The Russian Concubine (20 page)

Polly giggled. ‘Don’t be such a dunce, Lyd, all men love to be admired. It’s what they’re about.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Haven’t you noticed? That’s what your mother is so good at and why men flock round her.’

‘I thought it was because she’s beautiful.’

‘Being beautiful isn’t enough. You have to be smart.’ She shook her tousled blond hair with an affectionate smile. ‘My mother is absolutely useless at it.’

‘But I like your mother just as she is.’

Polly grinned. ‘So do I.’

‘Are your parents in bed?’

‘No, they’re out at some party at General Stowbridge’s place. They won’t be back for hours yet.’ Polly jumped off the bed. ‘Nobody’s here except the servants, but they’re off in their own quarters, so shall we go down and make some cocoa?’

Lydia leaped at the offer. ‘Yes, please.’

They hurried out of the room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Lydia felt more comfortable here. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t actually like Polly’s bedroom; it made her tense. It was Polly’s behaviour in it that unsettled her. Lydia had quickly learned to touch nothing. Absolutely nothing. If she picked up a hairbrush from the dressing table or a book from the bookcase, Polly got all twitchy and rushed to put it back in exactly the right spot and at exactly the right angle. Worse were the dolls. She had a whole row of twenty-three beautiful dolls lined up on a shelf, with china faces and hand-embroidered dresses. If any of them moved as much as a finger or a lock of hair, Polly noticed and felt compelled to strip the whole shelf and set them up again. It took forever.

Lydia steered well clear of them. The odd thing was that these weird obsessions fell away as soon as Polly left her room, and her desk at school was far more scatterbrained than Lydia’s own. It was as if in the privacy of her own room she could indulge her anxieties and fears, but elsewhere she hid them away and smiled at the world. Lydia was always careful to make sure no one upset Polly, not even Mr Theo.

‘I’ll just go and check on Toby,’ Polly said. ‘Won’t be long.’ She disappeared into the scullery.

Lydia wandered into the hall, sliding her feet along the polished floor till they squeaked, and peeked into the drawing room just to catch a glimpse of the gramophone and its shiny brass horn in the hope that their aroma of luxury would drag her mind away from Chang. But they only made her feel worse. Next to the drawing room was the door to Polly’s father’s study, which was always kept firmly shut. For the hell of it, Lydia tried the handle. It turned.

The room was dark, but she didn’t dare turn the light on. A bright yellow rectangle tumbled into the study from the doorway and lay across the big oak desk that sat squarely in the middle of the floor with a row of dark wooden filing cabinets behind it. On the wall opposite was a painting of a tall grey horse with one black hoof and beside it a portrait in oils of a nervous-looking young boy. Presumably Christopher Mason in earlier days. But Lydia’s attention was not on the walls. It was on a large leather-bound book that lay on the desktop. With a rapid glance over her shoulder to see if Polly was anywhere near, she stepped into the gloomy room and leaned over the book. On its tan cover was the one word in gold-embossed letters.
DIARY.
She opened it. Quickly she flicked through until she came to the page that showed the date of the concert, July the fourteenth, Saturday.

His writing was large and hurried, a scribble of black ink that was difficult to read, but she made out enough.
Six a.m. - riding with Timberley. Eight-thirty - breakfast meeting with Sir Edward at the Residence.
Below it was something written in and scratched out again by heavy black lines followed by
Tiffin with MacKenzie
and then
Willoughby 7:30
. Finally, written in small letters at the bottom of the page, was
V.I. at Club.
It was underlined.

V.I.

Valentina Ivanova.

So the meeting had not been accidental.

‘Lydia?’ Polly’s voice from the kitchen.

‘Coming,’ Lydia called out. She skimmed through the previous pages.
V.I. V.I. V.I. V.I. V.I. V.I.
One in each month. From January to July. She flicked ahead. One scheduled for August the eighteenth.

‘Lyd?’ Polly’s voice was closer.

She slammed the diary shut and made it to the door just as Polly was pushing it farther open.

‘What are you doing in here?’ The blue eyes were horrified. ‘No one is allowed in here, not even Mother.’

Lydia shrugged but didn’t reply. Her mouth was too dry.

Both girls were standing in the kitchen blowing steam off their cocoa and Polly was laughing as Lydia told her about the way Alfred Parker’s spectacles slid down his pink nose when Valentina invited him to remove a wayward crumb from her neck. There was the sound of a key in the front door. Polly froze. But Lydia moved fast. She tossed the last of her drink down the sink, pushed the cup inside a cupboard, and slipped behind the open kitchen door, where she was hidden from sight. She had no time for more than a glance at her friend, who was looking panicked.
Please, please, Polly, use your head.

