She drank the vodka.
A kick in the gut. Then warmth. It seeped up into her chest and made her cough. She drank again. Slower this time. The black pools were turning grey. She sipped again. It tasted foul. How could anyone like this stuff?
Her mother watched her but said nothing.
Lydia sat down on the floor in front of the stove and Valentina stroked her head.
‘Better?’
‘Mmm.’
Valentina took back the empty glass and refilled it for herself. ‘Do you like my coat?’
‘No.’
Valentina laughed and ruffled the beautiful soft fur. ‘I do.’ Lydia leaned her head back, rested it on her mother’s knee, and closed her eyes.
‘Mama, don’t marry him.’
Slowly and gently Valentina continued to stroke her daughter’s hair. ‘We need him, dochenka,’ she murmured. ‘In this world when you need something, you have to ask a man. That’s the way it is.’
‘No. Look at us. We’ve survived all these years without a man. Between us we managed. A woman can…’
‘That’s balderdash, to use one of Alfred’s words.’ Valentina laughed again, but this time there was no humour in it. ‘It was always through men that I got my concert bookings, never women. Women don’t like me. They see me as a threat. C’est la vie.’
But Lydia heard the loneliness in the words.
‘It is not balderdash, Mama. It’s true. We can manage.’
‘Dochenka, don’t make me mad at your stupidity. Look at yourself. When it’s a rabbit you want, you get it out of Antoine. For a hutch or money, it’s Alfred. Oh yes, don’t look so surprised. He told me you came to him for a few dollars.’
‘It was for… things.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not prying. In fact Alfred was quite touched by it because you asked him instead of going out and stealing it.’
‘That man is easily pleased.’
‘He said he believed it was a sign of your growing maturity. And of a better sense of morality.’
‘Did he really say that?’
‘Yes.’
‘But, Mama, I ask women for help too. Like Mrs Zarya and Mrs Yeoman, and even Anthea Mason showed me how to bake a cake. You taught me how to dance. And Countess Serova taught me to walk taller.’
Valentina snatched her hand away from Lydia’s head. ‘What?’
‘She told me to hold my…’
‘What in the name of all that’s holy has it got to do with that witch of a woman?’ Valentina threw the vodka down her throat. ‘How dare she? How dare…?’
‘Mama.’ Lydia twisted around to look at her mother, but her face was swathed in deep shadow from the single candle on the table behind her. Only her eyes glittered. ‘Don’t get upset, Mama. She’s not important.’
Valentina drew hard on her cigarette, a bright pinprick of fire, and exhaled fiercely as if she were spitting poison.
Lydia rubbed her cheek against the fur-covered knee. ‘She can’t hurt you.’
Valentina was silent, then stabbed out her cigarette, lit another, and refilled her glass. Lydia felt her own head swirling gently with a pleasant drowsy slowness that made her eyelids too heavy to raise. Behind them Chang’s smile floated in mist.
‘Where do you go these days, Lydochka? After school, I mean.’
‘I go to Polly’s house. We’re working together on a project for school. I told you.’
‘I know you did.’ She drank more of the vodka. ‘That doesn’t mean it’s the truth.’
Lydia almost told her then. Everything. About Chang and his crazy leaps and his foot and his fierce beliefs and the way his mouth curved into a perfect… The drink had loosened her tongue and words were longing to pour out, to tell someone. Someone.
‘Mama, what did your parents say when you married a foreigner? ’
To her horror she felt her mother’s knee start to tremble beneath her cheek and when she looked up, tears were rolling down her mother’s face. Lydia gently stroked the knee, over and over, the fur almost as soft as Sun Yat-sen’s under her fingers.
‘They disowned me.’
‘Oh, Mama.’
‘They had the eldest son of a fine Russian family from Moscow all lined up for me. But instead Jens Friis and I eloped and they cursed us. Disowned me.’ She brushed the tears from her face with the back of the hand that held the cigarette, only just avoiding setting fire to her hair.
‘You loved each other, that’s all that matters.’
‘No, durochka, you little fool. It’s not enough. You need more.’
‘But you were happy together, you were, you’ve always said so.’
‘Yes, we were. But look at me now. The curse of my family has done this to me.’
‘That’s crazy. There are no such things as curses.’
‘Don’t you kid yourself, darling. The one thing that monster Confucius got right among all his claptrap about women is that you should obey your parents.’ She tapped her glass on the top of Lydia’s head. ‘That’s something you need to learn, you little alley cat. Parents really do know what’s best for their children.’
Lydia began to laugh. She couldn’t help it. It just bubbled up from nowhere and burst out regardless. Once she’d started she couldn’t stop and laid her face in her mother’s lap, howling with laughter.
‘It’s the drink,’ Valentina murmured, ‘you silly thing.’ But she was starting to laugh herself.
‘Do you know,’ Lydia giggled, ‘that Confucius said a nursing mother should feed her grandparents from her breast when they can no longer eat solid food.’
‘Good God!’
‘And,’ Lydia gasped out, ‘a man should feed his own fingers to his parents in time of famine.’
‘Well, dochenka, it’s about time you fed me yours.’ She picked up one of Lydia’s hands and took a bite of her smallest finger.
Lydia went weak with laughter, tears streaking her cheeks and her breath coming in great noisy hiccups.
‘Wicked child,’ Valentina suddenly exclaimed, ‘look, the vermin is here!’
Lydia rolled her head around and saw the long white ears flicking with concern by her side. Sun Yat-sen had hopped off her bed and come to inspect the noise. She scooped him up into her arms, placed a kiss on the tip of his pink nose, laid her head down on her mother’s lap, and was instantly asleep.
31
Christmas Day was difficult. Lydia got through it. Her mother had a hangover, so hardly spoke, and Alfred was ill at ease playing host in his small and rather gloomy bachelor flat across the road from the French Quarter.
‘I should have booked a restaurant,’ he said for the third time as they sat at the table while his cook presented them with an overcooked goose.
‘No, angel, this is more homey,’ Valentina assured him. She managed a smile.
Angel? Homey? Lydia cringed. She pulled her Christmas cracker with him and tried to look pleased when he placed a paper hat on her head.
Two high points made the rest almost bearable.
‘Here, Lydia,’ Alfred said as he held out a large flat box wrapped in fancy paper and satin ribbon. ‘Merry Christmas, my dear.’
It was a coat, a soft greyish-blue. Beautifully tailored, heavy and warm, and instantly Lydia knew her mother had chosen it.
‘I hope you like it,’ he said.
‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’
It had a wide wrapover collar and there was a pair of navy gloves in the pocket. She put them all on and felt wonderful. Alfred was beaming at her, expecting more, and it made her want to explain to him, Just because you gave me a coat, it doesn’t make you my father. Instead she stepped forward, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cleanly shaven cheek that smelled of sandalwood. But it was the wrong thing to do. She could see in his eyes that he believed things between them had changed.