busy road, ready to take to her heels again, indifferent to her rescuer. Chivalry seemed to come with a high price these days.

‘Lydia Ivanova.’

She halted. Stared at the man in the heavy green jacket, his face creased with concern. It was familiar. Her mind groped through the rush of blood to her head and the animal urge to flee.

‘Alexei Serov,’ she said at last in astonishment.

‘At least you recognise me this time.’

Relief came in a warm thick wave. ‘May I?’ She held out her hand for the revolver.

‘You’re not going to shoot anyone.’

‘No, I promise.’

He released the hammer safely and allowed her to take the gun from his grip. She crunched the heavy metal butt of it down on the American’s skull, then returned it to Alexei Serov.

‘Thank you.’ She gave him a wide smile.

He looked at her oddly. His eyes scanned her face, her hair, her clothes. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you home.’ He offered her his arm with extreme politeness. ‘Hold on to me.’

But she backed away. ‘No. No, thank you. I’ll just walk beside you.’ Even she could hear that her voice was not normal.

‘You’re very shaken, Miss Ivanova. I don’t think you’ll manage it on your own.’

‘I will.’

He stared at her again, nodded.

‘But there’s been a murder,’ she told him rapidly and pointed back down the street, though she knew it was hopeless.

‘There are murders every day in Junchow,’ Alexei Serov said with a brusque shrug. ‘Don’t concern yourself.’

He set off with a long stride and signalled three men waiting quietly behind him to follow. Only then did Lydia notice them. They were Kuomintang soldiers.

He saw her right to her door.

‘Is your mother home?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she lied.

She needed to be alone, needed silence. Chang An Lo had been so close, barely a whisper away, but now…

Yet Alexei Serov ignored her protests and escorted her all the way up to the attic, ducking his head to avoid the slope of the roof over the last few stairs. Normally she would have died before taking anyone into their room. Even Polly. But today she didn’t care. He sat her down on the sofa and made her cups of tea, one after another, dark and sweet. He talked to her occasionally but not much, and when he sat down in the old chair opposite, she noticed the chipped cup in his hand. Slowly, like climbing up from some deep slimy tunnel underground, her mind was starting to focus again. His gaze was roaming around the room and when he saw her watching him, he smiled.

‘The colours are wonderful,’ he said and gestured to the magenta cushions and the haphazard swathes of material. ‘It’s nice.’

Nice? How could anybody in their right mind call this miserable hole nice?

She sipped her tea. Studied this man who had invaded her home. He was leaning back in the chair, fully at ease, not like Alfred who always felt edgy up here. She had the strange feeling that Alexei Serov would be at ease wherever he was. Or was it all an act? She couldn’t tell. His short brown hair was clean and springy, not brilliantined like most, and his eyes were the shade of green that made her think of the moss on the flat rock at Lizard Creek. He was long and languid all over, his face, his mouth, his body, the way he crossed his legs. Except for his hands. They were broad and muscular and looked as if he had borrowed them from someone else.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine.’

He gave a low laugh as if he doubted her words but said, ‘Good. Then I shall leave you.’

She tried to stand but found she was wrapped in her eiderdown. When had he put that there?

He leaned forward, observing her closely. ‘It is dangerous for a woman to go down to the docks. On her own, it is suicidal.’

‘I wasn’t on my own. I was with a… companion. A Chinese companion, but he was…’ The word wouldn’t come.

‘Murdered?’

She nodded jerkily. ‘Stabbed.’ Her hands started to tremble and she hid them under the quilt. ‘I have to report it to the police.’

‘Do you know his name? His address?’

‘Tan Wah. That’s all I know of him.’

‘I would leave it there, Lydia Ivanova.’ He spoke firmly. ‘The Chinese police will not want to know about it, I assure you. Unless he was rich, of course. That would change their outlook.’

Tan Wah’s skeletal face, yellow as the loess dust that blew in on the wind, floated before her. ‘No, he wasn’t rich. But he deserves justice.’

‘Do you know the man who stabbed him? Or where to find this murderer?’

‘No.’

‘Then forget it. He’s just one of many dying on the streets of Junchow.’

‘That is harsh.’

‘These are harsh times.’

She knew he was right, but everything in her cried out against it. ‘It was for my coat. He wanted my coat. Tan Wah is dead for just a stupid hateful bloody coat…’

She threw off the eiderdown and leaped to her feet, tearing at the buttons of her Christmas coat, shaking the foul thing off her shoulders and hurling it to the floor. Alexei Serov rose, picked up the blue coat and very deliberately draped it over the chair he had been sitting in. Then he walked over to the small sink beside the stove and returned with an enamel bowl of water and a washcloth.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Wash your face.’

‘What?’

