The Russian Concubine Part 35

'Let's leave it there. Why don't we just finish our cakes and talk about . . . ,' he searched for a subject, ' . . . Christmas or the wedding.' He gave her an encouraging smile. 'Agreed?'

She returned his smile and withdrew her hand. 'Certainly. The wedding is set for January, isn't it?'

He nodded and his eyes grew bright at the thought. 'Yes, and I hope you're looking forward to it as much as your mother and I are.'

She picked up a sugar cube from the bowl and started to suck one corner of it. Parker didn't look pleased, but he pa.s.sed no comment.

'It seems to me,' she said gently, 'that the start of a marriage is an important time. You have to learn about each other, don't you, and get used to living together. Accept the other person's little habits and, well, foibles.'

'There's some truth in that,' he said carefully.

'So it seems to me,' she took a tiny bite out of the sugar and crunched it between her teeth, 'that having a ready-made daughter around could make the situation twice as . . . hard.'

He sat up straight, both hands flat on the table. His expression was stern. 'What are you implying here, Lydia?'

'Just that it would be extremely helpful to you if that daughter promised to do exactly as you told her. No arguments. No disobedience for, shall we say, the first three months of your new and, I'm sure, wonderful, married life?'

He closed his eyes. She could see his jaw clicking and unclicking. When he opened his eyes again they did not look as happy as she'd hoped.

'That is extortion, young lady.'

'No. It's a bargain.'

'And if I don't agree to this bargain?'

She shrugged and bit another piece off the cube.

'Are you threatening me, Lydia?'

'No. No, of course I'm not.' She leaned forward and the words tumbled out. 'All I'm doing is asking you to give me a chance, a fair chance to earn two hundred dollars. That's all.'

He shook his head, and the sugar tasted like ash in her mouth.

'You are a devious child, Lydia Ivanova, but this kind of unholy behaviour must cease once your mother and I are married and you become Lydia Parker. I know your poor mother would be appalled at your duplicity.' Suddenly he rapped the table hard three times with his silver cake fork. 'Three months. With not a word or a look out of place from you. I have your word on it?'

'Yes.'

He opened his wallet.

In a dimly lit yard marked out with a circle of straw bales, the dog that looked like a wolf was having its throat torn out. Inch by inch. Strips of fur and flesh flew across the circle. Gobbets of blood spewed out into the eager faces of the men who edged too close, as the pale dog, the one that looked like a ghost, shook its snarling head from side to side and dragged more of the soft gullet into its jaws. One ear was hanging by a thread. Its shoulder was ripped open and dangling down in a loose scarlet flap, but its grip on the wolf-dog's throat was a death grip and the crowd roared its approval.

Lydia took one look at the savagery taking place inside the circle of straw, one glance at the bloodl.u.s.t in the eyes of the men, and then she walked over to the wall and was quietly sick. She wiped her mouth. She'd come this far and now was not the time to back out. For five days she had scoured the Russian Quarter of Junchow, walked its mean streets after school each day, seeking out Liev Popkov. The bear man. The one with the eye patch and the boots. Five days of rain and wind.

'Vi nye znayetye gdye ya mogu naitee Liev Popkov?' she asked again and again. 'Do you know where I can find a man called Liev Popkov?' she asked again and again. 'Do you know where I can find a man called Liev Popkov?'

They had looked at her with suspicion and narrowed northern eyes. Anyone asking questions meant trouble. 'Nyet,' 'Nyet,' they shrugged. 'No.' they shrugged. 'No.'

Until tonight. She had plucked up the courage to walk into one of the dark and dingy bars, a kabak kabak, that stank of black tobacco and unwashed male bodies. Hers was the only female face, but she stood her ground and finally on payment of a half dollar a toothless old goat told her to try the dog yard behind the stable.

Dog yard. More like death yard.

It was where the men gathered on a Friday night to get their thrills, raw and unadulterated. Dog fighting. It put fire in their bellies and in their veins, wiping out the degradation of a week of hard, miserable labour. Here they bet on who would live and who would die, knowing that a win meant a good night's vodka and maybe a girl as well if their luck held.

Liev Popkov was there. Lydia spotted him easily. Towering above the tight huddle of onlookers whose breath drifted in the icy air like incense around the dark yard. A lantern on the wall behind Popkov threw his broad shadow across the circle and onto the warring dogs. She couldn't see his face clearly but his great body looked motionless and lazy, and when he did shift position it was like the slow lumbering movement of a bear.

