23
Chang stood in the dark. Still as stone. They were
there, all around him. He could hear them. The rustle of a sleeve,
the brush of thigh against wall, the scrape of shoe on gravel. It
had been a risk. To show himself at the funeral. It meant they
would track him down, he knew that. But it would have brought
dishonour on him if he had shunned Yuesheng’s final moment.
Yuesheng was his blood companion and he owed him respect,
especially as it could so easily have been Chang’s own body lying
dead in the cellar that night when the Kuomintang attacked. So now
the Black Snakes were here. Death lay in the shadows, awaiting its
feast.
He was in a cobbled square in the old town, his
back pressed to a studded oak door, inset under an arch. Black
figures flicked from one street to another, crouched and coming
fast from all directions. Movement in doorways. Sharp eyes seeking
him. No moon to highlight the blades in their fists but he had no
doubt that they were there, hungry for blood.
He counted six of them in all, but could hear more.
One was standing tight against a wall no more than ten paces to his
right, guarding the entrance to a narrow hutong, an alleyway
that led deep into the maze of back streets. He had a harsh way of
breathing. With a silent leap and an upward slam of his heel, Chang
put an end to it, but before the body had even touched the ground,
he was into the hutong and running, low and lithe. Above him
in an upstairs window a light flooded on and a shout sounded from
behind, but he didn’t turn.
He moved faster. Ducked into deeper darkness. Feet
skidding on rotting filth. He led them on through the alleys,
stringing them out as they fought for speed, so that when the
fastest man found himself at a crossroads twenty feet ahead of his
companions, he had no idea what flew out of the shadows and thudded
into his chest, snapping ribs like twigs, until it was too late and
he couldn’t breathe.
Chang swept through the darkness. Winding and
twisting. Ambushing. One man lost the use of a leg and another the
sight in one eye. But a nighttime honey wagon, the cart piled high
with human manure and the stench enough to choke a man, blocked his
path and he was forced to swerve left down a slope that led
nowhere.
A death trap.
Sheer walls on three sides of a rough courtyard.
One way in. One way out. Six men spread behind him, breathing hard
and spitting venom. Three of them carried knives, two wielded
swords, but one held a gun and it was pointed straight at Chang’s
chest. He said something guttural and a sword carrier stepped
forward. He came at Chang and the long blade sang through the air.
Chang stilled his breathing, drew on the energy racing through his
blood, and in one fluid movement swept a leg under his attacker. A
sting of pain skittered down his side, but he took three rapid
steps and leaped into the air at the back wall, struggled for a
fingerhold, slipped, caught again, and then swung his heels over
his head in a full arc. On the roof but not safe. A bullet tore
past his ear.
A howl of anger down in the courtyard and the man
with the gun seized the swordsman’s weapon and sliced it down in a
blow that disembowelled the sword’s owner. The wounded man fell
forward to his knees, clutching at his writhing innards as they
spilled from his body, a high wailing scream rising from his mouth.
A second blow from the sword silenced the scream and sent his head
rolling into the gutter. The gun pointed once more at the roof. But
Chang was gone.
Lydia had time to think. The stretch of twenty-two
yards at the centre of the pitch was wearing thin, but around it
the turf spread out like a shimmering lake of green. The grass was
trimmed with precision and treated with a respect that baffled her
because the men seemed to pay more attention to its welfare than
they did to their children’s. But she loved to watch cricket. She
liked to imagine this same scene taking place on the other side of
the world in England. At this very moment in every town and village
the weekend was being besieged by men in white flannels strutting
around with pads and bats, knocking hell out of a small hard ball.
It was so wonderfully pointless. Especially in this heat. Only
people with nothing to do all day could think up a game so
bizarre.
Men in white.
To one nation it means a game. To another it means
death. Worlds apart. Oceans adrift. But what happens to someone
caught in the middle? Do they drown?
‘More tea, dear? You look miles away.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Mason.’ Lydia accepted the tea,
drew her thoughts away from Chang An Lo, and helped herself to
another cucumber sandwich, which she added to the plate balanced on
the arm of her deckchair.
Polly’s mother was wearing heavy sunglasses and a
wide-brimmed hat trimmed with roses from her garden, but neither
quite hid the bruise around her left eye or the swelling on her
cheekbone. ‘I tripped over Achilles, Christopher’s lazy old cat,
and banged into a door, silly me,’ Lydia had heard her laugh to the
other wives, but it was obvious from their expressions that no one
believed the lie. Lydia looked at her with new respect. To come
here today for the match and face up to this humiliation with such
a firm smile and a steady hand as she dispensed tea, that took
courage.
‘Mrs Mason,’ she said in a loud voice, ‘that is
such a pretty dress, it really suits you.’ It was frilly and
floral, the kind of dress only an Englishwoman would wear.
