The Summer Day is Done (46 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kirby, ‘I think I must have been a bit pompous.’

‘No, not at all,’ said Vine, ‘but with all due respect, sir, I still think your nurse quite delightful.’

‘Yes, she is,’ said Kirby. ‘Tell her so on your way out.’

‘I will, by Jove. Um, you wouldn’t know if she is formally attached at all? I mean, one doesn’t meet—’

‘I shouldn’t overdo it, Mr Vine,’ said Kirby gravely. ‘After all, this is the first time you’ve seen her. Just be acceptably complimentary on this occasion. As a diplomat you could handle that well enough, I’m sure.’

‘Leave it to me, sir, and thanks awfully. One can always call again with more work. A pleasure to have met you, I assure you.’

As soon as he had gone, and not without telling Olga he considered it a pleasure to have met her
too, she came out on to the balcony. Kirby didn’t know whether her flush was born of laughter or confusion.

‘Well,’ she gasped, ‘it was a wonder you didn’t arrange for him to take me to the ballet. I wasn’t listening, you understand, it was just that I couldn’t help overhearing. You did not bother to whisper.’

‘Olga, he was so impressed that—’

‘And what did you mean, he wasn’t to overdo anything?’

‘Well, if you had had to call for help, what help would I have been with my wooden leg? Young men who are very impressed can also be very impetuous.’

‘Colonel Kirby, you are deplorable.’ Olga shook her finger at him. He looked up at her from his chair. The sun was in his eyes. And she knew he was laughing. ‘But oh, you are silly too. You are
not
going back to England. How ridiculous to sit there and let that young man try to arrange things for you. Dr Bajorsky won’t allow that, I promise you. And what are those files that have been left on your bed?’

‘Some translation work.’

‘I see.’ If Olga could not quite cope with strangers, she could deal very composedly at times with Colonel Kirby. ‘What are you going to write with, your left hand?’

‘How stupid of me,’ he said. His right arm was still encased in its plaster. ‘Oh, I still might manage a little writing.’

‘Yes, if Dr Bajorsky says so.’ She stood there, her head and shoulders outlined against the
blue sky. The hospital work had made her face a little thinner, her eyes bigger. She was lovelier. ‘Colonel Kirby,’ she said quietly, ‘you’re not going back to England. If you even think about it, do you know what I’ll do? I’ll ask Dr Bajorsky to take your leg off, after all.’

‘Dear Olga Nicolaievna,’ he said, ‘when you do marry a Crown Prince—’

‘Oh, no!’ She was distressed to the point of anger. ‘You of all people to say that! I won’t be disposed of by anyone, not even by Mama or Papa. I shall please myself and make my own decisions. If there are certain things that restrict my freedom of choice, do you think this means I must marry someone I’m told to? I will never do that. Oh, perhaps
you
would like me to marry some fat French pretender just because you think a Grand Duchess should? How would you like it if I said you should marry some fat Italian countess?’

‘Would she have to be fat, Olga?’

‘I hope she’d be very fat and very horrid, that would pay you out very well,’ said Olga.

‘Olga, Mr Vine was right,’ said Kirby, ‘you are quite stunning.’

‘Oh, Colonel Kirby, how gallant you are,’ said Olga, demurely fluttering her long lashes and laughing herself into happiness again.

Two days later Tatiana found time to visit him. She brought Anastasia and Marie with her. He was in his usual place on the balcony, with some work in his lap. The daily sunshine had restored his colour. His limbs were mending
fast. Anastasia was now fourteen, Marie sixteen, and both had the good looks so characteristic of the whole family. They turned the visit into an occasion, into an exhilarating reunion. Romantic Marie sighed rapturously and longingly over the handsome wounded hero and Anastasia indulged her talent for ecstatic theatricals.

After kisses had been bestowed and greetings were over, she sank low in a billowing curtsey.

‘Oh, great and corpulent Sultan,’ she began.

‘You mean opulent,’ said Tatiana. Her vitality was undimmed by her hospital work. She was like her mother only in her willowy elegance. She had a zest for life and an animation in company that had escaped the dreamful, introspective Alexandra.

‘Oh, great lord and commodious master,’ began Anastasia again, ‘I have been dreadfully distraught by your incapability—’

‘My what?’ said Kirby, his hand in Marie’s.

‘She means your incapacity,’ said Marie, ‘she’s so awfully ignorant at times that she makes us all blush.’