‘Your face.’ He put the wet cloth in her hand. ‘I must go now, but only if you’re sure you’re…’

Lydia gasped. She had moved over to the mirror on the wall by the door and looked at herself. It was a shock. No wonder he had stared at her oddly. Her skin was paper white except for a fine smattering of blood spray all over her face and neck like dark brown freckles. One cheek was swollen where the American had slapped her, and there was a long scratch just in front of her left ear, most likely from the dash through the undergrowth in the woods. But worse was her hair. One whole side of it was stiff with dried blood. Tan Wah’s blood.

She didn’t look at her eyes. She was frightened what she might see there.

Quickly she wiped the cloth over her face, then hurried over to the sink and stuck her head under the tap. The water was ice cold but immediately she felt better. Cleaner. Inside. When she stood up she expected Alexei Serov to be gone, but he was standing behind her holding a towel. She rubbed her hair and her skin with it, fiercely, as if she could rub the images from her mind, but when she dragged a brush through her hair so roughly it snapped the handle, she made herself stop. Took a breath. Forced a laugh. It wasn’t much of a laugh.

‘Thank you, Alexei Serov. You have been kind.’

For the first time he seemed awkward and ill-suited to the room as he clicked his heels and dipped his head in a formal bow. ‘I am pleased to assist.’ He marched over to the door and opened it. ‘I wish you a rapid recovery from your ordeal today.’

‘Tell me one thing.’

He waited. His green eyes grew wary.

‘Why do you have Kuomintang soldiers at your beck and call?’

‘I work with them.’

‘Oh.’

‘I am a military adviser. Trained in Japan.’

‘I see.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then good-bye, Lydia Ivanova.’

‘Spasibo do svidania, Alexei Serov. Thank you and good-bye.’

He nodded and left.

Before his footsteps had faded on the stairs there was a sharp exclamation on the lower landing. It was her mother’s voice. After a brief torrent of Russian that Lydia couldn’t catch, Valentina burst into the attic room.

‘Lydia, I don’t ever want to see that Russian here again, do you hear me? Never. I forbid it. Are you listening? Damn, it’s cold in this wretched room. I absolutely will not have that hateful family anywhere near… Lydia, I am talking to you.’

But Lydia had taken her eiderdown and curled up inside it on her bed. She closed her eyes and shut out the world.

Chang An Lo. I am sorry.

It was the middle of the night. Lydia was staring up into the darkness. A pain in her temples was thudding in rhythm with her heartbeat. She had worked it out. For Chang to send Tan Wah to Lizard Creek, he must be ill. Or wounded. It was the only explanation. Otherwise he would have come himself. She was sure of it. Sure as she was of her own life. And now because of her, Tan Wah was dead, which meant she had put Chang in greater danger. Without Tan Wah, Chang An Lo might die. Her throat ached with unshed tears.

‘Lydia?’

‘Yes, Mama?’

‘Tell me, dochenka, do you think I am a bad mother?’

The attic room was as dark as death except for a thin slice of moonlight that drew a silver line down the centre of the curtain that formed Lydia’s bedroom wall. Her mother had drunk steadily all evening and had been muttering to herself in her own bed for some time, never a good sign.

‘What is bad, Mama?’

‘Don’t be foolish. You know perfectly well what bad means.’

Lydia made the effort to talk. This would be their last night together in this room. ‘You have never cooked me plum pie. Nor sewn up holes in my clothes. Or bothered whether I brushed my teeth. Does that make you bad?’

‘No.’

‘Of course not. So there’s your answer.’

A wind rattled the window. To Lydia it sounded like Chang’s fingers on the pane. The noise of a distant car engine grew louder, then faded.

‘Tell me what I have done right, dochenka.’

Lydia chose her words with care. ‘You kept me. Though you could have abandoned me at any time in St Mary’s Children’s Mission. You’d have been free. To do whatever you wanted.’

Silence.

‘And you’ve given me music, all my life there’s been music. Oh Mama, you’ve given me kisses. And colourful scarves. And shown me how to use the tongue in my head, even if I’ve driven you crazy with it. Yes, you did,’ she insisted. ‘You taught me to think for myself and, best of all, you let me make my own mistakes.’

A cloud passed over the moon and the sliver of light died in the room.

Valentina still said nothing.

‘Mama, now it’s your turn. Tell me what I have done right.’ There was the sound of a deep intake of breath from the other end of the room and a low moan. It took a whole minute before Valentina spoke.

‘Just your being alive is right. It is everything.’

Her mother’s words seemed to burn up the darkness and set fire to something inside Lydia’s head. She shut her eyes.

‘Now go to sleep, dochenka. We have a big day tomorrow.’

But an hour later Valentina’s voice came again whispering through the darkness. ‘Be happy for me, darling.’

‘Happiness is hard.’

‘I know.’

Lydia pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to scrub away the pictures of Chang, alone and sick, behind her eyelids. Happiness she could get by without. But she was determined to hold on to hope.