51
Chang An Lo opened his eyes. Something was wrong.
He could feel it. Tight in his bowels like wire.
He lay very still, listening.
But the squawking children’s voices as they played
in the courtyard masked all other noises, and a soldier’s boot on
the stair would pass unnoticed. Silently he rolled out of bed. From
under the pillow he took the curl of copper hair and from beneath
the mattress he drew the knife.
He stood behind the door. The smell of blood in his
nostrils.
Li Mei showed no surprise. Her almond-shaped eyes
looked at the blade in his hand but her face remained calm.
‘What is it?’ she asked as she placed the tray she
was carrying on a delicate chiffonier of honey-coloured wood.
‘A cold wind in my mind.’
‘All is safe. Tiyo Willbee is an honourable man.
You can trust him.’
Chang said nothing. He watched her pour hot water
from a teapot with a bamboo handle into a bowl of dried herbs. He
noticed she always did it in front of him, and he knew she was
showing him that she added nothing extra. He need not fear poisons.
He respected her for that. She cared for him well, coolly and
calmly, with an observant eye, but he longed for the passion of
Lydia’s nursing, her determination to snatch him from the jaws of
the gods and to breathe fire into his blood once more. He missed
that.
‘Any news?’ he asked softly.
‘The grey bellies are in the harbour, I’m told,
hundreds of caps bearing the Kuomintang sun. They are searching
ships.’
‘For Foreign Mud?’
‘Who knows why?’ She handed him the bowl and he
bowed his thanks. Her hair was scented with cinnamon. ‘People say -
but what do people know? - that Communists are being smuggled south
by ship to Canton and to Mao Tse-tung’s camps. The sound of guns is
in the air today.’
‘Thank you, Li Mei.’
She bowed. ‘I am honoured, Chang An Lo.’ With a
rustle of Shantung silk she left the room.
The smell of blood. It was strong in his
nostrils.
‘She hasn’t come.’
‘No, Chang, I’m afraid she’s not at school
today.’
‘Is that not strange?’
‘No, not really at this time of year. This is
always the worst term for sickness and influenza at my school.
Well, any school actually.’
‘Yesterday she was well.’
‘Don’t fret, I’m sure she’s fine. To be honest I
suspect that blighter Alfred has shut her up at home to keep her
away from you. You can’t blame him really, old chap. She’s still
young.’
‘I don’t blame him. He is her father now.’
‘Exactly.’
‘She needs guarding.’
‘Quite so.’
‘But not by him.’
Lydia’s leg hurt. Her head throbbed.
But when she forced her eyelids up, the blackness
beyond them was as dense as inside her mind. She tried them open
and tried them shut. Nothing changed. She moved an arm and felt her
elbow crunch against something hard. She touched her hip and thigh.
She was naked. Shivering.
That’s what decided it.
It was a nightmare. She was in one of those
terrifying caught-in-a-trap nightmares. No clothes. Everyone
staring. A splinter of hell. Stuck in her mind.
She closed her eyes and spiralled back down into
nothingness, knowing she would soon wake in her own bed.
Strange about the blackness though.