The Concubine's Secret (34 page)

There were no paths, so she walked in a straight line across the snow and brittle grass, crunching it beneath her feet as she headed towards the birch trees. Their naked branches reached out like pale spiders’ legs against the startling blue of the sky, and she felt something trembling inside her. What if he’d changed? What if nothing was the same? What if he’d travelled too far for her to reach him this time? The back of her throat tasted coppery, yet she couldn’t stop her lips smiling broadly or her cheeks flushing, despite the cold.

She stepped in among the slender tree trunks and, though the temperature abruptly dropped a few degrees in the shadows, she felt the heat of her body rise. She unbuttoned her coat. Her eyes scanned the undergrowth, but the only living creature she saw was a grey-faced jackdaw that bobbed its head up and down at her. She pushed further into the strip of woodland, picking her way deep into the gloomiest spots where concealment would be easiest. Every few steps she stood still, listening intently. But all she could hear was the distant murmur of water and the fretting of the wind in the branches.

Yet suddenly he was there. Tall and slender, graceful as the mottled trunks of the birches. That same intent stillness in the way he looked at her. She’d caught no sound of footfalls, no rustle of bushes, but now she could hear his breath, see its white trail from his lips and it came as fast as her own.

‘ Lydia,’ he said in a whisper.

She didn’t speak. She was gazing at his face, at his full mouth, his beautiful almond eyes. At the long strong throat and the line of his hair brushed back from his forehead, silky and black. It stole from her tongue all the words she had prepared. She reached out. He could be a phantom and this could be another of the dreams that tormented and tantalised her each night. She could be asleep in her bed, with Liev Popkov yawning like a hippopotamus on the other side of the curtain.

He touched her cheek. His fingers rested there and she leaned against them, the weight of her head in his palm. A murmur escaped her lips, a wordless sigh that shuddered up from deep within her, and without warning his arms curled around her. He held her so tight against his chest that neither could breathe. His hand pulled off her hat, dropped it to the ground and cradled the back of her head, fingers moving in the dense waves of her hair. A low moan rose from his lungs and brushed the skin of her temple.

They stood like that. No words. No kisses. No greeting. Unaware of where they were. And when they’d been still so long that a vole scuttled past their feet, pattering over the black loam, Chang An Lo lifted his head and smiled at her.

‘My love,’ he said softly, ‘you have brought my soul back to me.’

She kissed him. Breathed in his breath, tasted his tongue. Grew aware of his hunger for her. She felt her skin come alive again, though until this moment she hadn’t even realised it was dead.

They walked, arms close around each other’s waists, hips touching, feeling their bones and muscles relearning how to be one instead of two. Back across the patchy grass and over the trodden snow, towards the circus tent where people were milling around.

A moment earlier, when they had sat down on Chang’s coat in a buttery patch of sunlight slanting through the trees, a man in leather trousers with four children, all twig-thin, had come barging through the undergrowth gathering firewood. He was bundling it up with the help of the swarthy urchins into a stack on his back, held there by a leather strap. From their colourful garb and bright neckerchiefs Lydia guessed they were part of the circus. Chang had put a finger to Lydia ’s lips. It smelled clean and fresh, and she’d kissed the knot of scarred flesh where his little finger used to be. The man didn’t even see them but his presence was enough to dispel the sense of privacy, so they’d risen to their feet, picked up her hat and reluctantly emerged from the shelter of the trees.

‘You look well, Lydia. It pleases my heart to see it.’

‘You look alive.’ She glanced sideways at him. ‘It pleases me to see that.’

He smiled, that slow inward smile she had not forgotten.

‘How is the war in China?’ she asked.

‘There is much to tell and much to ask,’ he said without answering her directly, his arm holding her close against his side as they walked. He shortened his stride to hers; she lengthened hers to his.

‘Questions like how did you become part of the Chinese delegation? ’

‘And what happened on your journey across the Russian steppes?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘ Lydia, my love, I can see it in your eyes. That things happened. ’

As their footsteps faltered on a patch of snow, their gaze fixed on each other.

