Margarita pushed impatiently through the excited crowds, uncaring of the growled complaints and hard looks occasioned by her ready use of elbow and shoulder. The man who stood upon a chair and harangued the throng punched the air with his fist as he spoke.
‘And I tell you, comrades, that we did not fight and die in the streets – in these very streets – for the right to continue a Tsarist Imperialist war –’
‘Bloody Bolshevik,’ a man muttered as Margarita passed, and she dodged with practised speed as another standing nearby lunged at the speaker, grabbing him by the collar. ‘And what’s wrong with the Bolsheviks, my Menshevik friend?’
She reached the edge of the gathering. The whole of the Liteini was blocked by the meeting.
‘– what good have our sacrifices done us? Our sacrifices, comrades, not the sacrifices of the petty bourgeois who sit on their fat behinds around a table and call themselves a parliament! Our sacrifices! What good has it been, tell me that! The people still starve, still die for nothing under the filthy guns of tyranny –’
‘Mind where you’re going, girl!’ A man caught her arm. She snatched it away; saw the speculative look in his eye as he took in her fashionable dress and hat, the cloud of golden hair. Damn it that she could have been so stupid as to leave her brown cloak in Vassili’s room! Unseasonally warm as the April day was, the enveloping garment was disguise and protection in these dangerous days. She slid swiftly into the crowd like a fish into water, leaving the man staring after her.
‘I tell you this, comrades: you have more in common with the workers of Germany, the poor bloody bastards who suffer as you suffer, and die as you die, than with those that seek to rule you now – traitors all, to the revolution and to the people –’
She was almost at the crossroads. Hampered by her slim, hobbled skirt she hurried along the pavement. Swore under her breath as, suddenly, from a nearby turning a large group of men – yes, and some women too, she noted with disdain – erupted into the main street and advanced on the Bolshevik meeting, staves and cudgels in hand.
‘Listen as your comrades at the Front are listening!’ The impassioned voice echoed still behind her, bouncing from the walls of the buildings that lined the wide thoroughfare. ‘They don’t want to fight this war – they are refusing to fight this war! They are deserting – deserting by the thousands – by the hundreds of thousands. You know it! You know them! These are the brave lads who are standing up for their rights, and for the rights of every one of us. Now that Comrade Lenin is back with us –’
‘Look out!’ someone shouted.
Margarita plastered herself up against the wall as the grim-faced oncoming marchers broke into a determined trot, pouring past her and ploughing into the outer edges of the meeting, weapons raised.
She lifted her skirts and sped the last few yards, turned into the familiar street, shrieks and screams of anger, outrage and pain dying behind her.
She ran up the stairs to the apartment, fumbling in her bag for her key as she went. ‘Damned hooligans! Barbarians! Godforsaken apes, the lot of them!’ She swung herself briskly up and around the painted banister post onto the landing. A woman was coming out of one of the doors. She turned as she heard Margarita’s coming. For a moment they were eye to eye. Then the other woman – dark-clad and fat as a priest, Margarita thought contemptuously – stepped back, drawing her skirts aside, pursed her mouth, openly insulting, making as if she would spit.
Margarita, smiling viciously, gestured obscenely with her fingers.
And then saw Anna, waiting at the front door of the apartment.
She watched the other woman down the stairs, turned and sauntered defiantly towards her sister. She looked, Anna thought, quite exceptionally beautiful; thinner than she used to be, her face fine-boned and taut, the wide blue eyes a blaze of bright colour beneath the mass of her hair. Beautiful, yes; but not happy. ‘Fat bitch,’ she said, casually, as she reached to fit the key into the lock. ‘Fine neighbours I’ve got!’
‘Margarita!’ Anna said, unhappily.
‘Oh, do stop it, ’Noushka. Come in or stand there, but don’t lecture me. I’m not in the mood.’ She snatched her hat from her head and tossed it onto the table.
Anna followed her into the apartment. No sign of deprivation here. Despite the warmth outside the stoves glowed with heat; the paint was fresh, a new set of curtains decked the windows.
Margarita walked to the window, stood looking down into the street. She said nothing.
Irritatingly Anna felt every bit as awkward as she knew her young sister was hoping she would. ‘I – we – haven’t heard from you for a week or so. Mama – asked me to check that you were all right –’
Margarita turned, her sudden smile seraphic. ‘No she didn’t, Anna, don’t talk such nonsense. Mama doesn’t care whether any of us lives or dies. It was you who wanted to know if I was all right.’
Anna shrugged.
Margarita walked to the table, opened a silver box, took out a cigarette and lit it, taking a long, satisfied pull at it before throwing back her head to blow the smoke theatrically into the air. ‘I’m all right,’ she said, lightly.
‘You are?’ Her sister’s voice was openly, tartly sceptical.
‘Yes. As all right as anyone can be, that is, who has just heard that a bunch of bastard peasants has burned down her country home.’ She drew on the cigarette again, watching her sister. ‘Are the English peasants prone to fire-raising, Anna? Are you sure your precious Sythings is safe?’
‘Oh, Rita, I’m so sorry. Drovenskoye is gone? I’d heard reports – it’s been very bad in the countryside they say.’ Anna stepped towards her sister, hand outstretched, and stopped as Margarita turned, avoiding her. ‘Your mother-in-law? And Sasha’s sister? Are they safe?’
Margarita turned to look at her through a cloud of smoke. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, coolly.
Anna surveyed her sister helplessly. In the half a dozen times they had met since her return to Petrograd she had never once come near to breaking this bright and brittle shell with which Margarita had armoured herself. ‘Does Sasha know?’
Margarita lifted a shoulder.
‘Have you heard from him?’
