The Russian Concubine

46

Well, this was an interesting turnaround.

Theo was leaning against the doorframe of his guest bedroom and despite the sick headache that was a permanent fixture these days, he was smiling.

Po Chu was going to love him.

On the bed lay the young Chinese. Hell’s fire. What a state the fellow was in. Looked terrible. Don’t die. Don’t you dare die. I need you alive.

The Russian girl was sitting beside the bed on a chair that was well over four hundred years old, not that she had eyes to appreciate its beauty right now. She was holding one of his mangled hands in hers and talking to him in a low urgent voice, the words too soft for Theo to hear. But that didn’t matter.

Lydia Ivanova, you have brought me a prize indeed.

Theo drove her home. He’d almost had to cart her bodily out of the sickroom, she was so loath to leave, but Theo was having none of it. There was Alfred to face, so she had to go home and sort that out first. Anyway there was something so intense about the way she tended the Chinese young man that Theo was nervous that she was about to leap into bed with him, fever or no fever. What would Alfred say to that?

He left Li Mei bathing the patient’s brow with herbs and potions from the hoard in the satchel and promised Lydia she could return when her mother and Alfred said she was allowed to. Not before.

She had almost spat at him with fury but fortunately had more sense and finally succumbed with ill grace. Her eyes watched Li Mei with naked suspicion, but in the end she had accepted that her Chang An Lo was in safe hands. No police.

‘I give you my word on it,’ Theo said. ‘As an English gentleman. Li Mei will take good care of him while you’re gone.’

For a moment then, he thought she would bite.

To say Valentina Ivanova Parker was angry was an understatement. Theo was shocked. Never had he heard a woman use such language, and quite obviously neither had Alfred. She poured torrents of Russian and English abuse on her daughter’s head. But the girl stood there and took it. She didn’t cry and she didn’t run. Her hands rubbed the sides of her damp skirt and sometimes her gaze lowered to her wet shoes but most of the time she looked her mother in the eye and said nothing.

By contrast Alfred’s displeasure was muted. But he was British. Not like these crazy Russians. Theo attempted to leave but Alfred stopped him.

‘Hang on a sec, old chap, if you don’t mind. I want to hear the details of what happened, but first I must deal with Lydia.’

So Theo waited and while he waited he went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured out three large whiskies. He sipped his own.

‘Enough, Valentina. That’s enough.’ Alfred spoke sharply and it got through to her.

She stopped shouting. Glared at both Alfred and Lydia, snapped something more in Russian, and then headed straight for the drink Theo was holding out for her. She knocked it back in one gulp and shuddered.

‘I hate whisky,’ she said and filled the glass with vodka.

Alfred spoke quietly but sternly to his stepdaughter. ‘Lydia, you have only been a member of my family for a week but already you’ve brought disgrace on my name.’

He paused, in case she had any comment to make, but the girl just scowled at the floor, the way Theo had seen her do a hundred times in class when reprimanded.

‘Emotions are running high right now,’ Alfred continued with remarkable calm, ‘and we all risk saying things we may later regret, so I want you to go up to your room and stay there for twenty-four hours. To give you time to reflect on what you’ve done. Your meals will be brought to you. Now go.’

‘But I can’t, I have to…’

‘No buts.’

‘Please, he’s ill and…’

‘Lydia, do not make this harder than it already is.’

Theo saw the girl glance at her mother, but Valentina had turned her back on her daughter.

‘Go,’ Alfred repeated.

She went. Theo was surprised. He had never found her so biddable himself at school. What special powers did old Alfred possess? Theo drank more of his whisky, though it wasn’t yet noon. It was bloody indecent getting caught up in someone else’s family palaver, even a good egg like Alfred. Damned bad business. He lit one of his Turkish cigarettes and felt the whisky start to dull the edge of the pains in his body. Christ, how long before they passed this time? Alfred was speaking, but Theo had trouble listening. He was thinking about Chang An Lo. And Po Chu.

‘Leave it, Tiyo. Let a workman do it.’

‘No, it helps me.’

