Kate Furnivall: The Russian Concubine

‘Listen.’

She listened. Heard nothing. Except the wind tearing at the trees. But her heart and stomach seemed to collide. ‘You’ll need that knife.’

The door was kicked open. It shrieked on its hinges and rebounded against the wall with a slam as a British army officer strode into the musty shed, his eyes quick and sharp. Behind him the grey uniforms of the Kuomintang hovered like leashed hounds on the trail.

Lydia leaped to her feet, wrapped in a blanket. ‘Get out! How dare you burst in here? This is private property.’

‘A warrant.’ The officer waved a piece of paper rudely in her face. ‘Don’t play innocent, miss. Where is he?’

Already hands were rummaging through the blankets, among the boxes and cobwebs and old cans as if their prey might be hiding in one. It was when they yanked the sacks away from the back wall that the Chinese captain with the stone-hard face swore and yelled at his men to search outside. Where the sacks had stood was a gaping hole. The bottom of two planks had been carefully sawn through and removed. Lydia’s afternoon of waiting had not been completely without purpose.

‘Where is he, miss?’ the English officer snapped.

‘Gone,’ she said. And again softly to herself. ‘Gone.’

The time following that night was fractured time for Lydia. The days passed but didn’t exist. Images flashing by, blurred and meaningless. Only the meeting with Polly stood out and held her attention.

‘Lydia, I’m sorry.’ Polly had turned up on the doorstep, bearing a gift of macaroons tied up in silk with a lavender ribbon. ‘Forgive me, Lyd. I only meant to do what seemed best for you.’

It was hard. To let go of the anger. But Lydia told herself that if Polly’s words had not drawn Po Chu’s men to her in the shed that day, they’d only have found her some other day. Some other place. It would have turned out the same in the end. The Box. The water jammed in her throat. The iron-toothed tweezers on her breast. Nothing would have changed all that.

So she smiled into Polly’s worried blue eyes and hugged her close. ‘It’s okay, I understand. Really I do. You thought you were looking after me but it didn’t go quite right.’

‘You see, my father…’

‘Hush, Polly, hush. Forget it. It wasn’t your fault. Your father does things sometimes that aren’t always right.’

But not anymore. Christopher Mason would not be doing things that weren’t right with his daughter anymore. So Lydia kissed her friend’s pale cheek and told her she would be leaving Junchow. Polly had cried, and they had clung to each other and promised to meet up again one day in London, in Trafalgar Square with the pigeons. Nothing else during those days was clear in Lydia’s mind. Until the morning that she was standing on the railway platform with Alfred, clutching a net of oranges under her arm and a ticket to Vladivostok in her hand. Then everything came into focus. Pin-sharp. So bright it hurt her mind.

The oily belch of the steam engine excited her. All around them crowds jostled, travellers shouted to each other, carriage doors banged. A porter heaved bags. Vendors pushed trays of baos and hot roasted peanuts in her face, rang their bells, and yelled their wares. Interweaving through it all like a yellow river drifted five Buddhist monks in saffron robes, murmuring prayers and scattering incense. Lydia put a coin in their begging bowls. To please Chang An Lo’s gods.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she said to Alfred.

‘My dear girl, can I not persuade you? Even now?’

‘No, Alfred. But I am grateful, really I am.’

She meant it. He had been astonishing. When he realised he couldn’t shift her from her decision, he pulled every string he could get his hands on and had turned Sir Edward Carlisle’s neat bureaucracy inside out to acquire a visa and passport for her so fast. Both were in a name that still sat strangely on her tongue. Lydia Parker.

‘A good British passport,’ Alfred had insisted. ‘That’s what gets you places in this world. It will protect you. The might of the British Empire, you know, right there behind you.’

He had a point. No doubting that. But she had more faith in herself than in his empire, so, unknown to her stepfather, another passport was hitched inside her waistband. A Russian one. Forged, of course. Name of Lydia Ivanova . Just in case. Part of the survival kit.

‘I’ll send you a wire, Alfred, I promise. As soon as I can.’

‘Do that, my girl. You know I’ll worry.’

She looked at his face and couldn’t understand how it had grown so dear to her. He had lost a few pounds and his brown eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into his head than… before. How had she once thought them pompous? She leaned forward and hugged him.

‘Sure you have enough money?’ he asked.

‘If I had any more golden guineas sewn into my clothes and glued inside the soles of my shoes, the train would need an extra engine to cart me over the mountains.’

He laughed. ‘Well, you’ve got my solicitor’s address in London, so you can always reach me and I can wire you money for a steamer ticket to England. I won’t stay much longer. Not now. Not here in China.’

She held on to his hand for a moment, trying to find the right words and failing. In the end she said with a smile, ‘Be happy in England. She’d want you to be.’

‘I know.’ His lips tightened. He nodded. Patted her arm. ‘Keep yourself safe, my dear girl. God be with you.’

‘I have my bear with me.’

She glanced into the carriage. Liev Popkov was seated there. His great fist was stroking his beard and somehow managed to make even that simple gesture threatening rather than thoughtful. Her own small leather suitcase rested beside him on the bench seat, safe as the Bank of England. Probably safer. Even Alfred laughed when he saw two men back quickly out of the compartment when they encountered Liev’s single black eye and outstretched legs, as if a buffalo had snorted in their faces.

The train guard started slamming doors. The smell of hot metal stung Lydia’s nostrils as another belch of steam sent black smut swirling up the platform. The engine heaved itself into life. Whistles shrieked. This was it. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but at the same time something was tearing apart in there and she couldn’t quite hold it together. She jumped up on the carriage step, and it was then that she saw the tall figure with the silk scarf, short brown hair, and lazy stride ambling along the platform, as if he had all the time in the world. He strolled up to her carriage and doffed his smart new fur cap to her.

‘Alexei.’ She grinned at him. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

‘Changed my mind. Not keen on this place anymore, a bit too chilly for me.’ He glanced over his shoulder toward the station entrance and though he kept it casual, she could spot the unease in his green eyes.

‘Too hot, I think you mean. Come on, Papa will be glad to see you,’ she said and stepped to one side.

Alexei gave her a look that she couldn’t read, but it didn’t matter. Her brother was here. He shook hands with Alfred, who muttered, ‘Good man, look after her,’ and then Alexei leaped easily into the carriage beside her.

‘We have company, I see,’ he drawled and stared suspiciously at the big greasy Russian.

Lydia laughed. This could get interesting. It was going to be a long journey.

The clouds overhead were moody and silver-edged as she took her seat. She leaned her head against the juddering window, drew in a deep breath, and released it slowly as Chang An Lo had taught her, watching the pane of glass mist up and obscure what was out there. What lay ahead terrified her. And thrilled her. She knew she could survive it. She’d said so many times. That was the one thing she was good at. Surviving. Hadn’t she proved it? Well, now she was going to help her father survive.