The swift irritation that any reference to her husband seemed to occasion flickered in Margarita’s face. ‘Of course I haven’t heard from him. I’ve told you – how ever many times have I told you? – he’s at the Front. How the devil do you think he’d find time to write with things as they are? They’re saying whole regiments are refusing to fight, that men are executing their officers, have you heard? The whole thing’s a shambles. If Sasha’s in one piece I doubt if his priority would be to write to me!’
‘No. I suppose not.’
Margarita leaned to the window again, peering down into the street. ‘There’s more trouble out there. They’re breaking up a meeting.’
‘There’s been trouble all over the city.’
‘I don’t understand in the least what’s going on. I thought they wanted to get rid of the Tsar? Well, they’ve got rid of him. What the hell are they all fighting for now?’
‘Power,’ Anna said, bleakly. ‘The revolution isn’t over, Rita. It’s only just started. The Socialists aren’t satisfied with sharing power with the Duma. They aren’t going to stand by and let the Duma reap the benefit of what they see as their victory. Volodya says they won’t be satisfied until they’ve taken complete control.’
‘Ah,’ Margarita said, lightly spiteful, ‘if Volodya said it, it must be so.’
Anna ignored the silly and obviously deliberate provocation; she had in these past weeks realized that Margarita the woman was little different to Margarita the child: to rise to her bait was to encourage her to even more outrageous behaviour. She had joined her sister at the window. Beneath them a group of men ran past, shouting and waving heavy staves. One of them had a pistol that he was firing wildly into the air.
‘But why are they fighting amongst themselves?’ Margarita asked after a moment, a sudden flash of real interest in her voice. ‘That lot down there are all Socialists, aren’t they? Yet they seem to hate each other more than they ever hated the Tsar!’
‘The same answer, I suppose; power. Whoever takes control of the people will in the end, they think, take control of the country. Since the man Lenin came back –’
‘Who exactly is he?’ Margarita had finished her cigarette. She wandered to the table, stubbed it with thoughtful deliberation into an ashtray.
‘A Bolshevik leader. The Bolshevik leader, I suppose you could say. One of the most dangerous men in the country, Volodya says. He’s been in exile in Switzerland. He’s stirring up the most terrible trouble.’
‘Well.’ Margarita had reached the end of her attention span. She stretched, bored. ‘As long as they leave me alone I don’t much care what they do. Now, Anna, I’m really terribly sorry – it’s absolutely lovely to see you, of course, but I am rather rushed at the moment. I have a visitor coming, a friend –’
Their eyes met, one pair questioning, the other defiant. Then, ‘Of course,’ Anna said, brightly, gathering her handbag and gloves. ‘I won’t hold you up. I just wanted to check that all was well.’
It is,’ Margarita said.
At the door Anna paused, looking down at her smaller, slighter sister. ‘Rita,’ she began.
Margarita was too quick for her. ‘Don’t,’ she said, swiftly, ‘don’t lecture me, Anna. Just don’t. We all have our own way of coping with things, isn’t that right? This is mine.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. But, Rita, do try to come to see Mama just occasionally?’
Margarita shrugged unenthusiastically. ‘All right. I’ll try.’
She closed the door behind her sister with a sigh of relief, went back into the small parlour. A bottle of vodka stood upon the sideboard. She splashed a generous tot into a glass and tossed it back with one movement. Then as she lifted her head she caught sight of her own face in a small mirror that hung upon the wall. She stood for a long moment, her movements arrested, absolutely still, before turning fiercely away and reaching for the silver cigarette box.
Anna arrived back at the apartment, later that afternoon, dog tired and with aching feet, a loaf of bread and a few potatoes the prize for over two hours of queuing.
‘Anna, where have you been? You leave me alone here for hours on end. It isn’t fair, you know, it really isn’t fair! And where’s Volodya? I don’t see why you need both go out at the same time?’
Wearily Anna stood in the hall, eyes closed. Then she straightened her shoulders, walked down the hall to the parlour. ‘I’m sorry, Mama. There was a shop with some bread – I didn’t think I should miss the chance. And everything takes so long – there’s so much trouble in the streets again.’
‘Trouble in the streets! Trouble in the streets!’ Varya grumbled. ‘They need a good flogging, that’s what they need! It was never like this in the old days! In the good days of the Tsar! God’s judgement on us all, that’s what it is, you mark my words. God’s judgement! Anna, do light the stove, for goodness’ sake. And where are my chocolates?’
Anna bit her lip hard for a moment, then with precariously held patience said, ‘Mama, I’ve told you – we can’t light the stove. We’re very low on fuel. And there’s hardly any to be had. We must conserve what we have. It really isn’t that cold, you know. I’ll get you a rug, if you like, to put across your knees. And as for the chocolates, I gave you your allowance before I went out – it was supposed to last you the day.’
‘Allowance! The very thought!’ The white jowls wobbled pathetically. ‘I don’t ask for much, Anna – your poor Mama doesn’t ask for much, but how you can be so cruel as to deny me –’
‘Mama! I’ve told you! There are hardly any left! If you gobble them all up now you’ll have none, none at all.’
‘Don’t shout at me, Anna! There’s no need for that!’ The inevitable tears were squeezing from Varya’s eyes and running down her plump cheeks. ‘Oh, the shame! The shame and the pity of it! That my own daughter should treat me so!’
Anna, her patience fled, muttered a short, sharp and uncompromising answer to that as she stamped down the long passageway to the scullery that she and Volodya were using as a kitchen. The huge, wrecked, empty apartment was oppressive around her. They had spoken of trying to leave it, of finding somewhere smaller and easier to manage, but in present circumstances such plans were all but impossible. There was not a square inch of room in the city that was not already crammed with people. Her one half-hearted attempt to lobby a harassed Embassy official in the faint hope that he might be able to help with the problem had brought exactly the response she had expected; the British Embassy was not, understandably, interested in its citizens’ housing problems. It was interested in getting as many of those citizens as possible out of the disturbed city and back to Britain and to safety; when Mrs de Fontenay was ready to consider that option they would be all too eager to help.
