brood for long on the fate of the Figners or the country’s future. With the help of his aunt, he began to establish his reputation as a physician in embankment society, in particular with Anglo-Russian women of mature years, of whom there were a goodly number. So much nicer than those German doctors was the general view, and so well qualified. Some remembered his father with affection, and one old lady had ‘the honour’ to have been examined by his great- uncle, Sir James; ‘You are so like him, dear,’ she had said, with a tear of memory in her eye. And it had been suggested to him more than once that the emperor would one day favour the great-nephew of such a loyal servant of the House of Romanov with a royal appointment. Hadfield was grateful but a little embarrassed by the attention and looked forward to his afternoons at the Nikolaevsky with those who could not afford to pay for his services and would never dream of inviting him to dinner.
On the last Sunday in April, the dvornik huffed and puffed up the stairs to his apartment with a note from the British embassy. It was from one of the consuls, an old friend of his father’s: the ambassador’s wife had taken to her bed with a fever and he would be grateful if Dr Hadfield could spare the time to attend upon her. A victoria was waiting at the door for an answer, the surly coachman tapping his whip impatiently against its iron frame.
The embassy and its residence were at the seat of imperial power on the embankment before the Field of Mars where the emperor reviewed the royal regiments, within hailing distance of his palace. A fine eighteenth- century mansion, it had belonged to the first Alexander’s tutor and councillor, and the tsarconqueror had often danced in its famous White Ballroom. With less ceremony, Hadfield was shown up the bright marble staircase, through the embassy’s formal rooms and into the private quarters in the east wing.
The Countess of Dufferin was suffering from no more than a severe head cold and an acute attack of anxiety. But Hadfield was charming and concerned and left her with just the sort of large brown bottle she was expecting and would have been disappointed not to receive. A generous dose of honey and lemon to be taken on a silver spoon. By the following day she was much improved and fulsome in her praise for ‘my doctor’ and his ‘miracle’ cure.
Hadfield visited her twice more and, as her spirits improved, he found her to be engaging, with a keen interest in her new home. Lady Dufferin was not handsome: she had an angular face with a heavy brow, small dark eyes and loose curled hair, difficult to tame, judging by the number of pins and bands used to hold it in place. But the impression was of a lively woman with a wry, self-deprecating sense of humour. A little guarded — no doubt in keeping with her position — she had none of the aristocratic hauteur he had encountered in some of his patients in London. She questioned Hadfield closely about his work and expressed an interest in visiting the Nikolaevsky. The ambassador would accompany her, she said, the Earl of Dufferin wished to be familiar with all aspects of Russian life.
‘And your uncle, General Glen… Of course, he has made us very welcome, but I fear I may have offended him. I understand the general goes to church every day during Passion Week. Do you go to church that often, Doctor?’
‘Not as often as I should and not as often as my uncle would like,’ Hadfield said with a little shake of the head.
He had grown a thick diplomatic skin — the loss of his father, the strange ‘Russian boy’ at an English boarding school, the studied patience of medical practice — these had shaped a personality naturally inclined to please, but had also taught him a comfortable degree of detachment. An admirer of Darwin and Huxley, he was an agnostic, a firm believer in natural selection and the descent of man, but he was careful not to express these views in what his mother liked to describe as ‘polite company’. For her sake he had accompanied the Glen family to the English church on Easter Sunday.
‘Your uncle is a man of forthright opinions. He was concerned that Dufferin and I had only been to the English church once at Easter.’
Hadfield’s face must have betrayed the irritation he felt, for Lady Dufferin lifted her eyes to his and her patient smile became a conspiratorial one: ‘Well, the general recommended you. In practitioners, at least, his judgement is not to be faulted.’
The following day the embassy coachman delivered a warm note from the ambassador requesting the pleasure of Dr Hadfield’s company at the opera.
His father’s diamond studs, top hat, tails and black leather shoes from Jermyn Street — later he would smile at the rich irony of meeting her at the theatre in the company of a countess.
The Dufferin party was seated in the grand tier to the right of the imperial suite in a box designated suitable for grand dukes and ambassadors. The Mikhailovsky was glittering silver in the brilliant light cast by the new electric sconces the management had installed at great expense.
Her Ladyship had invited what she called a ‘select band of six’; Hadfield, the first and second secretaries at the embassy, and
‘Do you know, Doctor,’ said Lady Dufferin, turning to Hadfield, ‘a terrorist tried to kill the chief of the secret police—’
‘The Third Section—’ her husband corrected her from the seat beside her.
‘…just around the corner from our house? Two shots were fired into his carriage. They missed, but now they’re threatening to murder his daughter. And Mr Dobson says a girl walked into a party in Moscow last week and shot a man. That’s correct, isn’t it, Mr Dobson?’ Lady Dufferin leant back to catch the eye of the correspondent.
‘Yes, Your Ladyship. They say the victim was ordered to shoot the emperor but fled from Petersburg to avoid doing so and that the girl was sent to punish him.’
‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Lady Dufferin asked in a voice that left no doubt as to her own strong opinion on the matter.
Hadfield was relieved when the conversation turned to the ambassador’s first official visit to the Winter Palace. Leaning forward a little, he could see the only empty seats in the house were in the imperial suite. That Meyerbeer’s
‘…I don’t like it at all,’ said Lady Dufferin. ‘The electricity spoils the effect of the chandeliers. The balcony’s in darkness. And here,’ with a graceful flourish of her gloved hand she indicated the boxes on the opposite side of the grand tier, ‘the lamps are too bright. Look, the lights flicker and change colour. It just isn’t as gay as gas. But what an extraordinary modern age we live in.’
Yes, yes, what a modern age. Hadfield nodded as if hanging on her every word, but his attention was fixed on the gloom near the back of the stalls. Later, he would wonder what had drawn him to her of the many hundreds seated below: Anna Kovalenko, his persecutor at the political salon, Anna with the strikingly beautiful blue eyes. Perhaps it was because even at such a distance he could sense she was restless and ill at ease. Evgenia Figner and Madame Volkonsky were sitting to her right; to her left, the vociferous and blood-thirsty Goldenberg. The imperial suite with its huge orange velvet and gold fringed drapes was almost directly above them. Fortunate then that the chairs inside it were empty, Hadfield thought with a wry smile, or the evening might have been spoilt.
‘Have you seen someone you know, Doctor?’ asked Lady Dufferin. ‘A patient?’
‘An acquaintance — a friend of my cousin’s,’ Hadfield replied, leaning back in his seat.
The Anabaptists plotted and the wicked count carried off fair Bertha to his castle and for a while he was lost in the rhythm and grace of the music. But after a time, maddeningly, Hadfield’s gaze drifted from the stage to the orchestra pit and across the gentlemen in their tail coats and white ties, the ladies in taffeta and pearls, to the little band at the back of the stalls. What would they think of him if they knew he was in a tidy velvet box with a countess and the gentlemen of the British embassy? But did it matter what they thought? He had the troubling sense that his life was losing some of its shape. He had felt something of the same the week before, when he had rushed from a dirty crowded ward at the Nikolaevsky Hospital to a scented boudoir on the English Embankment to treat the wife of an iron master who was suffering from nothing more than a severe case of indigestion. From the grand tier he could imagine his shadow in the stalls below — the doctor who argued with passion for better public health, for a fairer
