The Summer Day is Done

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ The woman Anna, pleasant-faced, smiled away any suggestion of importunity on the part of Kirby.

  ‘Only that I was clumsy,’ he said in his faultless Russian. ‘I am terribly sorry, madam.’

  ‘Really, it was nothing,’ she said again, taking the parasol and shaking it out.

  He felt a peculiar consciousness of the familiar. He turned his head and looked into blue eyes regarding him in curiosity. Immediately her shyness rushed into pink, startled recognition. Her chestnut-gold hair was a profusion beneath her white, ribboned bonnet, her youth an almost absurd enchantment to him. Their glances touched, held and were broken. She dropped her eyes at his ghost of a smile and went on her way with the slender woman and the dumpy one, parasols opening, swirling and perching. The girl seemed to float, her white dress a whispering caress.

  He went on his own way and took with him a new image of a girl as sweet as dawn itself. He entered a building and found the offices he wanted. He went in. A clerk looked up. He asked for Mr Anstruther, a consular representative of His Britannic Majesty. Mr Anstruther came out. He was middle-aged and fatherly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, seeing Kirby, ‘come through, will you?’

  His office was brown. Brown leather chairs, ancient brown desk and mahogany paintwork. The curtains were of brown velvet and wooden filing cabinets stained brown. And Anstruther himself was brown.

  ‘I was expecting you two days ago,’ he said, indicating a chair. Kirby sat down. ‘I hope nothing cropped up.’

  ‘It was only that I came under the ownership of Aleka Petrovna, the Princess Karinshka,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Oh?’ said Anstruther, looking interested.

  ‘It took a few days to free myself. To have come before would have looked impolite.’

  ‘To whom?’ Anstruther was slightly sarcastic.

  ‘I understand your impatience.’

  ‘Not impatience, Mr Kirby,’ said Anstruther mildly, ‘we can always wait as long as we’re put in the picture. Worry is the word when we aren’t. However, you’re here. Have you got what you promised?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kirby. He brought out the wafer-thin rice papers that had lain within the cavity of his hairbrush and laid them on the table. ‘The information covers location of plants, factories, depots and so on. There are calculated yearly outputs, estimated stocks, types of armament, factors of obsolescence and everything else I could get. My estimation is that they’re short of every essential, particularly ammunition. They could fight a war on manpower alone, but how the devil they could successfully take on a major power I don’t know. By the way, it cost me a dickens of a lot to get certain of the information. That’s been included in the report and perhaps you’ll have it credited to my account at Coutts.’

  Carefully Anstruther studied the papers. Figures were construable but all else was in code. He looked up, his expression cautiously agreeable.

  ‘Major power? Mmmm,’ he said, ‘you must have sensed the situation is changing. Rapidly. We don’t anticipate being in dispute with Russia in the foreseeable future. Russia in the foreseeable future is more likely to be an ally. Either way, however, these figures should be invaluable. How reliable are they?’

  ‘Only as much as I am. How reliable is that in the minds of our masters?’

  ‘I hope you’re being facetious,’ said Anstruther. He put the papers into an envelope, slid the envelope into a drawer and locked it. ‘You know, with the way things are going at the moment, if there is a war it could only be with Germany.’

  ‘Is that reliable?’ asked Kirby.

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘Russia,’ said Kirby, ‘is opposed in all things to Germany. It’s traditional and it’s incurable.’

  ‘Is it?’ Anstruther stroked his chin. ‘There is the Tsarina to be reckoned with. An extremely good and religious woman, I believe, but German and with her own ways of influencing the Tsar. However, much as the Kaiser seeks to foster a closer personal relationship with the Tsar, Nicholas will never forgive him the fiasco of the Bjorko treaty. The Kaiser browbeat Nicholas into it and made them both look fools. It ran counter to the Russian alliance with France.’

  ‘And Willy and Nicholas have since cooled off?’

  ‘Considerably. The Kaiser still tries but Nicholas manages to stand aloof when they meet. He does it most agreeably.’ Anstruther got up and walked about. ‘But things are changing every day. You know, everything that can be done to make your figures look vastly better than you suggest would almost certainly coincide with the official line now.’