She leaned for a moment, tiredly, against the sink. Not, she thought, wryly, that the thought of England, of lovely Sythings and of safety did not become, with each passing day, a more attractive temptation to the said Mrs de Fontenay. But how could she go? Having come in the first place to offer help, how could she now run away, leave Mama – Natalia – the children – in such uncertain circumstances and with absolutely no guarantee of their safety? And Volodya. There was, too, now, the problem of Volodya. Dear, devoted Volodya, who undoubtedly loved her: and with whom she now found herself, to her private dismay, inextricably involved. It was not that she did not enjoy his warm and gentle lovemaking; she did. She enjoyed it very much indeed. Their snatched moments together in the quiet darkness after Varya had finally given in and allowed herself to sleep were perhaps the most precious of the day. Nor did she fail to appreciate how much they all owed him, how far they had come to depend on him. But she was all too honestly aware that she did not love him. She was very fond of him. She respected him. She used him, as a shield and a prop. But she did not love him.
She sighed, hugely.
The doorbell rang, brief and shrill.
Her heart jumped to her throat. ‘Damn!’ she said, out loud. ‘Who the devil’s that?’
‘Anna? Anna, there’s someone at the door!’ Varya’s voice was frightened.
‘Yes, I know, Mama. Don’t worry. It’s all right.’ The reassuring words were automatic, their conviction totally spurious. She went into the hall and opened the door with a dry mouth and her heart pounding in her throat.
A tall fair man stood upon the landing. He was dressed in working-man’s clothes, a cap jauntily upon his lank, over-long hair. His smile was charming. ‘You are Mrs de Fontenay?’ he asked, courteously, and then, at her bewilderment, his smile expanding, ‘Anna? Katya’s cousin Anna?’ His Russian was heavily accented. The accent was Finnish.
Anna stepped back. ‘Yes. Yes! Oh, do come in! You’ve come from her? You’ve come from Katya?’
He nodded, smiling at her excitement, reached into his breast pocket and brought out a thick envelope which he proffered her. ‘My name is Heimo. Heimo Puhakka. I have the honour of being your cousin’s friend. I have some messages for you, and this letter.’ He smiled his charming smile again. ‘A letter so long I fear it will take you a week to read it!’ He broke off, suddenly, coughing dryly.
Anna clutched the grubby envelope. ‘She’s well? And Jussi? And Uncle Mischa – he reached Helsinki safely? Oh, of course he must have or you wouldn’t know I was here. Come in, come in – let me take your coat.’
As he stepped into the hall he was overtaken again by a choking bout of throaty coughing. He put his hand out to the wall to steady himself.
‘You’re not well!’ Anna said, with swift concern.
Too breathless to deny it in words he shook his head, reassuringly. But Anna could see now the brightness of fever in his face. The hand that touched hers was dry and hot.
‘Anna? Anna, who is it?’
‘It’s a friend, Mama. A friend of Katya’s.’ Full of worry, she watched as the tall young man with the gentle smile pushed himself away from the wall and determinedly steadied himself. ‘Come in,’ she repeated briskly. ‘Come in at once and sit down. I’ll make you something warm to drink, something to soothe your throat.’
The cough rasped harshly again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘A little cough, that’s all –’ and sank to his knees, his head in his hands.
By the time Volodya came home Anna’s guest was tucked into bed and sleeping restlessly, his breathing harsh. Volodya stood, frowning, in the doorway. ‘Anna, you’re sure this is a good idea?’
Anna had spent a long time talking to Heimo before his illness had finally and utterly felled him. ‘You think it a better idea to turn him out onto the streets to take his chances? Perhaps to die?’ The words were crisp. She had foreseen careful Volodya’s objections. ‘We have no choice. He’s very sick. Come – come and read Katya’s letter. What adventures! Trust Katya to be in the thick of things!’ With brisk movements and a repressive expression that spoke louder than any words she shut the door and led the way back into the scullery.
‘There’s insurrection in Finland,’ he said, leaning on the door, watching her as she hauled out her bag of potatoes.
‘I know there is,’ she said, shortly. ‘Read Katya’s letter. You’ll find out all about it.’
‘Anna, that man is an enemy of the Russian Government –’
She turned on him, fiercely. ‘That man is Katya’s good friend, Volodya,’ she snapped. ‘And that’s good enough for me.’
‘If they should find out –’
‘Who should find out? Why should they find out? And what else do you suggest? Volodya, I tell you the man is sick!’ She turned back to her potatoes. The silence was heavy. She stopped, turned to him. ‘You want to peel the potatoes?’
He shook his head, sheepishly.
‘Then go and do something else,’ she said composedly and turned back to her task. ‘Try reading Katya’s letter. It might make you think twice about who is an enemy and who a friend.’
Heimo’s fever rose. Anna sat with him throughout the long night, sponging him with cold water, trying to make him drink, praying when all else seemed to be failing.
‘We need a doctor,’ she said when Volodya crept in to join her as the first pale light of dawn touched the sky.
‘A doctor? Are you mad?’
She said nothing.
The man in the bed thrashed restlessly, muttering. His fair skin glowed drily and painfully bright.
‘What would you rather?’ Anna asked at last, tiredly. ‘That he died here? How, pray, would you explain that?’
The doctor was a small, plump and nervous man. Anna distrusted him on sight. Yet his examination of the patient was brisk and professional, and he did have some medicines, at a price.
‘How much?’ Anna gasped.
‘I’m sorry. It is the market price. Inflation, you know.’
‘Greed more like it.’ Anna thrust the money at him. It was true that each time she went to the bank the money she drew out bought less and less and lasted for a shorter and shorter time. Heimo muttered confusedly, and not in Russian.