‘So I really don’t think the old boy should . . .’ Christopher Mason stopped in midflow. His footsteps rang out crisply on the wooden floor, nearer now. ‘Polly? Is that you in there?’

For a sickening moment Lydia feared Polly was going to stand there like a rabbit pinned in speeding headlamps, but just in time she got her feet moving and walked out into the hall to greet him.

‘Hello, Father. Did you have a nice time at the party?’

‘Never mind that. What in blazes are you doing up at this hour?’

‘Couldn’t sleep. It’s so hot and I was thirsty.’

To Lydia her friend’s voice sounded distinctly odd, but Mason didn’t seem to notice. She could hear the evening’s brandies blurring the edge of his words.

‘Oh, my poor girl,’ Anthea Mason murmured. ‘Let me fetch you some cool lemonade. That will help to . . .’

‘No, thanks, I’ve had a drink.’

‘Well, I’ll fetch some for myself anyway. I have a splitting headache.’ The click of high heels heading Lydia’s way.

‘Mummy.’

‘Yes?’

‘Let’s sit down in the drawing room. I want you to tell me all about the party and what Mrs Lieberstein wore this time. Did she...?’

‘It’s much too late for that kind of nonsense now.’ It was Mason again. ‘You should be in bed, my girl.’

‘Oh, please.’

‘No. I won’t say it twice. Upstairs with you.’

‘But . . .’

‘Do as your father says, Polly, there’s a good girl. We’ll chat about the party tomorrow, I promise.’

A pause. Then the sound of bare feet scampering across the hall.

Lydia held her breath.

Polly’s door closed upstairs and the sound of it was like a signal to the pair standing in the hall.

‘You’re too soft on that girl, Anthea.’

‘No, I . . .’

‘You are. You’d let her get away with bloody murder if I weren’t here. I won’t stand for it. You’re letting me down, don’t you realise that? It’s your job to see she learns how to behave properly.’

‘Like you did tonight, you mean?’

‘What exactly are you implying by that?’

A silence.

‘Come on, I demand to know what you’re implying?’

For a moment there was no answer, then a long sigh filled the silence. ‘You know precisely what I’m talking about, Christopher.’

‘Good God, woman, I’m not a damned mind reader.’

‘The American woman. Tonight at the party. Is that the way you’d like Polly to behave?’

‘For Christ’s sake, is that what this is all about and the reason you made me come home early? Don’t be so absurd, Anthea. She was just being friendly and so was I, that’s all. Her husband is a business contact of mine and if only you would be a bit more outgoing, a bit more fun at these . . .’

‘I saw you both being
friendly
on the terrace.’

It was said quietly. But the slap that followed it echoed around the hall, and Anthea’s sharp gasp of pain drew Lydia from her hiding place. She stepped forward into the kitchen doorway, but the couple in the hall were too intent on each other to notice her. Mason was hunched forward like a bull, his neck sunk into the shoulders of his rumpled dinner jacket, one arm outstretched and ready to swing again. His wife was leaning back, away from him, one hand to her cheek where a red mark was flaring outward to her ear. The earring was missing.

Her blue eyes were huge and round, just like Polly’s, but full of such despair that Lydia could hold back no longer. She darted forward but too late. Another slap sent Anthea Mason spinning around. She staggered, caught herself on the umbrella stand, and ran into the drawing room, slamming the door after her. Mason stormed into the dining room, where Lydia knew the brandy was kept, and kicked the door shut behind him. Lydia stood there in the middle of the hall, shaking with fury. From inside the drawing room she could hear the muffled sound of crying and she longed to rush in there, but she had enough sense to know she would not be welcome. So she walked back up the stairs, indifferent to how much noise she made, and returned to Polly’s room.

One glance at her friend’s face and Lydia knew Polly had heard enough of what had gone on downstairs. More than enough. Her mouth was pulled so tight it was almost bloodless, and she wouldn’t look at Lydia. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, a doll clutched fiercely against her chest, her breath coming in quick little puffs. Lydia went over, sat down beside her and took one of Polly’s hands in her own. She held it tight. Polly leaned against her and said nothing.

17

Chang was still there when the fox girl came back into the burned-out house. He’d waited for her alone in the darkness, knowing she’d return before she knew it herself. The rain had stopped and a thin sliver of moon shimmered on the wet bricks around him and caught the edge of one of the coins she had discarded so readily. He knew how much money meant to her, but he also knew it would not be the money that drew her back. As soon as she stepped over the threshold, he could see she no longer carried her anger with her or wanted to drive a sword through his heart. He thanked the gods for that. But her limbs seemed to weigh heavy on her and the line of her shoulders was curved down like a camel’s back. It pained him to see it.

She stood by the empty doorway, letting her eyes adjust. ‘Chang An Lo,’ she called out. ‘I can’t see you but I know you are here.’

