The Russian Concubine (36 page)

The softness of it surprised her. It lay still on the palm of one hand while she soaped it with the other, easing off the filth and scabs, delicately patting the skin dry with a towel. There was something so unbearably vulnerable about it. Even the tracery of blue veins left it looking bare and exposed, as if it needed another barrier between it and the world. Is that why men want women so much? As a barrier? A protection?

‘I’ll protect you, Chang An Lo, I swear,’ she breathed. ‘Like you protected me.’

She washed his legs, then his feet. She ran a finger over the scarred line that she had sewn with her own hands at Lizard Creek, and finally she took a pair of scissors, returned her attentions to his groin, and cut away the matted pubic hair and lice. It felt like cutting away his secrets.

During that first night at his side, she struggled with what was staring her in the face. It was almost dawn before she admitted it to herself. She couldn’t take Chang to the Chinese hospital. She couldn’t. Neither could she call a doctor.

It was obvious.

The Black Snakes had done this to him, and he had chosen to risk death in Tan Wah’s hovel rather than expose himself to recapture by seeking help from any medical people. Or even from friends where he was known among the Communists. Clearly he knew the Snakes had eyes everywhere.

‘You could have come to me,’ she whispered more than once and traced a finger along the sheer edge of his cheekbone.

Now she had to think.

The facts were bad. No adult would permit her to keep Chang here; she knew what they would say. They’d make faces and insist it was not right for a young girl.
Scandalous.
He’d be whisked away to the Chinese hospital, which was exactly where the Black Snakes would be waiting with their knives and their branding irons. No. No well-meaning adults. She was on her own. Her head dropped into her hands and struggled to work out her next step. It was some time before she lifted her face and gazed across the small musty shed at the big bear slumped in a heap. She wasn’t alone.

She walked over and thumped his shoulder.

‘Liev Popkov,’ she said urgently. ‘Wake up.’

35

Theo drove fast. He was angry. Angry enough to leave the black paste in the drawer this morning. His body ached and every pore of his skin sweated for the dream-filled smoke, but he needed his mind sharp. Sharp as a rat. It was still early and the morning mist drifted over the roofs, no wind to shift it, and the day seemed to be holding its breath. Theo parked the Morris Cowley outside the black oak gates and spat in the faces of the stone lions on the gateposts. Lions guard the hearth. Well, not this time.

The gatekeeper bowed submissively, almost scraping the ground with the earflaps of his quilted hat.

‘My master Feng Tu Hong not expecting you today, noble professor.’

‘It is not your honoured master I have come to see, Chen. It is his pus-head son, Po Chu.’

The gatekeeper didn’t exactly smile, but his face, usually so immobile and correct, took on a sly hint of animation. ‘I send worthless wife to tell Important Son you here and wish to . . .’

Theo did not wait but strode through the gate and up into the courtyards. Behind him the scurrying sound of a woman’s bound feet made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

‘Po Chu, you pig-humping piece of devil’s spit, if you ever lay a finger on my Li Mei again, I shall personally stick a blade through your eyes and straight down your gullet.’

‘Wah! You talk like a tiger, Tiyo Willbee, but at night you crawl on your belly like a worm to eat the poppy. I hear from the sampans. You shiver and you shake the way a whore does on her back with her legs in the air. You talk big but you crawl small.’

‘What I do out on the river is not your affair. But be glad that the remaining whispers of last night’s dream smoke keep me from calling the great war god Kuan Ti down from the skies to ram his spear through your bloodless heart for what you did to her.’

‘The whore needed it.’

‘Take care, Po Chu. Li Mei is no whore. She is your honourable sister.’

‘No sister of mine would bed a
fanqui.
She needed to be told.’

‘Needed your stinking fist in her face?’

‘Yes, by all the gods, she needed it.’

‘Because she came to make peace with your father?’

‘No. Because she thought my venerable father would be fool enough to give her what she wanted without a bargain.’

‘Bargain? What bargain?’

‘
Ai-ay!
The headmaster does not know his whore as well as he thinks.’

‘Enjoy this breath, Po Chu, because it will be your last if you call my beloved a whore again. Tell me what bargain?’

‘She begged. Ah, Tiyo Willbee, how she begged. Tears as big as crocodiles.’

‘Begged? For what?’

‘For our honourable father to release you from the deal with that monkey brain Mason, from the trafficking. Of course the great Feng Tu Hong in his wisdom was not moved by her street girl ways.’