The doctor’s face was bland. ‘The market price,’ he said again. ‘Even doctors have to live.’
The fever subsided a few hours later, though whether due to the drugs, to Anna’s ministrations or to the simple workings of a healthy constitution it was impossible to tell. Exhausted Heimo lay upon fresh pillows in the bed that had seen Katya’s conception, and smiled a tired but still infectious smile. ‘Look at this. A bed fit for a king.’
‘Fit for a friend of Katya’s, certainly,’ Anna said. ‘Lie still, do! We have little, I’m afraid, to tempt an invalid appetite, but I have potatoes and a little butter. Could you manage a spoonful?’
She sat with him as he ate, left him to sleep, then returned when he awoke.
‘You’ve been so very kind,’ he said. His fair skin was cool now, the ugly flush gone. His eyes were calm. He still coughed a little, but it was less harsh, less obviously painful. ‘I’m so very sorry to have inflicted this upon you. I hadn’t realized – a cold, I thought, just a cold. The journey was perhaps a little longer, a little more difficult, than I had expected.’ He grinned, faintly. ‘We go from dodging the Tsar’s patrol boats to dodging those of the Provisional Government. Perhaps I preferred the Tsar’s. At least, I never had to swim for it before!’
‘So that was what happened?’
He spread expressive hands.
‘Katya’s letter wasn’t damaged.’
‘Neither were the others I carried. There are ways to protect such things.’
Anna leaned forward, her elbows on the bed. ‘Are you tired? Can you talk?’
‘For as long as you wish.’
‘Then tell me – tell me about Finland – about Katya.’
Heimo’s presence was, perhaps inevitably, a cause of friction between cautious Volodya and an Anna who, despite these past months, had become dangerously used to living in a more open society.
‘He stays for as long as he needs to.’
‘Every moment he stays is a danger to us all. To you. To me. To your mother.’
She turned from him in disgust.
‘Anna, please, be sensible!’
‘Volodya,’ she said, coldly and she well knew unjustly, over her shoulder, ‘be a little brave. Just a little.’
That night in bed she tried to make it up to him, knowing how she had hurt him. They lay in silence after their lovemaking, his head upon her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ she said, softly, and the apology fell emptily into the silence that engulfed them.
He turned his head to kiss her breast. But he said nothing.
Later they talked. ‘He’s almost better,’ Anna said. ‘A day or two and he’ll be gone.’
She sensed his smile. ‘It’s jealousy,’ he said, ‘pure jealousy. I want you to myself.’
The soldiers came looking for him the next day. This time they had the courtesy to ring the front doorbell; by which time Heimo, nothing if not alert, having seen them enter the building, was on his way out of the servants’ door on the back landing.
‘But won’t they have the back of the building guarded?’ Anna asked anxiously.
‘Don’t worry – I shan’t go down, but up. Where there’s a roof there’s usually a way across it.’ He caught her hand. ‘Anna, thank you. I know what you’ve done for me.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘You call saving my life nothing?’ He shook his head. ‘Now, don’t forget – if you need us, you know where we are. You’ve memorized the Helsinki address?’
‘Yes.’
He dropped a quick kiss on her cheek.
‘God speed!’ she said. ‘And be careful! Give all my love to Katya!’
There was one last flash of that smile, and he was gone.
The soldiers searched, noisily and carelessly, and found nothing. They declined to tell her the source of their suspicions that she was harbouring ‘an enemy of the people’.
‘That bloody doctor,’ Volodya said, after they had gone.
Anna was scraping about with a pair of tongs in the cold ashes of the stove. ‘I suppose so. Well, Heimo’s gone, and so have they. Ah –’ She pulled out a package, shaking it free of ash. ‘Here it is. Katya’s letter.’
‘Anna! You were supposed to have destroyed it! What if they had found it?’
‘Well, they didn’t, did they?’ Anna blew the fine ash from the paper.
‘Anna? Anna! Anna, where are you?’
Anna raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Here, Mama. Coming, Mama.’
In the dangerous and disturbed weeks that followed Anna took to visiting Natalia and her children very frequently. She had come to be very fond of the two children, especially the little girl ’Tasha; and ’Tasha and her brother, bereft of any real warmth or tenderness from a mother who was all but obsessed with their small, ailing brother, returned her affection in full. Since Natalia still adamantly refused to leave the apartment Anna made sure that what supplies her money and Volodya’s contacts could provide were shared between the two households. Life was getting harder with each day that passed. After the violent riots and the mass demonstrations in April against the Provisional Government’s determination to honour their obligations to their allies and continue the war, the city seethed, faction and counter-faction fighting bitterly for advantage, the streets of the city their battleground. At the beginning of May a Coalition Government was formed, that included both the Duma deputies and some Socialists, though no Bolsheviks. But the apparent co-operation was never anything but a farce, and unrest and anarchy continued to stalk the city. Food became scarcer, and more expensive, by the day. There were massive and violent demonstrations against the Government. At the Front the Russian army was nearly disintegrating; up to a million men deserted in that year of 1917, and discipline had broken down entirely. No-one doubted that worse was to come. As the month of June approached preparations were laid for more demonstrations, more challenges to the power of the Government. Quarrelsome committees and Bolshevik Soviets took charge of factories, workplaces and regiments. There were stories of disaffection in the Baltic Fleet. Once again, Petrograd was a powder keg, and this time it was the Bolsheviks, led by the man known as Lenin, that held the match, poised to light the fuse.
On a warm and placid day in late May Anna and Volodya sat in the sunshine upon a bench in the Tauride Gardens, behind the palace that was the seat of the Duma, relishing a moment’s peace and privacy. For once the city was quiet. Anna, driven to distraction by her mother’s demands, had been desperate to get out, if only for an hour or so. In the cause of her own sanity she had produced almost the last of Zhenia’s store of chocolates, dumped them into Varya’s lap, and, with Volodya, had fled into the open air. She sat, face tilted to the sun, eyes closed, for a long, still moment. Volodya watched her, smiling faintly. A swan glided lazily across still, shining water.
