to feel the wind off the Neva on his face, hear the bells of the old Russia ringing out around the city.
He glanced across at Anna Petrovna again. She had bobbed down to exchange words with the man on the sofa who was gazing calmly at Hadfield, his plump hands clasped about his crossed leg.
‘Alexander Mikhailov is one of us,’ said Vera. ‘Very clear thinking…’
‘Why did you invite me here, Verochka?’ Hadfield asked, turning to look her in the eye.
‘You were with us in Switzerland.’ Then, after a pause, ‘We both want Russia, the world, to be different.’
‘But your views on how to go about it have changed.’
‘The people cannot wait any more. The whole nation will have gone to seed before the liberals get anything done. History needs a push.’
He did not reply. The gathering was breaking into conversational groups again. Their hostess returned with an anxious hand to her face. Anna Kovalenko had drawn Goldenberg aside and it was clear from her angry gestures they were engaged in an ill-tempered exchange. Hadfield began to make his excuses, but as he was reaching for Vera’s hand she said abruptly:
‘Lydia meant something to you, didn’t she?’ There was a steeliness in her manner, in the set of her jaw, and she held on firmly to his hand when propriety required him to withdraw it.
‘Yes, of course. Lydia was a very good friend to me,’ he said slowly. ‘Is she in St Petersburg?’
‘St Petersburg?’ Vera gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Lydia was arrested for distributing propaganda. Imprisoned. Exiled. She’s been sent to eastern Siberia.’
Hadfield turned his head away. Lydia with the soft brown eyes and teasing smile. He felt a lump the size of a fist in his throat. For a short time they had meant so much to each other. He had not seen or heard from her for three years but her last angry words troubled him still. He knew he had caused her great pain.
‘I’m sorry, Verochka.’
Vera Figner was gazing at him intently. She had not released his hand.
‘There is no freedom to protest peacefully here, Frederick. No alternative to terror. You’ll see.’
Old Penkin was a wily bird. He knew to keep his eyes open. He knew when there was a rouble or two to be earned for a little information. They had been coming and going all afternoon. He had watched them from the street and then from a chair at his gate. One of them had even asked him directions to Number 86. A young gentleman in a fine black fur-lined coat had stood gazing at the Volkonsky place only feet from him. Foreign-looking. Penkin had made a mental note of them all. He was the yard-keeper at the Kozlov house opposite, had been for fifteen years, and he knew all about Yuliya Sergeyovna Volkonsky and her friends. He had spoken to Constable Rostislov about them before.
‘Fairy tales,’ the policeman had said at first. ‘Fairy tales, old man. Bugger off. You’re not getting vodka money from me.’
That was before a madman tried to kill the tsar. Since then Constable Rostislov had been falling over himself to pay for the dvornik’s scraps. Of course, no one liked an informer. Penkin hated informers himself. But who would begrudge an old man a little extra money after fifteen years of fetching and carrying in all weathers for kopeks? On the quiet, that was the thing, just a word in the constable’s ear.
‘Hey, Tan’ka,’ he called through the kitchen door, ‘I must go out for a while.’
The maid rolled her eyes: ‘Don’t expect me to lie for you, old man. And don’t come back drunk.’
Penkin scowled at her: ‘Shut up, you trollop. I’ve got business. Important business.’
‘I know your sort of business,’ she replied with a harsh laugh.
‘Shut your mouth.’ He wanted to take his hand to her. He offered her money instead. ‘Two kopeks for you if you tell them I’m out on house business.’
‘Five.’
‘Done.’
The local police station was only a short walk away on Gorokhovaya Street. Penkin was careful to be sure no one saw him enter. As fortune would have it, Constable Vasili Rostislov was on duty and at the station. They sat in a large office full of empty desks and bookcases stacked high with police files. Penkin could not read but he could count. He knew it was important to count.
‘They began arriving at a little before three o’clock. Her footman told me she was inviting politicals, so I knew to be looking out for them.’
‘Names?’ the constable asked.
‘No. But I can tell you what they looked like. You can ask Yuliya Sergeyovna for the names, if you want them.’
Rostislov pulled open a drawer and took out a notebook and small leather folder of photographs. He opened it and began placing pictures on the desk in front of the dvornik. ‘All right. Only the truth now. If you lie I’ll find out and you’ll regret it.’
Penkin began to move the pictures round the desktop with a dirty finger, picking them up, peering at them, scratching his nose thoughtfully, shifting on his chair. Students — men and women — nicely dressed, expensive, some in uniform and some in frock coats and ties. What did they have to worry about? Nothing. There were two he was sure he recognised, and he handed them back to the policeman. Rostislov stared at him: ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘No,’ said the dvornik sulkily.
‘Are you sure about these two?’
‘Yes.’
‘This one?’
Penkin nodded.
‘Wait here. Don’t touch anything.’ The policeman pushed his chair away from the desk and crossed the office to a door in the opposite corner. He opened it and Penkin caught a glimpse of a brightly lit room with clerks bent over desks before it swung to behind him. The time slipped by and the dvornik began to grow impatient. He had been away from the Kozlov house for almost half an hour. The maid could not be trusted to make a decent job of lying for him — not for five kopeks. At last the door opened again.
‘You’re coming with me,’ Constable Rostislov said, lifting his uniform coat from a peg.
‘But I have to be back. They’ll miss me.’
The policeman laughed. He was clearly in great good humour.
‘Too bad. We’re going to Fontanka 16.’
5
The earnest faces and desperate talk left a dull grey impression on Frederick Hadfield’s mind for days and he resolved to be busy if another invitation was delivered to his door. He thought of Lydia Figner often and found himself consumed by feelings of guilt about the careless way he had ended their affair. As the days passed and he heard nothing more from her sisters, he began to wonder if they had just dismissed him as a hopeless case, beyond redemption, another fuzzy liberal without the vision or courage necessary for their great socialist project. For the most part, he was happy to be considered so, even if it was impossible to entirely ignore the truth of Vera’s parting shot: there is no freedom in Russia. With a stroke of his pen the tsar had made the army master of life and liberty in his empire. Men and women suspected of ‘subversive tendencies’ could be brought before a court martial and either imprisoned or banished without any recourse to an appeal.
From time to time he would cross the Neva by the pontoon bridge at the eastern tip of Vasilievsky and stare across the water at the grim stone face of the St Peter and St Paul Fortress. The enemies the state simply wished to forget were held in the cellars of the Alexeevsky Ravelin until cold and hunger carried them away. Would the Figners die in this Russian Bastille? And he would imagine Vera shivering in the darkness, her white face still defiant, an unspoken ‘Didn’t I say so’ in the damp air between them.
But Hadfield was too busy on the wards of the Nikolaevsky and with a growing list of private patients to