‘Why, thank you, Lydia,’ Anthea Mason said, and for
one ghastly moment Lydia thought she was going to cry, but instead
she popped a smile on her face and an extra sandwich on Lydia’s
plate.
Out on the field Christopher Mason hit another
four, but Lydia refused to join in the ripple of applause. Beside
her Polly beamed with delight and fondled her puppy’s head to cheer
him up. He was sulking at being kept on a lead when the ball was
just asking to be fetched.
‘Isn’t Daddy clever, Toby? He’ll be in such a good
mood today.’
Lydia wouldn’t look at her.
‘You’ll get yourself killed, Lyd.’
‘Don’t talk such poppycock. It was only a
funeral.’
‘But why? No one goes to Chinese functions. The
natives here keep to themselves and we do the same. That way
everyone stays happy. You’ve got to accept that they don’t like us,
Lyd, and they’re different from us. Mixing together. It can’t be
done.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it can’t. Everyone knows that.’
‘You’re wrong. Chang and I are . . . ,’ Lydia
sought for a word that wouldn’t shock Polly, ‘ . . . friends. We
talk about . . . well, about things, and I see no reason why we
can’t mix. Look at all the children who have amahs as
nannies to look after them when they’re little and they really love
them. So why does it have to change just because the children grow
up?’
‘Because they have different rules from us.’
‘So you’re saying it only works when they adopt our
rules and live as we live.’
‘Yes.’
‘But they’re just people, Polly. Like us. You
should have seen and heard their grief at the funeral. They were
hurting just like we do. Cut them and they bleed. So what do rules
matter?’
‘Oh, Lyd, this Chang An Lo is getting you all
muddled up. You must forget about him. Though I must admit Mr Theo
seems to make it work with his beautiful Chinese woman.’
‘But he hasn’t married her, has he?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And when Anna Calpin was young she used to love
her amah, but now she makes her sit on the toilet seat for
ten minutes when it’s cold in winter to warm it up before Anna uses
it.’
‘I know. But you’ve never had Chinese servants,
Lyd. You don’t understand.’
‘No, Polly. I don’t.’
The street seemed normal. A Chinese vendor stood
on the corner trying to sell sunflower seeds and hot water, a boy
was playing marbles in the gutter, and an old Russian
babushka was sitting in a rocking chair in her doorway,
plucking a guinea fowl. At her feet two filthy street urchins were
snatching at feathers as they fell and stuffing them into a
pillowcase. The big wheels of a rickshaw rattled down the road
kicking up grit.
Lydia tried to work out what had made her halt. It
was the street where she lived. She’d walked it a million times. It
was hot, she was dusty, and her dress was sticking to her skin. She
needed a cold drink. Only twenty yards to her own front door. So
what was it? What made her hesitate?
Be watchful, Lydia Ivanova. Don’t sleep while
you walk. They let you go once but not a second time. Chang’s
words to her. Well, she was being watchful all right, keeping
alert, yet she could see nothing to be nervous about. Oh hell,
maybe Polly was right. Maybe he was getting her head all muddled
over nothing. She hurried down the street, impatient with herself,
and it was as she was unlocking the front door that she sensed the
movement behind her. Not that she saw or heard anything. More a
sudden shifting of the air at her back. She didn’t turn. Just threw
herself over the threshold and slammed the door behind her. She
leaned heavily against it, not breathing. Listening.
Nothing. A car’s klaxon, a child’s laugh, the
savage shriek of a gull overhead.
She took a deep breath. Had she imagined it?
She waited while the minutes ticked by, and still
her pulse thudded in her ears.
‘Lydia, moi vorobushek, come here, come.’ It
was Mrs Zarya beckoning at the end of the hall. She was wearing a
bright pink kimono, and her hair was wrapped up in wire curlers. ‘I
have a piece of yam for your Mr Sun Yat-sen. Here, take it.’
Lydia moved, but her feet felt heavy. ‘That’s kind,
Mrs Zarya. Sun Yat-sen will like that.’ She remembered the clutch
of grass that she’d sneaked from the cricket club. It was scrunched
tight in her hand. ‘Going somewhere special tonight?’
‘Da, yes. To a soirée.’ Mrs Zarya said it
proudly. ‘A poetry reading at General Manlikov’s villa. He was a
friend of my husband and he is a fine man who has not forgotten his
old comrade’s widow.’
‘Have a good time.’ Lydia scampered up the stairs.
‘Thanks for the yam. Spasibo.’
