The Summer Day is Done (3 page)

‘This was meant for the Tsar’s train,’ said one official, paling a little.

‘What?’ said the driver. ‘Can’t they tell the difference between my train and the Tsar’s? Do I show the Imperial standard? Do I pull coaches of blue and gold? What are things coming to when short-sighted fools put me at this kind of risk? When you find them I’ll feed them to my engine. All they’re good for is making fuel.’ He climbed back into his cab. ‘Here,’ he called to Kirby seconds later, and the Englishman came to take the enormous crowbar the driver offered. It made easier and shorter work of prising the timbers free.

Andrei looked on as if he were going to faint. Close proximity to manual labour always gave him a sick headache.

‘I’m simply no good at this sort of thing, old fellow,’ he said to the sweating Kirby.

‘I know,’ said Kirby, levering with the crowbar, ‘but you’re a good friend, Andrei. Go and lie down somewhere.’

When they returned to the coach Princess Aleka could not believe what she saw. The Englishman’s
white silk shirt was smudged with dust and dirt, wet with patches of perspiration. And his hands were filthy. Andrei, still immaculate, sank into his seat, thankful it was all over.

‘What is all this?’ said Aleka, referring to the sweat and grime.

‘It’s something I keep picking up,’ said Kirby. She regarded the man behind the dirt. He returned her look with gravity. It made her sure he was laughing at her. ‘Shall I wash and change for lunch, do you think?’ he said.

‘I don’t mind whether you do or not,’ she said. Loudly, over Andrei’s head, she added, ‘It’s always nice to meet a man who is not afraid to sweat.’

‘It’s exhausting to others,’ said Andrei.

Over the meal in the dining car Princess Aleka sparkled with life. The ornate, gilded car was full of diners and Kirby wondered if, in a compulsive desire to draw attention to herself, she was deliberately theatrical. She did not need to be. Her striking beauty alone was enough. The car was bright with colourful women, it hummed with conversation and was gay with laughter. Russians were never more alive than when they were eating and drinking.

The champagne induced increased vivacity in Aleka, brought a delicate flush to her paleness.

She looked at him. He wore a jacket with collar and tie now. He was not going to amuse her, she thought, he was only going to be politely charming. He seemed very sure of himself.

‘What is your name now?’ she said. ‘In English
it’s John? Yes, I think that was it. I shall call you Ivan. What is your father’s name?’

‘His name was John too.’

His use of the past tense did not evoke an enquiry.

‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘So you are Ivan Ivanovich. I am Aleka Petrovna. Now we know each other very well. When do you return to England?’

‘I haven’t made any plans,’ he said. The prawns were succulent. She only toyed with hers, making more of the champagne than the food.

‘It will be when you’ve walked all over Russia, I expect,’ she said. ‘Ah, then you’ll find England so insignificant you’ll take two strides and fall into the sea. What a ridiculous way to have an accident. Now that is very amusing.’

She laughed.

‘You’re making people look, my dear,’ said Andrei, ‘and Ivan Ivanovich is English and therefore sensitive about such things.’

‘No one is looking at him,’ said Aleka, superb in her black-crowned auburn regality.

‘Some of the women are,’ said Andrei.

‘Pooh,’ she said, ‘old bitches will look at any dog.’ She forked a prawn and pointed it at Kirby above the gleaming tableware. ‘That was to insult them, not you, darling.’

‘I think I missed it,’ he said, ‘it’s all the noise.’

‘Oh, you are a wooden-head, like all Englishmen.’

‘Ah well, dear man,’ said Andrei, ‘take comfort in the fact that if you have a wooden head she says I have an empty one.’

The uniformed waiter came to refill their
glasses. His servility and deference displeased the socialist in Princess Aleka. She gave him a disdainful look. He replaced the bottle in its bucket and bowed low in exaggerated recognition of her disdain. She liked the cynicism of that riposte and smiled at him. He retreated with a numb feeling of having lost the brief battle.

The scenery had changed, the train pulling them rapidly into the Crimea. The landscapes had lost their flatness, they were beginning to be greenly undulating. The sky was cloudless. Kirby did not know why she was still on his mind but as the sunlight danced on the window, casting reflections tinted with gold, he thought again of the girl with blue eyes.

