‘Did you miss me, darling?’
‘Oh really, have you been away? I didn’t even notice.’
‘You wicked child.’ Valentina laughed and squeezed Lydia hard.
Alfred came over and patted Lydia awkwardly on the back. ‘Good to see you looking well, my dear. But where is Deng?’
‘The houseboy?’ Still she held her mother. Drew the scent of her perfume deep into her lungs. ‘I gave him the week off.’
‘Why on earth…? Ah well, never mind. I’ll take the cases up myself. Good exercise anyway.’
She heard his footsteps tread heavily up the stairs, and she felt her mother’s quick breath on her ear.
‘Lydia,’ was all Valentina said. ‘Lydia.’
‘Mama.’
They stood alone in the hall. Neither willing to release the other.
‘You’d have loved it, Lydia.’ Alfred was beaming at her and took a contented puff on his pipe, sending blue smoke coiling to the ceiling.
Lydia preferred the aromatic scent of the tobacco to the harsh smell of her mother’s cigarettes. They were all seated in the drawing room after an excellent meal of fillet of pork followed by pineapple syllabub. Wai was showing off his wider menu now that his master had returned. Alfred had lit the fire in the drawing room, as there was no houseboy to do it for him, whistling the whole time, and Lydia noticed a marked change in him. No more nervous foot-shuffling silences. Lots of sounds coming from him. Humming or whistling or talking. As if the happiness inside kept flowing out of him in noise.
‘One day, Lydia,’ Alfred said as he tossed a match into the glowing coals, ‘I will take you to the Yungang cave temples as well. You must see for yourself how astonishing they are and what wonderful building skills the Chinese possessed nearly two thousand years ago. Good Lord, in England we have nothing to compare with them. Quite remarkable.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Oh dochenka, you really must see the seated Buddha. It’s amazing. Sixty feet high and cut into a yellow cliff. I’ve never seen such a huge man.’ Valentina laughed and glanced teasingly at Alfred on the chesterfield beside her.
The radio was playing softly in the background, some new kind of syncopated jazz, and Alfred was humming again. Lydia was sipping a tumbler of lime juice with a handful of ice in it and trying hard to make conversation, but her mind was outside in the cold.
The hot-water bottle needed heating again. The poultices on the burns needed changing. The next dose of herb tea was overdue and…
‘Darling, do listen. You look as if you’re miles away. I was telling you about the system they have for their temples and tombs and things. It’s called feng shui. They’ve used it for more than two thousand years. It’s supposed to make sure the sites are… Oh, what was that word they used, my angel?’
‘Propitious?’ Alfred offered.
‘That’s it, propitiously sited.’
Valentina was very animated. She seemed to have shed the cloak of cultivated indifference she used to carry around with her and taken on an enthusiasm for everything. Lydia found it quite odd. She couldn’t decide whether it was something released from the inside or stuck on from the outside. But Alfred was clearly entranced.
‘I know about feng shui, Mama. The trouble is that the Europeans haven’t taken any notice of it at all. We drive railroads through their spiritual places, and missionaries build churches that throw shadows on ancient Chinese ancestral graveyards, disturbing their dead. Don’t laugh, Mama. It really matters to them. And they believe our church spires pierce the skies with their sharp points and prevent the good spirits returning to earth. Feng shui means wind and water.’
‘Does it? How clever of you, darling. Don’t I have a clever daughter, Alfred?’
‘Yes, very clever.’ He beamed at Lydia again.
But she knew that if Valentina had asked him if her daughter was bright green with pink spots he’d have said yes just as willingly. Lydia chose her moment. She stretched casually and stood up.
‘It’s good to have you home again but I think I’ll go to bed now, if you don’t mind.’
‘So soon?’
‘Mmm, I’m sleepy.’ She smiled at her stepfather. ‘It’s the heat from this wonderful fire. I think I’ll just pop out and check on Sun Yat-sen before I go up, though. He’s still a bit nervous in his new home, so…’
‘I don’t think so, Lydia,’ Alfred said firmly. ‘I don’t want you wandering around out there in the dark.’
‘But there’s a moon. It’s not too dark.’
‘No, you go to bed now, my dear. Leave the rabbit till tomorrow morning.’ He smiled at her but his eyes were serious, and suddenly she remembered the deal she’d made with him in exchange for the two hundred dollars.
Her heart sank. She looked to her mother for help, but Valentina was at the cocktail cabinet pouring a glass of vodka for herself and a snifter of brandy for her husband.
‘Please, Alfred,’ Lydia said coaxingly.
‘Not tonight, dear. You trot up to bed now and leave the bally rabbit till morning. There’s a good girl. Sleep well.’
Lydia nodded. ‘Good night, Mama,’ she said and gave her a light kiss. Then she did the same to Alfred, avoiding his spectacles.
Upstairs she drew a big letter A on a sheet of paper and stuck pins in it.
They lay among the blankets on the dusty floor. Gently, soothingly, he stroked her nipple with his thumb. Together they watched the moon travel slowly across the skylight above them. Lydia yearned for it to be a full moon, a complete magical disk, so that they could wish on it but it was at least a week too early, its perfection marred by reality. Her head rested on his shoulder, their limbs so entwined she no longer knew where hers ended and his began. His skin a part of hers. Her breath a part of his.
‘Lydia.’
‘Mmm?’
They had been silent a long time, wrapped comfortably around each other. The crisp rectangle of translucent light that the moon shed over them turned their naked skin silver and made shadows leap from one face to the other as their lips brushed. Earlier they had made love and it had been different. Fiercer. Hungrier. As if their bodies knew time was running out. Lydia had waited impatiently in her room until she was certain her mother and Alfred must be asleep, and then she’d crept downstairs and sped across the grass. Frost made it crunch underfoot. Trees lurched at her with spiky elongated shadows, and a bat flitted low over her head as she turned the key in the padlock.
‘Are you all right?’ he’d asked immediately. He was standing to one side of the doorway, a blanket over his shoulders.
‘No. I’m not all right. Not remotely all right.’
He kissed her mouth.
‘My mother came home early, just as you said she might, and so I’ve been stuck up there in the house worried sick about you and what you must be thinking Alexei Serov will get up to. Damn the man. Why did he have to call? But honestly I don’t think he’ll betray us. He’s helped me once before. I know he can be a real supercilious bastard at times, but he’s not so bad underneath. The danger is that he might feel a strong duty to the Kuomintang and…’
‘Hush, hush, my love.’
His dark eyes searched hers and the expression in them made all the words tumble straight out of her head. He drew her into his arms, enveloped her in his blanket, and for the first time in hours she felt safe again. In the middle of a rickety old shed, freezing to death and with every possible thing going wrong. Yet she felt safe. And happy. She only had to look at him and she felt happy. And when she wasn’t with him, she only had to think of him and her limbs turned liquid with desire.