At last Anna sighed, opened her eyes, settled back against the seat. ‘That’s better!’ She breathed deeply again. ‘Funny how nothing seems so bad in the sunshine!’
They sat for several minutes in an easy silence, watching the water birds and the glitter of the sunshine through the trees. A mother and three small children strolled by. The eldest boy was inexpertly bowling a large hoop that all at once escaped him, wobbled wildly and fell, clattering, beside Volodya. He bent to right it, sent it bowling back towards the child. The mother smiled her thanks. Volodya watched the child’s renewed and dogged efforts to control his toy with amused and affectionate eyes.
Anna turned to look at him, her eyes thoughtful. ‘You like children, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘And yet – you never married?’
‘No.’ The word was quiet.
She held his eyes for a moment, then, uncomfortable, looked away.
‘The only girl I ever wanted ran away and married someone else,’ he said, lightly.
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Volodya –’ She stopped, at a loss for words.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, calmly, and reached a hand to cover hers. ‘It has to be said, doesn’t it? Anna, I know. I know you don’t love me. You didn’t then, and you don’t now. It isn’t your fault.’
‘I do!’ she said. ‘I do love you! But –’
‘But not in the way that I love you. Not in the way I would wish you to love me.’
For one brief moment she remembered; remembered the blaze, the wonder, the agony of her feelings for Andrei. The warm depth of her love for Guy. ‘No,’ she said. And then, ‘I’m sorry,’ she added.
‘No need to be. I told you. It isn’t your fault.’
‘It feels as if it is.’
He shook his head.
The silence this time was long, and not quite as easy.
‘Volodya, I don’t know what to do,’ Anna said at last. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best; for you, for the others – for myself.’
‘You must go of course,’ he said, very promptly. ‘As soon as possible. There’s nothing else you can do in the end. You have another life. A safe and happy life. You should go back to it.’
‘Save myself? Forget everyone else?’ She rubbed her forehead a little tiredly with her fingertips. ‘I sometimes find myself wondering – why did I come? It’s so hard to remember what it was like. What on earth did I think I was going to be able to do? Waltz in – tidy everyone up – spend a few roubles – waltz back out again!’
‘You do yourself an injustice.’
‘Do I?’ she asked, bleakly unreassured. ‘Oh, Volodya, it all seemed so simple then. And it isn’t. It isn’t simple at all. It’s all such a muddle, isn’t it? A horrible, messy – dangerous! – muddle.’
He caught her shoulders firmly, turned her to face him. ‘Anna, there’s one thing you must face. We are lost. Russia is lost. What is to come will be as bad as if not worse than what has gone before. You have to go back to England. You have to save yourself.’
‘You want me to go?’
‘I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy.’
She turned away from him, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’
‘Come. You’re overwrought. Let’s walk a little way.’ He held out his hand.
They walked in silence.
‘Nothing’s as I had expected, as I had hoped,’ Anna said, quietly, as they came out onto the embankment of the Neva. ‘Mama – Natalia and her poor weakling of a baby – God alone knows what’s got into Margarita. And then – Lenka.’ She stopped walking, her eyes distant on the busy scene before her. ‘Volodya, why should Lenka still hate me so, after all this time?’ It was a question that haunted her.
He watched with her for a moment the wide, busy waterway that divided the city. Grey naval ships were anchored on the bank opposite the Winter Palace, near the Fortress, tugs and civil traffic ploughed through the wide, slow-moving waters. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know any of you well enough to know exactly what went on.’
Impulsively she turned to him, touched his arm. ‘I want to go and see her. I want to try to explain.’
‘Now?’
She shrugged a little. ‘Why not? If trouble starts again I may not get another chance.’
The apartment building where Lenka had a room was typical of many in the overcrowded industrial suburbs of the city. It was dark, depressing and none too clean. The alleyway outside was squalid. Despite the warmth of the day the air within the heavy walls was chill and damp, and the smell was stomach-turning.
Volodya hesitated by the door, looking at Anna enquiringly. Anna took a breath; nodded. He rapped, sharply.
The door opened almost immediately. A girl perhaps seven or eight years of age peered in the half-light. ‘Yes?’
Anna stood struck to silence. The youngster was tall, and very thin. The wiry halo of her hair was lit to fire by the light of a flickering lamp upon the wall behind her. Her skin was pale and freckled, her nose straight, her mouth wide.
‘Yes?’ the girl asked again, sharply. ‘What do you –’ She stopped abruptly, looking at Anna, her face registering the same shock, and then almost immediately a flame of fierce anger. She reached to slam the door.
Volodya moved his foot and the door jammed against it. ‘Is your mother here?’
‘Who is it, Tonia?’ Lenka’s voice was hoarse. The words were followed by a fit of coughing.
‘Lenka, it’s me,’ Anna said, very clearly, her eyes riveted, appalled, upon the hate-filled look that the child who from appearances might have been mistaken for her own had fixed upon her.
There was a moment of silence, followed by movement. Lenka appeared behind her daughter; a Lenka thinner and gaunter than Anna remembered her, wrapped in an ancient dressing gown, a handkerchief clutched in her hand. ‘What do you want?’
‘To talk. Please, Lenka.’
‘Anna, there is nothing to talk about. I’m not well. Please go.’ There was nothing of the old sullen strength of will; she looked simply exhausted, her eyes dark-ringed.
‘Let me help you,’ Anna said.
‘No.’ There was no weakness in that. ‘We’re all right. Just go away.’
‘Who is it, Mama?’ A little boy had come up behind her, wrapped his hand in the worn skirt of her gown, his thumb in his mouth, bright eyes upon Anna.