When they were back in the coach after lunch it emerged that Aleka had made up her mind about something. She had decided, she said, that Andrei and his good friend Ivan Ivanovich should stay with her at the Karinshka Palace near Yalta. Andrei, who had already closed his eyes, was shocked into opening them. He looked at Kirby. Kirby, who was to be Andrei’s own guest, did not feel he could comment. He only smiled non-committally. It was Andrei’s problem. Andrei realized he would either have to stay awake to make Aleka see reason or feign sleep and let her designs pass over him.

He sank back and closed his eyes once more.

‘You will come, of course, Andrei. You too, Ivan. You will like Karinshka, Ivan. We will all have fun. It’s not at all necessary for you to go to your own place, Andrei, it will only make your
life empty again. Andrei, for God’s sake, I’m talking to you.’

Andrei, without opening his eyes, mumbled his way into expressions of flattered delight but begged his little chicken to forgive him for his inability to accept. He was already committed to so many things on his estate.

‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ said Aleka.

‘You are the dearest, loveliest lady,’ murmured Andrei, ‘but it’s the arrangements, you see. What an extremely excellent lunch it was.’

‘Please kick him awake,’ said Aleka to Kirby. ‘If you don’t I will.’

‘I’m not asleep, darling,’ said Andrei placatingly, ‘only at rest. Why don’t you go into the coupé and get into something comfortable? Call if you need me.’

‘You ridiculous man,’ said Aleka, ‘what are arrangements to do with you? Gregory will see to all of them and without falling over you all the time. You won’t do anything except indulge your passion for lying around. You can lie around at Karinshka. I’ve invited you. Do you wish to insult me? In front of Ivan? Worse, do you wish me to be bored? You know I can’t stand my own company for more than a day.’

‘My dearest—’

‘He is arguing with me,’ she said to Kirby, ‘he has no damned manners at all.’

‘Heaven forgive me,’ said Andrei.

‘Good,’ she said, ‘it is settled, then.’

‘I meant—’

‘What are you doing to me?’ She was suddenly in a temper. ‘You have always come to
Karinshka, is it some woman keeping you away this time? It had better not be. And what about Ivan Ivanovich? Don’t be so damned selfish. He would like to come, but no, you are so concerned with yourself that his wishes don’t count. Andrei Mikhailovich, I insist, do you hear?’

‘Dearest,’ sighed Andrei, ‘we shall both be there and it will be enchanting.’

And as the train carried them through the profusion of Crimean hills, woods and colour, he went to sleep.

The following morning, after spending the night at a hotel in Sevastopol, they took a small steamer over the bright waters of the Black Sea to Yalta. There they were met by servants from Karinshka Palace and from Andrei’s estate, together with carriages. Only Gregory, the secretary, took Andrei’s carriage. Andrei, reluctantly resigning himself to the whims of the temperamental princess, took his seat with Kirby. His valet followed in a second carriage with the servants and the luggage.

The Karinshka Palace was several miles from Yalta. It was on this coast that many of Russia’s most privileged aristocrats had built their great houses or palaces. Somewhere in the vicinity was the enormous estate of the Tsar himself, crowned by the Livadia Palace. At this time of year the Imperial family were almost always in residence. Livadia was adored by the Empress Alexandra. Only at Livadia did she find the complete peace so necessary to her spiritual well-being.

The road was white and dusty, the scenery
breathtakingly beautiful, the hills and the valleys a riot of colour. Wild roses, wild grapes and every other kind of natural vegetation clothed the earth with heaven’s abundance. Princess Aleka, fully veiled to protect herself from the dust, was in a mood of sweet satisfaction.

A woman tossed a flower into her lap. She took it up and gestured her thanks to the woman.

‘You see,’ she said to Kirby, ‘they are real people here, not incurable serfs or priest-ridden peasants. All people should be real, should be proud. No one should be a servant.’

He thought she probably had a hundred servants herself and said so. She received that in contemptuous scorn.

‘I mean,’ she said bitingly, ‘that nobody should have a humble mind. One can serve without being at all humble. How can a man profess to have a brain if he can’t see that?’

‘I do see it. I took you literally, that’s all. I’m a wooden-head.’

‘Well, we’ll hope you get over it,’ she said, ‘but it’s here, in the Crimea, that we might start the revolution, because here the people aren’t humble.’

