The Russian Concubine Part 42

'She begged. Ah, Tiyo Willbee, how she begged. Tears as big as crocodiles.'

'Begged? For what?'

'For our honourable father to release you from the deal with that monkey brain Mason, from the trafficking. Of course the great Feng Tu Hong in his wisdom was not moved by her street girl ways.'

'I warned you, sc.u.m of the gutter.'

'But he offered her a bargain. He agreed to release you from the deal if . . .'

'If what?'

'If she kowtows to him nine times and comes back to this house to live out her life as his dutiful daughter. Hah! But she has brought fields of shame to the honourable name of Feng and needed to be taught the meaning of respect. That was when I hit her. Many times.'

'Like this?'

'Good G.o.d, old fellow, what the devil have you been up to?'

Theo rubbed his jaw. A livid bruise was spreading along it, and one corner of his lip was split. Christopher Mason was staring at him with an expression of unease.

'Tripped over my cat,' Theo said indifferently. 'I came over because your houseboy said you would be here and I need a word with you.'

'Now?'

'Yes, now.'

Mason glanced across the room at his wife and the two girls. 'It's not a good time, Willoughby. Later maybe.'

'Now.'

The situation struck Theo as rather odd. To be seated with that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Mason, all civil and polite, in Alfred Parker's new home the day after the disrupted wedding, with no Alfred around and the stepdaughter prowling by the French window like a dog on guard duty. It all felt strange. The girl looked ragged. Something had hollowed out her amber eyes, set them deep in dull shadows and coloured her lips grey. She kept giving each of her guests impatient stares to indicate she would be rid of them, but Anthea Mason was determined to fuss over her.

'Poor Lydia didn't sleep well and who can blame her, alone in an unfamiliar house,' she fretted, with a good-natured smile at the girl. 'I came over this morning, Mr Willoughby, and what do I find? Only that she's given the houseboy and the gardener the week off with full pay and told the cook that she just wants him to provide an evening meal and nothing else. Please, tell the dear girl she must accept the fact of servants in her life now that she is living in respectable circ.u.mstances like the rest of us. You're her headmaster, so she should listen to you.'

'For G.o.d's sake, Anthea, just forget it,' Mason snapped. 'You've seen her, like you promised you would, and she's fine.' He turned to Theo. 'I'm only here because I'm taking my wife and daughter over to the stables to see my new hunter. He's a splendid bay with the lungs of an elephant and will run the hocks off Sir Edward's dun stallion any day of the week. You see if he doesn't.'

'I want to see Sun Yat-sen, your rabbit,' Polly suddenly announced, blue eyes wide.

'What a good idea,' Anthea smiled. 'Where is it?'

'b.l.o.o.d.y stupid name for an animal,' Mason commented, but he stood up and led the way toward the French windows. 'I used to have a black and white lop-eared rabbit when I was a youngster, Polly. Called it Daniel. Nice little animal. So, young lady, let's all take a look at . . .'

'Not today.' Lydia stood with her hand holding the French windows shut.

'And why not?'

'He's disturbed. By the move. By everything changing.'

'But Lyd, please,' Polly pleaded. 'You said he was happy in his paG.o.da in the shed. That's not changed, has it?'

'No, but . . .'

'Excellent.' Mason brushed the girl aside. 'I like rabbits.' He barged out into the bare wintry garden, Polly at his heels as he strode down the path.

Anthea watched them. 'He likes all animals,' she said to Theo with a sad smile and followed her husband.

'It's human beings he has a problem with,' Theo muttered to himself and glanced at the Russian girl. She looked almost as bad as he felt. His head was splitting, as if it had a meat cleaver embedded in it. She was standing very still, both hands pressed flat against the window, her eyes fixed on the timber shed at the bottom of the garden. Polly was opening the door.

'Mr Willoughby.' Lydia spoke softly.

She was watching her friend's father fondling Sun Yat-sen's long ears. The Mason family were all gathered in a little group on the lawn, admiring the snowy white animal in Polly's arms, oblivious to the cold. Their breath circled them like mist.

'What is it, Lydia?'

The girl was still standing just inside the French windows, but now Theo noticed her gaze had shifted to an untidy pile of rags at the back of the lawn. The gardener should know better than to leave his rubbish in full view of the house. But of course she'd given him a week off.

'Where can I buy Chinese medicines?'

'Are you sick, child?'

'No.'

'You don't look well.'

Slowly she turned and fixed her eyes on him. 'Neither do you.'

He laughed as if she'd made a joke, and the effort of it sent a wave of nausea through him. 'In the Street of One Hundred Steps there is a Chinese herbalist. But I doubt that he speaks English.'

'Will you come with me?'

Theo shook his head but, despite the gaping hole in his mind where the smoke from the pipe needed to be, he said, 'I suppose I could.' There was just something about the girl. 'After I've had my talk with Mason.'

'I'll send him in to you.'

And she did.

'So?' Mason wouldn't keep still. In his jodhpurs and riding boots he paced up and down the carpet. Plainly he was embarra.s.sed. 'This isn't the place for this discussion.'

Theo knew this was not the way one Englishman should talk to another on a Sunday morning with the family just outside the window. He should be talking about horses or cricket or his motorcar or what the h.e.l.l the share market was up to back home. Or even the outrageous new law that the PM, Baldwin, had pa.s.sed to give the vote to women as young as twenty-one, as if flappers of that age knew anything at all about politics. But drugs? No. That was unacceptable.

'Listen to me, Mason. Listen hard. The situation has changed for me. I am severing all connections with Feng. I'm sick of being used as bait by both you and that b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'd.a.m.n it, man, fish bait is all you're fit for right now. Look at yourself, you're shaking.'