‘It’s a wicked witch,’ Tonia said, loudly, ‘who’s come to gobble you up.’
The dark eyes widened.
‘That will do, Tonia,’ Lenka said, none too severely. She was breathing heavily, the sound of it loud in the quiet.
‘Five minutes,’ Anna said. ‘That’s all I ask. Five minutes to talk. To let me try to explain.’
Tonia, thin and agile as a monkey, had ducked beneath her mother’s arm and stood, blazing with protective fury in front of her and the bemused little boy. ‘Go away!’ she shouted. ‘Go away, witch! Leave us alone!’
‘Tonia –’ Anna put out a hand to her. The child struck it aside.
‘Tonia!’ The sudden effort was too much for Lenka. Coughing all but choked her.
The child was beside her in a moment, arm about her waist. ‘Mama, Mama! You mustn’t cough! Come – come and sit down.’
Lenka allowed herself to be pushed into a patched armchair, its horsehair stuffing bulging through its threadbare covering. She was struggling to contain the fit of coughing.
Anna and Volodya followed them into the room. Watched as Tonia, competent and gentle as a woman three times her age, fetched a tin cup of water from the table, helped her mother guide it to her lips. Then she straightened, her arm across her mother’s shoulders, and faced the intruders defiantly. ‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘And we don’t want you here. Go away.’
Lenka’s silence was every bit as eloquent as her daughter’s impassioned words.
‘She’s right, Anna,’ she said at last, with a slow and difficult dignity that brought the sudden burning of tears to Anna’s eyes. ‘It’s too late. Go away.’
Anna came to kneel beside her sister. Steadfastly she ignored the child’s eyes, so like her own and yet fiercely and openly hostile as, like a distrustful animal’s, they followed her every movement. ‘All right. I’ll go. But Lenka – you aren’t well. Let me help you. You need food, medicines?’
‘No!’ the child snapped, loathing in her face and in her voice.
‘Quiet, Tonia!’ The effort of raising her voice brought on another bout of coughing. Lenka doubled up.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Tonia was there again, with a supporting arm, her fingers tender in her mother’s tangled hair, glaring at Anna above the bent head.
Lenka wiped her mouth, reached out to take her daughter’s hand in a firm grip. ‘Just a few roubles,’ she said to Anna, ‘for the children, you understand. Be still, Antonia!’
The child subsided, glowering.
‘Here.’ Anna pulled out her purse, pressed it into Lenka’s hand. ‘And there’s more –’
‘No.’
‘Very well. But remember, Lenka, if you need anything – anything at all! – send for me and I’ll come. I promise you.’
Lenka lifted a haggard face. ‘You promised me something very like that once before,’ she said, very softly.
Once in the dingy streets, which not even the light from the soft May sky could beautify, Anna walked briskly, blindly and in silence for a full five minutes before her companion caught at her hand and stopped her. ‘Anna.’
She turned to him. Tears reddened her eyes, slicked her cheeks, dripped from the sharp line of her jaw. ‘Don’t say anything, Volodya,’ she said. ‘Just don’t say anything at all.’ And she turned and hurried on through the dreary, embattled streets and the long, pearly dusk of the summer’s evening.
What came to be known as Petrograd’s June Days brought crisis once more to the streets of the city. As always the origins of the trouble were confused; there were demonstrations and counter-demonstrations and the confrontations were fierce. Forbidden by the Government to march, the Bolsheviks at first conceded defeat, then with savage enterprise and no mean organization proceeded to take over the Government’s own demonstrations, turning out in massive force, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who was winning this battle for the heart and mind of the working man. The simple slogan of the Soviets, ‘Peace, Land and Bread!’, appealed directly and forcefully to a population tired of the war, tired of oppression and all but exhausted by hunger. When it became clear that the Government was withstanding this fresh surge of pressure, tempers again rose to explosion point; there were strikes and demonstrations; workers’ delegations from seventy-four factories met to demand the immediate transfer of power from the Provisional Government to the Petrograd Soviet. Thirty-five thousand men downed tools to march in support of their Bolshevik leaders. The First Machine Gun Regiment, ordered by a nervous Government to quit the city and transfer itself to the Front, obliged by sending ten units to fight the Germans whilst keeping twenty in Petrograd for more pressing battles. Other regiments ignored their orders altogether. The soldiers, and their arms, once again began to join the workers on the streets.
By early July it was obvious that events had moved too fast; the mass of the people had run all but beyond the control of those who had sought to manipulate them. The Bolshevik leadership tried to stop the increasingly violent protests and were themselves ignored and vilified. Workers poured into the capital, and twenty thousand sailors from Kronstadt prepared to sail upriver and into the city. For two days the Tauride Palace was besieged by demonstrators calling for the resignation of Prince Lvov’s Government and the handing of power to the Soviet Executive Committee. Yet still the people themselves were divided and there were bitter clashes between rival factions.
Anna had become almost used to it by now; the massed marches, the waving banners, the inevitable violence, the fires, the barricades, and the forums that formed on almost every street corner, arguing and shouting, debating furiously, never so far as she could see coming to any conclusion. Life had to go on. Food must be found, contact maintained with the family, arrangements made with the bank for more funds. Plainly dressed and using common sense in her choice of routes she walked the streets unmolested. Like many others her only choice seemed to be to live from day to day, until some sort of order came out of the chaos; then she would make her decision. She spent a great deal of time with Natalia and the children; her sister-in-law was only too pleased to have her care for and entertain the two older children, whom she sometimes took back to the Bourlov apartment for days at a time, whilst Natalia devoted herself to the frail Dimochka. Anna had not attempted to visit Lenka again, though Volodya had taken supplies and money – both of which Lenka had flatly refused to accept. Margarita no-one had seen since the beginning of the disturbances two or three weeks before.
