The Lieutenant’s Lover by Harry Bingham

empty stove, holding hands and thinking about the rattle of train wheels in the dark. When they slept they kept their underclothes on, covered only by a thin sheet in the sweltering night.
    Then, by the third day, things seemed brighter. The arrangement was that, if the escape was successful, Emma would contact a Helsinki lawyer named Dr Pakkinen, who in turn would write to a Petrograd lawyer named Kamenev, an old friend of the family. The code for ‘all went well’ would be a request to pass on greetings to Misha. It might take weeks for the letter to get through. On the other hand, if the escape had been detected, then Misha’s own arrest would follow with swift and bloody certainty. No news was good news of the best possible sort.
    So Misha started to hope. But it was Tonya, as ever more careful than him, who urged him to proceed with care. They were upstairs in the apartment, sitting in front of the wide open windows, basking in the warm air and golden light.
    ‘You have to make a declaration to someone,’ she said. ‘If you don’t do it now, and they find out that you’ve said nothing, you’ll be held responsible.’
    Misha frowned. ‘You’re right, only not yet. I don’t want to risk being too soon.’
    ‘And I don’t want to risk you being too late,’ said Tonya, sharply. ‘It’s not only you to think of now.’
    ‘No. Perhaps you’re right. What do you think? Maybe the house committee?’
    ‘Of course the house committee. I’m not saying you need to go to the Cheka.’ The Cheka were the new, much-feared, secret police.
    They stood up. He was perhaps eight or nine inches taller than she was and the difference in that little room seemed suddenly huge. Tonya, as always, wore her hair tied and pinned at the back. He had never seen it otherwise. Putting his hands gently to the back of her head, he began pulling at the pins. She did nothing to help him except turn her head as he wanted, and she stood silently breathing, feeling the warmth of his hands on her neck. Then he was done. Her hair fell free in a dark curtain, framing her face and softening it. Misha ran his hands through her hair, then dropped them. The two of them stood in silence. It felt like the most intimate thing they’d ever done.
    ‘Well?’ said Tonya.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘I think you look beautiful.’
    ‘Really?’
    Misha was about to answer light-heartedly, before seeing that Tonya had been genuinely anxious.
    ‘Really. You should wear it like that all the time.’
    ‘I always wanted curly hair. I used to see all these pictures of the ladies at court—’
    ‘I like your hair just as it is. Besides, most of those court ladies wore wigs.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Most of them were bald underneath. Or hairy like a bear.’
    ‘Idiot!’
    She pushed him and he pushed her back. But they both knew that they needed to go downstairs to see the old woman of the house committee before she retired for the night. Tonya was about to start putting her hair up again, when Misha stopped her.
    ‘Don’t do that. Go as you are.’
    ‘I can’t go like this. I look like—’
    She stopped and blushed. They fought for a moment, then compromised. Tonya tied her hair at the back, but only loosely, so it still fell like a soft halo around her face. They went downstairs and knocked on the basement door, where the comrade chairwoman of the house committee had her room. The old lady was ready for bed, dressed in some voluminous white nightgown which could have served for somebody five times larger. She cackled when she saw the two of them together and Tonya felt sure that she was staring at her hair and drawing conclusions. Misha explained why they had come. He said that his mother and Yevgeny had gone out to visit friends the previous evening and not come back. He said he was very worried.
    ‘Worried? You should be, comrade. In this city, disappearance is a bad thing. It’s not the right thing from a political perspective. If a