‘You speak our language,’ he growled.
‘Not well,’ she replied in Russian.
He leaned against the wall, waiting for more from her, and she had a sudden image of it crumbling under his weight. Up close he was even bigger. She had to tilt her head back to look at him. At first that was all she saw. The bigness of him. That was exactly what she wanted. He was wearing a Cossack hat of moth-eaten fur jammed over his black curls and a long padded overcoat that stank of grease and came right down to the tip of his boots. And he was chewing something. Tobacco? Dog meat? She had no idea.
‘I need your help.’ The Russian words came to her tongue more readily than she expected.
‘Pochemu?’ Why?
‘Because I am searching for someone.’
He spat whatever was in his mouth onto the yard floor. ‘You are the dyevochka who made trouble for me. With police.’ He spoke gruffly but slowly. She wasn’t sure if this was his normal way or done just for her to understand the language that was still a struggle to her. ‘Why should I help you? You of all people.’
She opened her hand. In it lay Alfred’s two hundred Chinese dollars.
30
He didn’t speak, Liev Popkov. But neither did she. Yet they kept close, even touching at times. Side by side they hunched forward against the biting wind that whipped up off the Peiho River, and Lydia’s lungs ached with the effort.
‘Here,’ he muttered.
He meant the narrow street that twisted away from the quayside to their left. It was grey and cobbled and stank of putrid fish guts. She nodded. His broad shovel of a hand pulled her tight against him, so that not a crack of the thin wintry light sneaked between them and her body became no more than an extension of this great greasy bear. It was weird the effect he had on her mind. She felt big and bold and fearless. The hostile eyes around them no longer sent shivers down her spine, and when one of the Chinese dockhands reached out to touch her as he passed, Liev casually raised an arm and smashed his elbow into the man’s face. Broken bone and blood and high-pitched screams. She looked at the mess and felt ill. They kept on walking, no comment. Liev was a man of few words.
In the beginning on their first few forays down around the dock-land quays, she had tried to speak to him in her halting Russian, to offer some flow of simple conversation, but all she received in reply were grunts. Or no response at all. She grew used to it. It made it easier for her to concentrate on the faces that swarmed over the congested harbour and in the slippery hutongs, easier to avoid the thousands of shoulder poles carrying weighty piles of God-knows-what in their buckets and panniers. Easier to watch where her feet were stepping.
Easier. But not easy. None of this was easy.
‘Lydia Ivanova.’
Lydia’s head jerked up from her desk. Wisps of bright dreams fled her mind and she stared up into Mr Theo’s eyes. Grey eyes that had turned black, the pupils were so huge, and his tongue was sharper than ever.
‘Are you with us, Miss Ivanova? Or shall I bring a bed into class for you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You surprise me, girl. I would have thought the love affair between Philip II of Spain and Mary Tudor of England would be passionate enough to keep your eyes open in class. Isn’t that what girls your age like? Love affairs. Even with young Chinese boys.’
‘No, sir.’
He smiled a little. She did not return the smile.
‘Detention after school. You can do me an essay on…’
‘Please, sir, not after school. I’ll do detention for a whole week of lunch breaks, but not…’
‘You’ll do detention when I say, young lady.’
‘It’s just that…’ Her voice trailed away. Everyone was looking and listening. Polly was making signs but Lydia couldn’t work out what.
‘Lydia.’ Mr Theo walked over to her desk. His black headmaster’s gown billowed around him and to Lydia’s mind he looked like a long-legged crow come to peck her eyes out. ‘You will do detention today. After school. Understand?’
She wanted to hit him. As Liev Popkov would have done. But she lowered her head. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Oh, Lyd, you silly. When will you learn to grovel to him?’ Polly was clucking over her like a mother hen. ‘All you had to say was “I’m sorry, Mr Theo, I promise I won’t let it happen again,” and he would have let you off.’
‘Really?’
‘You are so naïve, Lyd. Of course he would.’
‘But why?’
‘Because that’s what men like. It makes them feel powerful.’
Understanding dawned. Yes. People want to feel powerful. She had seen its effects in the alien world of the docklands when she was linked to Liev Popkov and had learned the way it made you feel good. Powerful men. They made sure they got what they wanted, just as Polly’s father knew how to get things he wanted. Or people he desired. It made Lydia’s skin crawl. A question occurred to her, but she wasn’t sure quite how to put it to Polly.
‘Polly, you’re much better at handling people than I am. I can’t even get my mother to do things I want sometimes.’ She paused and rubbed the side of a fingernail. ‘By the way, does she ever come to visit your house?’
‘Gosh, no. What an odd question. Why on earth would she?’
‘I thought maybe she might come to talk to your mother, you know, like mothers do when their daughters are friends.’ She shrugged. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’
‘You are a strange one sometimes, you know.’
‘You’d tell me if she did. Come to your house, I mean.’
‘Of course.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘Good.’
‘How’s Mr Parker, by the way?’
‘He’s still around.’
‘Oh, you’re so lucky. When they’re married he’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted like a house and pretty clothes and holidays and everything.’ She laughed and poked her friend lightly in the ribs. ‘Including a nice new school uniform. It’s what you need.’
‘It’s not what I need,’ Lydia snapped. ‘It’s what people with power make you think you need.’
‘Oh, Lyd, you’re hopeless.’
Liev Popkov was still standing at the end of her road, waiting for her. He must have been there a long time because snow had built up into epaulettes on his shoulders and his fur hat had turned white like a stoat in winter.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Prastitye menya. I’m late because I had to stay longer at school.’
He grunted. Moved off with his loose shambling gait, so that Lydia had to scamper to keep up, and headed again for the harbour. It was a dismal but frantic world down there where everything from rhinoceros horns to ten-year-old slaves were bought and sold, but nevertheless Lydia liked the chance to gaze at the sleek liners and the rusting tramp steamers that brought the outside world into the heart of Junchow. It made England seem so close she could almost reach out and grab it in her hand. She watched hard-eyed men and fur-coated women stride down the gangplanks as if they owned the world, while at their feet coolies begged to carry their bags. The snow had stopped falling.
‘This one,’ Liev growled.
He led her down yet another dank and filthy alleyway where native hawkers tried to sell even the rags off their backs. One stall was offering bathroom taps, a whole tea chest of them smuggled out of one of the import warehouses that surrounded the harbour, while farther down was a row of porcelain-faced dolls sitting up like little dead children. Lydia had never possessed a doll in her life and was constantly baffled by whatever it was that drove girls to want one. Even to love the wretched things. Like Polly did. It was so…
A moon-faced man broke up her thoughts. He was speaking in rapid Chinese and pointing back down the alleyway. She started to shake her head to indicate she didn’t understand but realised he was talking to Liev, not to her. The man kept jabbering louder and louder, throwing his arms around. Liev just swung his great head back and forth. Nyet. Nyet. Nyet.