The Summer Day is Done (26 page)

‘I’ve been cleaning and pressing this one,’ she said, ‘and will do the other one this afternoon.’

‘No, go out and play,’ he said.

‘Play?’

‘With a young man, with Oravio if you like. I’ll ask Aleka Petrovna to spare him for the afternoon.’

Karita wrinkled her nose. Really, as old Amarov would have said, what was Ivan
Ivanovich coming to not to know how dull and dreary Oravio was?

‘If I wanted to run through the grass with a man I would not choose Oravio,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ said Kirby, and rubbed a sideburn. ‘Well, perhaps Oravio isn’t exactly a pillar of light. There is Sergius, then.’

‘Sergius is very much nicer,’ said Karita, ‘and might do very well in five years’ time when he’s grown up. This afternoon I shall be far too busy to take him by the hand.’

He laughed aloud. Karita smiled. He was always in amusement about something. It made her feel very pleased.

‘Karita,’ he said, ‘no one is ever going to do your thinking for you. But remember how pretty you are, remember it’s spring and that young men don’t like growing up. Think of yourself sometimes and not of my shirts or socks or uniforms.’

‘But I like your shirts and uniforms,’ said Karita, ‘and I don’t even mind your socks too much.’

‘Minx,’ he said and kissed her affectionately.

Well! thought Karita rosily. He had not done that all the time they had been in St Petersburg. What possessed him to kiss her here but never in St Petersburg? It was very confusing. Not that she minded. Ivan Ivanovich was always so agreeable. She was sure he would make Princess Aleka Petrovna very happy.

For about three months.

In her own suite Aleka was coldly observant of three wafer-thin buff cards Oravio produced from his pocket.

‘They were in the Englishman’s hairbrush,’ he said. ‘He’s not very clever. Hiding places like that are as old as Amarov.’

‘Why should he consider he has to be clever when he believes others are stupid?’ Aleka sounded as if she would have preferred Oravio to have found nothing. ‘Let me see them.’

‘They’ll have to be sent to Prolofski, he’ll decode them,’ said Oravio.

‘You don’t give the orders here.’ She put out a hand. Oravio shrugged and handed the cards over. They were all neatly inscribed with small English lettering. She could decipher none of it.

‘You realize what has been done to you and why?’ said Oravio darkly. ‘The Okhrana know about you and this is their way of destroying you with the help of English pigs. Now no one trusts you. You’ll be watched by everyone. But you’ve been lightly treated. That’s because you can claim the tyrants’ friendship. Otherwise you’d have had to suffer what true comrades have suffered.’

‘Hold your silly tongue,’ she said sharply, ‘of course I realize, I did from the beginning. Do you think I’m a fool? It’s you who lack brains. These cards need not be sent to Prolofski. What is on them must be carefully and quickly copied and the copy sent. The cards must be put back before Colonel Kirby has a chance to miss them.’

‘I am at your service, naturally,’ said Oravio insolently.

‘When Prolofski has decoded them we’ll see if Colonel Kirby is not what he seems.’

‘He never has been,’ said Oravio.

‘Ivan, you’ve got your nose in books again. Talk to me.’

Aleka and Kirby were on the terrace. The weather was drier and warmer each day. There was the softest of golden hazes shimmering above the sea. Kirby had his manuals and his notes in page-fluttering profusion on a table and over his lap.

‘You talk, Princess,’ he said, ‘and faithfully I promise to listen.’

‘What a terrible man you are,’ she murmured, ‘you’re still far more interested in those stupid manoeuvres than you are in me. If I were to make your life a thing of misery for your indifference to me, it would be no more than you deserved.’

He felt he had little to fear. She seemed to be indulging a temporary mania for doing nothing. It was so uncharacteristic that he wondered if, despite her light-hearted references to the incident, the attempt on her life had been more of a shock than she would admit.

‘I’m not indifferent,’ he said, ‘but perhaps you and I feel it’s more stimulating to progress than it is to arrive. Perhaps we enjoy anticipation so much that we prefer the event always to be ahead of us.’

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I anticipate. You procrastinate. Procrastination is not at all stimulating, it’s very uncomplimentary. It makes me feel that one day I shall be very odious to you.’

She was almost absurdly Russian. She lived in phases, he thought, in brief devotion to lovers or causes. Andrei had been a phase. Now it was his turn, Kirby supposed. How long would he last once they became lovers? A week? And then she would be looking over her shoulder. He could not deny it might be an illuminating week. She was superbly beautiful. The sea air and the warm days had erased her pallor and given back to her skin its pampered lustre of pearly whiteness.