It was when she reached the last flight of stairs
that she heard the voices coming from the attic. They seemed to
strike her upturned face. She stood still. One was her mother’s,
low and intense; the other was a man’s, raised in what sounded like
anger. They were speaking Russian. She opened the door quietly. Two
figures were together on the sofa, talking fast, hands gesturing
through the air between them. Lydia felt a shiver of dismay and
wanted to leave, but it was too late. It was the man from the
police lineup, the big bearded bear with the black oily curls and
the eye patch, the one with the wolf boots. Beside him Valentina
looked like a tiny exotic creature perched on the edge of the seat.
The man was staring straight at Lydia with his one dark eye and it
was enough to turn her cheeks a fiery red.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said at once. ‘I didn’t mean
to make the police come after you like that, I just . . .’
‘Lydia,’ her mother said quickly, ‘Liev Popkov
speaks no English.’
‘Oh . . . well, tell him I apologise, Mama.’
Valentina spoke in rapid Russian.
He nodded slowly and rose to his feet, filling the
attic room with his massive shoulders, ducking his head to avoid
the low ceiling, and still he stared at Lydia. She wasn’t sure
whether it was hostility or curiosity, but either way it made her
uncomfortable. But what confused her was how on earth he had
discovered where she lived. Chyort! She was jumpy as
hell.
He walked over to the door where she was standing,
and up close she feared he would tear off her head with one of his
great paws.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said once more before he had the
chance to unsheathe his claws, and she held out her hand.
To her surprise he took it, swallowed it up inside
his own, and shook it gently. But his single black eye seemed to
stare at her in disgust.
‘Do svidania,’ she said politely.
Good-bye.
He grunted and shambled out of the room.
‘Mama, what did he want?’
But Valentina wasn’t listening. She was pouring
herself a drink. Into a glass, 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 breasts 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 glass.
‘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 snatching 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 bloody death of their groping hands and their thrashing
hips. I want to chop them all up into tiny pieces, like 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 fuck 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 glass 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 hell
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
pawnbroker. 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
scrap 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 glass 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. 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 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 scraped 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.’
Lydia seized her mother’s arm. ‘I’ll get a job,’
she said urgently. ‘I’ll get us out of this mess, I promise, you
don’t need Alfred, I don’t want him in our house. He’s pompous and
silly and fiddles with his ears and rams his bible down our throats
and . . .’ She took a breath.
‘Don’t stop now, dochenka. Let’s hear it
all.’
‘He wears spectacles but still he can’t see how you
twist him around your finger like a wisp of straw.’
Valentina gave an elegant shrug. ‘Hush now, my
sweet. Give him time. You’ll get used to him.’
‘I don’t want to get used to him.’
‘Don’t you want to see me happy?’
‘You know I do, Mama, but not with him.’
‘He’s a fine Englishman.’
‘No, he’s too . . . ordinary for you. And he’ll
change everything, he’ll make us as ordinary as he is.’
Valentina drew herself up to her full height. ‘That
is insulting, Lydia, and I . . .’
‘Don’t you see,’ Lydia rushed on, ‘I only gave him
back his stupid watch to get rid of him.’ Her voice was rising. ‘I
used up all that precious money because I thought it would make him
hate me so much, he’d go away and never ever come back. Don’t you
see?’
Valentina stood very still. Her face drained bone
white as she stared at her daughter. The air in the room was too
brittle to breathe.
‘You underestimate me,’ her mother said at last.
‘He won’t leave.’
‘Don’t, Mama. Don’t do this to us.’
‘I have decided, Lydia.’
Suddenly Lydia could not bear to be in the same
room with this new Valentina Ivanova. She snatched up the
greaseproof package, rushed out of the room, and kicked the door
savagely behind her.
‘Little sparrow, what are you doing out here in
the dark?’
It was Mrs Zarya. She was wrapped in a long velvet
cloak and wore an elaborate hat with a black ostrich feather
curling around its crown. Diamond drop earrings caught the light
from her window and sparkled like fireflies. This was not a Mrs
Zarya that Lydia recognised.
‘Just feeding Sun Yat-sen,’ she muttered.
‘You have been feeding him for a very long
time.’
Lydia said nothing. The rabbit was cradled in her
arms and she could feel its rapid heartbeat against her
chest.
‘Did he like the yam?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
There was a silence, neither quite sure where to go
next. Somewhere in the street a pig started to squeal. It sounded
like a night demon.
‘You look nice,’ Lydia said.
‘Thank you. I am off to General Manlikov’s soirée
now.’
A soirée. A Russian soirée. It would be better than
the room upstairs.
‘May I come with you, Mrs Zarya?’ Lydia asked
politely. ‘I am wearing my smart dress.’
The Russian woman’s stiff and lonely old face
softened into a delighted smile. ‘Da. Yes. You must come.
You might learn something of the great country that bore you.
Da.’
‘Spasibo,’ Lydia said. Thank
you.