Master of Rain

by Tom Bradby

  Field wiped the palm of his hand across his hair to remove some of the rain.

  He knocked on her door once, loudly, then stepped back.

  Light spilled out beneath the door, across the puddle of water that had gathered around his feet.

  The door opened, the light behind her as it had been on that first day, her dressing gown only half done up, her hair tousled.

  “You have a guest.”

  She looked at him.

  She stepped forward and curled her arms around his neck, her lips soft, her mouth warm, tasting as he had always imagined she would. The smell of her was intoxicating.

  Field pulled at the back of her dressing gown. He kneaded, with strong hands, the soft flesh in the curve between her buttocks and thighs. She leaned back. Her hands rested gently on his neck, her eyes searching his.

  Natasha was tall, but he lifted her easily. She wrapped her legs around him and rested her head on his shoulder as he kicked the door shut behind him.

  She straightened by the entrance to her bedroom and released herself, leaning momentarily against the door frame. Her face was dimly lit by the city’s lights, her eyes, still searching his, betraying a combination of softness and deep loneliness. The rain rattled against the window.

  He touched her, the flat of his hand against her cheek, and leaned forward to place his face beside her own. Her skin was smooth against his, warm and soft.

  Field leaned back and her eyes once again searched his for something deep within.

  She took his face in her hands and gently kissed him. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the frame. Field found that his own hands were shaking as he pushed the hair from her neck and ran his fingers down to her shoulder.

  He bent his head to kiss her neck, breathing in the scent of her as though it were a drug. Her skin was soft as velvet and she inhaled sharply as he traced his fingers down between her breasts, slipping them inside her gown.

  Field put his lips to her skin. He sank to his knees, feeling the curve of the breast with his hand, her nipple hard but supple as he took it gently into his mouth.

  She breathed in again, arching her back. Her fingers massaged his scalp and pressed him closer.

  Natasha pushed him lower, his lips brushing her ribs and then her smooth, flat stomach, her hands gripping him harder as his own ran up her thighs and over her hips. She guided him firmly, until his lips touched the soft hairs between her legs.

  He kissed her harder and she leaned back, lowering her body, holding the frame behind her with one hand and his head with the other.

  Each movement of his tongue within her was matched by the swaying of her hips, her breathing punctuated by almost inaudible gasps. Her fingers ran slowly through his hair, before again gripping his skull.

  And then she was pushing him back and tearing at his clothes, pulling off his jacket and fumbling at the buttons of his shirt as he struggled to remove his trousers. She gave up and tore his shirt off as he tumbled onto the bed and she kissed him again, her lips on his cheek and his neck, his shoulder and the center of his chest, her warm, soft body flattened against him.

  Natasha was slower now, more gentle, her lips on his, her long fingers caressing his face and neck and chest and arms.

  She slipped off him, lay back, taking his right hand and inviting him to raise himself above her. She parted her legs, light from the racetrack illuminating the length of her, from the hair that spilled onto the white sheet beneath them to the round curve of her breasts to the darkness at the base of her belly. She brought him gently forward, guiding him, never taking her eyes from his as she let him slip silently inside her.

  They were slow. Natasha shut her eyes, her arms above her head, her face tipped to the side, her mouth parted. She raised her legs and brushed them against his hips before opening her eyes and looking at him again. She touched his face.

  She hardened her grip on his hips, clasped her legs behind him, then sat up, kissing him, passionately, on the mouth, then the cheek, breathing into his ear. His hand sought the contours of her ribs and her breast as they tumbled across the bed, parting for a moment, before she raised a leg to his waist and slipped him back inside her. She was laughing now, smiling at him, teasing him with her lips. “Richard Field,” she said quietly, testing the sound of his name. She laughed again.

  She rolled on top of him. He cupped the curve of her buttocks with his palms as she pressed down on him, her breathing low and rhythmic.

  Natasha slipped off him, gliding onto his stomach. She pressed herself against his chest, then lay back and pulled him gently above her again, filling herself with him once more.

  Twenty-nine

  They lay entwined together in silence, their bodies covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Her head was in the crook of his neck, a hand on his chest, her face by his ear, so that he could listen to her breathing.

  The rain still hammered against the window.

  “It is so comforting, the rain,” she said.

  Field did not answer. Her hand caressed his chest and then found his, her fingers playing with his own. She hugged him, her leg over his waist and groin.