‘I’ll pinch you when we get home,’ said Anastasia. ‘Oh, reverend alabaster—’

‘Stasha, you horror!’ Tatiana choked on her laughter.

‘Well, I think reverend alabaster sounds perfectly lovely,’ said Anastasia, ‘it suits Ivan beautifully.’

‘Thank you, my little warbler,’ said Kirby.

Anastasia shook back her ribboned hair and curtseyed again.

‘Alas, it is long since I slaved for my master—’

‘What a cheek,’ said Marie, ‘you never slaved at all, you only ever talked about it, and whenever Ivan wanted you you were never there.’

‘Only because I was already slaving on an errand for him,’ said Anastasia, ‘and to show him I’m not adamantly peeved about him being so long away I’ve brought my master an inexperienced gift. It’s a moon of solid gold.’

And with a beamingly generous smile Anastasia presented Kirby with a fat, round, glowing orange.

‘Thank you excessively,’ he said, ‘but – er – inexperienced?’

‘Yes,’ said Anastasia, ‘it’s not how much a present costs but the loving thought behind it, as Mama always says.’

‘You goose, you mean inexpensive,’ said Tatiana.

‘Actually,’ said Marie, ‘I’ve just brought you a nice orange, Ivan.’ And she produced an even plumper fruit.

‘Thank you too, Marie,’ said Kirby, ‘I shall have a very juicy time with these.’

‘You can spit the pips over the balcony,’ said Anastasia. ‘Alexis is away with Papa but I remembered to bring you something of his. It’s a rather nice piece of string, it’s for tying up things.’

‘My word,’ he said, accepting the length of twine, ‘if I can think of some things that need tying up when I’m not too busy, this could be the very thing. What a comfort it is to have friends like you young ladies.’

‘I should think it’s a shocking headache to have one like Anastasia,’ said Tatiana.

‘I shall now perform a slave dance that will make you sit up, great Sultan of the Seven Suns,’ said Anastasia.

‘I am sitting up,’ he said.

‘She means it will make you goggle,’ said Marie, ‘she’s the most frightful show-off.’

Anastasia was always willing to accept such remarks as compliments. She smiled graciously at Marie. She began her dance, gliding around the balcony and describing what she considered were Arabian pirouettes with whisking swirls of her white dress.

‘Ah, a Spanish flamingo,’ said Kirby. ‘Yes, very goggling.
Olé
.’

‘Would you believe it,’ said Tatiana, ‘Ivan’s at it now.’

‘At what?’ said Marie.

‘Flamingo when he means flamenco,’ said Tatiana.

‘What’s a flamingo?’ asked Anastasia, breathless from a final pirouette.

‘Oh, just a pink goose on long legs,’ said Kirby.

Olga arrived. She had managed to snatch time to bring his lunch and her own. She heard shrieks of laughter outside, went to the open windows and saw her three sisters around Colonel Kirby on the balcony. They were hilarious and he, infected by their gaiety, was helpless with laughter himself.

For ecstatic moments there was to Olga no war, no bitterness, no suffering. There was only a warm, beautiful feeling that the happiness of Livadia had reached Tsarskoe Selo.

Tatiana looked round. She saw Olga at the windows with a tray in her hands. Tatiana smiled, then caught her breath on a little dart of pain. Her adored sister’s eyes were brilliant with tears.

They sent him away soon after. After the Russian advance over the Danubian plain had been checked, the Germans began to inflict massive defeats on the Imperial Army in Poland. They took Warsaw. Russia was stunned, bleeding. The need for more hospital beds became so critical that the very walls of the huge Catherine Palace seemed to bend outwards as wards were crammed to the limit of their capacity and beyond. They put five beds into Kirby’s room and sent Kirby himself to convalesce among Russian officers on an estate some thirty miles from Moscow.

Dr Bajorsky apologized for the suddenness, the inconvenience, but there it was, the circumstances were such that there was no help for it and Colonel Kirby was to be evacuated immediately.

Whatever Alexandra might have had to do with it, the fact was the hospital needed every inch of space and Kirby saw that this removal was a reasonable consequence of circumstances. He did not argue, only took the opportunity to thank Dr Bajorsky for all he had done. Dr Bajorsky, a tired ghost of a man now, shook his head.

‘I’d have taken your leg off, Colonel, as it happened,’ he said. ‘It was Her Highness the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna who prevented me.
You owe more to her faith than you owe to my surgery.’

