The Russian Concubine Part 19

'Chyort vosmi! Lydia!' Lydia!'

'That's absurd.' Parker frowned at her. 'Who's been filling your head with such ridiculous lies?'

'A friend.' Was she out of her mind? Was she out of her mind? 'He's Chinese.' 'He's Chinese.'

Valentina sat forward abruptly, her fingernails clicking on the stem of her gla.s.s. 'And who exactly is this Chinese friend?' Her voice was icy.

'He saved my life.'

There was a shocked silence at the table, and then Valentina burst out laughing. 'Darling, you are such a liar. Where did you really meet him?'

'In the library.'

'Ah, I see,' Parker said. 'That explains it. A left-wing intellectual. All talk and no action.'

'You must stay away from him, darling. Look what the intellectuals did to Russia. Ideas are dangerous.' She rapped her knuckles sharply on the table. 'I absolutely forbid you to see this Chinese again.'

'Oh, don't fret, Mama. You needn't worry. He might as well be dead for all I care.'

'Miss Ivanova, I do believe. How very interesting to find you here of all places.'

Lydia had just left the ladies' powder room and was threading her way back through the tables and the chatter when she heard the woman's voice behind her. She turned and looked up into an amused cool pale blue stare.

'Countess Serova,' she said with surprise.

'Still wearing that dress, I see.'

'I like this dress.'

'My dear, I like chocolate but I don't eat it all the time. Let me introduce you to my son.'

She stepped to one side to give Lydia a full view of the young man behind her. He had a long face and was tall like his mother with her thick curling brown hair and the same haughty manner that made one side of his mouth curl up and his eyes half closed, as if the world weren't worth the effort of opening them fully.

'Alexei, this is young Lydia Ivanova. From St Petersburg also. Her mother is a piano player.'

'A concert pianist, actually,' Lydia corrected.

The countess conceded a smile.

'Good evening, Miss Ivanova.' His voice was crisp. He gave a fractional nod of his head and fixed his gaze somewhere around her hairline. 'I hope you are enjoying a pleasant evening.'

'I'm having a simply wonderful time, thank you. The food is so good here, don't you think?' It was the sort of thing she thought her mother might say, all light and gay and too good to be true.

But his reply was brief. 'Yes.'

They hovered on the edge of an awkward silence.

'Must dash,' Lydia said quickly.

She turned back to the countess and caught her staring across the room directly at Valentina, who had her head bent close to Alfred Parker's, talking softly. Lydia thought her mother looked more beautiful than ever tonight, so vivid in the navy and white dress, hair almost black in the soft lighting and piled on top of her head, her lips a carmine red. It was a surprise to Lydia that the whole restaurant wasn't staring.

'Nice to meet you again, Countess. Good evening. Do svidania Do svidania.'

'Ah, so tonight you can speak Russian, it seems.'

Lydia had no intention of stepping into that trap, so she just smiled and headed back to her table, remembering Miss Roland's instructions at school. 'Lead with your hips 'Lead with your hips, girls, at all times. If you want to walk like a lady, you must lead with your hip girls, at all times. If you want to walk like a lady, you must lead with your hips.' As she sat down,Valentina looked up and noticed Countess Natalia Serova and her son across the room. Lydia saw her mother's eyes widen and then turn abruptly away, and when the Serovas pa.s.sed their table a few moments later, neither woman acknowledged the other.

Lydia picked up one of the mint chocolates that came with the coffee. She decided she could definitely get used to this.

They left her outside the front door.

'Sleep well, darling.'

Valentina's fingers waved through the front pa.s.senger window of Parker's car as if they were trying to escape and then disappeared from view. The black Armstrong Siddeley trundled up to the corner, too big and boisterous for the narrow confines of the street, flashed its brake light at Lydia, and was gone. Off to a nightclub, they said. The Silver Slipper. She stood alone in the dark. The church clock struck eleven. She counted each stroke. The Silver Slipper. If you dance there after midnight, do you turn into a pumpkin? Or even a countess?

