The Lieutenant’s Lover. Harry Bingham

       ONE

      1

      Misha always remembered the moment.

      Weeks of war had passed without fighting, just orders to advance, followed almost immediately by orders to retreat. And then one night, on another interminable journey in a troop train, it happened.

      It was long past midnight. The train slowed and stopped. The little country platform filled with food vendors selling hot tea, boiled beef, rye pancakes. Misha clambered out to get some clean air and pace the stiffness out of his legs.

      As he walked up and down, it began to snow. Small flakes at first, so light they hardly seemed to descend. But within minutes, the flakes had grown into big white feathers. They still seemed to fall so slowly that they were hardly coming down at all, but the ground quickly spread with white. Misha liked the snow, and went on pacing just as before. All around, sounds became softer, rounded, muffled.

      Then a new vendor came onto the platform with a bundle of papers. There was a sudden eddy of excitement, men shouting, commotion. And Misha was caught up in it. Acting by some automatic instinct, he’d reached in his pocket for a kopeck or two and snatched a newspaper from the pile. And there, under the lamplight and the falling snow, he had read the headline:

      ‘BOLSHEVIKS SEIZE POWER IN PETROGRAD. WINTER PALACE STORMED.’

      That was all. There was a full article beneath the headline, one part fact, three parts sensational speculation. But Misha didn’t read a word of it. He didn’t have to. He was the son of a wealthy industrialist and landowner, at a time when owning industry and land had become suddenly dangerous.

      The Tsar was overthrown. The workers had taken over.

      Misha knew that his world had changed, utterly and for ever.

      2

      Tonya too remembered the moment.

      The water butt on the landing had been frozen over, but at this time of year the ice wasn’t yet thick. A couple of axe-blows was enough to break the surface, and she’d filled the enamel jug, feeling it grow suddenly heavy as the water rushed in. She carried it through to the apartment beyond the landing.

      In the living room, a cast-iron stove leaked heat and smoke in equal measure. The room was dim. In the corner by the stove, a man sat and watched Tonya enter and shrug off the thick coat which she wore over her nurse’s uniform.

      ‘Not working, Father?’

      He grinned, showing a mouth that held just four teeth, and not one of them a beauty. ‘Why work? It’s the revolution.’ Pleased with his answer, he repeated the word, dragging it out, giving a final kick to the final syllable, revolutsya, revolutsy-a.

      To begin with, Tonya had ignored him. There was the fire to stoke, water to boil, soup to make, her elderly grandmother, Babba Varvara, to care for. She didn’t know what he was talking about, but then again as his excuses for not doing his job as a railwayman were innumerable, she didn’t care much either.

      But then the old man had nudged the table. There was a newspaper lying there. Tonya remembered picking it up almost angrily, irritated at the interruption. And there it was, in simple words, black on white. The Winter Palace was stormed. The Tsar was captured. The workers were in control.

      For a moment, perhaps only a second, Tonya remembered thinking that this must be good news. She was a worker, wasn’t she? If their class was victorious, then things would get better wouldn’t they? She looked back at her father, who grinned again. His mouth was like a black hole thumbed into the dark grey shadow of his face.

      ‘Revolutsy-a,’ he repeated, nastily. ‘Revolutsy-a.’

      The word was ominous, and it sounded like death.