How did she know? Could she sense his presence as keenly as he sensed hers? He moved away from the wall and into the moonlight.

‘I am honoured by your return, Lydia Ivanova.’ He gave a deep bow to show her that he wanted no more harsh words between them.

‘Why a Communist?’ she asked and slumped down onto a block of concrete that had once been part of a chimney. ‘What makes you crazy enough to want to be a Communist?’

‘Because I believe in equality.’

‘That makes it sound so simple.’

‘It
is
simple. It is only men with their greed who make it complicated. ’

She gave a strange snort of scorn that took him by surprise. No Chinese woman would ever make such a noise in front of a man.

‘Nothing is ever that simple,’ she said.

‘It can be.’

The mandarins in her Western world had crowded her mind with untruths and blinded her eyes with the mist of deceit, so that she was seeing what they told her to see instead of what was in front of her. Her tongue was quick, but it tasted only the salt of lies. She knew nothing of China, nothing that was true. He moved around to squat down beside the wall again, the bricks solid at his back, and leaned forward to see her face more clearly. He had never known her so still or heard her voice so empty.

‘Do you know,’ he asked in a gentle tone not meant to anger her, ‘that women and children are still sold as slaves? That absent landlords rob the peasants of the food on their tables and the crops in their fields? That villages are stripped of men, seized by the army, leaving the weak and the old to starve in the streets? Do you know these things?’

She looked at him, but her face gave nothing away tonight.

‘China is not going to change,’ she said. ‘It’s too big and too old. I’ve learned at school how emperors have ruled as gods for thousands of years. You can’t . . .’

‘We can.’ He felt the heat rising in his chest when he thought of what must yet be done. He wanted her to know it. ‘We can make people free, free to think, free to work for an equal wage. Free to own land. The workers of China are treated worse than pigs. They are stamped into the dung like beetles. But the rich eat from gold plates and study in the scrolls of Confucius how to be a Virtuous Man.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Let the Virtuous Man try a day on his hands and knees in the fields. See which matters more to him then, a perfect word in one of Po Chu-i’s poems or a bowl of rice in his belly.’ He picked up a piece of broken brick at his side and crushed it against the wall. ‘Let him eat his poem.’

‘But Chang An Lo, you have eaten poems.’ She spoke quietly, but he could hear the impatience under her words. ‘You are an educated person and know it is the only way forward. You said yourself you came from a wealthy family with tutors and . . .’

‘That was before my eyes were opened. I saw my family riding on the broken backs of slaves and I was ashamed. Education must be for all. For women as well as men. Not just the rich. It opens the mind to the future, as well as the past.’

He thought of Kuan with her degree in law, so fierce in her determination to open the minds of the workers that she was prepared to work sixteen hours a day on a filthy factory floor where ten employees died each week from machine accidents and exhaustion. This fox girl knew nothing of any of this. She was one of the privileged greedy
fanqui
who had taken great bites out of his country with their warships and their well-oiled rifles. What was he doing with her? To ask her to change the patterns of her mind would be like asking a tiger to give up its stripes.

He stood up. He would leave her to her scattered coins and her thieving ways. One day she would be caught, one day she would grow careless, however closely he guarded her steps.

‘You’re going?’

‘Yes.’ He bowed to her, low and respectful, and felt something split in his chest.

‘Don’t go.’

He shut his ears and turned his back on her.

‘Then say good-bye to me.’ Her voice seemed to grow emptier, as if she knew he would not return this time, and a small noise escaped from her throat. She held out her hand as the foreigners did.

He walked over to where she sat on the concrete, bent down to take her small hand in his, and as his face came closer to hers, he smelled the rain on her hair. He breathed it in and inhaled it deep into his lungs until the scent of her seemed to fill his mind, the way the river mists fill the night sky. Her hand lay in his and he could not make his fingers release it. The moon stepped back behind a cloud, so that her face was hidden from him but her skin felt warm against his own.

‘And the foreigners?’ Her voice was barely a whisper in the darkness. ‘Tell me, Chang An Lo, what do the Communists aim to do to the
fanqui
?’

‘Death to the
fanqui
,’ he said, but he did not wish for her death any more than he wished for his own.

‘Then I must put my faith in Chiang Kai-shek,’ she said.

She was smiling; he could hear it in her voice though he could not see it with his eyes, but he did not want her to say such words, not even in jest. He felt a fleck of anger land on his tongue like ash.

‘The Communists will one day win, Lydia Ivanova, I warn you of that. You Westerners do not see that Chiang Kai-shek is an old tyrant under a new name.’ He spat again to the ground as the devil’s name passed his lips. ‘He has a lust for nothing but power. He proclaimed that he will lead our country to freedom, but he lies. And the Kuomintang Central Committee is a dog that jumps when he cracks the whip. He will destroy China. He strangles at birth all signs of change, yet the foreigners feed him with dollars to make him grow wise, the way an emperor feeds his pet tiger with songbirds to make him sing.’