He was held back not by lack of natural desire but by his inescapable regard for Olga, by a feeling that to make love to Aleka would be to betray innocence. But since he could never be more to Olga than someone she knew, that feeling was an absurdity. Nevertheless, it was there.

‘You must allow me to consider how delicate you still are,’ he said.

‘My God,’ she said, ‘what a ridiculous man you are and what strange ideas you have about women. When a woman needs love do you think she wants to be regarded as delicate and untouchable? She wants to be subjected to fire, passion and conquest. Don’t you know how primitive women are? Darling, put women into a jungle and they’d survive. Put men in and they’d perish.’

‘Eaten by the women, do you think?’ he suggested.

She lifted her white hands to the sky and turned her eyes to its blue as if entreating the heavens to bear witness to the hopelessness and impossibility of men. He smiled. If she ever did marry she would at least never bore her husband,
unless in one of her careless moods she picked a man who did not like theatricals.

The Russian manoeuvres, engaging divisions from the army of the Caucasus, took place on a plateau in the north of the Crimea. They were for Kirby not too far removed from Aleka’s descriptions. They consisted of movements which, to him, appeared unrelated to common sense. Soldiers in their thousands marched across the line of guns, offering themselves, it seemed, as willing targets. The officers from generals downwards were immaculate, bemedalled models of martial haute couture. They rode horses just as immaculate. In groups they trotted elegantly from one point to another, expressing restrained consternation as marching brigades periodically collided with other formations marching from elsewhere.

Generals, omnipotently observing the scheme of things from places of high vantage, bristled at the incompetence of others or beamed in acknowledgement of their own genius, according to whether confusion or cohesion was uppermost. The Tsar was there each day, surrounded by his staff, the only sober-hued note being struck by Nicholas himself and the massively austere Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, the Russian commander-in-chief.

The Tsar, a military enthusiast, enjoyed every moment. Masses of marching infantry aroused admiration in him. The power and potential of polished guns brought compliments from him. He watched from a high ridge one afternoon
as limbered guns were raced into position, the carriages swaying and rocking, the horses pounding, the artillerymen shouting. It looked spectacular. But Brigadier Rollinson, senior British observer, grunted. And Kirby, who had no military experience but a knowledge of armaments, did not have to ride down to examine the guns before pronouncing them aged and inferior. However, if the quality of much of the Russian armament was unimpressive, the manpower that surged and poured over the immense plain each day had a swamping effect on the imagination.

Nicholas, whenever observers from friendly powers were close enough, never failed to exchange friendly words with them. Especially did he seem to appreciate Kirby’s presence.

‘Exciting, isn’t it, my dear fellow?’

‘It’s new to me, sir,’ said Kirby.

‘Ah, they’re splendid soldiers, the very best,’ said Nicholas, leaning forward on his horse to embrace the columns of moving infantry with a wave of his arm. He looked around, smiled whimsically and murmured, ‘If only my generals could manoeuvre as well as my soldiers can march.’

He was in his element.

Kirby began to get a little bored. Relatively his role was an inactive one, sitting his horse among men who spoke a jargon unfamiliar to him. As a diversion he tried to discover if he knew more than the Russian staff officers about what was afoot each day. But as manoeuvre followed manoeuvre he could only conclude that where
the greatest weight of numbers engaged, there lay tactics of generals smothered by unmanageable quantities of men.

Each evening he and his fellow officers compared notes under the supervision of Brigadier Rollinson. Kirby felt these sessions were meaningless as they dealt with the obvious. And that was that Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich could face an enemy with the most formidable array of manpower in the world. He said so. Brigadier Rollinson smiled bleakly at the implied criticism, which disregarded the formidability of the Grand Duke himself. In any war, he felt the Grand Duke would come to terms with quantity.

The brigadier liked Kirby better now that the Navy-style beard had gone. He might lack experience but he did not lack a gift for communicating with Russians. It was an extremely useful gift.

At night the British and other foreign observers were entertained in Russian messes. Kirby was introduced to the fleshpots Aleka had spoken of. Whatever the Russians thought of their own manoeuvres they wholeheartedly embraced the nightly sorties into the wine cellars. Kirby avoided getting drunk. He merely achieved a state of glassy-eyed, stiff-backed immobility. The Russians got very drunk. They danced and sang until the early hours. Kirby sang too, and in Russian, but so solemnly and tunelessly that the Russians howled with delight. They slapped him on the back and told him that although he had a terrible voice he was a fine fellow.