‘I might try to pop in on her after I’ve been to see Mr Lawson at the bank,’ Anna said to Volodya on the day that he had come in with a precious chicken, a bag of even more precious onions and the news that the Bolshevik leadership were, with the exception of Lenin and a few close associates who had fled the city, under arrest.
Volodya swung Nikki, who was perched astride his shoulders, to the floor. ‘I wish you’d wait until I could come with you.’
‘Don’t be silly. There’s no real risk.’ She laughed as the agile little boy launched himself again at Volodya.
‘Another ride, Uncle ’Lodya! Another ride!’
‘You’re in more danger here from the look of it.’ She settled a small straw hat upon the wiry mass of her hair. ‘Goodness, if there’s one thing I truly miss it’s a decent hairdresser! Just look at me! I look like a hedgehog!’
‘A hedgehog! A hedgehog!’ Nikki crowed, elevated once more to the heights.
‘Don’t be silly, Aunt Anna.’ ’Tasha was loyally indignant. ‘Of course you don’t!’
‘Anna? Anna, are you there?’ At the sound of Varya’s voice all four of them stilled, almost guiltily.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll go,’ Volodya said.
‘Thanks.’ She kissed his cheek lightly, beneath the bright, interested eyes of the two children. ‘I won’t be long. It’s a formality, I think.’ She grimaced a little. ‘I want formally to ask for some more of my own money and Mr Lawson wants formally to lecture me on the advisability of returning to England.’
‘He’s right.’
‘That’s as may be.’ She waved from the door. ‘Be good, you two.’
‘What about Uncle ’Lodya?’ ’Tasha asked.
‘Yes. Him too. You’ll look after him for me, won’t you? Don’t let him misbehave?’
’Tasha giggled.
‘Anna!’ Varya shrieked.
‘Go,’ Volodya said.
The interview with Mr Lawson of the Anglo-Russian Bank went much as she had foreseen.
‘Mrs de Fontenay, in view of the unrest, and given the quite terrifying scale of inflation in the country at present –’
Anna, taking just enough time to register with some amusement that it was the rate at which she was spending money that was concerning the man just as much as any personal danger she might be in, stopped listening. At the end of the lecture she smiled, at her most charming. ‘Thank you, Mr Lawson. I shall of course consider what you’ve told me very carefully. Very carefully indeed. Now, if I may collect my money?’
The news of the arrests of the Bolshevik leaders had fired much excited discussion and a fair amount of disquiet in the streets. The inevitable noisy meeting was taking place in the Liteini. Anna squeezed through the animated participants. Soldiers, workers and students of both sexes, and a few sailors from the Kronstadt fleet that had anchored in the river, shouted each other down with a fine disregard for sense or courtesy. Almost all of them carried arms of one kind or another, and many wore the red armbands of revolution. Anna picked her way through the remains of a barricade, skirted about the burned-out remains of a tramcar – sometimes she thought it a wonder that there was a tram left in working order in the whole of the city – and turned the corner into Margarita’s street.
The building was quiet, the landing empty.
Anna rapped sharply at the door.
Nothing happened.
She knocked again; and when it became evident that Margarita was not there, disappointed, she turned to leave. Stopped. The smell of cigarette smoke was strong. Strong and fresh. She knocked again, louder. ‘Rita? Rita, are you there?’
She heard, distinctly, a muffled cough.
‘Rita, it’s Anna. Oh, do come on, Margarita – what are you doing?’ She rapped again.
‘Go away, Anna.’
She stared at the door.
As if she had willed it so, it opened, just a little. ‘Anna, go away,’ Margarita said, tiredly. She leaned against the door jamb, cigarette in hand. The air of the dark little hallway behind her was thick with pungent smoke. Her hair was a tangle, her eyes heavy. She wore a crumpled scarlet satin evening dress, brazenly low-cut, and her feet were bare.
‘Rita, darling – whatever is wrong?’
Margarita turned away, walked back into the apartment, leaving the door swinging open behind her.
Anna followed, closing the door.
The pretty little parlour was untidy. A vodka bottle stood upon the table, a half-empty glass beside it. Margarita turned to face her sister as she followed her into the room, defiantly picked up the glass and emptied it at a swallow. ‘Want one?’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Of course not. No. Of course not.’ Margarita turned and wandered to the sideboard. Set amongst the clutter stood the little theatre that Sasha had bought her. It stood neglected now, the tiny characters piled in a heap upon the stage. With careful, over-steady fingers she began idly to sort them, picking them out one by one, standing them in a row along the edge of the sideboard, pushing them into a straight line with the tip of her finger.
Anna waited for as long as she humanly could. ‘Margarita,’ she said, when she could stand the tense silence no longer. ‘What is it? What’s the matter? What’s happened?’ She stood watching her sister in concern. ‘Is it – Rita, dear – is it Sasha?’ Margarita laughed at that, sudden and shrill. ‘Yes!’ she said, ‘I suppose you could say that! Yes, it’s Sasha!’
Try as she might she could not stop the trembling.
How in the name of God had they found out, Vassili and the others? How had they discovered what she had done?
Almost unaware of her sister’s eyes upon her, she saw again those faces, those distorted and terrifying faces, endured again the disgust, the violent obscenities. How could they have turned against her so? They were her friends. Her only friends. Vassili’s handsome face had been ugly in its rage. ‘Tell me! Tell me! Tell me it’s a lie!’ His hands, that had gentled and loved her, had been savage as he shook her. She had thought, for a moment, that he might kill her. Why? For God’s sake, why? She was Sasha’s wife; yet not one of them had thought twice about cuckolding the man they now declared to be their blood brother. Betrayal? Who were they – any of them – to talk of betrayal? A tear – not the first she had shed in the long hours since she had dragged herself home the night before – ran almost unnoticed down her cheek.
‘He’s dead?’ Anna’s voice was gentle.
