The Summer Day is Done

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘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?’

  ‘Idiots? Oh,’ she flashed, ‘that should be easy for you, it will simply be as one fool to another.’

  ‘Touché, darling,’ said Andrei.

  A girl of sixteen stood on a balcony of the Imperial Palace at Livadia. The night was warm, the sky bright with stars, a velvet indigo encrusted with jewels. She wondered why she was thinking of a man she had glimpsed for no more than a few seconds, of his warm, friendly eyes and the smile he had given her.

  It was silly.

  Her sister came, putting an arm around her.

  ‘Olga, what are you dreaming of out here?’

  ‘Do you dream when you’re awake, Tatiana?’

  ‘Goose,’ said her sister, ‘when I’m awake I’m full of wishes, I only dream when I’m asleep.’

  ‘It’s you who are the goose. Wishes are dreams too, silly.’

  Karita brought Kirby his breakfast.

  He was awake, lying on his back, his hands folded behind his head. The huge windows let in the bright morning. Karita opened them and there came the scent of gardens, hills and sea. She herself was even brighter than the morning.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  ‘My lord,’ she began, then blushed at his laughter.

  ‘Karita, my lamb, you’ve been deceived again. Who has done it this time?’

  ‘I asked Count Purishkin and he said you could not be less than a duke. A duke is an English lord, isn’t he? You see, I knew I was not mistaken, but I’ve kept it to myself in case you wanted no one else to know.’

  ‘Well, lords and dukes of course are very funny about who should know and who shouldn’t,’ he said seriously. ‘Your mind is made up that I’m a duke?’

  ‘Highness, who was to tell Count Purishkin he was wrong? It would not have been proper for me to do so.’

  ‘Karita, I’m not a duke, so don’t call me my lord or anything else. That would be even less proper. What’s all this you’ve brought me?’

  The breakfast trolley was mountainous with food. Karita began to itemize the dishes. Kirby sat up, shook his head and told her to take it all away, leaving only fruit and bread. Karita, a picture in her bright blue and immaculate white front, stood her ground.

  ‘Her Highness said – well, she said—’

  ‘Yes?’ He thought her quick little smile delicious.

  ‘She said that Count Purishkin had been starving you, monsieur.’

  ‘I must tell Andrei Mikhailovich that. So her Highness wishes to fatten me up. Are her friends coming to eat me, then?’

  Karita could not restrain a gurgle. He was in such good humour again. And he did not really need to be fattened up, he was very sinewy and that was how a man should be. The open neck of his silk pyjamas showed flesh brown and hard.

  ‘You need only eat what you wish, monsieur,’ she said. ‘Also, her Highness said that if you would like to bathe in the sea this morning she will be ready for you to accompany her at eleven.’

  ‘Is it recommended, Karita?’

  Karita’s smile flirted around her lips, then she said, ‘It’s recommended that you be ready by eleven, monsieur.’

  He smiled.

  ‘How old are you, Karita?’

  ‘Nineteen, my lord. I mean monsieur. Oh dear, because of one thing and another and Count Purishkin, I don’t know what I do mean.’

  ‘We won’t go into all that again. Nineteen is lovely, Karita. Thank you for my breakfast.’

  Karita went away feeling pleasantly disconcerted. He was very teasing. He was quite unlike Oravio, who was so serious and earnest. Oravio was a senior footman. It was understood by their families that in a year or two he and Karita would marry. Karita herself had not said yes or no. Oravio said she did not have to. It was something their families would decide. Karita did not tell him that her mother had said she could do better for herself than that. Her mother did not consider Oravio would be a monumental catch.

  Certainly Oravio was dark and handsome. But he was not gifted with laughter. He admired his own seriousness, he said there was little to laugh at in Russia, anyway.

  Karita did not know why, when she saw him on the landing, his sober, swarthy handsomeness suddenly seemed unexciting. He glanced at the door she had closed behind her.

  ‘Why are you so pleased with yourself this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s my lord Ivan Ivanovich,’ she said, ‘he’s making comical faces over his breakfast.’

