Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

‘He was one of the chief advisers to the Tsar before… all this.’ She balanced her chin on his chest and looked up at him.

‘You know nothing more? Just that he was moved to Moscow?’

‘I have the prison number.’

‘What is it?’

‘Number 1908.’

He narrowed his eyes, contemplating the possibilities and the impossibilities, while she laid her cheek on his naked chest and remained quiet. He looked down at the glorious tangle of hair and the clean line of her forehead. How could he tell her? How could he make her see that maybe her father wouldn’t welcome her interference? That perhaps it could put at risk a life he was building for himself now.

Lydia slipped into her room, her valenki boots dangling in one hand so as to make no noise in her stocking feet. It was snowing outside, the night suddenly alive with huge damp flakes. As Chang had walked her through the icy streets of Moscow she’d asked him about China. He talked of his travels in Canton and of city life in Shanghai, but she knew his voice better than she knew her own. She could sense the secrets hiding like shadows behind his words. She didn’t push or pry. But what he didn’t say frightened her. Her hand tucked into his and she held him safe.

At the corner of her road he kissed her goodbye and she rested her forehead against his cold cheekbone.

‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Tomorrow.’

She didn’t turn on the light in the room, but threw off the wet blanket and knew she wouldn’t sleep.

‘So you’re back.’

Lydia froze. ‘You’re up early, Elena.’

‘And you’re up late.’

‘I was restless. I went for a walk.’

They were both talking in whispers and Lydia realised with relief that Liev must be still asleep. She could just make out Elena’s bulk in the chair. How long had she been sitting like that?

‘You went for a walk?’

‘Yes.’

Elena gave a low laugh. ‘ Malishka , little one, it’s me you’re talking to, not the Cossack. I am a whore and I know the smell of men and the smell of sex. You stink of both.’

The night hid the flush that rose to Lydia ’s cheeks. She started to undress, to peel off the clothes that belonged to Elena, unconsciously smelling them, searching for Chang.

‘Elena, it’s kind of you to sit up for me but you don’t need to worry so much. I can take care of myself.’

‘Can you?’

‘Yes .’

Elena gave a little snort. ‘Come here, malishka.’

Lydia tugged her nightdress down over her head, went over to the chair and knelt down beside it, so that their heads were close. In the unlit room eyes were just dark holes in pale moons. Elena’s hand found Lydia ’s shoulder.

‘Leave him, Lydia. Let the Chinese go.’

It hurt. Even the thought of it hurt.

‘Why do you say such a thing, Elena?’

‘Because he’s no good for you. No, don’t look away, listen to what I’m saying. Why would a Chinese Communist be so interested in a little Russian chit of a girl?’

Lydia wanted to shout Because he loves me, of course, but the question made her nervous. It was one she had asked herself a thousand times.

‘Why do you think, Elena?’ she enquired softly.

‘He wants to get between your sheets, that goes without saying: a Western girl notch on his bedpost.’

‘Don’t.’

‘But that isn’t the main reason, is it?’

‘No.’ Now she would hear the words she wanted: It’s because he loves you.

‘It’s because he’s using you, girl. Simple as that.’

‘Using me?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘That’s for you to find out. You’re not stupid. Maybe the Chinese have ordered him to find out through your friendship with that Russian officer what is going on behind the smiles at the Kremlin. Who knows?’

‘No, you’re wrong. Wrong, I tell you.’ She couldn’t swallow.

‘Hush, malishka . You’ll wake Liev.’ Suddenly her hand touched Lydia ’s cheek, a brief caress in the dark room. ‘What is it? Is he keeping secrets from you, little one? Can you trust him?’

Lydia pulled away angrily, remembering the shadows behind Chang’s words. ‘More to the point, can I trust you?’

‘Hah, a good question. But think about this, girl. What future is there in it for him? Or for you?’

‘Elena,’ she said, flat and firm so that Elena would know. ‘I trust him. I trust him with my life.’

‘More fool you, girl.’ She leaned closer, her nightclothes musty. ‘I don’t want to see you hurt.’

‘I won’t be. Not by him.’

A silence trickled into the room, a small stream of it between them, and they both waited to see who would be first to cross it.

‘Picture this,’ Elena whispered in a rush. ‘That your Soviet admirer, this Malofeyev, knows about you and your Chinese friend. And that is why he brought you only food today, instead of the information you want on Jens Friis. He is jealous. He doesn’t like you being with another man and so will not be as obliging as he might. It seems you can’t have both, little one. Your Chinese or your father. You must choose.’

Lydia rose from her knees. She uttered no sound, but curled up on her bed and pulled the damp blanket over her head. The ache inside her throat was strangling her. She thrust Elena’s words away into somewhere dark and unreachable, and instead she flooded her mind with the hours spent in the room with the crucifix on the wall, holding those moments up to the light. Polishing them. Making them shine.

Jens found his mind distracted. The nightmares visited more often. They broke his routine, chipped his night’s sleep into pieces. He was restless, pacing the workroom for hours on end, aware that the challenge he had so relished over the past months had turned sour in his mouth as it came closer to completion.

Not like when he first came to this unit. Then it had been a dream come true. This was work, real work, the kind of engineering he had been bred to. It was what he’d craved, the way a drowning man craves air. He used to wake up each morning convinced that he had finally died, slumped over his shovel on the icy wastes of the labour camp and been transported up to heaven. Ahead of him stretched a day of handling pens and papers and brass callipers, instead of skin freezing to axes and shovels and guts weeping with hunger. Even now, every day, he opened his eyes and couldn’t believe his good fortune.

The prison camp had been bad. That’s as far as he ever allowed his mind to go, no further. Twelve years of bad but now it had ended. He didn’t let it into his head any more, not into his conscious mind anyway. But he didn’t pretend to himself. He knew it was in there somewhere, hiding deep in the darkest coils where it only slithered out at night. So he had dreams. Nightmares. So what? He shrugged them off as a minor inconvenience. If people regarded a few unpleasant dreams as bad , they hadn’t been in a camp.

Since he’d learned of his daughter’s search, thoughts of Valentina and Lydia were distracting him, stirring up emotions he had long ago forgotten how to handle. Especially as now there was Olga. He ceased his pacing. Here in this safe and cosy haven he had rediscovered things. Things he valued. Work. Warmth. Food. And love? Yes, even that. A kind of love, very different from what he’d known before, but still love. He’d thought it had vanished from his heart for ever but it had sneaked in through hairline cracks in the shell he’d constructed around himself. He smiled because he knew now from Olga, a scientist, that a smile sent certain chemicals racing to the brain, chemicals that magically made you feel better. And God knows, he needed to feel better. She’d taught him that the more you smile, the more you want to smile. So he practised it each day, and the muscles around his mouth that had grown stiff and gritty with disuse started to soften and come to life.