The Russian Concubine Part 28

But Valentina wasn't listening. She was pouring herself a drink. Into a gla.s.s, not a cup, Lydia noticed, another sign of Alfred's generosity.

Her mother walked over to the replaced mirror on the wall and stared at her reflection as she took a first taste of the vodka.

'I am old,' she murmured and ran a hand down her cheek and throat, over the rise of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hip. 'Old and scrawny as a sewer dog with worms.'

'Don't, Mama. Don't start that. You are beautiful, everyone says so, and you are only thirty-five.'

'This stinking climate is destroying my skin.' She put her face right up close to the mirror and ran a finger slowly around her eyes.

'Vodka ruins your skin faster.'

Her mother said nothing, just tipped her head back and emptied the alcohol down her throat, and then for a brief moment she closed her eyes.

Lydia turned away and looked out the window instead. The old woman in the rocking chair had fallen asleep and the two urchins were trying to slide the half-plucked bird from her grasp, but even in sleep her fingers clung on. Lydia leaned out and shouted at them. They stopped their thieving and ran off down the street with their pillowcase of feathers. Above the rooftops the sky was streaked with lilac tendrils as the sun started to slide away from China, but Lydia was not to be distracted.

'What did that man want, Mama?'

Valentina was at the table, refilling her gla.s.s. 'Money. Isn't that what everyone wants?'

'You didn't give him any.'

'How could I give him money when I don't have any?'

Lydia considered s.n.a.t.c.hing the vodka bottle away and pouring it out the window, but she'd tried that once and knew it didn't work. It was like pushing a stick into a wasp's nest. It only made her worse.

'I thought you were going to work at the hotel this evening.'

Valentina gave her a look that made it quite clear what she thought of work and hotels. 'Not tonight, darling. They can stuff their work up their own fat backsides. I'm sick of it. Sick to b.l.o.o.d.y death of their groping hands and their thrashing hips. I want to chop them all up into tiny pieces, like steak tartare. steak tartare.'

'It's just a job, Mama. You don't really hate it.'

'I do. It's true. They sweat. They stink. They put their hands where they shouldn't and where they wouldn't if I were one of their own kind. They want to f.u.c.k me.'

'Mama!'

'And Alfred too. That's what he wants to do.'

'I thought he came and bought all your dances to protect you from the others.'

'When he can.' She sipped her drink. The gla.s.s was fuller this time. 'But often he has to work late for deadlines at his newspaper office.' She fluttered her fingers in the air. 'Such rubbish they all write. As if this colony were the centre of the universe.'

'How did that Russian man find me here?'

Her mother shrugged eloquently. 'How the h.e.l.l should I know, darling? Use your head. From the police, I suppose.'

Valentina was wearing an old cotton dress that she hated but deigned to put on in the house to save her few other clothes for best. It always put her in a bad mood, and Lydia swore that tomorrow she would throw it in the trash. For now, she went over to the stove and started chopping up the piece of yam.

'Dochenka, something occurred to me today.'

'That vodka can kill you?'

'Don't be so impudent. No, it occurred to me to wonder where the money came from to redeem Alfred's watch from the p.a.w.nbroker. Tell me.'

The knife hesitated in Lydia's hand.

'The truth, Lydia. No more lies.'

Lydia put down the knife and turned to face her mother, but she was back in front of the mirror staring at her reflection. It seemed to give her no pleasure.

'It happened when I was walking past the burned-out house in Melidan Road,' Lydia said casually. 'Two people were shouting at each other in there, a man and a woman.'

'So? Are you saying these people gave you the money?'

'Sort of. The woman threw a handful of silver at the man and then they both shouted some more and left. So I went in and picked up the money from the floor. It wasn't stealing. It was just lying there for anyone to find.'

Valentina narrowed her eyes suspiciously. 'Is that the truth?'

'Honestly.'

'Very well. But it was wicked of you to steal the watch in the first place.'

'I know, Mama. I'm sorry.'

Valentina turned and studied her daughter critically for a minute. She shook her head. 'You look an awful mess. Quite horrible. What on earth have you been up to today?'

'I went to a funeral.'

'Looking like that!'

'No, I borrowed some clothes.'

'Whose funeral?' She was turning back to the mirror, losing interest.

'A friend of a friend. No one you know.'

Lydia finished chopping the yam and wrapped it in a sc.r.a.p of old greaseproof paper, then took a large bowl of water into her bedroom and proceeded to strip off her damp dress and grimy shoes. She washed herself all over and brushed her hair till every last morsel of dirt and dust was out of it. She must make more effort with her appearance or Chang An Lo would never look at her the way he'd looked at the Chinese girl with the fine features and the short black hair at the funeral today. Their heads close together. Like lovers.

'Better?'

'My darling, you look adorable.'

Lydia had put on the concert dress and shoes. She wasn't sure why.