  ‘Why do you call him lord? He’s no lord, he’s only another arrogant Englishman.’

  There, thought Karita, there is someone else trying to think for me.

  ‘He’s not a bit like that,’ she said.

  ‘They’re all like that,’ said Oravio sternly, ‘keep away from him.’ He passed on. Karita tossed her head, tilted her nose and looked into a huge wall mirror. Well, you do not look all dark and intense, she said to herself. She went happily on her way.

  ‘Ah,’ said old Amarov when she entered the kitchens, ‘what has tickled you today, my bright one?’

  ‘See?’ said Karita, pointing to his chest. He looked down and Karita brought her hand up and tweaked his flowing white moustache.

  ‘Chit of an impudence,’ he shouted, ‘where is your respect for your betters?’

  ‘You are a lovely old man, old one,’ said Karita and kissed his cheek.

  ‘What are things coming to?’ muttered the old one. ‘What are they coming to?’

  Later that morning Princess Aleka, Andrei and Kirby bathed from the golden beach exclusive to Karinshka. They changed in the beach hut, which to Kirby had all the size and amenities of a miniature mansion. It stood back on the bluff, it had a terrace and was pleasantly suitable for lunch to be taken there if desired. But Aleka was expecting visitors at the palace.

  She appeared in a blue costume, the skirt edged with white, and she wore a blue bathing hat with a white band. The legs of the costume were shamelessly short, buttoned only just below the knees. Her limbs were smooth, shapely, her skin white. She looked hard at Kirby in his black costume.

  ‘How nice,’ she said slyly, ‘you aren’t as thin as I thought, Ivan.’

  ‘Princess,’ he said, ‘I’m still full of breakfast.’

  Andrei emerged, a figure of fashionable beachwear in striped red and white.

  ‘Goodness,’ murmured Aleka, ‘you are almost formidably beautiful, Andrei.’

  ‘Has the sun turned blue?’ he said. ‘No, it is divinity in the shape of Aleka Petrovna. Must we go into the sea? It is a pity to spoil the way we look.’

  ‘You see?’ said Aleka to Kirby. ‘He is even a coward about getting wet.’

  She was expressively graceful in the water, her breaststroke fluent and effortless. Kirby was entirely physical, distressing Andrei with his foaming, sea-beating crawl. Andrei himself merely floated on his back.

  ‘Really, my dear chap,’ he murmured to the sky as Kirby splashed by. Aleka plummeted above him and pushed him under. ‘Dear God,’ he gasped on emerging, ‘the whole sea is ours and three is still a crowd. I’m going to
lie on the beach. Ask Ivan to avoid treading on me when he comes out.’

  She pushed him under again.

  ‘Andrei, are we not to be lovers any more?’ she asked.

  Andrei spat water.

  ‘That is disgusting,’ she said, ‘I don’t spit in the sea, why should you?’

  ‘Perhaps when I’m half drowned I have spit to spare,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Andrei, speak to me of love,’ she said, treading water.

  ‘Dearest angel, last night I was exhausted. The tiresome journey, you know.’

  ‘Is there another woman, you cad?’

  Andrei, drifting languidly on his back again, said, ‘Darling, what was I to do for nearly a year? A desolate man must be comforted. Where is Ivan?’

  ‘Trying to carve a divide in the Black Sea,’ she said. ‘Andrei …’ She went close to him, he straightened up in alarm and they both trod water. She reached long white arms under the translucent blue. ‘Andrei …’

  ‘By every precious saint,’ said Andrei faintly, ‘is this love?’

  ‘Andrei, I am starved, starved, I tell you.’

  ‘Well, darling,’ he said, treading water sensitively, ‘you’re making quite a meal of the first course.’

  In a flash of temper she pushed him away. She swam. She found Kirby. He too was now floating on the warm, caressing water. Irritably she placed a hand over his face and pushed his head under. The water was suddenly alive and she screamed as she was lifted and tossed. She smacked into the sea. She rose to the surface in a fury, kicking and scratching.

