The Summer Day is Done (28 page)

‘What about?’

‘How should I know? It was while he was there that the Empress telephoned and I came here. Ivan Ivanovich, is there anything you want?’

‘Yes, I want to know why you’re telling me about a man called Prolofski,’ said Kirby.

‘Oh,’ said Karita casually, ‘people have heard of Prolofski. He is against our Father Tsar.’

‘Thank you, Karita. And there’s nothing else I want. Goodnight, sweet one.’

She put out a hand to the light switch. He was lying on his back, his eyes open, reflective. She was in confusion at herself for a long time afterwards at what she did then, but impulsively she bent and kissed him on the mouth.

‘Oh!’ she gasped and switched out the light.

‘How nice,’ said Ivan Ivanovich from out of the darkness and she heard a murmur of laughter, affectionate and comforting.

The Tsar looked in on Kirby the next morning and was delighted to see him sitting up and reading. Karita was quite beside herself with pride and pleasure as she brought Nicholas through, and her curtsey as she left would have graced the most elegant women of the court.

‘A charming girl,’ said Nicholas, ‘a credit to you, my dear man. Now, how are you? What a wretched business it was. You have the most
violent-looking bruise, we were far more worried about your skull than your arm.’

Kirby assured him it was nothing, although it had been a sick pain when he woke. Now it was back to being a bearable ache again. Nicholas talked, his flow of words easy as he passed from one light subject to another. His greatest gift was his ability to charm people, to set aside any suggestion of high and unapproachable majesty. All his children had inherited something of his personality. It was his simplicity and his friendliness that softened the harshness of every gaoler the Bolsheviks vindictively thrust upon him after the October Revolution. That was until they found Yurovsky, the one gaoler whose sadistic brutality could not be softened by man or God.

Nicholas had only come to enquire after Kirby’s health, to say a few cheerful words, but he stayed twenty minutes, talking of everything but the worries and problems which were never absent and on which he pondered conscientiously but indecisively day by day. His was the indecisiveness that afflicts every peaceable, good-natured man.

Finally he said, ‘Your arm is an inconvenience to you, Ivan, and a disappointment to me. There’ll be no tennis except with generals or ministers. Whatever talents generals and ministers have, they leave them behind on a tennis court. You have no idea, my dear fellow.’

‘Perhaps I have a little idea, sir,’ said Kirby.

Nicholas chuckled.

Apart from the Tsar and Karita, who looked
in from time to time to see to things, Kirby was left alone that morning. He supposed that Alexandra was being adamant in her insistence that he was to have quiet. It was very quiet. Even Karita, whenever she popped in, seemed elusively disinclined to converse. Karita, in fact, could not imagine what Ivan Ivanovich must think of her. It was not improper for him to kiss her, she supposed, but it was dreadfully improper for her to kiss him. Whenever she was in his bedroom she was confusedly aware of his eyes following her and laughing at her. It was quite the best thing to say nothing but to whisk about busily.

Princess Aleka arrived during the afternoon. First she paid her respects to Alexandra, whose sciatica had not improved and who spent more of her time in her boudoir. The princess imparted news which astonished and displeased Alexandra.

‘Ending your betrothal? Aleka Petrovna, I can’t believe you to be serious.’

‘I am very serious, Your Highness,’ said Aleka, cool and striking in black. Alexandra thought it a most unfortunate colour, seeming as it did to convey sombre finality. Nor did a black half-veil help to dispel this impression.

‘But you and Colonel Kirby, you are so well matched,’ said Alexandra. She knew Olga had not been overjoyed to hear of the engagement. How Olga would react to the news that it was off she could guess. She would begin to dream impossibly again. ‘The Emperor and I were so pleased for you, it seemed quite the happiest thing.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Aleka unemotionally, ‘we are not in love. You will agree, Your Highness, that that is all-important? Yes. It was an engagement brought about by circumstances rather than by mutual affection.’

‘I am sorrier than I can say.’ Alexandra regarded Aleka with disappointment and regret. ‘Oh, I wish both of you would think this over.’

Aleka, paler than usual and smoky-eyed, said, ‘When I tell him I’ve decided to end it, I’m sure he’ll agree with me that to think it over would be a waste of time.’

