‘No, but…’

‘Excellent.’ Mason brushed the girl aside. ‘I like rabbits.’ He barged out into the bare wintry garden, Polly at his heels as he strode down the path.

Anthea watched them. ‘He likes all animals,’ she said to Theo with a sad smile and followed her husband.

‘It’s human beings he has a problem with,’ Theo muttered to himself and glanced at the Russian girl. She looked almost as bad as he felt. His head was splitting, as if it had a meat cleaver embedded in it. She was standing very still, both hands pressed flat against the window, her eyes fixed on the timber shed at the bottom of the garden. Polly was opening the door.

‘Mr Willoughby.’ Lydia spoke softly.

She was watching her friend’s father fondling Sun Yat-sen’s long ears. The Mason family were all gathered in a little group on the lawn, admiring the snowy white animal in Polly’s arms, oblivious to the cold. Their breath circled them like mist.

‘What is it, Lydia?’

The girl was still standing just inside the French windows, but now Theo noticed her gaze had shifted to an untidy pile of rags at the back of the lawn. The gardener should know better than to leave his rubbish in full view of the house. But of course she’d given him a week off.

‘Where can I buy Chinese medicines?’

‘Are you sick, child?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t look well.’

Slowly she turned and fixed her eyes on him. ‘Neither do you.’

He laughed as if she’d made a joke, and the effort of it sent a wave of nausea through him. ‘In the Street of One Hundred Steps there is a Chinese herbalist. But I doubt that he speaks English.’

‘Will you come with me?’

Theo shook his head but, despite the gaping hole in his mind where the smoke from the pipe needed to be, he said, ‘I suppose I could.’ There was just something about the girl. ‘After I’ve had my talk with Mason.’

‘I’ll send him in to you.’

And she did.

‘So?’ Mason wouldn’t keep still. In his jodhpurs and riding boots he paced up and down the carpet. Plainly he was embarrassed. ‘This isn’t the place for this discussion.’

Theo knew this was not the way one Englishman should talk to another on a Sunday morning with the family just outside the window. He should be talking about horses or cricket or his motorcar or what the hell the share market was up to back home. Or even the outrageous new law that the PM, Baldwin, had passed to give the vote to women as young as twenty-one, as if flappers of that age knew anything at all about politics. But drugs? No. That was unacceptable.

‘Listen to me, Mason. Listen hard. The situation has changed for me. I am severing all connections with Feng. I’m sick of being used as bait by both you and that bastard.’

‘Damn it, man, fish bait is all you’re fit for right now. Look at yourself, you’re shaking.’

‘Forget that. You’re not listening to me, Mason. I’m telling you that our arrangement is over. I will have nothing more to do with the Black Snakes and their opium trade. I was a bloody fool to get involved in the first place, I realise that now. You twisted my arm at a time when…’

‘No, don’t give me that. You wanted the money.’

‘I was protecting my school.’

‘Don’t stick your headmasterly head in the sand, Willoughby. Join the human race. I despise people like you. You’re no different from the rest of us, however superior you like to think yourself because you can read this heathen language and understand the pious gibberish of their Confucius and their Buddha. You were just plain greedy.’

‘Like you, you mean.’

Mason laughed, delighted, as if paid a compliment. ‘Exactly.’ He smoothed a hand over his slicked-back hair in a self-satisfied manner. ‘I don’t know what has suddenly got you all fired up, but you’d better put a stop to it right now. Pull yourself together, man.’

‘I’m glad you’re getting my point at last. I am pulling myself together. No more night trips out on the river. No more black paste for me. It’s over. It’s a filthy trade.’

‘God damn you, Willoughby. We both know that the Chinese bastard won’t deal with me without you in the middle of it.’

‘Too bad.’

‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘I’m not threatening. I’m telling.’

‘You bloody fool, I’ll go straight to the police and you’ll be inside a filthy prison cell before you even start your next bout of the shakes.’

‘Mason, I’m telling you to let this go. You’ve made more than a good profit from our deal so far. Now it’s finished. Just let it go. Find yourself a new enterprise and let us end this now like English gentlemen.’ He held out his hand and made certain it did not shake.

Mason took his time. He looked from Theo’s face to his outstretched hand and back again. ‘Go to hell,’ he sneered and walked out through the French windows to the terrace. ‘Polly, Anthea,’ he shouted. ‘Time to go. I want to see what this horse of mine can do.’ He turned and stared back at Theo through the glass, his grey eyes flat and hard. ‘I might even have to use the whip on him.’

Theo wanted to kill him. There and then. His hand even slid to the short ivory-handled knife he kept up his sleeve, and he had to remind himself that it was the opium talking, warping his thoughts. But if he could only take a few breaths on the pipe, it would still the infernal racket in his head, just this once, just one more time. He swung away in a jerky movement and stepped into the hall but stopped in the doorway when he saw Lydia Ivanova sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. She was watching him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes. The concern.

It meant she had heard.

‘Please, Lyd. Go on.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Your father is waiting.’

‘Just a quick look, that’s all.’

‘No. Another day.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, Lydia, for heaven’s sake, I’m only asking for a look at your new bedroom, not at the inside of Mr Parker’s safe or anything like that. Why not?’

‘Sorry, Polly, but it’s not tidy.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’ve only been in it twenty-four hours.’

‘No, Polly. Not today. Please.’

‘What’s the matter with you, Lyd? You look…’

‘I’m fine. Did you like holding Sun Yat-sen?’

‘Oh yes, he’s utterly gorgeous. Papa liked him too.’

‘Your father is calling you to the car.’

Leaning in the doorway, Theo waited while the girls parted, a slight awkwardness between them. Little chickens. Fluffy and new. No idea how life has a habit of slicing your head off when you’re not looking.

36

His face. It was all brittle cheekbones. Skin stretched so tight it looked as if it would split. White as the pillow. Dirty purple hollows around his eyes. But it was his mouth that upset Lydia most. Before, when he leaped into her life that first day in the alleyway or later in the burned-out house when he talked of why only the Communists could drag China out of the tyranny of its feudal past, his mouth had been full and curved and brimming with vital energy. Not just energy, she thought, but a kind of inner power. A certainty. That was gone. His lips, more than any other part of him, looked dead.

Quickly she reached out and touched him. Warm. Alive. Not dead.

But too warm. Hot. Too hot.

He was lying in her bed. Again she squeezed out the cloth in the bowl of cool water. It smelled funny. That was the Chinese herbs. To soothe a fever, that’s what Mr Theo said they were for, to cool the blood. Tenderly she bathed Chang An Lo’s brow, his temples, his throat, and even the black stubble on his bony scalp. She felt a sense of achievement to see it clear of lice and all the other things that had been crawling around up there, and it pleased her to stroke it. Reassured her.