She lowered her eyelashes for a moment in a display of maternal distress, then looked up slowly and fixed her eyes on Lacock’s. ‘You know,’ she said softly, ‘how silly adolescent girls can be. Please excuse her this time, she meant no harm.’ She turned her dark gaze on her daughter. ‘Did you, Lydia?’
‘No, Mama,’ Lydia murmured and had to bite back a smile.
‘I mean it. I’ll give you a good whipping with Mr Yeoman’s horsewhip tonight.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘You are a disgrace to me.’
‘I know, Mama. I’m sorry.’
‘Where in God’s name did I go wrong? You are a wild thing and deserve to be locked up in a cage. You know that’s true, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘So.’ She stood in the middle of the pavement with her hands on her hips and stared at her daughter. ‘What am I to do with you?’ She was wearing an old but stylish linen suit the colour of ice cream, and it made her pale skin look like silk. ‘I’m so pleased the commissioner gave you such a telling off. Good for him. He had every reason to. Don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
Suddenly Valentina burst out laughing and gave Lydia a quick kiss on her forehead. ‘You are wicked, dochenka,’ she said and rapped her daughter’s knuckles with her clutch bag. ‘Take yourself off back to school now and don’t you ever give them reason to drag me to that police station again. You hear me?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘Be good, my sweet.’ Valentina laughed and stuck out a hand for a rickshaw. ‘The offices of the Daily Herald,’ she called to the coolie as she jumped in, leaving Lydia to walk up the hill to school.
She didn’t go back to school. She went home instead. She was too rattled. It frightened her that she had so nearly pointed to Number One, the man with the hard eyes, and said, He’s the one. That’s the face I saw at the window. He’s the thief. It would have made everything so easy, and Commissioner Lacock would have been happy rather than angry.
She sat in the shade on the paving stones in the little backyard and fed Sun Yat-sen strips of a cabbage leaf she had scrounged from Mrs Zarya. She scratched the bony top of his head where he liked to be rubbed and ran her hand over the silky fur of his long ears. She envied him the ability to find total happiness in a cabbage leaf. Though she did understand it. Valentina had brought home a box of Lindt chocolates last night, a big white and gold one, and they had eaten pralines and truffle cones for breakfast. It had felt like heaven. Alfred was certainly generous.
She tucked her legs up tight against her chest and sank her chin onto her knees. Sun Yat-sen stood up on his hind legs, rested a soft front paw on her shin, and twitched his nose in her hair while she traced a finger down the long line of his spine and wondered how far a person would go to have someone to love. Alfred was in love with her mother. Oh, any fool could see that. But how did Valentina feel about Alfred? It was hard to say, because she was always so bloody private about what went on in her head, but surely she couldn’t love him. Could she?
Lydia thought about that till the sun had disappeared completely behind the roof ridge, about exactly what it meant to be loved and protected. Then she wrapped her arms round the rabbit and held him close, her cheek tight against his little white face. He never seemed to mind how much she squeezed him; it was one of the things she adored about him, his squashiness. She kissed his pink nose and decided to let him roam loose in the yard and hope Mrs Zarya wouldn’t notice, before she ran up to the attic and snatched a knotted handkerchief from under her mattress.
The handkerchief lay heavy in her pocket as she made her way across to the old Chinese town, and her footsteps quickened at the thought that she might bump into Chang somewhere in its narrow cobbled streets. But all she encountered were cold hostile stares and the hiss of words that made her want Chang at her side. It annoyed her that she had no idea where he lived, but she’d never yet felt able to ask him outright, to tear aside that strange cloak of secrecy he hid under. But next time she would. Next time? Her heart gave a little clatter under her ribs.
Glass lay scattered across the cobbles of Copper Street and no one was doing anything about it. A young man carrying a yoke pole around his neck hobbled past Lydia, leaving an imprint in blood at every step, but most people scuttled against the opposite wall and kept their eyes averted. Only the rickshaw runners were forced to cross the glass. Those wearing straw sandals were lucky; those with bare feet were not.
Lydia stood and stared in horror at Mr Liu’s shop front. At where it had been. It was now a naked gaping hole. Everything was smashed into thousands of pieces; his glass window, his red latticework, his printed signs and scrolls, even the door and its frame lay twisted on the ground. The shops of the candlemaker and the charm seller on each side of it were untouched, open for business as usual, so whatever or whoever had done this had aimed it just at him. At Mr Liu. She stepped inside what was left of the pawnbroker’s, but it was no longer dark and secretive. Sunlight strode in, exposed the packed shelves to any passing gaze, and Lydia felt a sharp tug of sympathy for the place. She knew the value of secrets. In the centre of the room Mr Liu sat still as stone on one of his bamboo stools, while across his knees lay the long blade of the Boxer sword that used to hang on the wall. There was blood on it.
‘Mr Liu,’ she said softly, ‘what happened?’
He raised his eyes to her face, and they were older, much older. ‘Greetings to you, Missy.’ His voice was like a faint scratching on a door. ‘I apologise that I am not open for business today.’
‘Tell me what happened here?’
‘The devils came. They wanted more than I could give.’
Around his feet the jewellery display cases were crushed and empty. Lydia felt a lurch of alarm. The shelves didn’t look as if they had been touched, but the really valuable stuff was gone.
‘Who are these devils, Mr Liu?’
He shrugged his thin shoulders and shut his eyes. The world blocked out. She wondered what inner spirits he was calling on. But what she couldn’t understand was why nothing was being done to clear up the mess, so she went over to where the inlaid screen used to stand, now trampled into the floor, and set his kettle on the little stove at the back. She made them both a cup of jasmine tea on a tray and carried it over to him and his sword. His eyes were still closed.
‘Mr Liu, something to cool your blood.’
A faint flicker of a smile moved his lips and he opened his eyes.
‘Thank you, Missy. You are generous, and respectful to an old man.’
Only then did she realise the oiled queue that used to hang down his back had been chopped off and was lying on the floor, and his long tufty beard had been hacked back to grey stubble. The indignity of such an act overwhelmed her for a moment. Worse than the attack on the shop. Far, far worse.
She pulled up the other stool and sat down on it. ‘Why doesn’t anybody come to help?’ People were passing in full view of them, but their faces looked the other way.
‘They are afraid,’ he said and sipped the scalding liquid with indifference. ‘I cannot blame them.’
Lydia stared at the sword, at the blood turning brown. The attack must have happened only shortly before she arrived because part of it still glistened on the blade.
‘Who are these devils?’
A long silence settled in the shop alongside the dust and the shattered glass while Mr Liu started to breathe deeply in and out, long and slow.
‘You don’t want to know such things,’ he said at last.
‘I do.’
‘Then you are a fool, Missy.’
‘Was it the Communists? They need money for guns, I hear.’
He turned his black eyes on her, surprised. ‘No, it was not the Communists. Where does a foreigner such as you hear of those people?’