  “When I was a child,” she said, “we used to lie in bed and listen to the rain, all warm and safe.”

  “With your mother?”

  “My sister.” She lifted her head so that she could look at him. “Did you like to listen to the rain, Richard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have someone to listen with?”

  “No.”

  “You have no sister, or brother?”

  “I have a sister.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Edith.”

  “You are not close?”

  Field stared at the ceiling. “I think we were close.”

  Natasha hugged him again. She ran her hand through his hair, ruffled it. “Now you are always smiling!” She laughed.

  “So are you.”

  She held his hand and they lay still. Natasha examined his fingers, running her own along each and then placing her hand over his. “How only think so?” she asked.

  “Think so what?”

  “How do you only think you were close to your sister?”

  Field stared at the ceiling. He tried to pick out mosquitoes in the gloom but could not see any. Her nets worked. “It was a different life. It’s confused. Everything back home is confused.” Field tried to recall home clearly, but it was hard to think about anything while looking at her. She nodded, to encourage him. “It’s almost as though I have only been alive since I’ve been here and everything that went before is . . .” He stopped. “Did your family come?”

  She put a finger to his lips and rolled off the bed, her long hair hanging down her back as she moved toward the bathroom.

  Natasha returned, unashamedly naked, and knelt on the end of the bed.

  She slipped from her knees onto her hip, arching her back so that her hair hung back over his toes.

  Field leaned forward and touched the flesh above her knee.

  Natasha pushed him gently back onto the pillow, her lips warm, the smell of her still more intense, her nipples against his chest, the skin of her neck soft, her legs across his.

  The urgency had gone, her touch now more deeply satisfying. She ran her fingers across his chin and through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead. Her tongue ran around his lips and then slipped between them, finding his own and withdrawing.

  She smiled and leaned back onto her left leg, moving the other up beside his face. As he touched her ankle and ran his hand up her knee and then along her thigh, he watched her put the fingers of her right hand in her mouth.

  She reached down between Field’s legs, making a ring of her thumb and finger. She bent down to kiss him.

  Field’s muscles were tense, his arms straining.

  She released him, straddling his waist, taking his hand and guiding it. Her breathing quickened as she pressed down onto him, and he groaned as he sl
id into her once more.

  Natasha threw herself back, her breasts high in the half-light, her legs pressing against his thighs, her hands resting on his stomach. She pushed down harder, raising herself so that she was teasing the end of him, before forcing herself back down.

  She closed her eyes and, just for a moment, unease at the contrast between her expertise and his inexperience crept into the corner of Field’s mind, before she leaned forward once more, her hair tumbling into his face, her mouth warm, and he lost himself in the curve of her thighs.

  Afterward, they lay in almost exactly the same position, Natasha’s heart hammering against his chest.

  Field listened to it, and his own, slowing.

  “Have you always been a fighter, Richard?” she said, looking at him, resting on her elbow. “I think somebody once hurt you very badly.”

  He frowned.

  “So determined and yet so vulnerable.” Natasha stood and shook her head. “I can imagine you as a little boy.” Without waiting for him to answer, she walked to the bathroom, her hands on her slim hips.

  He listened as she ran the tap and brushed her teeth and then turned on the shower.

  “Tu arrives?” she asked.

  Field stood and walked into the bathroom. She was half-visible through a glass screen.

  He opened the door of the shower. She put her arms around his middle and drew him in, her body slippery and cool.

  Natasha looked younger with wet, straggled hair across her face, her nipples hardened by the water. She was smiling at him, as if she were enjoying a private joke.

  She pushed him gently away and stepped out of the stream of water. She lathered the soap in her hands and began to wash him. She started with his neck, then worked under his arms, before pushing him back so that she could wash his chest and stomach.

  She worked down his body to his feet, washing them as carefully as the rest of him, before pulling him forward into the stream of water.

  Field took the soap from her. He began at her neck. She watched him as he washed under her armpits and across her breasts, teasing her nipples with a soapy hand.

  “Washing.”

  Her stomach was flat, her belly button tiny and shallow.

  He knelt down, working the soap into a lather again, washing around her hips and then into the mound of hair at the parting of her thighs.

  He worked downward, placing his hand gently between her legs, feeling the response in her body.

  He washed her feet but without conviction. She stepped forward, her body quivering and pressed hard against his, the water streaming over them. Natasha lifted herself against him, into his arms, her legs around him as she leaned back against the glass screen.

