The Russian Concubine

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Now,’ Mrs Zarya said, ‘let us look on this sea monster you bring me.’

  Lydia placed her gift on the table. It was a large wide-winged flatfish, as brown as the wood it lay on but spattered with tiny yellow flecks on its broad back.

  ‘You catch this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mrs Zarya nodded appreciatively and prodded it with one finger. ‘That is good. So now I cook it. You eat with me too?’

  Lydia grinned. ‘Spasibo. You are kind, dobraya. Ya plohaya povariha. I am not a good cook.’

  ‘Ah, so you speak Russian at last. Otlichno! That is good.’

  ‘No, I’m learning it from a book but it’s hard that way.’

  ‘Tell that lazy nothing mother of yours to put off the bottle and teach her daughter russkiy yazik.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mrs Zarya opened her arms wide and swept Lydia to her overflowing bosom in a warm suffocating hug before Lydia saw it coming. The huge black bosom smelled of mothballs and talcum powder, and she could feel a whalebone digging into her cheek.

  ‘Help,’ she mumbled.

  The Russian woman released her with a look of concern.

  ‘I need help,’ Lydia said. ‘To learn Russian, I mean.’

  Mrs Zarya thumped a heavy hand against her own bosom. It vibrated disturbingly. ‘I, Olga Petrovna Zarya,’ she said in triumph, ‘teach you your mother tongue. Yes?’

  ‘Da.’ Yes.

  ‘But first I grill fish.’

  Lydia haunted the places Chang might be. After school each day she clambered first down to Lizard Creek, always expecting that this time at last she would push her way through the tangle of bushes and see his dark head bent over the beginnings of a fire or his knife swiftly flashing through the flesh of a fish or the bark of a willow twig. Everything he did, he did smoothly. Cleanly. Not messy like herself. She pictured it as she lay in bed at night, saw him raise his eyes from whatever task he was doing and look at her in that intense way of his. With a smile and a gleam that told her he was pleased she had found him.

  Because she wasn’t sure how he felt about her. Maybe he was staying away because he’d had enough of her and her crazy fanqui arguments. She tried to think back. Had she insulted him? Going to the funeral. Was that the problem?

  Not the grey bellies. Don’t let it be because of the grey bellies.

  Chills whipped through her body whenever she thought of their swords or their rifles pointed at his head. She saw the soldiers. With their armbands and the sun on their caps as if they owned the world. Strutting around the old town. It was madness but she went there, couldn’t stay away. She steered clear of the hutongs but scanned the crowds in the main streets, again and again and again, and found nothing but hostile eyes and jostling poles and mouths that shouted unimaginable words at her. Once she even spotted a neck with a Black Snake tattoo. But the man showed no interest in her. She didn’t run. Any more than she ran from the beggars who reached out at her with skeletal fingers or from the well-clad Chinese businessman who offered her a ride in his big black Cadillac. The chance of finding Chang among all this teeming humanity was . . .

  She refused even to think the word.

  ‘Ah, Missy, my eyes are bright with the pleasure of seeing you again. It has been a long time.’ Mr Liu waved her to a seat and spread his hands to indicate his shop. ‘I hope my miserable premises are not too disgusting to you.’

  Lydia smiled. ‘It looks different. Very modern. Your customers must come here just for the delight of viewing such a grand place, Mr Liu.’

  Mr Liu’s stick-dry figure seemed to swell with pride, and he scuttled away to the stove where the teapot was waiting. It was a new one. Plain cream porcelain. In fact everything was new. Shelves, cabinets, door, window, even the stool she was sitting on. Gone was the bamboo one and the ebony table. In its place was a modern chrome and plastic one. The shelves and counter were the same: modern, clean and horrible. Only the black stove remained of what used to be. And the jasmine tea. That hadn’t changed.

  ‘I’m impressed, Mr Liu. Business must be very good indeed.’

  ‘Times are hard, Missy, but there is always someone who needs something. The trick is to provide it.’ His face was older, the dry walnut skin thinner than tissue, and his hair was short and white now, but the wispy beard was coming back. He fingered it constantly like an old friend.

