The Summer Day is Done (4 page)

This Englishman was not in uniform but all the same Karita looked cautiously for a sword. He was without one.

‘Something is wrong with me?’ he said.

‘Oh, your most gracious Highness,’ she said, blushing, ‘you must forgive me for staring so.’

‘You are Karita and in charge of this suite?’ he said.

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘Well, Karita, don’t call me Highness or I’ll have your head off.’

Karita turned pale. Holy saints, it was true, then. She would lose her head. Not because of the colour of her hair but because of the way she spoke.

‘Monsieur,’ she said, coming to terms with the problem, and using the courtesy title accorded to someone who bore no other, ‘have you killed many people?’

He thought about it.

‘No, not very many,’ he said gravely. ‘Hardly any, in fact. Almost none, I think. Well, none that I can remember.’

‘None?’ She did not know whether to be relieved or dubious. ‘None at all, monsieur?’

‘I don’t think so.’ He thought more about it, giving it weightier consideration. ‘Well, if there are any I can remember, I’ll let you know. How will that do?’

She blushed because she knew he was amused.
He was remarkably handsome. But he could not be telling the truth. She hoped he would never get angry with her. She was sure it would be terrible if he did.

‘It’s only what I’ve heard, your— only what I’ve heard, monsieur,’ she said.

‘What, about me?’ He was completely intrigued, finding her quaintness bewitching.

‘About the English,’ said Karita. It was a blessed diversion when Tanya came to say the bath was ready and old Amarov wheeled in the trolley containing the silver samovar and dishes of savouries. Karita filled a glass with tea, Kirby took the glass and a savoury and carried them through to the bathroom. The colour of the bath gave a blueness to the steaming water and Tanya had laid out what looked like masses of huge towels. He went into the bedroom, drank the tea and ate the savoury while he undressed.

In the drawing room Karita glanced over her shoulder.

‘You can leave the trolley, old one,’ she said, ‘his Highness will have what he wants when he’s finished his bath.’

Old Amarov, a retainer who had known many years of service with the Karinshka family, was white of eyebrow, sparse of hair.

‘He’s no Highness,’ he grumbled, ‘he’s only an Englishman. My father fought them at Balaclava.’

‘Your father fought everyone,’ said Karita. ‘Don’t let the Englishman hear you deny his nobility, he has slain a thousand men in his time.
You’ve only to look at him to see that. It’s true he’s pretending to be ordinary but you can see he’s not. And he’s very kind.’

‘The wit of a woman is sharp indeed,’ said old Amarov, growling around, ‘and only a brainless donkey would question why someone who has slain a thousand men could be called kind.’

‘It was not out of kindness,’ said Karita composedly, ‘but in defence of his Tsar.’

‘Fool of a girl, England has no Tsar, only a king.’

‘Old one,’ said Karita, a little smile showing, ‘do you think her Highness favours him?’

‘What is the world coming to?’ Old Amarov was disgusted. ‘Go about your business, girl, and don’t let your nose grow longer than it is.’

Karita wrinkled a nose which she knew was not long at all. She sang as she whisked about the suite, seeing to this and that. With the Englishman in his bath she went into the bedroom and unpacked for him. She caressed the fine material of his English shirts, admired the soft strong leather of his footwear. Tanya helped her, stowing garments in the wardrobes as Karita handed them to her. She was careless with the leather case containing the Englishman’s comb, hairbrush and mirror and the hairbrush fell to the floor, hitting the corner of an open drawer on the way. Karita smacked her.

When Kirby, wearing a dressing gown, came in from the bathroom, Tanya was still tearful. She fled when Kirby appeared. ‘He will take your head off for your clumsiness,’ Karita had said. Karita apologized to him for what had
happened and was distressed, she said, that Tanya’s carelessness had cracked the hairbrush.

‘Oh?’ he said.

She showed him the hairbrush. The back was of polished wood, inlaid with ivory. She pointed out a hairline crack.

‘Dear me, that is bad,’ he said.

Karita blushed with mortification. Oh, that Tanya! She lifted her worried brown eyes. But he was smiling. He was not being terrible at all.

‘If there’s anything else you want, you will ring, monsieur?’

‘What a treasure you are,’ he said.

Pink pleasure tinted her cheeks.