Theo was sanding down the top of a desk. Two nights ago he had roamed the classrooms in an agony of pain and despair, his whole body shaking with need for the poppy’s peace, unable to sleep, unable to think, unable to listen to Li Mei’s words of comfort. The only thing that filled his mind was his loathing of Christopher Mason. It swelled in his brain until he thought his head would explode with the pressure of it, so he’d taken a sharp knife from the kitchen and carved on Polly Mason’s desk the word HATE in letters six inches high.

In the morning he’d regretted it. The school Christmas break would end this weekend with the new term about to start, so he set himself this task of repairing the damage to the desk. The repetitive movement of the sandpaper, over and over along the grain of the wood, soothed him in some strange way. To erase hate. To create smoothness. It satisfied something inside him.

‘Have you told Chang An Lo?’ he asked Li Mei while his hands continued to move in rhythmic sweeps over the desktop.

‘No.’

‘Will you?’

‘No.’

The rasping sound of the sandpaper was the only noise in the room. Li Mei perched on one of the other desks, tucked her feet under her, and watched him at work. She was wearing the lilac cheongsam he liked with an amethyst clasp in her black hair, and Theo knew she must be tired from nursing her Chinese patient all night, but still her oval face looked fresh and calm. Even the bruises were fading.

‘If I tell him,’ she said at last, ‘that I am the sister of Po Chu, he will wish to leave.’

‘Yes, I can see why he would want to. Would that matter?’

‘It would. My brother has wounded him and it is my duty to make amends. If I can.’

Theo glanced up at her, his hands still at work. ‘You’ve been reading the Analects again?’

She smiled. ‘In the Lun Yu Confucius says much that is true.’

‘Po Chu will be angry if he finds out Chang is here.’

‘He won’t find out.’ She paused. ‘Will he, Tiyo?’

Theo said nothing, concentrating on ridding himself and the desk of HATE.

‘Will he?’ Li Mei asked again.

Theo stopped, put down the sandpaper, and brushed the wood dust from his hands. ‘My love, after the brutal way Po Chu beat you, it pleases me to do anything that will hurt your brother. If Po Chu were to find out that Chang is here, he would come and have the satisfaction of killing him, but if he never learns what happened to the one who escaped from his clutches, it will always gall him. So no, he won’t find out from me.’

‘Thank you, Tiyo.’

He returned to the sanding once more.

‘Tiyo?’

‘Yes?’

‘We both know you could use him to bargain. With my father. To make him stop Mason accusing you to Sir Edward.’

‘Yes. We both know that.’

‘Will you? Use him?’

‘I’ve thought about it.’ For a moment he didn’t know whether the rasping noise was inside or outside his head. ‘Which matters more to us, Li Mei? That I go to prison or that this young man dies? What does your Confucius say about that moral dilemma?’

Tears slid down Li Mei’s pale cheeks.

He placed a hand on Chang’s forehead. It was hot. Instantly the black eyes opened and stared up at Theo with a wary expression.

‘I am better,’ he mumbled thickly.

‘I think not,’ Theo said.

‘Lydia?’

‘She’s fine. But she can’t come to see you. Her parents won’t let her.’

The young man’s face tightened. He looked in pain. But Theo had a feeling it wasn’t physical. He took pity on him. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be here tomorrow because our school term starts. So I’ll make sure you get to speak to her in her morning break.’

The black eyes relaxed a little. ‘Xie xie. Thank you.’

Theo nodded and started to move away.

‘Why do you do this?’ Chang asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Help me.’

‘Ah, why do you think?’

Chang’s gaze was harsh. Theo felt it scour through him. ‘Because you need help. For yourself,’ the young man said in a low voice. ‘You help me and maybe someone will help you. It is about balance.’

Theo found the comment unnervingly accurate. It was the same reason he’d taken Yeewai, the cat, from the woman on the junk. You reap what you sow. The gods of all religions seemed to agree on that.

He changed the subject. ‘Would you like something stronger for the pain?’

Chang shook his head on the pillow.

‘Opium perhaps?’ Theo offered.

‘No.’

‘Good man.’