  She wondered what it was he had learned the trick of providing. Guns? Drugs? Information?

  ‘Mr Liu, if I wanted to find someone in old Junchow, how should I go about it?’

  His eyes narrowed. Settled on her face.

  ‘You have this person’s address?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Place of work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘His family?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t notice the his slipped in there.

  ‘Friends?’

  She hesitated. ‘I know one friend. By sight only.’

  ‘So.’ He folded his hands into his sleeves and considered her for so long she started to grow uncomfortable. ‘So,’ he said again. ‘This someone. He could be in trouble?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘In hiding?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I see.’

  She waited what seemed an age while he considered again.

  ‘The place to search, Missy, is the docks. Down by the harbour. There the world is lawless and nameless. The dollar is the only language that they speak. The dollar and the knife.’

  ‘Mr Liu, you are generous with your words. Thank you.’

  ‘Be careful, Missy. It is a dangerous place. Life there is worth less than a hair from your copper head.’

  ‘Thank you for the warning, I will remember it.’ She sipped her tea and looked around at the many objects on display. The metal leg by the door had gone but in its place stood a giant turtle shell. ‘I have something small you may find of interest.’

  He drank his tea impassively.

  Lydia pulled out an object wrapped up in a cloth. It was a handbag. Alfred had bought it as a present for Valentina and earned himself a kiss in return, but after he’d gone, Valentina had shuddered and thrown it under her bed.

  ‘Red!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘As if I’d ever be seen holding a red handbag.’

  But it looked expensive. Satin covered, with tiny white pearls along the top. Lydia laid it on the new table. Mr Liu glanced at it but didn’t pick it up. His mouth pulled tight into a straight line.

  ‘Thirty dollars,’ he offered.

  Lydia gaped at him. It was more than she’d expected. She certainly wasn’t going to argue. She nodded. He drew a roll of notes from inside his gown and counted six of them into her hand. His fingernails were long and clean.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Liu. You are generous.’ She rose to leave.

  ‘Take care, Missy. This life only comes once. Don’t throw it away.’

  She buried it. The thirty dollars.

  In a jar at the base of the big flat rock. Each time she went to Lizard Creek she used a pebble to scratch a line on the side of the big rock, just so that he’d realize she’d been there. Now she arranged pebbles in a small mound over the top of the spot where she’d buried the glass jar, like a cairn.

  ‘You’ll know, Chang An Lo. I’m certain you’ll know. It isn’t much, thirty dollars, but it’s something. I’ll bring more, I promise. It’ll help if you’re in need.’

  She rested a hand on the top stone of the cairn and curled her fingers around it as if she could curl her fingers around Chang himself.

  ‘Don’t let him be in need,’ she whispered to his gods. ‘Except in need of me.’

  28

  Theo opened his eyes abruptly, breaking free from the fierce grip of his dreams. He was suffocating. His lungs would barely move, blackness was creeping into his head, a needle point of pain at his throat was . . .

  His eyes finally registered what was in front of them.

  The cat. For God’s
sake, it was just the bloody cat. Yeewai was crouched on his chest, her evil yellow eyes no more than inches from his own and her talons kneading the soft skin between his collarbones. A noise like a steam engine was coming from her mouth but Theo had no idea whether it was a purr or a growl.

  He pushed the animal down onto the eiderdown and instantly realised the warm body of Li Mei was no longer beside him in the bed. Oh Christ, what time was it? He sat up. His head exploded into ten thousand pieces, each one of them embedding into his brain, and the cat’s claw raked his hand in protest. Theo groaned, rolled his legs over the side of the bed, and let his hands do the work of holding his head together.

  It was morning and his mouth tasted like the inside of a rat’s ass.

  Another day. Sweet Christ.

  He felt cold. Really cold. The air in the classroom was so chilly Theo expected to see his own breath rise like smoke from his mouth. He shivered. His limbs ached.