‘When?’ Alexandra was more astonished. ‘You mean it’s your decision alone and that you have yet to tell him? Aleka Petrovna, you can’t tell him now, not when he’s so unwell. It was only by God’s blessing that he didn’t have his head kicked in. Dr Botkin said his escape was miraculous, and only time will tell whether there is any real injury.’

Aleka did not seem to be moved.

‘I will see how he is, Your Highness,’ she said.

Alexandra sensed an inflexibility that was bitterly emotional. She thought of Olga and sighed.

Kirby greeted Aleka with a smile. He thought her appearance in sombrely soft black incongruously conspicuous. It was as if a pale-faced mourner had entered the brightness of Livadia. She did not sit down. She stood looking at him, almost with an air of disinterest.

‘You didn’t think I was dead, did you?’ he said as she lifted her veil.

‘I only heard that you fell off your horse,’ she said.

‘And would you believe it, I was sober at the time.’

She did not respond, she only said, ‘Are you better today and able to talk without groaning?’

‘I felt better the moment I found I was still alive,’ he said. ‘But how attractively bereaved you look, Aleka love.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ she said. ‘So can people. The joke is over, Ivan Ivanovich. Shall I surprise you by telling you it never began? Did you think I believed your professed innocence? As soon as I saw that announcement I knew it could not have been worked out without your help. My dear stupid man, it was all too obvious. You were all too obvious. No one would walk around Russia for three years for the mere fun of it. There are so many more exciting things to do if you have money. I did not believe you were genuine from the start. Sometimes I hoped you were, because you’re not an unexciting man. Sometimes I hoped you would love me. But you have always been in love with someone else and you have always had other things to do. You are a British government agent. And as an agent, a spy, a man without principles even where friends are concerned, you tried to make me look a fool, tried to discredit me politically. But I am rooted in the cause and it would take a far better, a far more ingenious and persuasive man than you to pull up those roots.’ A little glitter appeared in her eyes. ‘I was your friend, Ivan, I was ready to be more than your friend. You betrayed me.’

He was very still, his back against heaped pillows, an open book on the bed.

‘I thought it was a way of saving you from your other friends,’ he said, ‘they will only lead you to Siberia.’

‘Siberia would not be lonely, many of my associates are there already.’

‘We all have our causes to serve,’ he said, desperately conscious of how close he was to his own destruction. Accusation by itself would smear him. If she had proof, destruction was inevitable. The Imperial family would look at him in horrified disbelief. The blue eyes would freeze.

‘Causes?’ Princess Aleka was savagely mocking. ‘Do you call yours a cause? Espionage? Espionage is for humanity’s rejects who are not fit for anything else. What friends have you made in Russia whom you have not sought to use or deceive? What did you do in your three years of travelling? What strengths and weaknesses of Tsarism did you discover? And now you have made a friend of the Tsar himself. Now you will use him, deceive him, and carry his very soul back to England in a locked box. What a triumph for you, Ivan Ivanovich. What a story you could write. A spy at the court of the Emperor of Russia. Have you looked into every cabinet, under every bed?’

He wondered if he was sweating. He felt he was.

‘You have your beliefs, Aleka, I have mine. You believe in revolution and would do anything to achieve it. I believe you are wrong and would
do what I could to save you and Russia. The Tsar needs time, help, tolerance. He will give you justice in the end. However I’ve served my own government, I’d do nothing now to hurt Russia. How did you find out, by the way?’

‘You’re very calm,’ she said. ‘Is it because you have no real feelings? Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? People like you must be cold. It need not bother you how we found out. You were very suspect. You were always alone. Where is there any rich Englishman who travels without even one servant? Karita must have been an embarrassment to you at times. You were lucky that she isn’t the kind to listen at doors, to spy on the spy. But we have the proof we need, all the names of your own special friends in Russia, everything necessary to have
you
sent to Siberia. Indeed, perhaps Alexandra Fedorovna will be so upset that she will have you shot.’

‘I see,’ he said. His head throbbed. Pain stabbed.

‘Yes, that’s a great worry to you, isn’t it?’ Her smile was bitter. ‘How our charming Imperial family will look at you when they know. It doesn’t matter about lesser people, their feelings don’t signify. But the Emperor and Empress, ah, they are different.’

‘They are better than you think, Aleka. That is why they should be offered something kinder than revolution. That is why I’m for them, not against them.’

