The Summer Day is Done (47 page)

‘Oh, you are nice to say that,’ she said. ‘So many people say terrible things about their own, but I’ve never heard you say anything at all terrible. And there’s so much trouble again, so much of people throwing bombs again. We put Peter Prolofski into a hole but there are more like him every day, all coming up out of different holes.’

It was the first time she had mentioned Prolofski since that dark night at Livadia. They shared the secret very easily and with a great deal of mutual respect.

‘I remember Prolofski, Karita,’ he said, and put his arm around her shoulders. It made her feel warm and wanted. It was an extraordinarily nice feeling. ‘Now the Tsar is going to take over command of his armies from Grand Duke Nicholas. What do you think of that, Karita?’

They looked out over the landscape of sunlit brown. It was pleasant enough, but without the colours and contours of the Crimea. The war was not so far away here. The Germans had overrun Poland. The atmosphere was unhappy.

‘The Tsar will beat them, you see,’ said Karita.

‘Perhaps, if they’ll give him guns and shells,’ said Kirby. She looked at his profile. She had never seen him so sombre. Her heart sank. If Ivan Ivanovich could not smile any more, what had happened to Russia? What was happening to it?

‘I wish he’d take you with him,’ she said, ‘you could think how to beat them.’

He turned his head. Her brown eyes were full of trust in his infallibility. He shook his head. He laughed. Karita smiled in return. Anything was better than to have him gloomy.

‘Karita, I know nothing of how to move armies, I’m really only a desk soldier,’ he said. ‘All I know at the moment is that I don’t like the Tsar being so committed to isolation from his capital. Every enemy he has will move against him.’

They were moving, but not so much against Nicholas as Alexandra. Totally unequipped to take on the role of autocratic regent, Alexandra nevertheless attempted it. Immediately she was attacked on all sides, and the attacks were venomous. Particularly hateful to her were the renewed accusations that she was pro-German. The slanders that attached implications to her relationship with Rasputin were unbearably crude and vicious. But because of her faith in the holy man and her devotion to God, she suffered every calumny with a spiritual strength that was unbreakable.

The Russian retreat slowed down and a defensive line was established. But the loss of
Poland had been a shock, and it was one from which the armies and the nation never really recovered. Alexandra did nothing to improve morale at home. All that she did do seemed to worsen things, yet she was utterly sincere in her conviction that all she did was for the good of Imperial Russia.

Meanwhile Kirby found an ally with a more authoritative voice than Karita’s. Major Kolchak suddenly arrived. He seemed to have one shoulder awkwardly lower than the other and his arm threatened to be permanently stiff. He had the look of a man who had nearly been hanged. He was delighted to renew his acquaintance with Kirby, and on his first visit to the mess listened with his square, rugged face gradually darkening as fellow officers attacked Kirby for England’s shortcomings.

‘Gentlemen!’ Major Kolchak’s voice startled them all into silence. ‘You’re forgetting yourselves. Colonel Kirby is our guest. He’s also my friend. Shall we talk of women we have known?’

Yet in his own way Major Kolchak was the bitterest of them all. He directed his anger not against the Allies, however, but against Russian incompetence and corruption. He foresaw more than the possibility of Russia’s defeat, he foresaw the complete collapse of civil administration and the plunge into revolution. He had long conversations with Kirby. He was convinced that the first to go would be the Tsar himself.

‘Those who hate Nicholas or are envious of him include certain Romanovs,’ he said. ‘But if they contrive to destroy him then they themselves will
be eliminated by the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries, once they have got rid of the reigning Romanov, will make sure they aren’t saddled with another. What an inglorious mess we’re in, my friend. And look at me, I’ll be lucky if I can draw a pistol in defence of the Tsar, let alone fire it.’

‘Stand behind me,’ said Kirby, ‘I’ll fire for both of us – but with my eyes shut.’

Major Kolchak liked that.

‘Ah, we are two of a kind,’ he said, ‘I am a coward too, by God. And a useless one now.’

But the human body being the resilient machine it is, Major Kolchak was declared fit enough to return to his unit in August. And not long afterwards Kirby returned to Petrograd.

Alexandra, on one of her periodical visits to headquarters, casually mentioned what a remarkable recovery Colonel Kirby had made. He had written to Alexis, telling the Tsarevich he would soon be back in Petrograd where he expected to receive orders that would return him to the British military staff at headquarters.