‘And Kuan?’ Lydia asked quietly. ‘Is she part of your delegation? Or part of your life?’

‘And the Soviet officer with the wolf eyes? Is he an element in your
nothing much?’

They smiled at each other and let it go. She thought she had remembered everything about him but she was wrong. She had forgotten the way she felt herself change when she was with him, slowing the blood in her veins and the thoughts in her head. She became more like the person she wanted to be.

‘No questions,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Later.’

He kissed her hair. ‘There will be a later.’

They strolled on towards the circus tent, their movements in rhythm with each other, but the fact that he’d felt the need to reassure her there would be a
later
instantly raised doubts in her mind. Her throat grew tight and she fought back sudden tears. What was going wrong? She was here with Chang An Lo, his arm around her waist, his ribs rising and falling in time with her own, the long muscles of his thigh stretching and shortening next to hers as they walked, and they were speaking in English. This was everything she had longed for day after day, month after month. So… what was wrong?

It was the words. They felt like burrs between them, as if their bodies remembered but their tongues had forgotten, no longer able to find the words to share. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her ear on the strong line of his collarbone. Ignore the words. Ignore the questions. Listen to his heartbeat instead.

One side of the tent slapped noisily in the wind as they approached it, harsh as a whipcrack, and a man in a short padded jacket and torn rubber boots came out with a wooden mallet and a handful of iron pegs. He knelt on the ground and started to hammer one of the rope loops into the ice-bound earth.

‘Are there any animals?’ Chang asked in Russian.

‘Round the back.’ The circus man didn’t look up.

‘
Spasibo.’

The question surprised Lydia. She didn’t know he had an interest in animals. Back home in China when she showed him her pet rabbit, he’d wanted to eat it. That memory made her smile. They stepped over the guy ropes and followed a well-trodden mud path that skirted the tent and led to a row of wagons at the back. The vehicles were painted in great splashes of colour with designs of circus acts – a lion tamer curling a whip, a ballerina upside down on horseback – and though most of the trucks were closed up, several had their sides pinned back to reveal cages within. A rope fence stretched several feet in front of the bars to deter the public from approaching too close.

Lydia could see why. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘lions.’

In one of the cages lazed two lionesses, their big square heads resting on their front paws, their tawny eyes half closed, their coats shaggy to keep out the cold. An interested group of people had gathered in front but a small boy was trying to drag his father over to the next cage. Lydia glanced at Chang. His attention was also on the next exhibit and his black eyes possessed something that hadn’t been there before, a kind of focusing himself in the moment. She looked across at the cage and behind the bars a massive male tiger was standing with muscles tensed, defiantly glaring with yellow eyes at the spectators. He was utterly magnificent. He snarled silently to reveal fangs that turned Lydia ’s stomach. She noticed Chang take a step closer.

‘You are drawn to danger,’ she said.

His body stilled. She saw it. As if he’d slowed his heartbeat at will. He spun round to look at her, turning his back on the wild creature, and reached out to lift a lock of her hair and let it trail through his fingers like flames.

‘I only put my hand in the fire when I have to, my love.’

‘Coming to Moscow,’ she gestured towards the scrubby patch of wasteland where they were standing, and the tired-looking tent, ‘and coming here today, it seems to me that’s putting your head as well as your hand in the flames.’

He shook his head, saying nothing at first, but his black eyes drifted back to the tiger and stayed there. Lydia was jealous of the animal.

‘I came,’ he said softly, ‘because I had to.’

‘Because Mao Tse Tung ordered you to?’

Ignore the words.

His gaze flicked abruptly back to her face. It brushed against her with a touch that was almost physical, over her hair, the planes of her face, the neat curve of her ear, the fullness of her mouth.

‘I came,’ he said again, ‘because I had to.’

She didn’t ask for more.

Instead she looped her fingers around his. ‘How did you know I was in Moscow?’

‘I didn’t. I knew you were in Russia. That was enough.’

‘ Russia is a big country, Chang An Lo,’ she laughed. ‘I could have been anywhere.’