She pushed aside such strange thoughts, unlocked the door, and started up the stairs. Her legs felt lifeless now, as if she'd left it all behind in the restaurant, and there was a dull ache somewhere inside her head. She wasn't sure if it was the heavy humid night air or the wine settling under her scalp like a layer of lead. She knew she should feel happy. She'd had an exciting evening, hadn't she? Alfred Parker had been attentive and courteous. More to the point, he was generous. Exactly what they needed. Life was looking up. So why did she still feel so bad? What the h.e.l.l was wrong with her? Why was there this sick weight in her stomach, there all the time as if she had influenza?

She pushed open the door to the attic. Parker wasn't doing it for her, she knew that. He'd caught her thieving and he'd caught her lying. He was the kind of man who had principles the way their attic had c.o.c.kroaches, and an unshakable grip on his belief in what was right and what was wrong. All that backbone-of-England stuff, for G.o.d and King Harry. A straight bat, isn't that what the English called it? A good egg. She gave a sharp little huff of annoyance. A man like Parker romped around on the moral high ground because he could indulge himself, as thoughtlessly as he could indulge himself in a posh French restaurant. He wouldn't bend.

Until now. Now he had met Valentina.

She struck a match in the dark, lit the solitary candle on the table, and instantly was surrounded by writhing shadows leaping up the wall and stalking the small circle of light. It was unbearably hot in the room. The window was partly open but she could hardly breathe. She yanked the dress impatiently over her head to let the sultry air touch her skin and maybe ease the hollow ache.

'Don't do that.'

Lydia gasped at the sound of the voice. Though it was soft, she knew it instantly and her heart tightened in her chest. She spun around but could make out no one in the room.

'Who's there?' she shouted, her heart thumping. 'Don't skulk in the dark.'

'I'm here.' The curtain to her own bedroom area twitched.

She strode over and swept the curtain aside. It was Chang An Lo. He was sitting on her bed.

'Get out.'

'Listen to me, Lydia Ivanova. Listen to what I tell you.'

'I have have listened. You stole listened. You stole my my ruby necklace, sold it down south somewhere, and gave the money away. I heard all right. And you expect me to believe you?' ruby necklace, sold it down south somewhere, and gave the money away. I heard all right. And you expect me to believe you?'

'Yes.'

'You are a lying, thieving, rotten, conniving, unscrupulous, filthy rat.' She was storming up and down the room, completely indifferent to the fact she was wearing only her underwear. 'And I wish I'd let that policeman put a bullet through your black heart when I had the chance.'

'I came to tell you . . .'

'To tell me you robbed me. Well, thanks very much. Now leave.' She pointed a finger at the door.

' . . . to tell you why I did it.'

The false-hearted toad was still standing in the centre of the room, as calm and cool as if he had brought her flowers instead of lies, and that just made her want to choke him. She'd trusted him, that's how stupid she was, she'd trusted him, she who trusted no one. And what had he done? Just trailed her trust through the sewer and torn a raw hole in her insides.

'Get out,' she yelled. 'Go on, get out of here. I know why you did it and I don't want to hear a bunch of lies from you, so . . .'

A loud knock on the door stopped her. A voice called out, 'Are you all right, Lydia?'

It was Mr Yeoman from downstairs.

Lydia's eyes met Chang's, and for the first time she saw danger in them. He was up on his toes, ready to strike.

'No,' she whispered harshly to him. 'No.'

'Are you having a spot of bother, dear? Do you need any help?'

Mr Yeoman was an old man, no match for Chang. Lydia rushed to the door and opened it a crack. He was standing on the landing, his white hair bristling, a bra.s.s poker in his hand.

'I'm okay, Mr Yeoman, thanks. Really. Just . . . arguing with a . . . a friend. Sorry we disturbed you.'

His bright bird eyes peered at her, unconvinced. 'Are you sure I can't help?'

'Sure. Thanks anyway.'

She closed the door and leaned against it, breathing hard. Chang had not moved.

'You have good neighbours,' he said in a quiet voice.

'Yes,' she said more calmly, 'neighbours who don't trick me with sly words.' By the teasing light of the candle she could see the skin of his face grow taut across his high cheekbones and he started to speak, but she hurried on, 'And if my mother should walk in now and find you here, she'd skin you alive, with or without your kung fu kung fu kicks. So . . . ,' she reached for her dress and slipped it on, 'we will go out into the street, you can tell me what it is you came to say, and then I never want to see you again. Understand?' kicks. So . . . ,' she reached for her dress and slipped it on, 'we will go out into the street, you can tell me what it is you came to say, and then I never want to see you again. Understand?'