‘Dear God.’ It was an involuntary exclamation from Kirby. Dr Bajorsky, involved in so much of the frenzied activity of the morning, glanced at the Englishman and saw, perhaps, something of what he felt for the Grand Duchess. ‘Is she here?’ Kirby asked.

‘No. I think she has a late duty today. But if you wish to thank her then leave her a note. I’ll give it to her.’

Kirby wrote it stiffly with his right hand.

Olga knew nothing of his removal until she arrived later. She was stunned. Dr Bajorsky, explaining the reasons, was conscious of blue eyes looking frozen. He gave her Kirby’s note.

My dear Olga. Thank you so much for everything
.

Thank you and bless you
.

They had taken away her escape to happiness. Now there was only the war.

Karita was in splendid spirits. Kirby had written to her and she had gone to the convalescent retreat to join him. Paul Kateroff was astonished and angry. When he realized there was no thought in her mind of not going he told her that her subservience degraded her. She put her chin up.

‘Is it subservient to do what one wants to do?’ she said.

‘You’re no better than a serf, running when he says run, going when he says go—’

‘We are family, he’s my mother and father,’ said Karita.

‘You stupid girl, what does that mean except a lot of archaic nonsense?’

‘It means that I would rather be family with him than stay here and pull your silly nose,’ said Karita.

Paul was so bitter that he made the mistake of saying things that made her blood rush and her body burn. But she let him finish, she was only thankful that Ivan Ivanovich was not present himself to hear what was said.

Then she spoke. ‘I thought you better than some of the others, but when you insist on listening to so many lies and so much hatred it’s to be expected that you end up speaking obscenities yourself.’

He had lost his golden-haired girl. He never saw her again. He died in the revolution, executed by Bolsheviks because he opposed their denial of free speech to all.

On the estate given over by a patriotic landowner for accommodating convalescing officers, Karita lived among other servants. She was sad at times because the war was going so badly for her beloved Russia. But she would not have been less sad elsewhere, and elsewhere she would not have had her moments of warm satisfaction. Ivan Ivanovich was frankly delighted to have her there. He was so generous in his appreciation of all she did for him, her attentions liberally augmenting the cursory ministrations of the limited medical staff, that Karita was almost embarrassed.

‘There’s no need to thank me so much for everything,’ she said, ‘after all, we are really family.’

She had begun to say things like that. It amused him, endeared her to him. He laughed.

‘Karita, little one,’ he said, ‘I adore you.’

‘Oh, not improperly, I hope,’ said Karita.

He shook with laughter.

Karita was not only his comfort, she was his ally. He needed one here. The Russian armies were being battered and pounded on every front in the west, and the Russian officers were
becoming bitter. Colonel Kirby was English and therefore the natural target for their bitterness. What was England doing apart from allowing Russia to make nearly all the sacrifices? The British sat safely in their French trenches and no doubt gambled only with cards while Russia lost thousands of lives a day. It was no wonder England could always win the last battle when every preceding battle was fought by her allies. Kirby used maps to try and explain the British case, he used population figures to show why Britain could not put such massive armies into the field as Germany or Russia. But he knew he sounded apologetic rather than convincing. Karita soon became aware of how he was being assailed by her countrymen and showed her resentment by actually arguing with them. They were astonished at first, then always they roared with laughter, smacked her on the bottom and told her to go and put ribbons in her hair. Karita was tempted to smack some of them back but one could not do that to men who had lost an eye, an arm, a leg. But they were very unfair. She knew that her Englishman loved Russia as much as they did.

Kirby was using a crutch. He hopped about on this like a wooden-legged sailor, she said. She also said he was not to take too much notice of what the Russian officers said.

‘They’re trying to blame you,’ she said, ‘and you couldn’t have done more for Russia unless you had been blown completely to bits. Oh, why are people so stupid? And why is it the Germans are winning? It’s very sad, isn’t it?’

‘It isn’t because the Germans are better or braver, Karita,’ he said, as they sat together on a terrace overlooking a landscape of brown fields, ‘it’s because we’ve cared less about guns than they have.’

‘Why do you say we? You aren’t a Russian, it isn’t your fault.’

‘We all hide from reality if we can, we all tend to say it was the other fellow.’ His expression was sombre. ‘I may not be a Russian but I’ve had everything from Russia a man could want.’