Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

She made herself study them carefully, refusing to look away however much she wanted to. It felt too intimate. There was a nakedness about the hunched figures, their fear and degradation too huge and too exposed for everyone to see. It sickened her stomach.

Papa, is this what it’s like for you? This kind of humiliation?

It was hard to keep her mouth closed, to jam the words inside. She could tell by their clothes and their air of bewilderment that these men must be new prisoners. It showed in their nervous glances at the guards, even in the way one of them looked for a brief moment at Lydia herself. The shame in the eyes. One man with a small bundle wrapped in a scarf under his arm managed an odd little smile at Lydia, fighting to pretend this was all a hideous mistake. That they’d been snatched from warm beds for… what? The dropping of an unwary word, the voicing of a wrong thought?

Using rifles like cattle prods, the three soldiers were herding them into a long line that stumbled towards the station entrance. At the very back a small plump man started sobbing in a loud outpouring of grief. To Lydia it sounded more like a sick animal than a human being.

‘Get back inside.’

It was a guard patrolling the platform. He jabbed at the open carriage door to slam it shut.

‘Comrade soldat .’ Lydia smiled at him and pulled off her hat, letting her hair fall loose. He was young. He smiled back.

‘My lungs aren’t good,’ she said, ‘and there’s always smoke in my compartment. I need some clean air.’ She inhaled noisily to emphasise the point and felt the sleet nip at the back of her throat. It made her cough.

‘Well shut the door and open its window instead.’ His tone was friendly.

At that moment she spotted an elegant figure descending the steps further along the train. It was Antonina. She ducked her head against the rain that glistened on her furs like a shower of diamonds. Behind her the two uniformed companions were wrestling her luggage off the train, but Alexei had been wrong about her. She didn’t hurry. She took her time. She smoothed her soft grey leather gloves over her fingers, adjusted the angle of her hat, then with expressionless eyes she studied the wretched line of prisoners. She murmured something to one of the uniforms and instantly a small black umbrella was produced for her. She accepted it but held it too high above her head, indifferent to the sleet streaming in under it.

Lydia took a deep breath. She had a few brief seconds, a minute at most. No longer, before the train moved on. The soldier had his hand on the door, ready to slam it shut.

‘Antonina!’ she called.

The pair of deep-set eyes turned towards her, narrowed against the rain, and she gave a faint nod of recognition.

The soldier started to shut the carriage door. ‘Move back there.’

Lydia didn’t move. ‘Antonina,’ she called again.

With neat unhurried steps, the dove-grey boots crossed the wet platform and Antonina stood in front of her, appearing small from Lydia’s view high up on the steps of the train. The soldier moved away instantly with a smart salute. Clearly he knew who this woman was. In her furs and her carmine lipstick she looked much less approachable than in her burgundy dressing gown.

Lydia tried a friendly smile but the only response was a distant little grimace.

‘Before you even ask, young comrade,’ the woman said briskly, ‘the answer is no.’

‘The answer to what?’

‘To your question.’

‘I haven’t asked a question.’

‘But you were going to.’

Lydia said nothing.

‘Weren’t you?’ Antonina tipped back her umbrella and gave Lydia a long scrutiny, her beautifully groomed eyebrows arching into a mocking curve. ‘Yes, I can see you were.’

Her manner rattled Lydia. It was dismissive, it made her feel clumsy and childish. She wasn’t sure of her footing any more. There was something so sleek and slippery about this woman today that Lydia could feel herself sliding off with nothing to hold on to.

‘I just wanted to say goodbye,’ she murmured.

‘ Do svidania , comrade.’

‘And…’

‘And what?’

‘And yes,… you are right. I want to ask something.’

‘Everyone always wants to ask me for something.’ Her dark gaze slid off to where the prisoners on the platform had bunched up, awaiting further orders. Their hair was plastered to their heads by the incessant rain and the man who had been sobbing noisily was quiet now, his face in his hands, his shoulders trembling.

Lydia looked away this time. It was too much.

‘Everyone,’ Antonina continued in a voice that sounded amused, though her eyes were sad and serious, ‘wants me to convey a parcel, to pass on a message, to beg my husband, the Commandant, for this or that for their loved one.’

Lydia shifted uneasily on the steps. ‘Mistakes are sometimes made,’ she said. ‘Not everyone is guilty.’

The woman gave a short hard laugh. ‘The OGPU decisions are always right.’

Time was running out.

Lydia said quickly, ‘I am searching for someone.’

‘Isn’t everybody?’

‘His name is Jens Friis. He was captured in 1917 but he shouldn’t be in a Russian prison at all because he’s Danish. I just need to know if he’s here in this camp. That’s all. Nothing more. To hear that…’

The woman’s eyes turned to her, smooth and cold as black ice, but the palms of her pale leather gloves were fretting against each other fiercely. She noticed the way Lydia glanced at them and for the first time she smiled, a small, angry smile, but still a smile.

‘Is this man your lover?’

‘No.’

‘So what is he to you?’

‘Please, Antonina? Pozhalusta? ’ Lydia said in a rush and climbed down one step in her eagerness. The guard nearby was moving closer. ‘All I need is just one word from you.’

The train suddenly shuddered beneath her and heaved a great sigh, sending steam billowing down the platform. For one startling moment, the Commandant’s wife was enveloped in a cloud that obscured everything but her two hands in their ceaseless motion. When the steam cleared, Antonina had turned her back on Lydia, her long fur coat swaying as if the skins were still alive.

‘ Nyet, Lydia.’ She started to walk away, calling over her shoulder, ‘My answer is no.’

The soldier closed the door and the train began to move. Quickly Lydia opened the window and leaned out. ‘I’ll be in the hostel in Felanka,’ she shouted after the retreating woman. ‘You can leave a message for me there.’

Slowly the figures on the platform grew smaller. Lydia continued to stare at where they had been, long after the rain swallowed them.

‘Yob tvoyu mat!’ Liev Popkov swore suddenly and pushed his huge fist towards the window. ‘Look at that. It’s the stinking hell-hole.’

Alexei saw Lydia elbow him hard in the ribs to silence him, but it was too late. Every head in the carriage turned to stare at what he’d indicated and a young woman with a baby asleep in her arms started to weep silently. It was the camp. Trovitsk labour camp. It couldn’t be anything else, though from this distance it looked harmless enough, more like four dog kennels rising above the flat winter horizon. Those must be the tips of the watchtowers, but the rest of the camp was lost in a faint blur, secretive and secluded, too far away to make out anything of the communal huts or barbed wire fences.

‘God help the bastards,’ Alexei muttered.

The big woman opposite grimaced. ‘He hasn’t done much of a job of it so far.’

Lydia looked round at them both and frowned. Her tawny eyes were huge. A straggle of hair had crept out from under her hat and lay like a lick of flame on the collar of her coat. ‘The Soviet State is looking after those people,’ she said in a curt voice. ‘It does what is best. For all of us.’