Voices grew louder, male and female. Her eyes flicked to the door and back to the girl. A new jazz rhythm started up and the thump of her heart matched its syncopated frenzy. The door opened and instantly lit the room in a harsh, unshaded light. Annie flinched and then saw quickly that it was Chow’s sister in the chair. An empty washbasin and chamber pot were in the corner, and a single chair seemed set aside for visitors. Otherwise the room was bare except for some garish material which hung on either side of the window in two straight strips.
Her attention was drawn back to the door as three Chinese men entered. They were dressed in traditional clothes, and could have come from the markets to deliver some produce. But they stood ominously silent and waiting. One had a scar across his cheek that crossed his eye in a nasty mess of poorly healed, bulbous skin. At his waist was a knife tied in a sheath that was open at the base so the sharp-tipped razor edge was visible. One of the others carelessly blew a mouthful of smoke into the room and Annie’s nose filled with the smell of incense mixed with a heady fragrance that cloyed at her throat. His fine metal glasses fogged over for a moment and she was reminded of the monkey handler in the Nanshi alleyway. But she was too distracted and frightened to continue the thought.
Then the men straightened visibly as footsteps sounded. Annie sat up and her head spun. She held her hands tightly together to stop them shaking and to ward off the icy cold that had begun to creep into her fingers.
Natalia entered the room. The men stood back as she waved them aside. Annie sunk into the mattress with relief. Her arms dropped loosely, her eyes ached with a tiredness she only then allowed herself to feel, but she managed a smile. The semi-dark was kind to Natalia’s face, softening the tired circles Annie noticed. Natalia walked over to the bed and her feet hit the old floorboards with purpose.
In the moments of silence that followed Annie was aware of the noise of voices beyond the door. She soon smelt the pungent odour of opium smoke. In the room it mingled with the damp earth. Natalia had turned away from Annie and was lighting a cigarette. She laughed harshly as she turned back, one finger wrapped around the slim sheath of tobacco as she pressed it to her lips. She was wearing Chow’s jade ring. It glared at Annie from its new owner’s finger.
‘You’ve been very foolish and arrogant.’
Annie felt the room sway a little as she watched Natalia walk around, waving her cigarette like a baton. ‘How much do you really know about me?’
This did not sound like the friend who brought vodka to drink instead of tea. Natalia was dressed like a man, in baggy trousers and a loose-fitting shirt with a long tie draped round her neck. Her thick mane of brilliant red hair hung loose too, like an expensive cloak around her shoulders. It made her masculine dress style stand out even more. Why did she have Chow’s ring?
Annie’s shoulders slumped and she lay back against the bed.
‘I don’t know you, do I?’ she whispered.
‘Very good, quick learner; so this may not be as painful for you as I thought.’
Natalia dragged the chair close to the bed, and swung into it, leaning back with her legs stretched forward. She drew on the cigarette and inclined her head slightly so that one of the men quickly brought her an ashtray. Then she leant forward aggressively, clapped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously.
‘First of all, my apologies for the death of your lover.’
Annie drew in a loud breath at the mention of Chow. Her chest exploded with a fierce heat that made her breathing quicken and her head swim. Natalia was playing with his ring on her finger, watching Annie’s reaction.
‘Such a foolish, foreign girl; playing with fire, as they say. You must realise it was you who got Chin Pao killed. I helped, but only a little—the police were very grateful for the tip-off, they’d been looking for the Communist connection to the gang and then they found Chiao Chin Pao, in the grotty little room, packing up his belongings to run away, or so they thought.’
‘I don’t understand? Why would you betray him, why?’
Annie didn’t realise she’d shouted until she felt the cold pain on her cheek as Natalia slapped her.
‘Shut up. You might have convinced the police to spare his life if you’d arrived at the boarding house a little bit earlier. But you didn’t, and now Chin Pao is dead. You don’t save people do you, Annie? You would rather have adventures to escape your boring life. Chiao Chin Pao, or should I say your man Chow, was an adventure to you, a bit exotic, like me, your Russian friend. You thought I might even be a princess.’ Natalia laughed again. ‘You used us all as distractions. But there is no more running away now, Annie.’