  He was seated in his usual place at his high desk in front of the class, but there was a stove behind him and he was near enough to reach behind to feel it. The blasted caretaker must have forgotten it again. To his surprise the stove was hot and when he thought about it, the condensation on the windows meant the room must be warm, fighting off the northerly blasts outside. The pupils looked comfortable, not chilled. The pupils. Rows of them. Unruly creatures. Today they felt like leeches on his skin, sucking him dry, draining all the knowledge from his head into theirs. He shivered again and tried to concentrate on the pile of papers in front of him, but the writing kept blurring and his eyes lost focus. He had arrived late and set the class a history exercise to do while he tried to mark the homework he should have dealt with last evening.

  That was the trouble with spending so many nights out on the river. These days he never seemed to be anything but cold and tired, the sort of tiredness that eats into your bones. The Chinese captains of the junks and sampans and the oarsmen in the scows were used to him now and he was used to them. No more scares. No blades. And no cats, thank God. And they knew only too well the way to ease the pain of the wind driving off the river and knifing down your throat where the damp rotted your lungs. So they taught him. How to make the wait seem shorter and the fear lose its edge. Just the thought of the pipe upstairs in the drawer by his bed set his hands shaking.

  A shout made him raise his head. He hadn’t even realised it had dropped onto his hands. A dark-headed lad was struggling with a girl over the ownership of a pen.

  ‘Philips,’ Theo said sharply.

  ‘But sir, I . . .’

  ‘Silence, boy.’

  The culprit glared at the girl. She smirked.

  Theo let it pass. Their faces merged into grey patterns in front of his eyes. He blinked to bring them back into sharp outline and looked around at the other young faces. Few appeared to be working. Girls were whispering behind their hands, and one of the boys was folding a sheet of paper with perfect precision into a paper dart. The Russian girl was staring out the window. With an effort he ran a hand over his eyes to wipe away the cobwebs that felt as if they clung there. The Russian girl turned to watch and he felt a touch of unease. There was something about the way that girl looked at you, as if she could see into all the black holes you tried to hide. He wondered if she knew how lucky she was to be still alive after that Black Snake business with Feng Tu Hong.

  Alfred was a fool to get involved with that family.

  For no reason he suddenly recalled the conversation he’d had with the girl in the Ulysses Club and the ferocity of her desire to mould her life into something she wanted. By sheer force of will. Well, life wasn’t that simple. Didn’t it ever occur to the silly girl to wonder why she was the only foreigner in the school, the only non-British pupil among all the Taylors and Smiths and Fieldings? Didn’t she find that odd? Not that she was much of a mixer. She’d always kept to herself, except for the Mason girl. He looked at Polly’s glossy blond head bent over her work. She seemed to be the only one really concentrating on the exercise, and suddenly a bitter anger rose in his throat, so that he felt an urge to strike out at the poor defenceless creature.

  Christopher Mason.

  A fitting name. A man of stone.

  ‘No,’ Mason had said over a gin at the club, with a smile that wasn’t a smile. ‘No. It will not end so easily.’

  ‘Damn you, man,’ Theo had retorted. ‘The debt to the bank will be repaid by early next year and then that’s an end to it as far as I’m concerned. No more.’

  ‘I must disagree.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. You can run the business on your own. You don’t need me anymore, neither you nor Feng Tu Hong.’

  ‘Oh, but I do, Willoughby. Don’t underestimate yourself.’ Slate grey eyes and a slate grey tongue.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, my dear chap, Feng won’t do the deal without you. The old devil wants you in on it or he shuts up shop, God only knows why.’

  Theo felt chills up his spine. ‘That’s your problem,’ he said, ‘not mine.’ He started to walk away.

  ‘The inside of a jail is not very pleasant, I’m told.’

  Theo swung round. The urge to crush his fist into this man’s grinning face almost blew him over the edge, but some vestige of survival instinct clawed him back from the brink. He leaned over Mason, emphasising the difference in their height, breathing hard in his face.