'Forget that. You're not listening to me, Mason. I'm telling you that our arrangement is over. I will have nothing more to do with the Black Snakes and their opium trade. I was a b.l.o.o.d.y fool to get involved in the first place, I realise that now. You twisted my arm at a time when . . .'

'No, don't give me that. You wanted the money.'

'I was protecting my school.'

'Don't stick your headmasterly head in the sand, Willoughby. Join the human race. I despise people like you. You're no different from the rest of us, however superior you like to think yourself because you can read this heathen language and understand the pious gibberish of their Confucius and their Buddha. You were just plain greedy.'

'Like you, you mean.'

Mason laughed, delighted, as if paid a compliment. 'Exactly.' He smoothed a hand over his slicked-back hair in a self-satisfied manner. 'I don't know what has suddenly got you all fired up, but you'd better put a stop to it right now. Pull yourself together, man.'

'I'm glad you're getting my point at last. I am am pulling myself together. No more night trips out on the river. No more black paste for me. It's over. It's a filthy trade.' pulling myself together. No more night trips out on the river. No more black paste for me. It's over. It's a filthy trade.'

'G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Willoughby. We both know that the Chinese b.a.s.t.a.r.d won't deal with me without you in the middle of it.'

'Too bad.'

'Don't threaten me.'

'I'm not threatening. I'm telling.'

'You b.l.o.o.d.y fool, I'll go straight to the police and you'll be inside a filthy prison cell before you even start your next bout of the shakes.'

'Mason, I'm telling you to let this go. You've made more than a good profit from our deal so far. Now it's finished. Just let it go. Find yourself a new enterprise and let us end this now like English gentlemen.' He held out his hand and made certain it did not shake.

Mason took his time. He looked from Theo's face to his outstretched hand and back again. 'Go to h.e.l.l,' he sneered and walked out through the French windows to the terrace. 'Polly, Anthea,' he shouted. 'Time to go. I want to see what this horse of mine can do.' He turned and stared back at Theo through the gla.s.s, his grey eyes flat and hard. 'I might even have to use the whip on him.'

Theo wanted to kill him. There and then. His hand even slid to the short ivory-handled knife he kept up his sleeve, and he had to remind himself that it was the opium talking, warping his thoughts. But if he could only take a few breaths on the pipe, it would still the infernal racket in his head, just this once, just one more time. He swung away in a jerky movement and stepped into the hall but stopped in the doorway when he saw Lydia Ivanova sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. She was watching him. He didn't like the look in her eyes. The concern.

It meant she had heard.

'Please, Lyd. Go on.'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Your father is waiting.'

'Just a quick look, that's all.'

'No. Another day.'

'Tomorrow?'

'No.'

'Oh, Lydia, for heaven's sake, I'm only asking for a look at your new bedroom, not at the inside of Mr Parker's safe or anything like that. Why not?'

'Sorry, Polly, but it's not tidy.'

'Don't be silly. You've only been in it twenty-four hours.'

'No, Polly. Not today. Please.'

'What's the matter with you, Lyd? You look . . .'

'I'm fine. Did you like holding Sun Yat-sen?'

'Oh yes, he's utterly gorgeous. Papa liked him too.'

'Your father is calling you to the car.'

Leaning in the doorway, Theo waited while the girls parted, a slight awkwardness between them. Little chickens. Fluffy and new. No idea how life has a habit of slicing your head off when you're not looking.

36.

His face. It was all brittle cheekbones. Skin stretched so tight it looked as if it would split. White as the pillow. Dirty purple hollows around his eyes. But it was his mouth that upset Lydia most. Before, when he leaped into her life that first day in the alleyway or later in the burned-out house when he talked of why only the Communists could drag China out of the tyranny of its feudal past, his mouth had been full and curved and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with vital energy. Not just energy, she thought, but a kind of inner power. A certainty. That was gone. His lips, more than any other part of him, looked dead.

Quickly she reached out and touched him. Warm. Alive. Not dead.

But too warm. Hot. Too hot.

He was lying in her bed. Again she squeezed out the cloth in the bowl of cool water. It smelled funny. That was the Chinese herbs. To soothe a fever, that's what Mr Theo said they were for, to cool the blood. Tenderly she bathed Chang An Lo's brow, his temples, his throat, and even the black stubble on his bony scalp. She felt a sense of achievement to see it clear of lice and all the other things that had been crawling around up there, and it pleased her to stroke it. Rea.s.sured her.

She sat on a chair beside the bed all day. As the light from the window changed from grey to greyer, she listened to the rain dripping outside. Sudden gusts of it against the gla.s.s panes. The colours drained from the room as it grew darker and still she kept bathing his limbs, his chest, and his sharp pelvic bones till she knew his body almost as completely as she knew her own. The texture of his skin and the shape of his toenails. She anointed the infected wounds with strange Chinese unguents, changed bandages, and dripped restorative herbal teas through his cracked lips. All the time talking to him. She talked and she talked. Once she even managed to laugh as she fought to drench his ears with sounds of life and happiness, to give back to him the lost energy.

But his eyes never opened, not a flicker, and his arms and legs lay lifeless, even when she changed the bandages on his hands, and she knew it must hurt horribly on some deeper plane where she couldn't reach him. But sometimes sounds came from his mouth. Whispers. Low and urgent. She leaned over and put her ear close to his mouth, so close she could feel his faint breath hot on her skin, but she could make no sense of the sounds.

But once, when she was spreading a grainy yellow salve over his lips with her forefinger, his mouth suddenly opened just a fraction and his lips closed over her finger. It was an extraordinarily intimate act. The tip of her finger in the soft moist folds of his mouth. More intimate even than when she held his p.e.n.i.s in her hand and washed it. She felt a surge of exhilaration and hugged it to herself. She rested her own lips on his forehead.

That moment was enough to carry her through the long night.