A dull weight pressed on Annie’s lungs, making it hard to breathe; there was a horrible truth in what Natalia said. She never considered the affair from Chow’s perspective until that moment. It opened up so many questions she didn’t want to ask but she couldn’t help wondering: had she been blinded by her own selfish desire?
‘Chiao Chin Pao told you too much, him and his stupid little sister. They risked exposing our work with the Green Gang when he took you into his confidence. But he couldn’t help himself, so in love, when really this is where his loyalty should have been, with his only allies.’
Natalia stood and opened her arms expansively, as though there were more than the three men and two women in the room.
‘Chin Pao was grateful for the Green Gang’s help when he needed them to get his sister to Shanghai, but he was a fool to think he could walk away. He was too useful—how do you think he got the job at the Club in the first place? Not because of his dancing skills, that is for certain. That ugly, pock-marked Chinaman you saw me with at the ball, he helped Chow get the job, and Chow joined his bang hui and met with him every month. His sister got a nice little job with Mrs Marsden too, no complaints when it suited them. I had the unsavoury task of working with the Chinaman to build up the Bolshevik base in Shanghai. Until you exposed him, and all because of the death of an insignificant kitchen hand.’
Chow had known the Chinaman. Annie suddenly realised with absolute certainty that it was him she’d seen sitting together with the pock-marked man and the monkey handler in Zhenye Li Alley.
‘I saw Chow with him briefly in Zhenye Li, that day we visited the willow-pattern tearoom, didn’t I? That’s why Chow disappeared.’
‘Well done.’ Natalia lit another cigarette and the tip flared red hot. ‘The Communist Party book store is in the Little North Gate district of Nanshi. I needed to pass on some information and you, my dear, were such a useful distraction that day.’
Annie looked again at the man wearing glasses standing by the door and realised it was indeed the monkey handler. His expression was vacant but she felt an instant, choking panic at the desperate hopelessness of her position. Natalia was still talking.
‘I endured so many boring teas with you and the other ladies at the Club. But I just kept thinking about the Party taking over, when we would end the imperialist, foreign rule with its corrupted social values. No more brainwashing the people, just like my misguided father. And it was working excellently, until you came along. Now we have a dead brother and sister to dispose of.’
Natalia jerked her head at Chow’s sister, slumped in the chair, not moving. She grabbed a set of notebooks and threw them at Annie.
‘Look, look, all these books filled with information, now at risk because of you.’
Annie flinched as one of the books caught the corner of her eye, cutting the skin. All those moments when she’d seen Natalia and Chow together at the Club, they all took on a new meaning.
‘Even you, Captain Brand’s wife, helped our cause without ever realising it. The jewellery, that expensive necklace you gave me, it all sells for good money, dollars we can use to buy allegiance, send men back to the Soviet Union for education, produce our pamphlets and teach. Did it make you feel charitable to give me your cast-offs?
‘You people only care about the value of gold and silver and the search for profits
. Foreign women are so easy to fool but your men are even more gullible. Mr William Piper, the English banker with expensive gifts—I detested being his love interest, but it gave me access to the inner circle of decision-makers. No one questioned a woman listening in to their conversations. Well, they will fear me when the Bolsheviks take power. Poor Willie Piper, he had no idea what I was doing, but at least he got something in return for his money.’
Natalia stood up then and leant over, placing one foot on the bed as she shook her chest at Annie aggressively. Her breasts pressed against the silk shirt. Annie could see skin and red-tinged nipples through the material. For a horrible moment she felt her body sliding towards Natalia, as the bed’s mattress gave way under the weight of Natalia’s leaning frame. She didn’t dare move, caught between mortification and terror. Natalia lit another cigarette as she looked Annie up and down, appraising her. There was a tight crease in her arms where they crossed in judgement as her dark eyes bore down on Annie’s modest figure.
