Kate Furnivall - The Russian Concubine

Without breaking stride she steered herself and Chang through the crawling traffic across to the other side of the road, away from the uniforms, and thought she had got away with it. But the British one’s head came up. He stared straight at her. At Chang. Said something to his colleague. Both immediately strode in her direction, carving a path through the sheet of white air. She couldn’t run. Not with Chang An Lo. Instead she tried to come up with a good reason why a white girl would be stumbling along with a Chinese draped around her shoulders in a snowstorm.

She couldn’t.

The police figures were closer, held up by a small burst of traffic, all shrouded in white. Death robes. A native man pushing a wheelbarrow with a child sitting in it swore at the car in front, which had slowed for the junction. It revved its engine ready to accelerate away, and the noise made Lydia glance across at the driver. She could barely see him through the sweep of snow-laden windshield wipers, but she saw enough. Instantly she stepped out onto the road, dragging Chang with her.

She tapped at the sedan’s window. ‘Mr Theo, it’s me.’

The window rolled down and Mr Theo’s grey eyes peered at her, narrowed against the cold wind. ‘Good God, what are you doing out in this?’ His gaze shifted to Chang An Lo. ‘Bloody hell.’

The policemen were almost at the car.

‘I…’ Her dry mouth tripped her up. She tried again. ‘I need a ride.’

She saw his eyes notice the two uniformed figures now approaching the rear of the car. Beside her Chang An Lo’s breathing came in convulsive gasps.

‘Not on the run, are you?’

‘No, Mr Theo,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course not.’

He knew she was lying. She could see it.

‘Get in,’ he said.

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.’

Was he dead?

Or in a police cell?

Did he miss her?

Was he smiling at the lovely Li Mei the way he’d smiled at her?

No answers. Just questions.

If only she hadn’t given her word to Alfred Parker in Tuson’s Tearoom. She had promised to obey him in exchange for the money, but she’d lied to him before. Stolen from him. Thought nothing of deceiving him. So why did she feel so bound by this absurd promise? Why?

She was lying on her bed exactly where Chang An Lo had lain, her head where his had rested on the pillow, but she hadn’t slept. As the night hours crawled by, she had time and again buried her face in the white Egyptian cotton of the sheets and pillowcase and tried to breathe in the essence of him. But it was too faint. Just the smell of herbs. She had risen from her bed as a dull dawn turned the sky from black to silvery grey, the clouds so heavy and low she could almost touch them. But it had stopped snowing. From her window just the sight of the shed sent a spasm of longing through her, and she stared for a long time at the flimsy wooden frame cocooned in white. The spindly claw prints of a bird trailed across the crisp crust of snow around it. Eventually she had retreated to her bed again and wrapped her arms around the pillow.

She could break her word. Creep out of the house before Alfred and Valentina woke. Though not that for one minute did she think her mother was asleep; no, she would be tossing and turning, listening and watching the light grow paler. Lydia was seriously worried about her mother. She’d never seen her so angry, so out of control. It made Lydia’s chest hurt to think about it, so she concentrated on Alfred.

She could break her word to him.

She could.

She closed her eyes and tried to do deep breathing the way she’d seen Chang An Lo do when the pain was bad. In through the nose, out long and slow through the mouth. But her thoughts kept getting in the way.