His hand was gripping her fingers too hard and he could feel her bones fighting each other, but she gave no sign.

‘It will never happen,’ he finished.

‘But the Communists are cold killers,’ she said without withdrawing her hand. ‘They cut out their enemies’ tongues and pour kerosene down their throats. They bring China’s new industries to a halt with their strikes and sabotage. That’s what Mr Parker told me tonight. So why did you give them my necklace money?’

‘For guns. Your Mr Parker is twisting the tail of truth.’

‘No, he’s a journalist.’ She shook her head and he felt a trickle of spray from her wet hair. It flicked on his cheek and set his skin alive. ‘He must know what’s going on, that’s his job,’ she insisted. ‘And he believes Chiang Kai-shek will be the saviour of China.’

‘He is wrong. Your journalist must be deaf and blind.’

‘And he says the foreigners are China’s only hope for the future if this country is to come out of the Dark Ages and modernise.’

Chang dropped her hand. A surge of anger at the arrogance of the Foreign Devils rose in his throat and he cursed them for their greed and for their ignorance and for their vengeful god who would devour all others. Her golden eyes stared at him in confusion. She didn’t understand and would never understand. What was he doing? He stepped back quickly, leaving her Mr Parker’s lies in her lap, but his fingers did not listen to his head and felt as empty as a river without fish.

‘Did he not tell you, Lydia Ivanova, that the foreigners are cutting off China’s limbs? They demand reparation payments for past rebellions. They cripple our economy and strip us naked.’

‘No.’

‘Nor that the foreigners rub China’s bleeding face in the pig dung by their rule of extraterritorial rights in the cities they stole from us? With these rights the
fanqui
ignores the laws of China and makes up his own to please himself.’

‘No.’

‘Nor that he wrapped his fist around our customs office and controls our imports. His warships swarm in our seas and our rivers like wasps in a crate of mangoes.’

‘No, Chang An Lo. No, he did not.’ For the first time she seemed to gather fire into her words. ‘But this he did say, that until the people of China break free from their addiction to opium, they will never be anything but a weak feudal nation, always subservient to some kind of overlord’s whim.’

Chang laughed, loud and harsh, the sound raking across the broken walls.

She said nothing, just stared at him, shadows stealing her face from his eyes. Some night creature flitted silently over their heads, but neither looked up.

‘That’s something else your Parker forgot to tell you.’ His voice was so low she had to lean forward to hear, and again he breathed in the scent of her damp hair.

‘What?’

‘That it was the British who first brought opium to China.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true. Ask your journalist man. They brought it in their ships from India. Traded the black paste for our silks and our teas and spices. They brought death to China, not only with their guns. As surely as they brought their God to trample on ours.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘There is much you don’t know.’ He heard the sorrow in his own voice.

In the long silence that followed, he knew he should leave. This girl was not good for him. She would twist his thoughts with a
fanqui
’s cunning and bring him dishonour. Yet how could he walk away without tearing the stitching from his soul?

‘Tell me, Chang An Lo,’ she said just as the headlamps of a car swept into their brick shell, revealing the tight grip of her fingers on a coin she must have picked up from the floor, ‘tell me what I don’t know.’

So he knelt down in front of her and started to talk.

That night Yuesheng came to Chang in a dream. The bullet that had smashed through his ribs and torn into his heart was no longer there, but the open hole remained and his face was well fed in the way Chang remembered from before the bad times.

‘Greetings, brother of my heart,’ Yuesheng said through lips that didn’t move. He was dressed in a fine gown with a round embroidered cap on his head and a hooded hunting hawk on his arm.

‘You do me great honour to come to me before your bones are even in the earth. I mourn the loss of my friend and pray you are at peace now.’

‘Yes, I walk with my ancestors in fields thick with corn.’

‘That pleases me.’

‘But my tongue is sour with acid words and I cannot eat or drink till I have emptied them from my mouth.’

‘I wish to hear the words.’

‘Your ears will burn.’

‘Let them burn.’

‘You are Chinese, Chang An Lo. You come from the great and ancient city of Peking. Do not dishonour the spirit of your parents and bring shame on your venerable family name. She is
fanqui
. She is evil. Each
fanqui
brings death and sorrow to our people and yet she is bewitching your eyes. You must see clear and straight in this time of danger. Death is coming. It must be hers, not yours.’

Suddenly, with a wet gushing sound, the hole in Yuesheng’s body was filled with boiling black blood that smelled like burned brick, and a high-pitched noise issued from him. It was the sound of a weasel screaming.