She heard his intake of breath, and it seemed to suck the air from her lungs. 'I understand.'

She led him to a house two streets away. It was more of a sh.e.l.l than a house because it had burned down nine months ago but still lay like a blackened tooth stump in the middle of the brick terrace, and it had become home to bats and rats and the occasional feral dog. Much of what remained had been scavenged, but the outer walls still stood and gave a sense of privacy despite the lack of a roof. Rain had started to fall, a soft gloomy drizzle that sweetened the air and made Lydia's skin twitch.

'So?' She stood and faced him.

Chang took his time. In silence he made himself a part of the darkness and seemed to glide through the ruined rooms, no more solid than the wind that rippled up from the river and cooled Lydia's bare arms. When he was satisfied no others had taken refuge behind the black piles of rubble, he came back to her.

'Now we talk,' he said. 'I came to see you so that we would talk.'

The faintest remnants from the street lamp on the far corner trickled into the s.p.a.ce between them, and Lydia looked at Chang carefully. There was a change in him. She couldn't see how or what, but it was there. She could feel it. As she could feel the rain on her face. There was a new sadness at the corners of his mouth that tugged at her and made her want to listen to his heart, to learn why it was beating so slow. But instead she tossed her head and reminded herself that he'd used her, that all his concern for her was worth nothing. Just lies and rat droppings.

'So talk,' she said.

'It would have killed you.'

'What?'

'The necklace.'

'You're crazy.' She had visions of it throttling her as she tried it on.

'No, my words are true. You would have taken it to Junchow old town, to one of those snake holes that ask no questions. They rob the thieves that come to their doors but keep their hands white and clean. But no one would touch this necklace, no one would take that risk.'

'Why?'

'Because already it was known that it was meant as a gift for Madame Chiang Kai-shek. So you would have returned empty-handed and before you reached home you would be dead in a gutter, the necklace gone.'

'You're trying to frighten me.'

'If I wanted to frighten you, Lydia Ivanova, there are many more things I could say.'

Again his mouth revealed a sorrow that the rest of his face denied. She studied his lips with care and believed them. Standing in the rain in the middle of the filthy ruin under a night sky as black as death, she felt a cold rush of relief. She breathed deeply.

'It seems I owe you my life yet again,' she said with a shiver.

'We are involved, you and I.' His hand moved through the gap of yellow streetlight that lay between them and touched her arm, a faint brush of skin, no more than a moth's wing in the darkness. 'Our fates are sewn together as surely as you st.i.tched the flesh of my foot together.'

His voice was as soft as his touch. Lydia felt the solid ball of anger inside her tremble and start to melt; she could feel it trickling through her veins and out through the pores of her skin into the rain where it was washed away. But what if these were lies too? More lies from those lips of his that could make her believe his words. She wrapped her arms around her body and refused to let the small hard core of her anger escape. She needed it. It was her armour.

'Involvement means sharing, doesn't it?' she said. 'And it doesn't alter the fact that the necklace was was mine. If you sold it somewhere in the south where they don't know the importance of it, then at least we should share the money. That sounds fair to me. Fifty-fifty.' She held out a hand. mine. If you sold it somewhere in the south where they don't know the importance of it, then at least we should share the money. That sounds fair to me. Fifty-fifty.' She held out a hand.

He laughed. It was the first time she'd heard him laugh and it did something strange to her. It made her mind uncurl. For that one fleeting moment she forgot the endless struggle.

'You are like a she-fox, Lydia Ivanova, you sink your teeth in and never let go.'

She wasn't sure if that was an insult or a compliment but didn't stop to find out. 'How much did you get for it?'

His black eyes watched her face, and still the laugh lingered on his lips. 'Thirty-eight thousand dollars.'

She sat down abruptly. On a low ragged wall. Put her head in her hands. 'Thirty-eight thousand dollars. A fortune,' she whispered. 'My fortune.'

The silence was broken only by something scuttling across the floor and making a dash for the doorway. Chang stamped on it. It was a weasel.

'Thirty-eight thousand,' Lydia repeated slowly, rolling the words around her tongue like honey.