Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

Lydia stepped forward, seized a handful of Edik’s filthy jacket sleeve and yanked hard. His feet scrabbled on the ice.

‘Get off my-!’ He swung round, wide-eyed, realised who it was and grinned. ‘ Privet. Hello.’

‘Put it back.’

The grin fell off his face.

‘Put it back,’ she said again.

For a moment there was a wordless battle, then his shoulders slumped. He shuffled back to the man and easily replaced whatever it was he’d stolen. The boy refused to look at Lydia but she took hold of his sleeve again and dragged him back to their doorway.

‘That’s better,’ she said.

‘For you?’

‘No, stupid, for you.’

As they climbed the stairs, neither mentioned that his sleeve had torn and was hanging in tatters between her fingers.

‘Here, give her this.’

Lydia handed a piece of kolbasa sausage to the boy and, though he accepted it, he still wouldn’t look at her. He had sidled into their room and found a spot for himself on the floor, his back propped against the wall where even the ecstatic greeting of Misty, who had been left behind there, didn’t bring a smile to his sallow face. He broke off a chunk of sausage and popped it on the dog’s moist little tongue, then one on his own. Elena was seated in the chair, hands busy with needle and thread, a navy garment of some kind spread on her broad lap.

‘Sausage is too good for that animal,’ she grumbled.

Lydia wasn’t sure whether she meant the boy or the dog.

‘And what are you grinning at?’ Elena aimed the question at Lydia.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘Nothing.’

‘The kind of nothing that puts a smile the width of the moon on your face and a purr in that voice of yours?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Come on, girl, you look like a cat that’s landed in a bucket of cream.’

The boy laughed and stared up at Lydia, suddenly interested. Despite herself Lydia felt her cheeks start to burn.

‘Is it your brother?’ Elena pressed her. ‘Did Alexei turn up today?’

‘No.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I waited at the Cathedral but-’

‘I mean what else happened?’

Lydia looked at the boy. He and the dog were both watching her with bright eyes.

‘Nothing,’ she said and added a convincing shrug. ‘Nothing else, Elena. But today I’m hoping to hear from the Party member I was with at the Metropol reception. His name is Dmitri Malofeyev. I had no idea until I met his wife that he used to be the Commandant at Trovitsk camp where my father was held. It means he knows the right people to ask.’

‘You think he’ll help you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Why should he?’

‘Because…’ Lydia glanced awkwardly at the boy and back to Elena, ‘I think he likes me.’

Elena tied off her stitch, calmly bit through the thread and asked, ‘What then? When he gives you the information you want. What will you give this important Soviet official in return?’

Silence spread like oil in the room, smooth and thick and cloying. It seeped into Lydia ’s nostrils, making it hard for her to breathe. The only sounds were the little grey dog panting and the churning of the organ outside.

‘Elena,’ she spoke quickly, as if the words would do less harm all squashed together, ‘I have no choice. I can’t just sit here any more. Don’t you see? Liev goes out night after night searching for a slip from someone’s tongue, or a loose piece of grumbling from a cook or a guard who’s had one vodka too many. He’s trying. Chyort , I know he’s trying – to find out the whereabouts of this secret prison, number 1908. He’s asking dangerous questions in bars and taverns throughout Moscow. And it frightens me, Elena. It frightens me so much I-’ She stopped. Took a deep breath and forced the words to slow down. ‘I’m frightened that one night the stupid Cossack will ask the wrong person the wrong question and end up in a labour camp himself.’

Elena sat very still, hands in her lap. She said nothing but her colourless eyes forgot to blink and her mouth grew slack.

‘That fear haunts me, Elena. Every time the big bear goes out. Like now. Where is he? What is he doing? Who is he talking with? What bloody rifle barrel is he staring into?’ She looked down at her fingers knotted together and asked in a whisper, ‘How much should a person risk for love?’

Elena lifted a hand and ran it down her face, over her eyes and mouth until her fleshy chin sat cradled in her palm. The action seemed to bring her back to life and she stabbed the needle into the reel of thread with a shake of her head. ‘It’s his choice. No one is making him do it.’

‘But I want him to stop. Now. It’s too dangerous. But he won’t, I know he won’t.’

‘And this Soviet official, your Dmitri Malofeyev. Is he not dangerous? ’

‘I can handle him.’

Elena burst out laughing, a girlish sound that made the puppy bark. She rose heavily to her feet, shook out the garment she’d been stitching, revealing it to be an old but thick wool coat which she tossed carelessly to the boy.

‘Here, Edik. Shut your ears, wear this and get out of here, you and that fleabag of yours.’ She hesitated for a second and placed her hands on her ample hips, glancing round the room with a sudden tension that made the veins of her neck stand out. ‘I have enough to take care of here, I don’t need more.’

She walked over to the door and as she passed, an unexpected thing happened. She ran a hand down Lydia ’s hair, something she’d never done before. Her touch took Lydia by surprise and was far gentler than she would ever have imagined.

‘ Malishka , little one,’ Elena said softly, ‘that man eats girls like you for breakfast.’

Then she took down her coat from the hook behind the door and pulled on her galoshes, ran a comb through her dead-straw hair, wound a scarf around her head and left.

The boy stared at the door as it closed behind her. A sound came from him, a subdued kind of whimper that at first Lydia thought was the dog.

‘She doesn’t like me,’ he said.

Lydia went over and knelt on the hard floor in front of him, stroking the puppy’s fur as if it were a part of the boy. ‘Don’t be foolish. If she didn’t like you, why would she go to all the trouble of finding and patching up a coat for you?’

‘I don’t know.’

She ruffled his milk-white hair and let Misty lick her wrist. Reluctantly the boy dragged his gaze from the door, as though finally accepting that Elena wasn’t coming back for a while, and turned to look at Lydia.

After a moment he said, ‘I still don’t think she likes me.’

‘I think the trouble is that she likes you too much.’

The bones of his face seemed to hunch together, as if that thought was too hard to squeeze in between them. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Edik,’ Lydia said gently, ‘I think you remind her of her dead son.’

The organ grinder had ceased his music and the room felt empty without it. The light was growing smoky, as grey as Misty’s coat. Edik had fallen asleep curled up on the floor with his dog, and though the puppy was awake it lay still, one yellow eye on Lydia. When she stood up and moved over to the window to watch the square patch of sky above the courtyard turn from blue to lilac before it merged with the roofs, the puppy gave a low growl in the back of its throat. Although no more than a skinful of wobbly bones and milk teeth, already it was guarding its master.

That reassured Lydia. She wasn’t sure why she cared so much, but she did.

She wanted to be alone with her thoughts. They were hammering on her skull to be let out. I’ll find a way . That’s what Chang had said as they parted, I’ll find a way , and she believed him. If Chang An Lo promised he would find a way for them to be together – really be together, rather than the few snatched kisses of today – then he would. It was as simple as that.