She turned. ‘Yes,’ she said, blankly. ‘Of course he’s dead.’ She looked round, vague and distracted, for her cigarettes.
‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.’
‘I can’t find – ah, there they are.’ She picked up the packet from the table, struck a match to light it, shook the flame out. Whore, they had called her. Treacherous whore. An easy weapon to reach for, that. And who had made her so? Had she whored alone? Bastards, every one of them; heartless, brutal bastards. She remembered how they had manhandled her, remembered the probing, twisting fingers, and felt sick.
‘How did it happen?’ Anna asked, her quiet voice distant through the strange rushing sound in Margarita’s ears. ‘Do you know? Did they tell you?’
Margarita’s control snapped. She turned on her sister in sudden and mindless fury. ‘For God’s sake, Anna, stop talking to me as if I’m a child who’s heard her favourite toy’s broken! Of course I bloody know! They stood him up against a wall and they shot him!’
There was a short, appalled silence.
‘I told them where to find him,’ Margarita said, perfectly steadily. ‘Him and that bitch on heat that he was sniffing around. And they found them. Found them both. Together. It’s a bloody shame they didn’t shoot them together too. They exiled her. Sent her off to Siberia. I hope she’s dead! I hope she died slowly, and I hope it hurt! I hope –’ She broke off. She was shaking visibly.
‘Sasha – was executed?’ Anna asked, slowly.
‘Yes, Anna. Sasha was executed. He deserted! Brave, beautiful Sasha deserted! He was a coward! He ran away! And he ran not to me but to her – to her! So I told them where he was, and they shot him, and I’m glad! You hear me? I’m glad!’ The tears came in sudden, huge, choking sobs. She cried loudly, her mouth open like a child’s. ‘And now they’ve found out and they hate me – they called me names – they did horrible things to me – the pigs! The stinking pigs!’
‘Who did?’ Anna’s voice was remarkably calm. Her eyes were not.
‘Sasha’s friends – my friends.’ Margarita stopped at that, suddenly realizing what she had said, and to whom she had said it. The sobbing subsided. She pulled at the tablecloth to wipe at her nose and face. Several small ornaments fell to the floor, clattering and rolling.
‘I – I don’t think I have this right, Margarita.’ Anna rubbed at her forehead. ‘You aren’t – you aren’t honestly telling me – you betrayed Sasha? He deserted – and you –’ She stopped. She looked, and felt, genuinely ill.
Margarita turned away from the look in her sister’s eyes. ‘I’m not sorry,’ she said. ‘You won’t make me feel sorry.’
‘When? When did this happen?’
Margarita shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Months ago. Months and months ago. Now go away, Anna. For God’s sake, go away.’
‘How could you do such a thing?’ Shock had robbed Anna of any grace or courtesy. Pure undisguised horror was in the question. She could do nothing to prevent it.
‘Go away,’ Margarita repeated.
‘Months ago?’ The words were only just sinking in. ‘You said months ago? And all this time you – you’ve been pretending –’ Words finally failed.
‘Go away! Get out! I don’t want you here!’
Anna backed away from her, very slowly. Then, abruptly, she turned and all but ran from the room. Margarita heard the slamming of the front door; it echoed like a pistol shot in her head long after the sound of her sister’s stumbling footsteps had died.
Left alone, Margarita wandered the room, touching this, handling that, her face vacant. She took a vase from the shelf and dropped it, watching it explode and splinter at her feet. She picked up the vodka bottle, took a mouthful, choked a little, pulled a face, put the bottle back upon the table. Walked to the sideboard.
The cardboard figures stood in line, smiling fixedly and inanely into space.
She picked up the figure of the prince, traced with her finger the tiny, rakish scar upon the cardboard cheek. Then with deliberate movements she reached for the matches, struck one, and set it to the figure’s feet. The bright material flared and curled; began to burn.
Margarita smiled. With no haste she set the burning figure in the centre of the stage, stood and watched as the flames licked and glowed about it.
Then she turned, and without bothering to shut the doors behind her walked out of the apartment and down the stairs into the street.
Comrade Sergei Krakovski had had a good day. He’d helped derail a tram and he’d brained a Menshevik. He’d also consumed, along with his fellows, a great deal of vodka kindly donated by the owner of a shop they’d come across in the Nevsky, and he was ready for anything. He was a brute of a man, big as a bear, a man who worked with iron and was proud of it. ‘Ashkenov?’ he said, frowning in disbelief, ‘Kurakin? Do you see what I see?’
A woman was walking towards them. A vision. She walked with dainty steps, the folds of her scarlet skirt held high above the pavement, disclosing incongruously bare and dirty feet. The golden mass of her uncombed hair fell in tangled curls upon her naked shoulders. The dress was cut so low that it all but exposed her nipples. She smiled, dazzlingly, as she approached. Stopped. ‘Gentlemen? May I pass?’ She lifted her chin, eyes wide and challenging.
They moved forward, surrounding her with their rank male smell, with the animal sound of their breathing. She did not move, but stood still, straightening her shoulders and arching her back a little, deliberately provocative.
Krakovski reached a huge hand roughly to fondle the nearly bared breast. ‘And if we say no, little whore?’
She let him pull the dress down to her waist. Smiled into their faces.
Kurakin gawked. The man Ashkenov turned his head, sniffing. ‘There’s a fire down the street –’
‘There’s a fire right here,’ Krakovski growled. ‘And I’m going to be the first to put it out.’
‘Who says so?’
Without taking his eyes from Margarita, Krakovski bunched his great iron fist under the other man’s nose. ‘My good right hand says so. Wait your turn. Come, little lady. Here, in the doorway. That’s right! Up with it. Sweet Jesus! Watch this, lads – this is the way it’s done – that’s right, girl – Christ, yes! – that’s the way!’