‘You’re not so pretty anyway, not my type.’
Annie watched the Russian press the cigarette butt into a saucer dramatically, bright red nails smudging out the last wisp of smoke. It was like a performance, part of an act she’d done many times before. Then Natalia moved even closer. Annie looked straight ahead, her stomach felt weak and loose and she stared at the far wall rather than into Natalia’s eyes, bleak and soulless without the kohl to define them.
‘I don’t want your pity.’ Annie’s voice was a whisper.
‘It doesn’t matter now; we will move on, clean up this mess and start again. It was lucky Chin Pao told us about this safe house, although I think after today we will find a new base. But there will be no new beginnings for you. I will make it easy though, not painful, opiate drugs are quite nice really, and foreigners overdose in these illegal dens every day.’
Natalia stood back observing Annie for a moment. She lit another match and Annie watched as her lips took the thin cigarette and a line of smoke drifted up from the smouldering tip. Then she flicked the match away and walked out of the room.
The three men left with Natalia, one loping in front of her and two behind. None of them looked back.
Annie heard the key turn in the lock and the room closed in around her. She dug her nails into the skin on her palms, her shoulders hunched and tight, listening and waiting. A thread of blood collected at the white curve of her nail. Feet shuffled on dirty flagstones beyond the door, she heard wheezing sucks on a pipe and unintelligible voices. Annie imagined the men huddled together, discussing her fate.
Above the door a spider’s web floated in an air current. Annie looked towards the window but it was sealed shut. She couldn’t see where the faint breeze originated. The spider worked nimbly on a broken thread that dangled with the weight of a struggling fly. Another current of air sent the web shivering anew and Annie’s muscles throbbed as she watched.
Something rustled under the matting and Annie looked around. It moved again, oblivious to her presence. She watched the light flit back and forth in the thin line beneath the door, steadying herself against the bed when the signs of movement stopped abruptly. Tasks had been allocated in the next room, one of the men had been given the job of killing her; she could feel it.
Sharp pain shot down her legs as she stood; her body had tensed up over the last hour and every muscle felt cramped. But she needed to check Chin Feng and she didn’t know how long she had before Natalia’s men returned. The girl was dead but she was Chow’s sister and she deserved Annie’s attention. No, she was Chin Pao’s sister. A wave of hopeless lethargy as thick as tar sunk into her bones; she never really knew the man. The effort of walking across the room suddenly felt overwhelming.
She breathed quietly through the pinching tightness of each muscle as she moved. Voices from the next room made her catch her breath and stand painfully still, listening for louder sounds of someone approaching, but still she heard only soft, indistinct murmurs. The smell of opium intensified.
Annie gently pushed the young girl’s head to rest against the back of the chair. She was limp but her skin was still warm. She couldn’t have been dead for long. There were bruises on her neck, down her throat, visible beneath the buttoned turn of her ripped cotton shirt. Annie recognised the smell of stale, damp blood, mingled with sweat and the ammonia sting of urine. It made her gag and turn away. She sucked in air to flush the stench. Chow’s sister had the same square jaw and thin lips as him. A matted strand of hair stuck to her cheek. Annie dropped to her knees and untied her. Then she reached her arm out to rest in Chin Feng’s lap, linking her own warm palm with the remembered gentleness of this young girl. It felt damp in the fold of her skirt and Annie felt the wiry roughness of bare pubic hair beneath the material. Dried blood streaked down her leg.
Annie wished for a different end for Chin Feng, one that only eventuated after many more years of living than this wretched girl had been allowed. She cursed Chow for not making the safer choice to leave his sister in their village. Chin Feng might have been her sister too, in a future where she and Chow were together. But there would be no future now and she would never feel the sense of being part of a family again.