‘I couldn’t be more pleased,’ said Nicholas. The strain of his new responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief showed in the new lines around his eyes. But he seemed relaxed at the moment. He always enjoyed Alexandra’s visits. To the stark militarism of
Stavka
she brought the luxury of trivialities, the news of friends or relatives. There was no time during their married lives when these two people were not happy to see each other, no time when Nicholas did not listen attentively to
her ingenuous opinion of a minister’s failings or her homely recital of a domestic happening.

‘Colonel Kirby is a fine man,’ she said, then went on to talk about the children. She touched on Anastasia’s tendency to favour things that made her fat, then on the wretchedness of circumstances that were spoiling the most exciting years of Olga’s life. ‘She works so hard, Nicky, and is under so much strain with her nursing. She will do more than she should. It’s such a shame that it should all be like this at a time when life ought to be at its sweetest for her. We must do all we can to see that the most important things don’t pass her by.’

‘Marriage, for instance?’ Nicholas mused on that subject, always a complicated one, always governed as much by politics as anything else where any of his children were concerned. ‘I don’t think she’s in any great hurry, my love, and I don’t think she will be while we’re still at war.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ said Alexandra, close to him in the austere comfort of his railway coach, ‘I only feel we shouldn’t use the war as an excuse to overlook the matter or we may find we shan’t want to lose her at all. We must be fair to her.’

‘My feeling is that Olga would prefer us to leave it to happen rather than have us contrive it,’ said Nicholas. He could not quite see the point of Alexandra’s concern. There were simply no eligible suitors in the offing with the war situation as it was. Indeed, most of such suitors were on the side of the enemy.

‘But it would be unwise and unfortunate if she wanted us to leave it for the wrong reasons,’
said Alexandra. Never in the best of health now, she too had her other worries. There were dark shadows under her eyes.

‘Well, there’s little we can do except pray for victory and peace,’ said Nicholas in his philosophic way. For Nicholas there was always the hope that things would be better tomorrow. ‘Nobody will be happier then than Olga. She’ll think of marriage then, my love.’

‘I pray to God for victory, peace and Olga’s happiness,’ said Alexandra earnestly. Then for some reason she said, ‘As to Colonel Kirby, I’m sure he’ll be fretting for more active service when he returns from convalescence. It would be nice to be able to help him. What a pity we can only do so indirectly. If he were in the Russian army we could do so much more for him.’

Nicholas’s smile brought back some of his youthful charm. He was forty-seven and beginning to age. But his smile was still irresistible.

‘No, my sweet Alix, I can’t make him a general. That’s only been a joke between us. He knows it.’

‘My love, I know it too,’ said Alexandra. She was still as slender as she had been as a young woman, still used reserve to armour her shyness. ‘I only meant that when he’s quite fit again he might relish a new role. He’s always said how much he’d like to serve you, Nicky, and he could do this very well as a staff officer in our own army. It only needs a word from you to the British authorities to have this arranged.’

‘Mmm,’ said Nicholas. He rubbed his beard. ‘He could come back here. He’s uncommonly
useful to have around and the most congenial chap as well.’

Alexandra observed very pleasantly that she had actually been thinking just how much Colonel Kirby might appreciate a complete change of scenery, and that to keep him close to them might be considered rather selfish and indulgent. Everyone liked him immensely and they themselves ought not to make too much claim on his company.

This time the Tsar’s smile was a rather wan recognition of the roundabout way Alexandra had travelled to make her point. He knew she suspected Olga of forming a totally unwise attachment which could prejudice his eldest daughter’s outlook when the possibility of a suitable alliance did arise.

‘Mmm,’ murmured Nicholas again, ‘I wonder if he’d like to come over to us? We could use him in Armenia with our Caucasian army. He’d be very useful there, especially with the British operation in the Dardanelles going on.’

‘Armenia?’ Alexandra measured the distance in her mind’s eye. She smiled gratefully. ‘I’m sure that’s an excellent place for him to be, darling. You know, you always arrange things so well when you’re not being harassed by others. It’s a great pity that so many people think they’re being helpful when they’re only interfering. I know this is only a minor matter but it still needed thinking about.’

Nicholas knew it was not a minor matter to her. He leaned forward and caressed her cheek with his fingertips.

‘I’ll have a word with our British friends,’ he said.