  ‘Well, will you add a few noughts or shall I?’

  ‘I mean,’ said Anstruther testily, ‘we’d approve an increased Russian output.’

  ‘You’d better talk to the Tsar about that,’ said Kirby. ‘I’d like a holiday myself. I’ve poked my nose into so many places these last three years that all I want for the next three is to mind my own business.’

  Anstruther permitted himself a brown, fatherly smile. He looked at Kirby, comfortably at ease in his chair. That was the man’s forte, his ability to be at ease, to make friends and invite confidences. He was a better observer of a country than the finest official ambassador. He was invaluable in Russia.

  ‘Well, your time is your own for the moment. We might get you back to England for a vacation if you like.’

  Kirby mused on that, then said, ‘Thanks all the same but no, not yet.’

  ‘You mentioned – let me see, who was it now? Princess Karinshka? Mmmm, I think we’ve got a file on her.’

  ‘On Princess Karinshka?’

  ‘Let me see.’ Anstruther unlocked a cabinet, extracted a file, returned to his desk. He opened the file, perused a few entries. He looked up. ‘Did you know she’s a socialist?’

  ‘She says she is. She doesn’t live like one.’

  ‘That’s not uncommon. Convert her,’ said Anstruther briskly, ‘a revolution in Russia would be no help to any of us at the moment.’

  ‘Except to the people. Well, except to some of the people.’

  Anstruther brushed that aside.

  ‘One revolutionary aristocrat is worth ten thousand conventional revolutionaries in a country like this. It might only mean containing her particular pocket of trouble, but I’m sure you’ll do your best. We’ll leave it to you.’

  ‘Princess Karinshka could eat me,’ said Kirby, ‘so I’ll leave it to you. I’m going to take that holiday. If you want me for anything really important, I’m staying at the Karinshka Palace. I don’t know for how long. She’s not a woman who can put up with the same faces indefinitely.’ He got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll get your report sent,’ said Anstruther, ‘and let you know sometime what they think of it.’

  ‘If they want to show enormous gratitude,’ said Kirby, ‘tell them to make me a lord. It will please a friend of mine and make me look more proper to her.’

  He got back to Karinshka quite late. He wandered with the groom around Crimean villages, intensely interested in the Tartar people and all the bargains they had to offer him. He accepted a great deal of hospitality, drinking their black coffee and their Tartar liqueurs. The groom, a Tartar himself, drove the carriage in lazy happiness, stopping whenever Kirby wished and joining the bargaining, the drinking and the establishing of friendship. He did not drink much coffee, however, he opted for something more infectiously convivial. He was singing when they arrived at Karinshka. Old Amarov kicked him all the way to the stables for being drunk.

  The sky was purple, the descending sun slashing the colour over the horizon. Karita appeared when Kirby reached the door of his suite and followed him in.

  ‘It’s not my place to say so, monsieur,’ she said, ‘but her Highness is dreadfully put out.’

  How quaint she was. He was warm with bonhomie.

  ‘Is she?’ he said. ‘What has Andrei Mikhailovich done now?’

  ‘It isn’t Count Purishkin, monsieur,’ said Karita, her brown eyes slightly reproving. �
�Who could be put out by so inoffensive a gentleman as he is?’

  ‘Her Highness, perhaps?’

  ‘Indeed no, monsieur, never. Well, almost never. It is you. You have been gone all day. You see, she is so sensitive. She thinks you must be bored here. Monsieur, are you?’ She seemed touchingly anxious to hear that he wasn’t.

  ‘Never, little one.’

  ‘I am so glad. Monsieur, you must be ready by nine or she will not permit you to dine with her.’

  ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘Well, never mind. You can bring me something up on a tray. If her Highness is having her usual visitors she won’t miss me.’

  ‘Monsieur!’ Karita was aghast. ‘She would kill us both.’

  ‘I must save you from that,’ he said. ‘I’ll get ready, then. Did you enjoy seeing your parents?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She looked pleased at his interest. ‘I spoke to my mother of you. It was because you’re English and I wanted to tell her you didn’t go around fighting everyone.’

