The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall Page A

you.’
    ‘Now stop being cross with me.’
    ‘Mama,’ Lydia said softly, ‘I’m frightened.’
    ‘Poof, don’t be so silly. I buy you your first elegant dress to make you happy and you say you are frightened. To own something beautiful is not a crime.’ She leaned her dark head against Lydia’s and whispered, ‘Enjoy it, my beautiful young daughter, learn to enjoy what you can in this life.’
    But all Lydia could do was shake her head. She loved the dress, yet hated it. And she despised herself for wanting it so much.
    ‘You make me cross, Lydia Ivanova, cross as an old goat,’ her mother said in a stern voice. ‘You don’t deserve the dress. I shall take it back.’
    ‘No.’ The word came out as a shout and betrayed her.
    It was only later, when Valentina had finished brushing Lydia’s hair and pinning it into a sophisticated curl on one side, that Lydia noticed her mother was wearing new evening gloves.

    A naval officer approached her as she edged away from the smoking room, where she’d taken a quick peek around the door. The air in there was thick with the smoke from a dozen cigars and a brace of pipes, a blue smog that caught at the back of her throat and made her sneeze.
    ‘Can I help you, miss? You look as if you’re lost, and I hate to see such a charming young damsel in distress.’ The officer smiled at her, very dashing in his startlingly white uniform and a smattering of gold braid.
    ‘Well, I . . .’
    ‘Permit me to buy you a drink?’
    His eyes were so blue and his smile so playful, offering her an invitation that so far had only been spoken in her dreams. Permit me to buy you a drink. It was the dress that was doing it, she knew that. The dress and the sophisticated curl. She was tempted. But in her heart she knew that this elegant officer, with his row of well-fed teeth, would expect something in return for his interest. Unlike her Chinese protector yesterday. He’d asked her for nothing, and that touched her in a way she didn’t quite understand. It was so . . . so unfamiliar to her. Why would a Chinese hawk want to rescue a fanqui sparrow? The question burrowed inside her.
    She recalled the flash of anger in his dark eyes and wondered what lay behind it. She wanted to ask him. But first she’d have to find him and she didn’t even know his name.
    ‘A drink?’ the uniformed officer asked again.
    Lydia turned her head away in disdain and said coolly, ‘I am with my mother, the concert pianist.’
    He melted away. Lydia felt a little trill of delight flutter up her spine and moved on toward the next door. It was set back in a small niche off the entrance hall. Reading Room, a plaque announced in brass letters, and the door was already half open. She walked in. The banging of her heart subsided only when she realised there were no more than two people in residence, an elderly man asleep in a leather wingback chair with The Times rising and falling over his face as he snored gently. The other man, over by the window where the rain was rattling against the dark panes, was Mr Theo.
    He was sitting very upright with his eyes closed. From his mouth came a sort of long drawn-out oom noise, over and over monotonously, the way her mother did piano scales. He was breathing deeply and his hands were turned palms upward like empty begging bowls on the arms of his chair. Lydia watched, fascinated. She had seen natives do this, especially the shaven-headed monks in the temple up on Tiger Hill, but never a white man. She looked around the room. It was dimly lit and one wall was obscured by dark shelves of leather-bound books, and placed at intervals were ebony tables covered in newspapers, magazines, and journals. On the nearest one Lydia could read the headline: CAPTAIN DE HAVILLAND SETS NEW RECORD IN GYPSY MOTH .
    She tiptoed over to one of the tables. Very occasionally she found a magazine discarded in Victoria Park and would pore over it for months until it finally fell apart, but these