company,’ he said.
She looked down at her hands. ‘Will you tell me what happened to you?’ she asked in a low voice.
He described the attempt on his life to her and the weeks he had spent recovering in hospital and at his uncle’s house. ‘And so I am above suspicion now — well, almost. I suppose I have your Mikhailov to thank for exonerating me in the eyes of the police.’
‘He is not “my Mikhailov”.’ She paused for a moment, her face working as she struggled to control some strong emotion: ‘He’s been arrested.’
‘Arrested?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sorry?’
‘Of course I am,’ she said indignantly. ‘He was a good comrade. It’s a terrible blow to the party.’
A caustic remark was on the tip of Hadfield’s tongue but he managed to keep it locked behind his teeth.
‘I must go,’ she said, rising abruptly from her chair. ‘Things are difficult. People are frightened. They’re executing Kviatkovsky and Presnyakov at the fortress tomorrow.’
Hadfield picked up her old brown woollen coat — it smelt of the kitchen, something a little sharp — and helped her into it.
‘I wanted to be sure you knew,’ she said, turning back to him. And she smiled at him at last, her full lower lip trembling a little. How could she smile at him like that after so many months?
‘Are we going to meet again?’ he asked.
She gave him another, a broader smile. ‘Of course.’
He bent to kiss her, but she held a finger to his lips: ‘Not here against the window. I’ll send word.’
They stepped into the corridor to find the porter waiting at the door, resentful he had been put out of his room at supper time. Hadfield reached into his pocket for a rouble. ‘The lady’s honour, you understand.’
He nodded and pinched it from his hand ungraciously.
At the hospital entrance, Hadfield summoned a droshky from the rank and helped her up the step. ‘Where are you going?’
She leant forward to speak to the driver, huge in his padded blue coat and furs: ‘How much to the Anichkov Bridge?’
‘The usual,’ he growled. ‘From here — 20 kopeks.’
‘Ten.’
She turned to reach out her hand to Hadfield’s face and then the cab was gone.
Even before it turned out of sight, Hadfield had summoned another. He did not stop to think what purpose it would serve until he was rumbling along the Slonovaya Street, drops of rain driving into his face, but he knew he could not bear to let her out of his sight so soon. He was too late. There was no sign of her on the Anichkov. She had probably changed cabs as a precaution. He paid his driver and walked across the bridge with half a mind to treat himself to a supper at the Europe Hotel. It was raining quite hard now, pattering on to the felt of his top hat, and he quickened his pace, crossing Nevsky at the Ekaterininsky Garden.
Stopping before a brightly lit restaurant, he lifted his coat collar and was rearranging his scarf when he saw the reflection of a familiar face in the window. The man was striding along the wet pavement towards him, and although Hadfield could not remember his name he knew he recognised him — and that he had seen him in Anna’s company. A big fellow, in his late twenties, with a full brown beard and dressed as a worker in a short coat and peaked factory cap. Hadfield looked away, shifting his position a little so he could follow the man’s retreating back. The name sprang to his mind the moment he turned left into the Malaya Sadovaya and disappeared from view. Zhelyabov. Was it a coincidence or was he meeting Anna? Intrigued, Hadfield walked back to the corner, then on into the lane, but Zhelyabov had vanished. The legs of a drunk were protruding from a doorway close by and he could see a couple of bedraggled prostitutes sheltering beneath a carriage arch, but the rain and chill had driven everyone else from the pavement. There were popular taverns on both sides of the lane and he strolled to the bottom, peering through their lighted windows, searching for Zhelyabov among the flushed faces of civil servants and shopkeepers, peasants and prostitutes, but he was nowhere to be seen. Wet and cross with himself for chasing trouble aimlessly about the city, he gave up the idea of visiting the Europe and took a cab home.
The following day Anna sent a message to the hospital asking Hadfield to meet her in the usual place. He found his own way to the lane in Peski, nameless still, dark, rubbish-filled, the rickety wooden homes of the poor clinging to the stone buildings like fungus. The old Ukrainian woman greeted him with a deferential nod and a sly ‘you again’ smile. And she led him up the stairs to her corner — everything as he had remembered it to be. Anna did not want to talk but kissed him hungrily, pushing him away, drawing him back with her eyes closed, and they made love on the damp mattress and on the floor, her finger at his lips, always in control. And after, he held her, small in his arms, and whispered words of love in English that she did not understand but which made her smile. They did not speak of politics, the past or the future, grateful only for this moment. Then at eleven o’clock she told him she had to leave. He knew better than to ask why. They walked arm in arm through Peski to the cab rank in front of the Nikolaevsky Station. At Anna’s suggestion they shared a droshky, but only as far as the Ekaterininsky Garden. There she kissed him tenderly and promised there would be more time together, perhaps a weekend, at least a day. The driver whipped his horse on and, craning his neck over the folded canopy, Hadfield watched her cross Nevsky in the direction of the Malaya Sadovaya. He sat back in his seat. It was none of his business. Better not to know.
He did not hear from Anna for a few days. He spent his hours of leisure in the company of embassy folk, and there was a rowdy evening at an exotic club with some of the younger doctors at the hospital. His feelings seemed to oscillate alarmingly from quiet contentment to a state of jittery excitement that he characterised to himself as a type of neurosis. What if something happened to her? What if she changed her mind about him again? What if… ? At one of these fevered times, he found himself drawn to the place he had seen her last: the Malaya Sadovaya. It was a late morning in the middle of November and the first heavy snow of winter was falling on the city. Wrapped warmly in his coat, his scarf pulled over his face, he took a cab to the end of Nevsky and walked the rest of the way. The taverns on the Malaya Sadovaya were doing good trade even at that hour, its shops with their fine meats and wines and cheeses drawing servants from the best households and even gentlemen of quality. He took a table in a hostelry with a view of the lane and ordered bread and a glass of gluhwein, which he sipped without pleasure for half an hour, watching the passers-by with no real expectation of seeing her.
He was relieved to leave the noise and darkness and smoke behind and step into the cold air once more. Opposite the tavern was the vintner’s where Dobson bought most of his wine. With a little time to spare, Hadfield visited the shop and was tempted by the silver-tongued sommelier into spending a preposterous sum on a bottle of vintage champagne. ‘To celebrate,’ he would tell Anna, although he knew she would frown and complain of the waste. How strange, he thought, I don’t even know her birthday. The merchant below the vintner was taking delivery of new stock from a covered wagon, staggering under its weight as he felt his way down the slippery steps to his basement shop. It was parked too close to the vintner’s door, the horse stamping and snorting restlessly in the shafts, and Hadfield was obliged to squeeze round to the back of the wagon. The merchant had returned for more and was trying — to the amusement of the old carter — to lift three heavy truckles of cheese at once.
‘Hey — give me a hand there,’ he grumbled.
But the carter laughed and shook his head: ‘Get on with it, can’t you see this gentleman is trying to pass?’
The merchant edged towards the basement steps again, but slipped, and the topmost cheese crashed to the pavement.
‘Are you going to try and flog that now?’ the carter observed with a sneer. ‘I’ll give you ten kopeks for it.’
The merchant glared at him and slid the remaining truckles back on to the cart.
‘Well?’ the old man asked. ‘What about it?’
‘Get lost. It wouldn’t have happened if you’d lent a hand.’
Hadfield studied the cack-handed merchant carefully as he scooped ragged chunks of the broken cheese from the snow. The aroma was ripe and strong. Almost everything in his life reminded him of Anna in one way or another, but he could have sworn there had been a hint of it on her coat at the hospital.