‘I warned you, scum of the gutter.’

‘But he offered her a bargain. He agreed to release you from the deal if . . .’

‘If what?’

‘If she kowtows to him nine times and comes back to this house to live out her life as his dutiful daughter. Hah! But she has brought fields of shame to the honourable name of Feng and needed to be taught the meaning of respect. That was when I hit her. Many times.’

‘Like this?’

‘Good God, old fellow, what the devil have you been up to?’

Theo rubbed his jaw. A livid bruise was spreading along it, and one corner of his lip was split. Christopher Mason was staring at him with an expression of unease.

‘Tripped over my cat,’ Theo said indifferently. ‘I came over because your houseboy said you would be here and I need a word with you.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

Mason glanced across the room at his wife and the two girls. ‘It’s not a good time, Willoughby. Later maybe.’

‘Now.’

The situation struck Theo as rather odd. To be seated with that bastard Mason, all civil and polite, in Alfred Parker’s new home the day after the disrupted wedding, with no Alfred around and the stepdaughter prowling by the French window like a dog on guard duty. It all felt strange. The girl looked ragged. Something had hollowed out her amber eyes, set them deep in dull shadows and coloured her lips grey. She kept giving each of her guests impatient stares to indicate she would be rid of them, but Anthea Mason was determined to fuss over her.

‘Poor Lydia didn’t sleep well and who can blame her, alone in an unfamiliar house,’ she fretted, with a good-natured smile at the girl. ‘I came over this morning, Mr Willoughby, and what do I find? Only that she’s given the houseboy and the gardener the week off with full pay and told the cook that she just wants him to provide an evening meal and nothing else. Please, tell the dear girl she must accept the fact of servants in her life now that she is living in respectable circumstances like the rest of us. You’re her headmaster, so she should listen to you.’

‘For God’s sake, Anthea, just forget it,’ Mason snapped. ‘You’ve seen her, like you promised you would, and she’s fine.’ He turned to Theo. ‘I’m only here because I’m taking my wife and daughter over to the stables to see my new hunter. He’s a splendid bay with the lungs of an elephant and will run the hocks off Sir Edward’s dun stallion any day of the week. You see if he doesn’t.’

‘I want to see Sun Yat-sen, your rabbit,’ Polly suddenly announced, blue eyes wide.

‘What a good idea,’ Anthea smiled. ‘Where is it?’

‘Bloody stupid name for an animal,’ Mason commented, but he stood up and led the way toward the French windows. ‘I used to have a black and white lop-eared rabbit when I was a youngster, Polly. Called it Daniel. Nice little animal. So, young lady, let’s all take a look at . . .’

‘Not today.’ Lydia stood with her hand holding the French windows shut.

‘And why not?’

‘He’s disturbed. By the move. By everything changing.’

‘But Lyd, please,’ Polly pleaded. ‘You said he was happy in his pagoda in the shed. That’s not changed, has it?’

‘No, but . . .’

‘Excellent.’ Mason brushed the girl aside. ‘I like rabbits.’ He barged out into the bare wintry garden, Polly at his heels as he strode down the path.

Anthea watched them. ‘He likes all animals,’ she said to Theo with a sad smile and followed her husband.

‘It’s human beings he has a problem with,’ Theo muttered to himself and glanced at the Russian girl. She looked almost as bad as he felt. His head was splitting, as if it had a meat cleaver embedded in it. She was standing very still, both hands pressed flat against the window, her eyes fixed on the timber shed at the bottom of the garden. Polly was opening the door.

‘Mr Willoughby.’ Lydia spoke softly.

She was watching her friend’s father fondling Sun Yat-sen’s long ears. The Mason family were all gathered in a little group on the lawn, admiring the snowy white animal in Polly’s arms, oblivious to the cold. Their breath circled them like mist.

‘What is it, Lydia?’

The girl was still standing just inside the French windows, but now Theo noticed her gaze had shifted to an untidy pile of rags at the back of the lawn. The gardener should know better than to leave his rubbish in full view of the house. But of course she’d given him a week off.

‘Where can I buy Chinese medicines?’

‘Are you sick, child?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t look well.’

Slowly she turned and fixed her eyes on him. ‘Neither do you.’

He laughed as if she’d made a joke, and the effort of it sent a wave of nausea through him. ‘In the Street of One Hundred Steps there is a Chinese herbalist. But I doubt that he speaks English.’