When they arrived at last at the Karinshka Palace, Kirby thought he had never seen anything so expansively soaring. It was built on a high green hill overlooking the sea. Cupolas gleamed in the sunshine, were outlined against the blue sky. It had been left to Princess Aleka by her father’s brother, an unprogressive old bachelor who had been murdered in the 1905 rebellion, and it was held in trust for her by her
father, thereby overcoming the restriction placed on female inheritance.

Inside everything had a lofty vastness, walls and ceilings of gold and white, chandeliers immense and yet fragile. The wide central staircase was Russian baroque, winding and floating towards the upper floors. Princess Aleka, restless and subject to boredom, often no sooner arrived in one place than she was fidgeting to be elsewhere. But Karinshka was different. After nine months in France and England she had longed for it. She swept through, her pale green silk coat swirling. Servants bowed or curtseyed.

Aleka herself showed Andrei and Kirby to their rooms on the first floor. It was a huge suite, fit for a king, the wallpapers like fragrant watercolour murals. Aleka had perhaps wanted to impress her English guest a little, for she waited on his reactions as he surveyed the sumptuously furnished drawing room with its tall windows that opened on to the wide, sweeping balcony.

‘Will you be comfortable enough?’ she asked.

‘Comfortable? I shall drown in velvet magnificence.’

‘Oh? You would prefer, perhaps, to look for a tent in the garden?’

‘In the garden,’ he said, ‘I’ve only ever found the pen of my aunt.’

She had removed her veil. Her dark eyes were full of amusement.

‘Yes, when I was learning French I heard that joke too,’ she said.

‘I shall like it here,’ he said.

She turned as a servant came in. She said,
‘Ah, here is Karita. She is to look after you. She is a jewel. Karita, here is Ivan Ivanovich Kirby from England. You must see that he doesn’t find fault. The English are very critical of the rest of us. But there, he’s not too bad himself. Now I must go and see that Andrei Mikhailovich is happy. He’s a little sulky at the moment. Poor Andrei.’

She glided out.

Karita, the serving girl, floated a graceful curtsey to the Englishman. She wore a dress of sea blue, the colour of the Karinshka livery. The moulded bodice would have displayed a roundness had it not been covered by a crisp white front with pockets for house keys. Beneath the wide skirt petticoats rustled. Kirby smiled. He saw a girl in blue and white, with golden hair burnished and braided, without a cap. She had huge brown eyes, was slim-waisted and composed. She could not have been more than nineteen. She clapped her hands. Two other servants in blue livery appeared, dark and muscular men. They bore his luggage. There were two portmanteaux and a valise.

‘Just put them in there,’ said Kirby, indicating the bedroom, ‘I can manage.’

Brown eyes looked at him in horror.

‘But, your Highness—’

‘I’m not a Highness, I’m an English traveller.’

Karita looked calmly resolute. He knew she would insist that the servants did everything and he nothing. He had been in the houses of other aristocrats, in Andrei’s palatial St Petersburg residence. One did not do things for oneself. It
upset the servants. The less one did the closer one was to the All-Highest in the eyes of servants.

‘Egor and Rudolf will see to your luggage, Highness, and I will unpack it,’ she said. He was very tall, very distinguished. He was obviously incognito, as many of Princess Aleka’s guests liked to be at times. A man so distinguished and with such fine eyes must be much more than a traveller. Egor and Rudolf came out of the bedroom, she nodded to them and they left. ‘Will you have Tanya run your bath now?’

‘Thank you. Who will put me in it?’

He was teasing her. Well! Karita drew herself up, clapped her hands again. Tanya, a maid, came hurrying in, she too in blue with a white front, but wearing a cap. She bobbed to Kirby, went through to the bedroom and into the bathroom. Kirby looked on indulgently. Sumptuousness and service were the keynotes of Karinshka. The blue and white elegance of the furniture, the walls adorned with paintings, enhanced the beauty of the bright, spacious drawing room. And Karita was not unornamental. Positively pretty.

‘Highness—’

‘I am only Ivan Ivanovich,’ he said, using both names in the Russian way.

‘Yes, indeed, Highness,’ she said. She regarded him a little cautiously. She had heard of England but had never seen anyone from that strange country. She had imagined all Englishmen to be dressed as soldiers and carrying swords, because they were always at war with someone. They were the warriors of Western Europe and carried their swords to the far corners of the world. She
had heard that if an Englishman did not like the colour of a man’s hair or the sound of his voice, he considered either a good enough reason to take the man’s head off.