‘But you weren’t. You were here in Moscow, just as I am here.’

‘Yes.’

She felt his hand tighten on hers. ‘The gods look after those they love.’

She smiled. ‘Well, they’ve certainly looked after me.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘So what did you promise them in exchange?’

‘Hah! My Lydia,’ he smiled, ‘you know me too well. You are right. I did in fact promise them the earth.’

They both laughed. The separate sounds of it rolled between them, hers light and teasing, his low but full of pleasure, merging into one single breath that hung in the air. They relaxed. She felt some of the tension, the uncertainty that lay like a shadow at their feet, fade to a shapeless blur and into its place slid a brighter shade of something else. It might have been the sunlight, bright and sparkling. But to Lydia it felt like something solid. It felt like happiness.

They walked out of the circus field and back through the street market, arm in arm like any normal couple, eating the apples she had bought.

‘Now please tell me, Lydia,’ Chang asked, ‘have you discovered news of your father?’

‘We said no questions.’

‘I know.’

He felt her shiver, just a flicker through the fingers that lay curled on his arm. Nothing more. But he waited patiently.

‘We travelled to the prison camp,’ she said in a low voice, ‘the one near Felanka where he’d been held, but-’

‘
We?’

‘Yes, Liev Popkov came with me, the Cossack.’ She glanced up at him with that little twist of amusement on her lips that always tugged at something deep in him. ‘You remember him, I’m sure.’

‘Of course. Is he here in Moscow?’

‘Yes. He and a woman friend of his are sharing a room with me.’ She laughed. ‘All very cosy.’

He studied her. Listening to the words behind her words. ‘Soviet Russia,’ he said, ‘has its own problems. Please give my greetings to Comrade Popkov. I hope his back is still as broad and as strong as the Peiho River.’

She laughed again. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Liev is as strong as ever.’

Chang had only met the big Cossack once, though
met
was hardly the right word. In China Popkov had hauled Chang’s sick body through the streets of Junchow for Lydia to nurse back to health. The memory was still a dark stain, filling him with a sense of shame. That he had needed another man’s legs to carry him to safety.

‘But my father was no longer in that camp,’ Lydia continued. ‘He’s been moved to Moscow. Alexei and I parted company in Felanka.’

‘Alexei Serov?’

‘My brother,’ she pointed out quickly and bit into her apple.

He knew he’d spoken too fast.

‘Alexei Serov, is he here?’

‘He came with me to Russia to help in the search.’ She stepped deliberately on a pristine patch of snow and left a clear footprint in it, as if she would stamp her imprint on the world. ‘Jens Friis is his father as well as mine, remember.’

She let her hair swing forward, concealing the side of her face, and he wanted to lift it aside, to see the sadness behind it. What was it she felt for her father? Instead he stopped walking. He stood still, one hand holding hers, and immediately she turned towards him, her lips parted in a small breath of surprise. He drew her to him. In a tired backstreet in this faceless city he centred them both on a sunlit patch of dirt and encircled her fragile waist easily with one arm. He drew her so close that she was pressed hard against him, their bodies moulding to each other, her breasts under her coat firm against his chest. She didn’t resist in any way, though people in the street stared for a moment; she just took to herself the shape of him as if it belonged to her.

He tapped a finger on the pale centre of her forehead. ‘My dearest love,’ he murmured. ‘In here,’ he tapped again, ‘you are alone. In here we are all alone. You cannot force into your head a father you do not know and a brother who, until recently, you weren’t aware existed. Or into your heart. A family is more than just blood, it is also made of those you trust. In China I have people who are my family, even though we share no bond of blood.’

He saw her throat constrict, the delicate bones rise and fall, and his heart grieved for her.

‘I am your family,’ he promised her softly.

A sound came from her lips, a low wordless utterance that spilled from somewhere deep within her. Her eyes darkened till they were the colour of winter rain and she leaned forward, nestling her head in the hollow of his neck. He stroked her hair, smelled its familiar fragrance, its strands alive under his fingers.