‘Frankly,’ said Kirby, cautiously sitting down again, ‘I sing better when I’m drunk.’

They roared at this. Brigadier Rollinson made a note that Colonel Kirby might have a future as a liaison officer.

On the final day of what Kirby considered a week of inconclusiveness, the Tsar was to review his troops. He arrived early that morning in an open motor car. He was greeted with unrestrained enthusiasm. He stood up in the motor car and responded with smiles and salutes. There was a girl with him.

Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna was colonel-in-chief of a regiment in St Petersburg. In this capacity she had come from Livadia with her father to be present at the review. Nicholas did not hide his pride in her as he assisted her from the motor car. Olga wore a white, golden-braided military jacket with skirt and boots. A red-and-white cap adorned her gleaming hair. She was shy at being so much the centre of attention for the moment, but responded to the gallantries of officers with quick smiles. Her horse was brought, together with the Tsar’s, and they rode at a walk, Olga side-saddle, between lines of officers until they reached the front of a stand erected to seat privileged onlookers and observers. The stand was full, the women dressed colourfully, their whites and greens, yellows and blues alternating with the sober hues of formally attired foreign attachés.

The Tsar turned, rode forward and halted, easy and relaxed on his mount, his pleasure in the occasion obvious. Olga stayed in a position
behind him but to his right. Flanking her was Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, a soldier of integrity and ability, of stern kindness, and idolized by the troops. Over six feet tall, he sat his horse majestically. Behind the group were masked senior officers of the Tsar’s staff, as well as some foreign observers, Kirby among them.

He was some ten paces behind the Grand Duchess. Her horse shifted a little, she quietened it. He could only see her back. It was very straight, her jacket enhancing her slender waist. Beneath her cap her hair, thickly plaited and wound around her head, was like dark, burnished russet in the sunlight. He could not take his eyes off her.

The troops began to march past to the music of massed regimental bands. It was an acclamation as much as a parade as the Tsar saluted each regiment. Banners whipped and fluttered, and the thud of marching feet became a ceaseless rhythm. Olga sat in an attitude of composure and pride as her father took so many salutes.

The artillery appeared, guns and carriages heavily indenting the trampled earth. They were horse-drawn, the long traces black in the bright light, the men upright in their saddles. The long columns of horsed men and grey metal bruised the ground and threw up dust, the sun sent light running over gun barrels and spinning around wheels.

It was the Cossacks who brought the review to its emotional close. They came in a sweeping, thunderous gallop on their small horses. Their noise, their rhythm and their abandonment
quickened the blood of every onlooker. Sabres glittered amid a sea of tossing manes and impulsively the crowded stand rose to the onrushing spectacle. Kirby saw Olga visibly quiver, so infectious was the excitement evoked by the galloping Cossacks. When they had finally passed there was an audible sigh from the women in the stand.

Kirby did not know if his regard was too obsessive, too intent, but suddenly as emotional bodies relaxed Olga turned in her saddle and looked directly back at him, as if she had felt his eyes upon her. She had not seen him without his beard but recognition was immediate. Blue eyes looked into grey. Kirby smiled. Colour rushed into her face, then she turned to her front again, her eyes bright with joy.

It was over. The Tsar turned, wheeling his horse. Olga moved close to him.

‘Papa, did you know? Colonel Kirby is here – is he to be invited to Livadia? He—’

But there were so many voices, so much noise, with her father receiving the congratulations of his staff and his generals, as well as the applause from the crowded stand. He rode back to the car with Olga, escorted by officers. She passed quite close to Kirby, gave him the shyest of glances, the quickest of smiles, and was then swallowed up in the tide of uniforms. At the car Nicholas was in no hurry to dismount. He had enjoyed it all far too much to give up the pleasure of exchanging further comments with the Grand Duke and others. He was in genial commendation of everything, his smile constantly lighting up his
handsome face, while Olga shook her head at the extravagances of officers who declared they would suffer indescribable torment if she did not stay and dine with them. Cossack officers, returning from their ceremonial gallop, were pressing forward now to bring their own greetings to the Tsar and his daughter before they left for Livadia, where they were now in residence with the rest of the family.