‘Will you come with me?’

Theo shook his head but, despite the gaping hole in his mind where the smoke from the pipe needed to be, he said, ‘I suppose I could.’ There was just something about the girl. ‘After I’ve had my talk with Mason.’

‘I’ll send him in to you.’

And she did.

‘So?’ Mason wouldn’t keep still. In his jodhpurs and riding boots he paced up and down the carpet. Plainly he was embarrassed. ‘This isn’t the place for this discussion.’

Theo knew this was not the way one Englishman should talk to another on a Sunday morning with the family just outside the window. He should be talking about horses or cricket or his motorcar or what the hell the share market was up to back home. Or even the outrageous new law that the PM, Baldwin, had passed to give the vote to women as young as twenty-one, as if flappers of that age knew anything at all about politics. But drugs? No. That was unacceptable.

‘Listen to me, Mason. Listen hard. The situation has changed for me. I am severing all connections with Feng. I’m sick of being used as bait by both you and that bastard.’

‘Damn it, man, fish bait is all you’re fit for right now. Look at yourself, you’re shaking.’

‘Forget that. You’re not listening to me, Mason. I’m telling you that our arrangement is over. I will have nothing more to do with the Black Snakes and their opium trade. I was a bloody fool to get involved in the first place, I realise that now. You twisted my arm at a time when . . .’

‘No, don’t give me that. You wanted the money.’

‘I was protecting my school.’

‘Don’t stick your headmasterly head in the sand, Willoughby. Join the human race. I despise people like you. You’re no different from the rest of us, however superior you like to think yourself because you can read this heathen language and understand the pious gibberish of their Confucius and their Buddha. You were just plain greedy.’

‘Like you, you mean.’

Mason laughed, delighted, as if paid a compliment. ‘Exactly.’ He smoothed a hand over his slicked-back hair in a self-satisfied manner. ‘I don’t know what has suddenly got you all fired up, but you’d better put a stop to it right now. Pull yourself together, man.’

‘I’m glad you’re getting my point at last. I
am
pulling myself together. No more night trips out on the river. No more black paste for me. It’s over. It’s a filthy trade.’

‘God damn you, Willoughby. We both know that the Chinese bastard won’t deal with me without you in the middle of it.’

‘Too bad.’

‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘I’m not threatening. I’m telling.’

‘You bloody fool, I’ll go straight to the police and you’ll be inside a filthy prison cell before you even start your next bout of the shakes.’

‘Mason, I’m telling you to let this go. You’ve made more than a good profit from our deal so far. Now it’s finished. Just let it go. Find yourself a new enterprise and let us end this now like English gentlemen.’ He held out his hand and made certain it did not shake.

Mason took his time. He looked from Theo’s face to his outstretched hand and back again. ‘Go to hell,’ he sneered and walked out through the French windows to the terrace. ‘Polly, Anthea,’ he shouted. ‘Time to go. I want to see what this horse of mine can do.’ He turned and stared back at Theo through the glass, his grey eyes flat and hard. ‘I might even have to use the whip on him.’

Theo wanted to kill him. There and then. His hand even slid to the short ivory-handled knife he kept up his sleeve, and he had to remind himself that it was the opium talking, warping his thoughts. But if he could only take a few breaths on the pipe, it would still the infernal racket in his head, just this once, just one more time. He swung away in a jerky movement and stepped into the hall but stopped in the doorway when he saw Lydia Ivanova sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. She was watching him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes. The concern.

It meant she had heard.

‘Please, Lyd. Go on.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Your father is waiting.’

‘Just a quick look, that’s all.’

‘No. Another day.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, Lydia, for heaven’s sake, I’m only asking for a look at your new bedroom, not at the inside of Mr Parker’s safe or anything like that. Why not?’

‘Sorry, Polly, but it’s not tidy.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’ve only been in it twenty-four hours.’

‘No, Polly. Not today. Please.’

‘What’s the matter with you, Lyd? You look . . .’

‘I’m fine. Did you like holding Sun Yat-sen?’

‘Oh yes, he’s utterly gorgeous. Papa liked him too.’

‘Your father is calling you to the car.’

Leaning in the doorway, Theo waited while the girls parted, a slight awkwardness between them. Little chickens. Fluffy and new. No idea how life has a habit of slicing your head off when you’re not looking.