‘Her Highness doesn’t dine until nine,’ she said, ‘but there is food on the trolley if you wish it. I may go now, monsieur?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I think I shall miss you.’

She was used to being teased by the irrepressible friends of Princess Aleka but was never disconcerted by it. She was just a little disconcerted now. She tried to leave as composedly as she could. Outside she was free to indulge her emotions. She giggled.

Alone, Kirby took up the hairbrush. He twisted it, the ivory inlay was divorced from the polished wood and the back came away. He turned it over. What had been carefully inserted was still there, undisturbed.

He sat for a long while by the drawing room window, watching the sun in its slow, evening descent. He had enjoyed his bath, his feeling was one of relaxed well-being. The view was a panorama of sky and sea, of garden magic where
the hillsides swarmed with greens and golds.

He thought about a man he had to see in Yalta. But it was not easy to concentrate when images of shy innocence were so intrusive. How young she had looked. He had glanced into the faces of a thousand girls, on the street, in restaurants and theatres, and everywhere else, but he could not call one of them clearly to mind. Except this one.

Karita returned to his suite at a little after eight.

‘I am to tell you her Highness expects you in the dining room at nine, monsieur.’

‘Then I’d better get dressed before then.’

‘It would not be out of place, monsieur.’ Karita too had a sense of humour. It was nice to see his smile of appreciation. She was beginning to find him unusually intriguing. It would not be at all unpleasant to be in charge of his comfort while he was here. If Englishmen were aggressive and quarrelsome, this one was not. It was better to make up one’s own mind than to listen open-mouthed to others.

She went into the bedroom and came out carrying his white-jacketed evening suit.

‘I will press it for you, Highness.’ It slipped out because she could not dissociate impulse from instinct.

She returned with the suit immaculately pressed and brushed within half an hour. It was warm and sleek from her attentions.

‘Karita,’ he said when he had thanked her, ‘try not to be too indispensable, it will only destroy my self-reliance. How would you like it if, when I
had finished my stay here, I couldn’t even button up my own jacket?’

‘Monsieur,’ she said, the braids of her hair like beaten gold, ‘what a fuss to make over such a little thing as pressing your clothes.’

He laughed. She really was the prettiest and most self-possessed of young women.

She waited outside his door while he dressed. When he emerged just before nine Karita was quite delighted. He did her great credit. She curtseyed, then preceding him along the wide landing she led the way to the staircase. Slowly she descended. She found him by her side. She stopped in a little confusion.

‘Your Highness—’

‘If you call me that again I’ll do something terrible,’ he said.

She knew he would not, but it did sound alarming.

‘Monsieur, I’m so sorry, but I am to go first, you see.’

‘Very well. We must all do as Romans do, of course.’ He followed her down. There were liveried servants standing like sentries at their posts in the shining hall used for balls. Karita’s petticoats whispered and rustled. Footmen opened the doors to the dining room. Kirby saw the illuminating enchantment of one single vast chandelier, the colour of paintings and the resplendence of a long table laid for dinner. Silver sparkled, glasses reflected brilliance. Princess Aleka stood at the head of the table talking to Andrei, Andrei a sartorial elegance in a cream-coloured jacket and midnight-blue
trousers. Princess Aleka was a revelation. Her low-bodiced brocaded gown was a shimmer of silver and gold. Her bosom was unashamedly, curvingly opulent, her white shoulders smoothly bare. Her piled auburn hair was jewelled. In warm marble, thought Kirby, she would have looked like a sculptured goddess.

‘Monsieur Ivan Ivanovich, your Highness,’ announced Karita.

Aleka turned.

‘Why, Karita, such formality,’ she said, ‘but how prettily you do it. You have more feeling for an occasion than I have. It is an occasion, isn’t it, when we have a handsome Englishman to dine with us?’

‘Indeed, Highness,’ murmured Karita. Aleka laughed and Karita smiled, then whisked away.

Looking after her, Aleka said, ‘You’re pleased with her, Ivan? You have the best servant here. Andrei has his own valet, of course, but no one is quite as invaluable as Karita. Am I not good to you? You’re comfortable? Everything is to your liking? Of course. What silly questions we do put to each other at times.’

She sat at the head of the table, Kirby one place down on her right, Andrei opposite him. The enormously long table was fully laid although there were only the three of them. Aleka explained to Kirby that it was not necessary for him to think every evening would be as quiet and boring as this, for she would have the most entertaining friends to dinner each night from tomorrow onwards.

