Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

Her hands had curled around Chang’s, cradling his bandages to her breast as she might cradle an infant, and despite the raging fever that made his eyes dull as pond water and his brain as sickly as a rabid dog’s, he knew he would remember this moment. For a brief minute she’d rested her cheek on his shoulder and her hair had crept like flames over his shirt front. Just to look at her was enough, at her pale cheek and her clear amber eyes. It drew him back from the edge.

She seemed fragile. Frightened. Yet she’d pulled him forcibly into Theo Willoughby’s car on the snowy streets of Junchow, whisking him from under the nose of the police just when the Nationalist authorities believed they had captured him at last. She’d looped her arm around his shoulders, holding him upright, and the last thing he wanted was to topple over in her teacher’s car. She would lose face.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Lydia said politely to the man driving. ‘Thanks for giving us a ride.’

The schoolmaster glanced quickly in the mirror, his gaze seeking Chang. Even in his sick state Chang knew the signs. The yellowish skin around the mouth. The eyes not quite in this world. This Englishman was smoking the pipe of dreams at night and could not be trusted.

‘So what have we here?’ Willoughby had asked with more curiosity than Chang cared for.

‘This is my friend, Chang An Lo.’

‘Ah! The young rebel I’ve heard about.’

‘He’s a Communist fighting for justice.’

‘It’s a fine line, Lydia.’

‘Not to me.’

After a moment Willoughby said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For you.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘You are crossing a divide that is too wide for your young legs.’

‘Just help us. Please.’

‘How? He looks almost dead.’

‘Take us somewhere where the soldiers will not come.’

‘Where, Lydia? A hospital?’

‘No, they’ll find him there. Your school.’

The teacher had snorted as if he’d swallowed a frog.

Lydia had turned to Chang and with her touch as gentle as a moth’s wing, she’d taken his face in her hands and he’d breathed her sweet strong breath into his lungs.

‘Don’t die on me, my love,’ she’d whispered. He could feel her trembling.

He was not far from taking the path to join his ancestors, he knew that. He could hear their voices rustling in his ear. One slip of his foot and he’d slide into… His eyes closed, their lids like lead coins, but instantly her lips brushed each eye.

‘Open,’ she murmured.

They opened and her eyes were no more than a finger’s width from his own, pinning him to life. Not allowing him to leave this world.

‘Chang An Lo, what colour is love?’

He wanted to speak but there were no words.

‘He’s gone,’ the schoolmaster said.

‘No,’ she hissed, and she squeezed the bones of his skull between her palms. ‘Tell me, tell me.’

‘It’s too late, Lydia,’ the teacher insisted, though his voice was not unkind. ‘You can see he’s gone.’

She ignored him, listening to nothing but Chang’s breath sighing from his lungs. ‘It’s the colour of my eyes,’ she whispered, ‘of my lips, of my skin. It’s the colour of my life. Don’t you dare leave me, my love.’

He didn’t leave her. Not then.

‘Come here, girl. I have a clock for you, a good marble one with-’

‘ Nyet , I don’t need a clock.’ Lydia shook her head and backed away from the stall.

She liked street markets. The shouting and the pushing and the manhandling of goods. They reminded her of home. No, she pulled herself up sharply, get it right. What she meant was they reminded her of China, but China was no longer her home. Face it . Her mother was dead, her stepfather had scuttled back to England and Chang An Lo was… was where? Where? Where?

She looked around at the hustle and bustle of the market. At the vegetables spread out next to a jumble of old shoes, at the neat pile of homemade preserves between the books and the bread. She even spotted an ancient microscope, all brass and knobs beside a hank of brightly coloured embroidery silks. The traders were bundled up against the cold, haggling and arguing over kopecks as if they were precious as bars of gold.

Moscow had come as a shock. Not at all what Lydia had expected. The Bolsheviks had made the right move, she decided. They had shifted the capital city of Soviet Russia right away from the decadent bourgeois elegance of Leningrad – the city of her own first five years of childhood. Instead Moscow became the hub. For ever turning. She could almost hear its wheels.

The moment she stepped off the train she fell in love with the place. Alexei had told her that it lacked the grace and beauty of Leningrad, that Moscow was a dirty industrial dump. But he was wrong. What he’d omitted to mention was that the new capital was bursting with infectious energy. There was a kind of spark in its streets. An eagerness. It made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. And hanging over it all was the unmistakable smell of power in the air.

Moscow was the future. No question.

But was it her future? More importantly, was it Papa’s?

‘I’m here, Papa,’ she whispered. ‘I’m back.’

‘I don’t know what you’re looking so damn pleased about.’ Elena was staring with annoyance at Lydia.

‘I was thinking,’ Lydia said as she inspected the shabby room they’d just entered, ‘thank goodness Alexei is not with us. He would hate this place.’

‘I hate this place.’

‘It’ll do us. It’s our first step. Now we’re here, we can start searching properly. Anyway I’ve seen worse,’ Lydia laughed. ‘I’ve actually lived in worse.’

‘More fool you,’ Elena grunted and plonked herself down on a bed. The springs pinged with a metallic screech.

‘The room is small, I admit.’ Lydia started to pace slowly round it, trying to find something positive to say. The air was musty, heavy with the long lost hopes of past occupants. The wallpaper was stained and peeling in places. One of the window panes was cracked and an electric cable stuck out of the wall above one of the beds, ending in a spray of naked wires. It looked to Lydia horribly like a snake with its head cut off.

‘The ceiling’s nice,’ she said. It was high and decorated with elaborate cornices. ‘And the floor. It may be battered but it’s solid parquet.’

Elena rolled her eyes in disgust. ‘Look at the rugs.’

‘So the poloviki are a bit old. But what do you expect in a communalka?’

‘ Nichevo, ’ Elena groaned. ‘Nothing.’

‘Well, that’s what we’ve got. Nichevo.’

That wasn’t strictly true. They had a roof over their heads. That’s what mattered to Lydia and she wasn’t fussy about what was under that roof. She’d learned the hard way. While living from hand to mouth with her mother in Junchow, the sight of the rent money ready in the blue bowl on the mantelpiece made the difference between eating and not eating, between sleeping and not sleeping, between being warm and being cold. The living quarters they had been allocated here in Moscow were situated in the Sokolniki district. It was one of the smoky industrial sectors, squeezed between a tyre factory that belched out disgusting smells and a small brick building in which a family manufactured dog leads. The house was divided up into numerous apartments, with a courtyard at its centre and a booth at its front which did shoe repairs as well as sharpening knives and scissors. It was run by an Armenian with three gold teeth. Popkov declared he was working for OGPU, the secret police, but Lydia didn’t believe a word of it. Popkov claimed everyone was informing for OGPU. But if that were true it seemed to Lydia that there’d be no one left to inform on. She craned her neck back now and gazed up at the ceiling. It was solid. Yes, prettiness was an extra bonus when you lay in bed. But its solidity was what mattered.