Kate Furnivall: The Russian Concubine

‘But now Chang An Lo is in prison.’

His long face studied hers intently. ‘Yes.’

‘Can’t you do something? Please. To get him out.’

‘Lydia, don’t be foolish, this isn’t a game. Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang army are at war with the Communists. They slaughter each other every day, sometimes hundreds at a time. Chang knew that when he walked into Captain Wah’s arms. So no, I can’t get him out.’

‘But Alexei, he stuck up a few posters, that’s all. Surely not enough to…’

He barked out a scornful laugh. ‘Don’t be absurd. He’s a trained code breaker. One of their best. That’s why the Kuomintang are interrogating him now before…’ He stopped.

There was a silence in the room so crystal clear that Valentina’s soft footsteps could be heard pacing up and down outside the door. It had taken a lot of ‘discussion’ to convince Valentina that Lydia owed the Russian this courtesy.

‘Alexei.’

‘Whatever it is you want, Miss Ivanova, the answer is no.’

‘You are in a powerful position, Alexei.’

He stood up quickly and gathered his gloves to him. ‘Time for me to leave.’

The walls of Alexei Serov’s office were painted bright yellow on the top half and a drab olive green on the bottom half. His desk was gunmetal grey and the floor just bare boards. Lydia regarded it with distaste as she sat silently on a bentwood chair in a corner and watched Alexei plough through a pile of paperwork. She noticed the way his brown hair, though still short, was starting to curl again behind his ear and the speed with which he scanned each document in front of him. But she was irritated by him. How could he sit there so calmly when elsewhere in the building Chang An Lo was…? Was what?

In pain? On a rack? In chains?

Dead?

Twice she interrupted him. ‘Is he coming?’

Twice Alexei had sighed, lifted his head, and looked at her with disapproval.

‘I’ve given the order for him to be brought to my office. That’s overstepping my mark as it is. I can do no more. This is China. Be patient.’

She sat there for two hours and forty minutes. Then the door opened.

Lydia’s face made Chang An Lo’s heart burst into life again inside his chest. Her smile filled the drab little room. Her hair. It set the air itself on fire. He ought to have known she’d come, that somehow she’d reach him. He should have believed.

She leaped to her feet, but the Russian at the desk gave her a warning look. So she stood quietly in the corner, her tawny eyes focused on Chang’s face, her fingers tugging at her coat buttons as if she would tear off her clothes if she could. Behind him two Chinese soldiers stood at attention and he knew that if he gave the yellow-bellied worms the slightest excuse, they would delight in joining the imprints of their rifle butts to the marks already on his back. But he was certain their farm brains would know no English.

‘Chang An Lo,’ the Russian said formally, ‘I have summoned you here to answer some questions.’

Chang kept his gaze firmly on the Russian. In English he said, ‘The sight of you brings joy to my heart and makes my blood thunder in my veins.’

The Russian blinked. A small sound escaped from Lydia but the guards behind him stood silent.

‘I know not how long I will be allowed to stand here. So there are words I must say. That you are the moon and the stars to me, and the air I breathe. To love you is to live. So if I die…,’ another raw sound from Lydia, ‘… I will still live in you.’

The Russian could take no more. ‘For God’s sake, that’s enough,’ he snapped.

But Chang was barely aware of anyone other than Lydia in the room. He let his eyes move to the corner. Her gaze met his and he felt such a surge of desire for her that he knew he was not ready to die yet.

Abruptly the Russian was ordering the guards out of the room and following them through the door himself.

‘You have two minutes, no more,’ he said briskly.

Chang An Lo moved toward Lydia. He opened his arms and she stepped into them.

Theo opened the drawer and removed the pipe with care. He ran a hand over its long ivory stem and felt the ancient carvings on it talk to him through his fingertips. The need to keep it safe, to have it there at his bedside just in case, was so strong he knew he had to destroy it. Ever since that strange day at the farmhouse with Alfred and Liev Popkov he’d had an acute awareness that his life was too fragile to take risks with anymore.

Maybe it was all that crazy strutting about with a gun in his hand that did it. Or the violent death of Po Chu. Or the impending execution of the Communist.

Death was whispering in his ear.

Or was it the curt letter from Mason severing all future contact? That had mystified Theo. What in hell had changed that bastard’s mind?

All he knew for certain now was that he wanted more from life. For himself. For his beloved school. And for Li Mei. He raised his gaze from the pipe in his hands and looked at her. She wore no jewellery, no face paint, and her hair was pulled back from her face in a severe knot, a white flower pinned to it, all signs of her mourning for her brother. She was sitting at the window, her hands folded over each other on her lap, her almond eyes watching him. Only the tick of a tiny muscle at the side of her mouth betrayed how much she wanted this.

Slowly he lifted the pipe up above his head, holding it with both hands like a sacred offering to the gods, and for a brief second his mind yearned again for the swirl of the sweet smoke. But Theo didn’t listen. The pipe came swinging down with force, right onto the brass rail at the foot of the bed. The ivory shattered. Pieces skittered across the room and one brushed against Li Mei’s small foot. She kicked it away.

‘Now will you say yes?’ Theo demanded.

Her black eyes were bright with happiness. ‘Ask me again.’ ‘Will you marry me, Li Mei?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tiyo.’

‘What is it?’

‘She’s there again. At the gate.’

‘Who?’

‘The Chinese woman.’

‘Ignore her.’

‘Perhaps she wants her cat back.’

‘You mean Yeewai?’

‘Yes. The creature used to be hers. And now you say her husband has been executed and his boat taken, as well as her daughter, there’s no reason why you couldn’t give the animal back to…’

‘If she wants the cat, let her ask.’

‘I don’t like the woman, Tiyo. Or her cat. There are bad spirits around her head.’

‘Superstitious claptrap, my love. There’s no harm in her. But if it’ll please you, I’ll give her a few dollars next time I go out.’

‘Yes, do that, Tiyo. It might help.’

But when Theo drove out, there was no sign of Yeewai’s previous owner and he gave her no thought. The traffic across town was slow, the streets full of Saturday shoppers, so it took him longer than he expected to reach Alfred’s house and he was annoyed at being late. In the days that were to follow, he would go over these moments again and again in his mind, trying to get them straight and in the right order, to see if anything could have been done differently. But some were fuzzy and indistinct. His arrival was one of those. He remembered backing the Morris Cowley into the drive and leaving it near the open gates because Alfred’s big Armstrong Siddeley was already taking up most of the space. But after that, nothing until Alfred was clapping him on the shoulder.

‘Good to see you, old chap. I know Lydia is longing to thank you.’

It didn’t look like that to Theo. She was standing by the window in the drawing room, holding herself very stiffly. Either the girl was in pain or she was on guard. Could be both. Theo followed her line of sight to see what she was staring at outside. Nothing. Just an old garden shed. She didn’t look well. Gaunt cheeked. Her skin transparent. Her mouth was pulled tight with strain and her amber eyes seemed to have turned several shades darker. Yet something in them gleamed, as if there were a bright light deep down there, a kind of fire he had not seen in them before. He remembered that, when he conjured up her image later. That fire.