Andrei winced. Kirby said, ‘I give you my
word, Princess, in a world revolving as giddily as ours there’s nothing I enjoy more than quietude and boredom.’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Andrei, ‘although I must say one’s enjoyment is governed by whom one is sharing the boredom with. There’s no boredom I couldn’t enjoy with you, dear Aleka.’

‘Imbeciles,’ said Aleka. She was not bored herself, not at the moment. She was at Karinshka and her guests were exclusively her own. She knew many intelligent women but much preferred her love–hate relationships with men. Love, arguments and quarrels all exhilarated her.

Blue-liveried retainers began to serve dinner. Kirby found himself involved with a stuffed egg sitting on a bed of caviar. Aleka, like all aristocrats, behaved as if the servants were only deaf shadows, naming names and places with the abandon of an unimpeachable bohemian as she told Andrei what she thought of some of his St Petersburg friends.

‘Good Lord, darling,’ said Andrei, ‘you must have looked through a thousand keyholes in your time.’

‘Indeed I’ve not,’ said Aleka, ‘I’m speaking of my personal knowledge of libertines. You have some frightful friends, Andrei.’

‘Horrifying,’ said Andrei, ‘and I do hope your personal knowledge was acquired as a result of victories and not defeats. To picture you trying to fight off Sergius Pavlich raises the most appalling images. The man is as hairy as a bear. Ghastly.’

Vodka was served with the first courses. Aleka
wanted to hear more of England and the English from Kirby, but interrupted him frequently to remind him that she had been there far more recently than he had, and that therefore her impressions of things were fresher than his were. Eventually Kirby mildly observed over a dish of tenderly white fish that it was a pity she raised questions to which she knew all the answers. It made him feel unnecessary.

‘Darling, nobody is unnecessary,’ she said. They had been speaking of the separate Houses of Parliament and she was determined to put her point. ‘It’s just that you forget I’ve attended both Houses and that it’s not a question of my knowing the answers but of having opinions. Do you know what my opinion is of your Houses of Parliament?’

Her scent was delicately exotic and he was sure her bosom was powdered.

‘I know you’re going to tell me,’ he said.

‘One House,’ she said, ‘is nothing to do with the people, it’s full of lords and dukes and ancient nobodies. The other House is full of monkey-faced politicians who are supposed to have everything to do with the people but don’t give a damn for them.’

‘We try to believe,’ said Kirby, ‘that the House of Lords protects us from the indifference of the Commons.’

‘Impossible,’ said Aleka, ‘because your House of Lords is full of aristocrats like Andrei. Andrei couldn’t protect a dog from a flea, he couldn’t even protect himself from one. Forgive me, Andrei, but that is so, isn’t it?’

‘Perfectly so, my little peahen,’ said Andrei.

She regarded him with exasperated affection.

‘Sometimes, Andrei, I love you because you’re like a rich man lost in a jungle, all your gold helpless to save you from the cannibals. And sometimes I don’t know why I love you at all.’

‘To be loved for any reason is uplifting,’ said Kirby, ‘but to be loved for no reason at all is destructive to any man.’

‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘He assumes himself to be an indescribable perfection and surrounds himself with mirrors so that his perfection is always a delight to his own eyes. He dies the death of Narcissus. I think, by the way, that I read that in a book.’

‘Then it was a very stupid and badly written book,’ said Aleka.

The vodka was followed by a Crimean wine, full-bodied and heady.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Aleka, ‘it will all be much more exhilarating.’

‘God forbid,’ said Andrei, shuddering. ‘I have to tell you,’ he said to Kirby, ‘that Aleka Petrovna has an extraordinary liking for loud voices.’

‘Oh?’ said Kirby. He reflected. ‘Shall I speak up a little, Princess?’

‘Ivan,’ she said, ‘I should be very disappointed if you really did turn out to be a fool. It would be just my luck. Almost all my friends are idiots. But it’ll be exhilarating, all the same. There’ll be people here every day from now on. They’ll come calling tomorrow and never stop. You’ll find much to talk to them about.’

As a servant refilled his wine glass Kirby said
with an air of disarming sincerity, ‘I shall look forward to it. But how does one talk to idiots, Princess?’