She went over and touched his arm.

His head turned, faster than she expected. Though one eye was obscured by the patch and the lower half of his face was covered by the black beard, his single eye registered complete surprise and his mouth fell open, revealing big strong teeth. Tombstone teeth.

'Dobriy vecher. Good evening, Liev Popkov,' Lydia said in her carefully rehea.r.s.ed Russian. 'I want to talk to you.'

She had to shout above the roar of the crowd and for a moment she wasn't sure if he'd heard her or even understood her, because all he did was blink silently and continue to stare at her with his one dark eye.

'Seichas,' she urged. 'Now.' she urged. 'Now.'

He glanced over at the dogs. An artery had been severed and canine blood pumped into the icy night air. His expression gave nothing away, so she had no idea if he was winning or losing, but he effortlessly shouldered a path through the press of men around him to the back wall of the yard. It was in deep shadow and smelled of damp.

'You speak our language,' he growled.

'Not well,' she replied in Russian.

He leaned against the wall, waiting for more from her, and she had a sudden image of it crumbling under his weight. Up close he was even bigger. She had to tilt her head back to look at him. At first that was all she saw. The bigness of him. That was exactly what she wanted. He was wearing a Cossack hat of moth-eaten fur jammed over his black curls and a long padded overcoat that stank of grease and came right down to the tip of his boots. And he was chewing something. Tobacco? Dog meat? She had no idea.

'I need your help.' The Russian words came to her tongue more readily than she expected.

'Pochemu?' Why?

'Because I am searching for someone.'

He spat whatever was in his mouth onto the yard floor. 'You are the dyevochka dyevochka who made trouble for me. With police.' He spoke gruffly but slowly. She wasn't sure if this was his normal way or done just for her to understand the language that was still a struggle to her. 'Why should I help you? You of all people.' who made trouble for me. With police.' He spoke gruffly but slowly. She wasn't sure if this was his normal way or done just for her to understand the language that was still a struggle to her. 'Why should I help you? You of all people.'

She opened her hand. In it lay Alfred's two hundred Chinese dollars.

30.

He didn't speak, Liev Popkov. But neither did she. Yet they kept close, even touching at times. Side by side they hunched forward against the biting wind that whipped up off the Peiho River, and Lydia's lungs ached with the effort.

'Here,' he muttered.

He meant the narrow street that twisted away from the quayside to their left. It was grey and cobbled and stank of putrid fish guts. She nodded. His broad shovel of a hand pulled her tight against him, so that not a crack of the thin wintry light sneaked between them and her body became no more than an extension of this great greasy bear. It was weird the effect he had on her mind. She felt big and bold and fearless. The hostile eyes around them no longer sent shivers down her spine, and when one of the Chinese dockhands reached out to touch her as he pa.s.sed, Liev casually raised an arm and smashed his elbow into the man's face. Broken bone and blood and high-pitched screams. She looked at the mess and felt ill. They kept on walking, no comment. Liev was a man of few words.

In the beginning on their first few forays down around the dock-land quays, she had tried to speak to him in her halting Russian, to offer some flow of simple conversation, but all she received in reply were grunts. Or no response at all. She grew used to it. It made it easier for her to concentrate on the faces that swarmed over the congested harbour and in the slippery hutongs hutongs, easier to avoid the thousands of shoulder poles carrying weighty piles of G.o.d-knows-what in their buckets and panniers. Easier to watch where her feet were stepping.

Easier. But not easy. None of this was easy.

'Lydia Ivanova.'

Lydia's head jerked up from her desk. Wisps of bright dreams fled her mind and she stared up into Mr Theo's eyes. Grey eyes that had turned black, the pupils were so huge, and his tongue was sharper than ever.

'Are you with us, Miss Ivanova? Or shall I bring a bed into cla.s.s for you?'

'No, sir.'

'You surprise me, girl. I would have thought the love affair between Philip II of Spain and Mary Tudor of England would be pa.s.sionate enough to keep your eyes open in cla.s.s. Isn't that what girls your age like? Love affairs. Even with young Chinese boys.'

'No, sir.'

He smiled a little. She did not return the smile.

'Detention after school. You can do me an essay on . . .'

'Please, sir, not after school. I'll do detention for a whole week of lunch breaks, but not . . .'

'You'll do detention when I say, young lady.'