  They dried each other afterward, and then she brought over his clothes and put them carefully on the bed. She placed the flat of her hand against his stomach, then began to dress him, her touch reassuring. His suit was crumpled and still damp from the rain.

  “A new suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should take better care of it.”

  Natasha placed her own clothes on the bed. She pulled the garter belt around her waist and then sat down. Field took the stockings and placed them over her toes, rolling them slowly up her legs and fastening them at the top as she watched him.

  “You haven’t done this before, have you, Richard?”

  Field found it impossible to answer. It seemed to open up too many other questions. She stood and took his head to her stomach. When he straightened and put his big arms around her, he noticed, for the first time, a picture of the tsar and tsarina on the mantelpiece above the fireplace on the far wall. It was a formal picture, Nicholas in military uniform, his wife in a long white lace dress. Natasha followed his gaze.

  She walked to the closet and turned. “I know a café in the Concession which will be open. It is early, we will not be seen.”

  She took a long red dress from the closet, more suitable for dinner than breakfast. She slipped it over her head and then turned her back to him, to allow him to do up the buttons. It was well made, elegant, and obviously expensive.

  Natasha searched for her keys in the silver pot by the door and then stepped out into the dark hallway, her heels noisy on the stone floor. Field looked at his watch. It was five o’clock in the morning, but he had never felt less tired in his life.

  In the lift she checked herself in the mirror, rearranging her hair. He touched the curve at the bottom of her back and she gripped his hand and smiled at him.

  Outside, there were no rickshaws, so they walked beneath the streetlamps that still brought only a dim glow to the streets.

  Field took her hand and she held his for a moment before letting it slip free. She did not smile at him, and now that they were in public, her mood seemed to have cooled.

  “Did somebody hurt you?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Always so angry.” She imitated him. “Shoulders hunched, fists bunched. Like a boxer!” Their footsteps kept a steady rhythm. “Tonight you are smiling and it is better.”

  Field didn’t answer.

  “Why did you come to Shanghai?” she asked.

  “To escape. Like everyone.”

  “To escape what?”

  “Just to escape.”

  “Your family?” She took his hand again briefly, glancing about her, a teasing smile at the corner of her lips. She seemed much younger suddenly. “Why do you care about Lena . . . about me?”

  Field did not answer. The first glimmer of dawn was visible through the leaves of the trees. Thin shafts of light fell across their faces as they walked beside the gracious houses with their angular, corrugated tile roofs and small attic windows still lingering in semidarkness.

  “You have family here?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “But you left—”

  “My mother died when I was a little girl, my father before we left Russia, my sister of tuberculosis here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They turned into Avenue Joffre and stopped by a family sleeping together in a huddle against the window of a jewelery shop, two young children sandwiched between their parents. Natasha reached into her pocket and slipped a note under the father’s hand. Field could see the man was an opium addict; his eyes were drawn and haunted, his skin pallid and yellow. The children and the mother were so thin that the bones in their faces seemed ready to break out of their skin. “Your uncle should do something for the poor of this city,” she said.

  Field looked at her. “My uncle?”

  “Your uncle is the municipal secretary, no?”

  “How did you know that?”

  She laughed. “So you can find out about me, but not the other way around?” She shook her head. “They do nothing, the businessmen here, only pillage it, like . . . pigs. All for big business and their own pockets, while so many starve.”

  “Yes,” he said, not wanting to argue.

  “They live in their big houses and offices and clubs and they pretend this world does not exist.”

  “It’s the same everywhere.”

  “But worse here. I do not believe anywhere is worse than here. So much wealth, so much suffering. Worse even than Russia.”

  “That’s a surprising view, given—”

  “Why surprising?”

  “I thought your family was driven out by the Bolsheviks.”

  “That’s ideology. Ideology is the enemy of humanity.” She stopped and faced him. “You make a war with Lu, but for the Chinese, your leaders are worse than he is.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “He gives back. He is an animal, but for the Chinese a leader. The others give only back to Europe.”

  She turned away.

  “You lived in Kazan?” he asked.

  She shook her head dismissively and walked on. “It was a long time ago.”

  “In the picture—”

  “I do not like to talk of it.”

&n
bsp; “You still feel—”

  “It was all too long ago, another life.”

  “You came here with your sister.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were close to her.”

  Natasha smiled. “She was older, but she was shy and kind and a little timid. She always looked after me. Papa called her the little mouse.” She frowned. “But it was an affectionate name.”