  ‘Swine! How dare you!’

  ‘My mistake,’ said Kirby, holding her off, ‘I thought it was a game for two.’

  She was still in a temper when they returned to the palace but brightened when she saw there were visitors waiting. There were cries of delight at her appearance. Expansively Aleka invited them all to stay for lunch. It was no more than they expected, anyway. Lunch was noisy, merry and prolonged. The visitors gay and boisterous, restless and insatiable, talked and ate, ate and talked. Aleka’s friends were like herself, temperamental, volatile and intensely Russian. Every emotion was uninhibitedly declared, expressed, revealed. They knew of Aleka’s political views, they teased her, mocked her, derided her. Aleka herself did not seem to mind that everything she said battered vainly against the opposing flow, was drowned and swept back to die. There was such exhilaration in flinging sarcasm at derision, logic at mockery. She loved every moment. Her dark eyes flashed, she smote the table and broke her wine glass. Kirby watched her. Her pale face glowed, her body vibrated. She revelled in their company, despised their outlook.

  Not until a little exhaustion set in among some did others make themselves heard. A young man with a jewelled tie pin and lips as glistening as a woman’s said he had never seen a socialist who did not look like a tram conductor in search of a non-paying passenger. Aleka eyed him as if he had been born under rotting timber.

  ‘Alexis, foolishness is bad enough, ignorance is worse,’ she said. ‘Russia is groaning and what do you do? Plaster ignorance all over your foolishness. Poor Alexis. How does it feel to be unforgivably stupid? Privilege is bleeding the people to death and you’re indifferent to it. The Tsar’s ministers are either corrupt or incompetent and you’re grinning about it. It wouldn’t be so bad if grinning suited you, but never have I seen anyone who looks more like a laughing donkey. There, it isn’t your fault. You can’t help your face and your teeth. If you wish you can leave the table and hide yourself in the cellars. Old Amarov will pour wine over you and you can grin and soak all day.’

  They laughed at the young man. He grinned the more.

  ‘Come, Aleka Petrovna,’ said a smiling man, ‘in Russia it’s always as bad as you say but never turns out worse than it was before. It’s always an exaggeration.’

  ‘When it’s not an exaggeration and the people are skinning you with sickles,’ said Aleka, ‘you’ll all say why didn’t someone tell you.’

  ‘Darling, you tell me,’ murmured a blonde woman to Kirby. She was festooned with ropes of pearls and sat next to him. Her features were cosmetically cared for, her eyes speculative and hungry.

  ‘About Russia?’ he said. ‘Alas, as Princess Aleka will tell you, I know so little about my own country that it would be regrettably inappropriate for me to set myself up as an observer of Russia.’

  ‘Oh, Aleka Petrovna is vastly amusing,’ she said, ‘but there’s no need to take her seriously. I am always interested in what the English have to say about us. I have been interested ever since Aleka introduced us before lunch. I shan’t mind if you’re dreadfully rude about everybody, everyone else is.’ She went on and became so immersed in the game of claiming his attention that she quite lost the thread of her original gambit and any desire she had to hear opinions that really did not matter. She passed on to the international flavour of Paris which, she declared, was the only capital city in Europe where foreigners felt themselves incipiently at home. Since everyone else seemed to have resumed talking as well, Kirby gave up trying to listen to her alone and let the whole become a tableau of mouths that never closed.

  It was like that for days.

  They bathed in the mornings, they returned to become embroiled in marathon, noisy lunches. The visitors took their carriages back to their own estates late in the afternoon and most of them appeared for dinner at night. The dinners were even more exhilarating than the lunches, excepting only to Kirby and Andrei.

  ‘The trouble with Russians, dear man,’ said the exhausted Andrei, ‘is that we’re all so infernally egoistic. We’re so frightfully Russian.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that’s better than being frightfully Chinese.’

  ‘Are you sure you aren’t doing the Chinese an injustice?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure at all.’