'I don't look horrible anymore, do I, Mama?'

'No, sweetheart, you look like peaches and cream.' Valentina was wearing only her oyster-silk slip now, her long hair loose around her bare shoulders. She placed her empty gla.s.s on the table and came to stand in front of Lydia. Even half drunk she moved gracefully. But her eyes looked suspiciously red at the rims, as if she might have been crying silently while Lydia was behind her curtain, or it could just be the vodka talking. She cupped Lydia's face in her hands and studied her daughter intently, a slight frown placing a crease between the finely arched eyebrows.

'One day soon you will be truly beautiful.'

'Don't be silly, Mama. You will always be the beautiful one in this family.'

Valentina smiled, and Lydia knew she had said the right thing.

'You will be pleased to hear, little one, that I have tonight decided to create a new me. A modern me.'

Her mother released her face and headed for the drawer beside the blackened stove. Lydia experienced a sudden unease. It was where the knives were kept. But it wasn't a knife her mother picked out, but a pair of long-bladed scissors.

'No, Mama, don't, please don't. You'll see everything differently in the morning. It's only the drink that's . . .'

Valentina stood in front of the mirror, seized a great handful of her dark hair, and sliced it off at jaw level.

Neither spoke. Both were shocked by the image in the mirror. It was brutal. Lopsided and bewildered. The reflection of a woman who was lost between two worlds.

Lydia recovered first. 'Let me finish it for you or you won't get it straight. I'll make it look smart, really chic.'

She gently took the scissors from her mother's rigid hand and proceeded to cut. Each snip of the blades felt like treachery to her father. Valentina had always told her how he'd adored her long hair and described how he used to stand behind her each night before going to bed and brush it into a silky smooth curtain with long, slow strokes that set it crackling full of sparks. Like shooting stars in a night sky, he used to say. Now the soft waves lay like dead birds at her feet. When the act was finished, Lydia picked them up, wrapped them in a white scarf of her mother's, and laid the slender bundle under her pillow. It deserved a proper funeral.

To her surprise, her mother was smiling. 'Better,' she said.

Valentina shook her head from side to side and her hair bounced and swung playfully, curving into the nape of her neck and emphasising her long white throat.

'Much better,' she said again. 'And this is just the beginning of the new me.'

She lifted the half-empty bottle of Russian vodka off the table, walked over to the open window where the evening sky looked as if it were now on fire above the grey slate roofs, and stuck out her arm, tipping the clear liquid into the street without even a glance below.

Lydia watched.

'Happy now?' her mother asked.

'Yes.'

'Good. And no more dance hostess for me either.'

'But we need that money for our rent. Don't . . .'

'No. I have decided.'

Lydia began to panic. 'Perhaps I could do it instead. Become a dance hostess, I mean.'

'Don't be absurd, dochenka. dochenka. You are too young.' You are too young.'

'I could say I'm older than sixteen. And you know I dance well, you taught me.'

'No. I am not having men touch you.'

'Oh, Mama, don't be silly. I know how to look after myself.'

Valentina gave a sharp high laugh. She dropped the bottle onto the floor and seized her daughter's arm. She shook it hard.

'You know nothing of men, Lydia Ivanova, nothing, and that's the way I intend to keep it. So don't even think about such a job.' Her eyes were angry, and Lydia could not quite understand why.

'All right, Mama, all right, calm down.' She pulled her arm free and said carefully, 'But maybe I could find some other job.'

'No. We agreed a long time ago. You must get yourself an education.'

'I know, and I will. But . . .'

'No buts.'

'Listen, Mama, I know we said the only way for us to climb out of this stinking hole is for me eventually to get a decent job, a proper career, but until then how are we going to . . . ?'

'It is not not the only way.' the only way.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean there's another way.'

'How?'

'Alfred Parker.'

Lydia blinked and felt a rush of sour saliva in her mouth. 'No.' It was no more than a whisper.

'Yes.' Her mother tossed her newly bobbed hair. 'I have decided.'

'No, Mama, please don't.' Lydia's throat was dry. 'He's not good enough for you.'

'Don't be silly, my sweet. I'm sure his friends will say I'm not good enough for him.'

'That's rubbish.'

'Is it? Listen to me, Lydia. He's a good man. You never minded about Antoine, so why object to Alfred?'

'You were never serious about Antoine.'

'Well, I'm glad you realise I intend to be serious about Alfred.' She said it gently and lifted a strand of her daughter's shining hair between her fingers, as if to remember what long hair felt like. 'I want you to be nice to him.'

'Mama,' Lydia shook her head, 'I can't . . . because . . .'

'Because what?'

Lydia sc.r.a.ped the tip of one of her new shoes along the floor. 'Because he's not Papa.'

A strange little moan escaped Valentina's lips. 'Don't, Lydia, don't. That time is over. This is now.'