Annie looked at the light flickering beneath the door. A chair scraped and she heard voices. It must be the men, weighing out the opium to administer the lethal dose. She wanted it to be the one with the scar across his cheek so she had something to concentrate on while he went to work. She wanted him to kill her quickly and not to assault her first, like they’d done to Chin Feng. Her head throbbed and her body shook with a coldness that cut through to her bones. Hoping for anything at this point was fruitless; she had no control over the next minutes or hours of her life—however long this process would take. Choking panic pressed on Annie’s throat at the thought of the vast abyss of nothingness ahead.
A car horn sounded and Annie jerked her neck in shock at such a familiar noise so close, yet unreachable. She thought of the ship’s fog horn sounding its position on the Yangtze, and the car’s insistent horn was like a marker too, of daylight and normalcy in the world beyond the window. That was where she belonged. This small, grey room could not be her final view. She gently placed Chin Feng’s hands back into her lap before standing. Moving was slow and painful. But she clambered onto the bed and reached for the window, stretching her arms as she scrabbled to grab hold of the ledge. The bed creaked and she stopped, then tried again, repeating each attempt with the dogged futility of the spider repairing his web. Her arms ached, and her breath came short and fast. She balanced the chair on the bed, felt it wobble as she stood gingerly and for a moment her fingertips touched the sticky, dusty ledge before the chair dislodged and she fell hard to the floor. A sharp pain spiked in her wrist but she didn’t move.
The opium smoke seeping under the door made her groggy and she had a sense of falling, like a weighted feather, plummeting in an uncontrollable swirl of heaviness. This was the end; she could finally give up, stop running, just stay on this floor and let her body and mind slip away. Did Judy decide to stop swimming; did she make a choice to die in the river? Her sister would have fought to live.
Annie grabbed at the rough matting beneath her. She raised her face to the window, the muscles in her neck stretched as she tilted her chin up and warmth coursed through her, releasing the tightness along with all those years of guilt. Annie closed her eyes and saw Judy’s smiling face. She gently stroked her sister’s cheek and felt the warm glow of life on her skin. She felt calm, waiting for her opiate. The air was thick with the smell of it and she breathed in deeply.
‘Help me.’
The voice was barely audible, and could have been the rustle of mice under the mats. But Annie heard it, a second time, a cough or croak, it sounded cruelly painful. She looked at Chin Feng’s body and saw her foot move. Annie grabbed hold of the girl’s hands and leant in close, listening to the sound of her shallow, soft breathing.
‘Chin Feng, can you hear me?’ An
nie whispered for fear of alerting the men. She cut her breath short and held it in her throat, straining to hear.
‘Help me.’
Someone moved next door and Annie grabbed Chin Feng’s face roughly and held it still. She put a finger to her lips and felt it shaking. She motioned for Chin Feng to be silent and swung around to watch the door. Blood rushed into the white spots on Chin Feng’s cheeks where her fingers left their marks and bruises coloured immediately.
‘We have to get out.’
Annie clamped her hand over the girl’s mouth and held her head close against her stomach. ‘Shut up or they’ll come back.’ She whispered the words into Chin Feng’s hair. There was movement next door; light flickered again beneath the door. Annie watched it, frozen and mesmerised by the changing hues, but no one entered. Chin Feng’s chest rose and fell against Annie’s body. She pressed her fingers into Annie’s arm. There was no strength in her grasp, but Annie saw the intention in her eyes.
‘We escape. I know this place, we use it.’
Chin Feng shuffled her feet across the matting. Annie pointed down in question and Chin Feng nodded. She lifted the threadbare carpet and saw a round, dulled metal handle submerged in the dirt. It was rusted and concealed by years of disuse. But when Annie rubbed away the earth she saw a trapdoor. There was rustling and she realised that the animals she’d heard earlier were beneath the trapdoor, not the matting.
Annie looked to the door beyond which their captors sat, before pulling back the threadbare matting and cautiously pulling on the handle. She heard music and a fresh smell of opium wafted through from the next room. She quickly tied her handkerchief around her nose, hoping to reduce the effects of the opium smoke. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the knot, acutely aware that each second could make a difference to their chances of escape. But it was hard to be calm with the frenzied pounding in her head.
The Shanghai Wife Page 20