'It's just that . . .' Her voice trailed away. Everyone was looking and listening. Polly was making signs but Lydia couldn't work out what.

'Lydia.' Mr Theo walked over to her desk. His black headmaster's gown billowed around him and to Lydia's mind he looked like a long-legged crow come to peck her eyes out. 'You will do detention today. After school. Understand?'

She wanted to hit him. As Liev Popkov would have done. But she lowered her head. 'Yes, sir.'

'Oh, Lyd, you silly. When will you learn to grovel to him?' Polly was clucking over her like a mother hen. 'All you had to say was "I'm sorry, Mr Theo, I promise I won't let it happen again," and he would have let you off.'

'Really?'

'You are so naive, Lyd. Of course he would.'

'But why?'

'Because that's what men like. It makes them feel powerful.'

Understanding dawned. Yes. People want to feel powerful. She had seen its effects in the alien world of the docklands when she was linked to Liev Popkov and had learned the way it made you feel good. Powerful men. They made sure they got what they wanted, just as Polly's father knew how to get things he wanted. Or people he desired. It made Lydia's skin crawl. A question occurred to her, but she wasn't sure quite how to put it to Polly.

'Polly, you're much better at handling people than I am. I can't even get my mother to do things I want sometimes.' She paused and rubbed the side of a fingernail. 'By the way, does she ever come to visit your house?'

'Gosh, no. What an odd question. Why on earth would she?'

'I thought maybe she might come to talk to your mother, you know, like mothers do when their daughters are friends.' She shrugged. 'I just wondered, that's all.'

'You are a strange one sometimes, you know.'

'You'd tell me if she did. Come to your house, I mean.'

'Of course.'

'Promise?'

'I promise.'

'Good.'

'How's Mr Parker, by the way?'

'He's still around.'

'Oh, you're so lucky. When they're married he'll give you everything you've ever wanted like a house and pretty clothes and holidays and everything.' She laughed and poked her friend lightly in the ribs. 'Including a nice new school uniform. It's what you need.'

'It's not what I need,' Lydia snapped. 'It's what people with power make you think you need.'

'Oh, Lyd, you're hopeless.'

Liev Popkov was still standing at the end of her road, waiting for her. He must have been there a long time because snow had built up into epaulettes on his shoulders and his fur hat had turned white like a stoat in winter.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Prast.i.tye menya. I'm late because I had to stay longer at school.' I'm late because I had to stay longer at school.'

He grunted. Moved off with his loose shambling gait, so that Lydia had to scamper to keep up, and headed again for the harbour. It was a dismal but frantic world down there where everything from rhinoceros horns to ten-year-old slaves were bought and sold, but nevertheless Lydia liked the chance to gaze at the sleek liners and the rusting tramp steamers that brought the outside world into the heart of Junchow. It made England seem so close she could almost reach out and grab it in her hand. She watched hard-eyed men and fur-coated women stride down the gangplanks as if they owned the world, while at their feet coolies begged to carry their bags. The snow had stopped falling.

'This one,' Liev growled.

He led her down yet another dank and filthy alleyway where native hawkers tried to sell even the rags off their backs. One stall was offering bathroom taps, a whole tea chest of them smuggled out of one of the import warehouses that surrounded the harbour, while farther down was a row of porcelain-faced dolls sitting up like little dead children. Lydia had never possessed a doll in her life and was constantly baffled by whatever it was that drove girls to want one. Even to love the wretched things. Like Polly did. It was so . . .

A moon-faced man broke up her thoughts. He was speaking in rapid Chinese and pointing back down the alleyway. She started to shake her head to indicate she didn't understand but realised he was talking to Liev, not to her. The man kept jabbering louder and louder, throwing his arms around. Liev just swung his great head back and forth. Nyet. Nyet. Nyet. Nyet. Nyet. Nyet.

The man drew a knife.

Lydia tried to back away, but two men had placed themselves directly behind her. She felt her breath stop, and start up again too fast. With one hand Liev Popkov seized her wrist; with the other he drew from under his coat a knife that was almost a sword, long and curved and double-edged. Its hilt was heavy black metal and sat firmly in the Russian's fist. He leaped forward with a low growl, dragging Lydia with him. Her feet skidded from under her on a patch of iced-up vegetable pulp, but without even glancing in her direction he yanked her into the air and slashed at the Chinese moon-face at the same time.