Kirby was back in Petrograd. He limped a bit and there were furrows in his right arm deep enough to carry rivers of water when he was in the bath. But his convalescence had browned him, he looked fit again and the limp would go in time with exercise.

As soon as he and Karita arrived in the capital he received a visit from a spruce senior Russian officer. He had come from the War Ministry and wished a few friendly words with Kirby. In short, His Imperial Highness the Tsar sent his felicitations on Colonel Kirby’s recovery and wondered if Kirby would care to serve him more directly. A rank equivalent to his British one awaited him at Third Corps headquarters in Kars on their southern Caucasian front, where it was hoped the Russians would in due course link up with the British when the latter forced the Dardanelles. Did Colonel Kirby think that a suitable appointment? His Imperial Highness would consider it an honour if he agreed. The British authorities had signified their approval of the transfer. What did Colonel Kirby think?

Kirby knew exactly what to think.

He could either go to Kars, south of the Caucasus, as an officer in the Imperial Russian army or decline and almost certainly be returned to the United Kingdom. There was no other alternative when one knew what must have actuated the offer.

Kirby accepted. For one reason alone. He
wanted to stay in Russia. He had to maintain some communication with Olga, even if only that of treading the same soil, even though they would be a thousand miles apart. Having accepted, he received orders to proceed to Kars on Monday. It was now Saturday. He had two days’ grace. Karita was nearly speechless. What were they doing with him, sending him there, bringing him here and now this? He was just being ordered about. He was to join the Russian army? But why? It was absurd. Now he’d be ordered about by the Russians as well as the British. Aunt Charlotte would never stand for it.

‘Yes, I am simply speechless,’ she said.

‘Are you?’ he said. ‘When?’

He told her the British would no longer have the right to give him orders. Just the Russians. Karita said orders from some of the Russians she knew would confuse the saints themselves. Kirby told her to stay in Petrograd if she wished.

‘Oh, no, you’re not going to try that again,’ she said. She would go with him to this place wherever it was. He told her that Kars was nearer to her home in the Crimea than Petrograd was. It was in Armenia. Karita shuddered. Armenia
was
the end of the world. It was where you froze to death in the winter and scorched to death in summer. Its people were still barbarians. Nevertheless, as he had to go she would go with him. Her mother would certainly insist on it and it was no use arguing.

‘I know that,’ he said, ‘I’m wiser now.’

The following day, Sunday, he went to the Alexander Palace, arriving there at a time when
he felt the Imperial family would have returned from morning service. Tsarskoe Selo seemed at peace, the palace in quiet, majestic contemplation of the Sabbath. He asked for audience with the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna. His own name brought a flicker of acknowledgement from a court official. He did not know the man, but the man seemed to have heard of him, and no doubt in association with Olga. It would be this sort of thing that would bother Alexandra.

He did not have to wait long before he was escorted through the palace to one of the drawing rooms. Olga was there, and imprudently or not, she was quite alone, without any lady-in-waiting. She wore a dress of purest Sunday white, satin-sashed, and her hair, caught by the light of the windows, was as bright as if the sun had poured gold into it. If the realities and tragedies of war had awakened her consciousness of the world as it truly was, yet they had also given her complete maturity, turning a sensitive girl into a compassionate woman. She was a girl no longer. But never, he thought, would she ever lose for him that which had first come to his eyes. The enchantment of unkissed innocence.

She was a little tense, a little pale, but as he came towards her the warm blood quickened and her eyes shone. He was so brown again, so much himself once more, despite a slight limp as if his leg had a stiffness to it. He took the hand she extended.

‘I haven’t been so long this time, have I?’ he said, smiling.

‘Dear Colonel Kirby, no, not long at all,’ she
said, a little breathless and very happy. ‘Oh, it’s good to see you looking so well again, you cannot imagine how pleased I am.’ Her hand trembled in his, she curled her fingers tightly to steady them. They looked at each other. Her mouth began its betrayal, her bottom lip would not be still. He felt the urgency of his desire to kiss her, to lay his lips on the soft bed of her mouth. Each time he saw her it became harder to deny the urge. Now it was frightening. She was emotional, the long lashes quivering, wanting to hide what was in her eyes. They flickered, fell and lifted again. He knew he must not, she knew he must not, but her mouth was tremulous with appeal, her clasp tighter.