  ‘I didn’t realize she suffered such anxieties about us,’ he said. ‘I hope she believed you.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ said Karita, ‘you tease me dreadfully. But see, my mother has given me an ikon for you.’ She slipped a hand into the pocket of her dress beneath her white front and brought out a tiny bas-relief of polished wood. ‘She said it would bring you closer to God.’

  ‘Oh, she thought I was a heathen too, did she?’

  ‘She didn’t say so, only that she would like you to have it. Of course, if you don’t wish it—’

  ‘I wish it very much,’ he said. He studied the ikon, carved to delineate the head of the Virgin Mary. ‘I will value it very much. Thank your mother for me. And thank you, Karita.’

  He bent and kissed her. Karita felt the momentary pressure of warm, firm lips and then an intensely disconcerting confusion. She looked up at him, her face hot. She saw laughter but kindness too, and affection.

  ‘Oh, goodness,’ she said, then the door opened to a knock and Princess Aleka swept in. She was gowned in deep green, her auburn hair brilliant, her jewels a radiance.

  ‘Ivan, you utterly deplorable man,’ she cried, ‘where have you been? Andrei and I have been off our heads about you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so late—’

  ‘Yes, old Amarov told me how drunk the groom was. You aren’t drunk too, I hope. No. How nice to have a friend who can drink in a hundred villages and still remain sober. But we thought we had lost you. Andrei said you had probably gone walking from Yalta to Kerch, it’s only a hundred and fifty miles.’ She was apparently not a bit put out, she was in her most vivacious mood. He glanced at Karita, edging her way towards the bedroom, intent on running his bath. Karita gave a very expressive shrug. It clearly said that she could not understand her Highness any more than he could. ‘Ivan,’ Aleka went on, ‘I’m sorry but it will be quiet tonight. There will be none of our friends to dinner, I have had to put them all off. It is Andrei’s fault. Can you imagine it, he said I am turning Karinshka into a zoo and that if I didn’t give him a rest from the monkey house tonight he would hang himself! Oh yes, you can smile, but Andrei is like that. You simply could not trust him not to hang himself if he could find someone to knot the rope. So I have invited no one to dine with us. I hope you will be able to bear the awful silence. How nice that you’re back in time to join Andrei and me. You and I must talk him into realizing that a monkey house is far more entertaining than a cemetery. Do you know, he said he would always prefer a cemetery as long as there were dancing girls around and their embonpoint was sufficiently diverting. Yes, that is the ridiculous kind of man he is.’

  ‘Voluptuousness in a cemetery would be diverting,’ observed Kirby.

  ‘There is no need for you to be ridiculous too,’ she said, but she was laughing. ‘Ivan, what is that you have?’ He showed her the ikon, she regarded it in light curiosity, her bosom a warm fullness seeking to escape from the half-hearted embrace of her bodice. ‘Did you buy this in Yalta?’

  ‘It was given to me by a friend.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her dark eyes danced. ‘So, you have a friend in Yalta who cares for your spiritual graces? It’s a Crimean ikon, so you have a Crimean sweetheart. Invite her, she shall stay with us. You’ll be late for dinner if you don’t hurry.’ She turned as Karita came to say his bath was ready. ‘Heavens, you grow prettier every day, child. Oravio is the luckiest of men.’

  She glided out in a shimmer of green.

  ‘Karita,’ said Kirby, slipping off his jacket and undoing his tie, ‘I thought you said she was displeased with me.’

  ‘Monsieur, truly, she is up and down, down and up. It can be very confusing.’

  ‘Well, she is up now. Who is Oravio?’

  ‘Oh, he is one of the footmen, we are supposed to have an arrangement. It is all only perhaps.’

  * * *

  ‘Well,’ said Princess Aleka to Oravio a few minutes before she went down to dinner, ‘where did he go?’

  ‘To Yalta, to the British consulate there,’ said Oravio. ‘Then he seemed to wander all over the Crimea, doing nothing except talk to people and drink with them. It was a good day for him, it was execrable for me. Only for the party would I spend all day following a long-legged Englishman.’

  ‘He met no one of importance?’