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  Mason nodded slowly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean you would report me. To customs.’

  ‘Exactly that. As a trafficker in opium, Foreign Mud as they call it. I can provide times, dates, black-sail boats, the whole damn lot. Witnesses who saw you. You’d be staring at four filthy walls and ten years in prison before you could even blink.’ There was savage enjoyment on his face.

  ‘If you shop me, Mason, I’ll take you down into that hell with me, you bastard, I swear to God I will.’

  Mason laughed. ‘Don’t kid yourself, you bloody fool. You have no proof. There’s nothing to connect me with your nighttime activities on the river. You don’t think any of that money has gone into my bank, do you?’ He laughed again, a harsh grating sound that tried Theo’s nerves. ‘You’re in a box, Willoughby, and you can’t get out, any more than a dead man can crawl out of his coffin. So just enjoy the nice cosy benefits, why don’t you?’ He stared with amusement at Theo. ‘It looks to me, old chap, as if you’re up to your eyeballs in them already.’

  Theo knew he was trapped. The rage inside him was burning holes in his belly and only the sweet black paste seemed to blunt the pain. But Li Mei did not understand. She said little. But he saw the look in her eyes each time he went to the drawer.

  ‘Sir?’

  Theo blinked hard. Got his brain moving. The class was still there. It was Polly. Pretty Polly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve finished, sir.’

  ‘In which case, Miss Mason, why don’t you join me here in front of the class and read it out loud for the benefit of those who lack your speed of mind.’

  Polly’s shoulders hunched down as if she wanted to crawl under her desk. She mumbled something.

  ‘Pardon, Miss Mason, I didn’t catch that.’

  ‘I said I’d rather not, sir.’

  Mason’s laugh in his ears goaded him on. He didn’t normally make Polly read aloud to the class as her academic talents were very mediocre, but to hell with it. Today would be different. She stood in front of the rows of expectant faces and started to read in a halting voice, her cheeks a miserable red. Theo realised with surprise that she was talking about Henry VIII and the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Is that what he’d set them? He’d forgotten already. Her words faltered, stumbled, grew slower and smaller.

  ‘That’s enough, Miss Mason. You may sit down.’

  She threw him a glance of gratitude and escaped back to her seat. Gratitude. She should be hating him for that display of petty cruelty, hating him as much as he hated himself.

&nb
sp; ‘I congratulate you, Polly, on your diligence in class. The rest of you,’ he scowled at his pupils and vaguely registered a tawny gaze glaring at him with fury, ‘will stay in at break time and write an account of the Diet of Worms. You, Polly,’ he smiled at her benignly, ‘you are excused from it because you have worked well.’

  Her blue eyes widened with pleasure.

  It was too easy. To take revenge that way. Mason was the one who deserved the spike through his heart. If he had a heart, that is.

  ‘Mr Theo?’

  ‘What is it, Lydia?’

  ‘Please, would you do some translation for me? Only a few sentences. Into Chinese, I mean.’

  It was the end of the school day and his head was thrumming. He could barely stop his limbs trembling and twitching, desperate to seek out the pipe and the paste and the little heated spoon, but first he had to steel himself for the ordeal of the parents-at-the-gate ritual. Fortunately the wind was keen and gusting through the yard, so the mothers and amahs did not linger over picking up their offspring or stand around making aimless conversation. But now the Russian girl wanted something. What did she say? Translation? She was holding a piece of paper out to him, expecting him to take it. His fingers reached out and he saw her watching the way the tips jumped erratically around the paper before he grasped it. With an effort he read what was on it. There were four short sentences.

  1. Do you know someone called . . . ?

  2. Can you direct me to . . . ?

  3. Where is . . . ?

  4. Does he live/work here?

  ‘Ah.’ He smiled at her. ‘The young Chinese. You’re after him, aren’t you?’

  He was astonished by the girl’s reaction. Her mouth fell open, her lips bleached bone white, and she seemed suddenly painfully young and as vulnerable as eggshell.