‘We can split the money between us.’
‘Can we split the prison sentence between us too?’
‘Don’t get caught and there’ll be no prison,’ she’d scoffed.
But even then her cheeks had started to burn. She’d turned them to the breeze off the silvery surface of the river and wanted to tell him not to take the risk after all. Forget the necklace. But her tongue wouldn’t find the words. When she looked back at him his mouth was curved in a smile that somehow soothed the fretting of her soul. It was a strange feeling, one that was new to her. To be with someone and not have to hide things. He saw what was inside her and understood.
Unlike Alfred Parker. He wanted her to be somebody she would never be and would never want to be, the perfect rose-pink English miss. His dull little soul was eager to snatch her mother away from her and give her a rabbit hutch in exchange. What kind of bargain was that?
Oh Chang An Lo, I need you here. I need your clear eyes and your calm tongue.
She rose to her feet, trying to move smoothly, and stared hard at the water. She had to catch a fish to present to Mrs Zarya, so she took from her pocket a penknife she’d pinched from a boy at school and proceeded to whittle the tip of her spear to an even sharper point, the way she’d seen Chang do. The stripped willow branch didn’t need it, but it made her feel better. To be cutting something.
‘My great heavens, moi vorobushek, where did that hideous thing come from?’ Mrs Zarya flapped her hands in a flurry of astonishment and eyed Lydia with sudden suspicion. ‘You not offering it instead of rent, are you? This month is now time.’
Lydia shook her head. ‘No. It’s a gift. I caught it for you.’
Mrs Zarya smiled broadly. ‘Clever little sparrow. Come.’
Lydia was relieved that instead of waddling back into the living room with its oversized furniture and the accusing eye of General Zarya, her landlady led her farther down the corridor to a narrow kitchen. She had never been in it before. It was small and brown. Two chairs, a table, a stove, a sink, and a cabinet. Everything brown. But it smelled clean and soapy. In one corner stood a well-polished samovar with its little teapot keeping warm on top.
‘Now,’ Mrs Zarya said, ‘let us look on this sea monster you bring me.’
Lydia placed her gift on the table. It was a large wide-winged flatfish, as brown as the wood it lay on but spattered with tiny yellow flecks on its broad back.
‘You catch this?’
‘Yes.’
Mrs Zarya nodded appreciatively and prodded it with one finger. ‘That is good. So now I cook it. You eat with me too?’
Lydia grinned. ‘Spasibo. You are kind, dobraya. Ya plohaya povariha. I am not a good cook.’
‘Ah, so you speak Russian at last. Otlichno! That is good.’
‘No, I’m learning it from a book but it’s hard that way.’
‘Tell that lazy nothing mother of yours to put off the bottle and teach her daughter russkiy yazik.’
‘She won’t.’
‘Ah.’ Mrs Zarya opened her arms wide and swept Lydia to her overflowing bosom in a warm suffocating hug before Lydia saw it coming. The huge black bosom smelled of mothballs and talcum powder, and she could feel a whalebone digging into her cheek.
‘Help,’ she mumbled.
The Russian woman released her with a look of concern.
‘I need help,’ Lydia said. ‘To learn Russian, I mean.’
Mrs Zarya thumped a heavy hand against her own bosom. It vibrated disturbingly. ‘I, Olga Petrovna Zarya,’ she said in triumph, ‘teach you your mother tongue. Yes?’
‘Da.’ Yes.
‘But first I grill fish.’
Lydia haunted the places Chang might be. After school each day she clambered first down to Lizard Creek, always expecting that this time at last she would push her way through the tangle of bushes and see his dark head bent over the beginnings of a fire or his knife swiftly flashing through the flesh of a fish or the bark of a willow twig. Everything he did, he did smoothly. Cleanly. Not messy like herself. She pictured it as she lay in bed at night, saw him raise his eyes from whatever task he was doing and look at her in that intense way of his. With a smile and a gleam that told her he was pleased she had found him.
Because she wasn’t sure how he felt about her. Maybe he was staying away because he’d had enough of her and her crazy fanqui arguments. She tried to think back. Had she insulted him? Going to the funeral. Was that the problem?
Not the grey bellies. Don’t let it be because of the grey bellies.
Chills whipped through her body whenever she thought of their swords or their rifles pointed at his head. She saw the soldiers. With their armbands and the sun on their caps as if they owned the world. Strutting around the old town. It was madness but she went there, couldn’t stay away. She steered clear of the hutongs but scanned the crowds in the main streets, again and again and again, and found nothing but hostile eyes and jostling poles and mouths that shouted unimaginable words at her. Once she even spotted a neck with a Black Snake tattoo. But the man showed no interest in her. She didn’t run. Any more than she ran from the beggars who reached out at her with skeletal fingers or from the well-clad Chinese businessman who offered her a ride in his big black Cadillac. The chance of finding Chang among all this teeming humanity was…
She refused even to think the word.
‘Ah, Missy, my eyes are bright with the pleasure of seeing you again. It has been a long time.’ Mr Liu waved her to a seat and spread his hands to indicate his shop. ‘I hope my miserable premises are not too disgusting to you.’
Lydia smiled. ‘It looks different. Very modern. Your customers must come here just for the delight of viewing such a grand place, Mr Liu.’
Mr Liu’s stick-dry figure seemed to swell with pride, and he scuttled away to the stove where the teapot was waiting. It was a new one. Plain cream porcelain. In fact everything was new. Shelves, cabinets, door, window, even the stool she was sitting on. Gone was the bamboo one and the ebony table. In its place was a modern chrome and plastic one. The shelves and counter were the same: modern, clean and horrible. Only the black stove remained of what used to be. And the jasmine tea. That hadn’t changed.
‘I’m impressed, Mr Liu. Business must be very good indeed.’
‘Times are hard, Missy, but there is always someone who needs something. The trick is to provide it.’ His face was older, the dry walnut skin thinner than tissue, and his hair was short and white now, but the wispy beard was coming back. He fingered it constantly like an old friend.
She wondered what it was he had learned the trick of providing. Guns? Drugs? Information?
‘Mr Liu, if I wanted to find someone in old Junchow, how should I go about it?’
His eyes narrowed. Settled on her face.
‘You have this person’s address?’
‘No.’
‘Place of work?’
‘No.’
‘His family?’
‘No.’ She didn’t notice the his slipped in there.
‘Friends?’
She hesitated. ‘I know one friend. By sight only.’
‘So.’ He folded his hands into his sleeves and considered her for so long she started to grow uncomfortable. ‘So,’ he said again. ‘This someone. He could be in trouble?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘In hiding?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I see.’
She waited what seemed an age while he considered again.
‘The place to search, Missy, is the docks. Down by the harbour. There the world is lawless and nameless. The dollar is the only language that they speak. The dollar and the knife.’
‘Mr Liu, you are generous with your words. Thank you.’
‘Be careful, Missy. It is a dangerous place. Life there is worth less than a hair from your copper head.’