  ‘I don’t know who he saw at his consulate. Elsewhere he met only peasants.’ Oravio was darkly contemptuous, and not of Kirby alone it seemed. Aleka’s mouth tightened for a moment in anger.

  ‘Be careful how you talk to me,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Highness. Always, Highness.’ His voice was a sneer, his bow an impertinence.

  Andrei liked to be entertained. But he did not consider Aleka’s dinner parties entertaining at all. They sapped his powers of endurance. Aleka in the past had never been as restless as this, wanting always to have people and noise around her. It was a concession indeed to have dinner proceed in civilized quietness that evening, but Andrei suspected the respite to be extremely temporary. Something must be done to enable placid life to pour back into him. He must go to his own estate for a few days. He could not take Kirby. Aleka would never stand to be robbed of both guests. It would not matter to Kirby. He could manage admirably, being a man of adaptability.

  The next day Andrei spoke on the telephone to Gregory, his secretary. It was, he said afterwards to Aleka, the most damnable thing, but there was a crisis on his estate and Gregory had implored him to go there for a few days. Aleka said it was more than damnable, it was a Machiavellian ruse to go off and consort with one of his aristocratic whores. Andrei declared he had an undying love for her alone, begged her understanding of circumstances beyond his control and slipped away. She was furious.

  ‘What about Livadia?’ she shouted after him as he hurried down the steps to the waiting carriage.

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps, but if not, beg their Highnesses to accept Ivan in my place,’ he called.

  Aleka, absolutely livid for a while, almost had a stand-up fight with old Amarov. He gave her his notice. She accepted it but an hour later implored him to rescind it.

  ‘It’s impossible, old one,’ she said, ‘why, without you Karinshka would fall to the ground. Who else can I trust when I’m not here? Who else but you could command the servants? Look, I am on my knees. Stay, old ram, you shall have a horse of your very own. See, here are my tears as witness of all that you mean to us.’

  Old Amarov peered. He saw soft, cajoling brightness but no tears. However, the last thing to trust in any woman were tears.

  ‘Your Highness, everything is as it was and there’s no need to give me a horse.’

  ‘I insist. It’s yours, old faithful. Bring me some tea and I’ll know all is well between us again. And tell Monsieur Kirby to join me. He’s hiding away somewhere. I don’t know why it is, old Amarov, but some men have a damned indecent aptitude for avoiding a woman when she is most in need.’

  ‘What are you in need of, Highness?’

  ‘I don�
�t know,’ she said. ‘Tea at the moment, I suppose.’

  ‘Ivan Ivanovich.’ She had just arrived on the terrace to find him stretched out on a long cane chair, reading a book he had borrowed from her library. The sea lay like a placid blue lake in the distance, the air was lazily warming. He was a deep, even brown, the flecks of gold in his beard intensified by the sun. She looked broodingly at him.

  ‘Princess?’

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said, lowering her white-clad body on to an adjacent chair.

  ‘How peaceful it is,’ he said.

  ‘God,’ she said, ‘that’s brilliant, isn’t it? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you like women? Don’t you like me?’

  He had liked a number of women, had thought he loved more than one of them. He could not remember why. The only clear picture he had in his mind these days was the face of an enchanting girl.

  ‘You aren’t serious, are you?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I damn well am,’ said Aleka.

  ‘Then I love you,’ he said.

  ‘Must you be an echo of Andrei? Andrei is always declaring his devotion and backing away from it. You would do the same. It’s not necessary to love me, you know, only to like me. Ivan, put that book down. Look at me.’

  He looked at her. Her dark eyes were soft. Her white dress, high-waisted, gave her an unusual air of virginal charm. White was the purest and yet the most illusory of colours.

  ‘You’re excessively beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I have the strangest feeling that although you’re saying that to me you’re thinking of someone else. Is it the God-fearing woman who gave you that ikon? Do you want to go and join Andrei on his estate? You can be quite frank, I shan’t lose my temper.’

  ‘My dear Princess, I like it here,’ he said in relaxed satisfaction. ‘There’s everything to do or there’s nothing to do, and you don’t mind either way. Who could be a more agreeable hostess than that? Is there something perhaps that you would like to do?’