  Kirby wanted to go into Yalta. He asked Karita about the possibility of taking a carriage. Karita passed the request on to old Amarov. Old Amarov asked the princess. She was still in bed. Kirby was requested to make a personal appearance. Karita took him to Aleka’s suite and through to the bedroom. She lay in a bed huge enough to accommodate six voluptuous concubines. His feet sank into the thick pile of a deep red carpet. There were enough slender-backed chairs to suggest she sometimes held court there. She sat up, her silken nightdress off her shoulders, her auburn hair a luxuriant disorder, her face at its palest.

  ‘Why do you want to go into Yalta?’ she asked.

  ‘To see friends I know there.’

  ‘Can’t you invite them here?’ She sounded a little annoyed.

  ‘You’re kindness itself, Princess, but my friends are workers and couldn’t leave their jobs. Is there a carriage I might take?’

  ‘Workers?’ She looked at him disbelievingly, while Karita, in dutiful attendance by the door, looked anywhere but at the princess. Unconventional though she knew Boyar women were, Karita thought that the princess, in choosing to appear as if she were emerging nakedly from her nightdress, was going a little too far. The black silk seemed dangerously insecure against the white curving flesh, the wide, ruched neckline with its plunging front loosely low around the arms. But the Englishman did not look embarrassed, only casual as he regarded the princess with an expression entirely pleasant. ‘Workers?’ she said again. ‘You have friends among workers in Yalta?’

  ‘At the British consulate,’ he said. ‘Princess, you only need to say yes or no. If it’s inconvenient—’

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ she said crossly. He thought she was perhaps liverish. It would not be surprising. ‘Heavens, it’s not a crime to be interested in the movements of one’s friends, is it? You aren’t going because you’re bored here, are you?’

  His smile was an immediate denial.

  ‘I haven’t been bored at all and I’m certainly not now. Have you been painted in oils lately, Princess? Stay like that and I’ll ask Andrei to come in and put you on canvas while I’m in Yalta.’

  Long lashes lifted. She looked challe
nging, as if daring him to exercise impropriety, to lower his gaze. Then she said, ‘Karita is to take a carriage in thirty minutes, she has a free day and is going to see her parents. You can ride with her and then take the carriage on to Yalta. But you’re not to forget to return. Ivan, if I thought you really were bored—’

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said. He took her hand and kissed it. Aleka made a little face, but was not displeased.

  The carriage did not arrive promptly but it was there in the end. Karita, in bright blouse, flowing skirt and linen bonnet, said she would sit up with the groom. Kirby said he would prefer her company himself as the groom had the horses to talk to.

  ‘Monsieur, it’s not proper for me to sit with you,’ she said. She looked remarkably attractive.

  ‘Well, let’s be improper for once, no one will notice,’ said Kirby.

  Her smile came, brightening her golden face. She sat up with him, her back very straight, her attitude as proper as it could be under the circumstances. He talked to her, asked her about her parents. She said her father farmed the land and her mother was very wise. She always went to see them when she had a free day.

  She alighted when they had gone three miles. She thanked Kirby, said goodbye to the groom, and Kirby watched her turn off the road into a narrow lane, flanked on both sides by rolling carpets of colour. He saw the white rooftops of the village of Karka in the distance, where Karita’s parents lived. She turned and waved. She looked as colourful as the landscape.

  Yalta was balmy with autumnal warmth. Holiday Russians were strolling and shopping. Kirby stepped out and asked the groom to return with the carriage in a couple of hours. He sauntered in the sunshine, the town brown and mellow. The atmosphere was one of peace, although in St Petersburg there was another minor crisis and there had been unrest in the Urals. He had coffee, black and strong and sweet. He felt a sense of freedom. Princess Aleka did not make friends, she possessed them. In his meandering abstraction, he almost collided with a rather dumpy woman as she emerged from a shop. She, stepping hastily back, dropped her folded parasol. He picked it up and offered it to her with apologies for his clumsiness. As he did so a slender woman, accompanied by a girl in summery white, also emerged from the shop. She looked at Kirby, at the woman he had brushed, and said in enquiry, ‘Anna?’