She made a gesture of rejection with her hand.

‘Spare me your penitence,’ she said, ‘I’d like
to think you were more of a man than that. And spare yourself tears for the moment. I’m not going to tell them. Those aren’t my orders. You’re safe on one condition. Oh, do you think I care about spies, who are really only very little men? I don’t care about such men, not in the smallest way, whether they live or die or what happens to them. I don’t care if you’ve stolen a million secrets from Russia, one person like old Amarov is worth a thousand people like you, all with a million secrets each. So don’t think I care about what happens to you, whether you’re caught and shot or caught and hanged. There are real tyrants we’re concerned with, real wrongs, real betrayers, all vastly bigger than you. You are to go free, but only if you remember that you will work for us now. When we want you we will use
you
.’

He had been mistaken about Princess Aleka. She was not a spoiled, capricious dilettante who took up causes to escape boredom. She was to be treated with the finest care and caution. Nothing mattered more to him than his relationship with the children of the Tsar. He would fight to preserve that above everything else. He would fight even harder to preserve Olga’s friendship: in a few years she would make a suitable marriage, and after that he might never see her again, but he could not make do with less than memories unspoiled by exposure of his trade.

‘In our work,’ he said, ‘we place little value on anything but expediency, as you would know, Princess. How will you want to use me?’

‘You will be told – from time to time,’ she
said. ‘Is it necessary for me to tell you not to be stupid?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You will not hear from me,’ she said, ‘but a man called Peter Prolofski. Goodbye, Ivan Ivanovich.’

‘I am sorry, Aleka,’ he said.

She looked at him. She saw the savage mark at his temple, a dark, ugly blue. She saw regret on his face and something of sadness. She compressed her lips, fighting to discipline emotions she had always indulged. But her lips broke apart and she said huskily, ‘Ivan, is there anything more foolish than people?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but you’ve always been generous and lovely.’

‘Oh, you damned stupid idiot,’ she said, ‘you could have had Aleka Petrovna but you threw her away.’ She stooped, she pressed her mouth to his, fiercely, tempestuously for long seconds. ‘That is the last of my generosity,’ she said and swept out like a rushing cloud of black.

He put his hand to his forehead. It was damp. Outside, floating up from a green lawn, he heard the laugh of a girl. He got up and went to the open windows. They overlooked tranquillity. He saw woods, the mountain peaks. To the left he saw the sea. Far in the distance it merged with the pale blue sky. The vistas were infinitely beautiful, infinitely peaceful.

‘No, darling,’ said the Empress to her eldest daughter later that day.

‘But, Mama,’ said Olga, ‘it’s only that it must
be so boring for him, and it would not inconvenience me in the slightest to read to him.’

‘Is it to be supposed he can’t read to himself?’

‘It’s a dreadful strain, Mama, if one has a bad head,’ said Olga. ‘Dearest Mama, it wouldn’t have happened if Papa and I had not allowed so many soldiers to crowd us so. It’s simply impossible for Papa to spare time to sit with him, but I shouldn’t mind at all. And positively no one has been to see him all day, he’ll think us dreadfully uncaring.’

‘He’ll think nothing of the kind, my love,’ said Alexandra, in restful relaxation but soft determination. ‘Dr Botkin has been to see him and so has Papa. And so has Aleka Petrovna.’ She hesitated a little at this. Olga had bent her head low over the book she held. ‘Darling, there’s nothing you can do for him that Karita can’t do more properly. Olga?’ Olga had put her book aside and risen. ‘Oh, my precious, no more of this or I shan’t be able to let him stay.’

‘You would not send him away?’ Olga was quick with distress. ‘Mama, you couldn’t, he is quite dangerously ill.’

‘Olga, you know he isn’t. He might have been, but he isn’t. Dr Botkin is finally quite happy about him. He suffered severe concussion, nothing more, except for his broken arm.’

Olga moved slowly to the window, her back to her mother.

‘Mama,’ she said quietly, ‘you know I would never disobey you or Papa, never. Nor would I ever do anything to distress you. But please let him stay. Alexis would be so disappointed if you
didn’t. He’s so looking forward to seeing him when he’s up. It wouldn’t be for long, in any case, because as soon as he’s well enough he’ll rejoin Aleka Petrovna at Karinshka.’