The Summer Day is Done

by Mary Jane Staples

  She realized she had been rushing on. She turned to the trolley and filled a glass from the samovar. She floated a slice of lemon on the golden liquid.

  ‘Your Highness—’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said swiftly, ‘you’re not to call me that, you know you’re not.’ She turned to him again, not too shy now to show him a little reproof.

  He was using his right arm to lever himself up to a sitting position.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that if you could punch the pillows up a little –’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Olga leaned. She moved the pillows, heaping them. Her hair was a soft whisper close to him, her scent perceptible, her dress rustling. ‘There, how is that?’

  The pillows were very comfortable. His broken arm throbbed, his head thumped. But he felt well looked after already.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is fine. Thank you, Olga.’

  She carefully handed him the glass of tea. It looked good. He was parched. He took a mouthful. He gulped. It was scalding.

  ‘What is wrong?’ she asked, quick with anxiety.

  ‘Too hot,’ he said.

  Olga shook her head and her hair shimmered. ‘Oh, that’s nothing compared with everything else. I thought – we thought – well, it was so frightening for a moment.’

  ‘It was my own fault,’ said Kirby, ‘I was paying too much attention to you, thinking how splendid you looked. Then there was a bump and I was absolutely sure I was going to miss my lunch.’

  ‘It looked much worse than your lunch,’ said Olga. ‘Papa was so good. When he saw how bad you seemed he said, “This is infernally distressing, what’s the best thing to do now?” So I said, “It’s our fault in a way, Papa, so we’d better take him back to Livadia with us and let Dr Botkin see to him.” And Papa said, “Splendid,” and began to order everyone about in the most practical way until everything was arranged to his satisfaction. Then he began the drive home and we followed with you in another motor car. Well, it was thought best that an army surgeon should be with you and I sat with you too. Papa was most agreeable about that. He said army surgeons were the most considerate of fellows but not quite as considerate as women.’

  ‘Oh, much less, Olga,’ he smiled. ‘Karita was right, you’ve all been wonderful and it was only my arm. Thank you for everything.’

  ‘But it wasn’t only your arm,’ she said, ‘it was your head where the horse kicked you. There, at the side of your head, where you have the most awful bruise.’ She reached out, indicating with a characteristically shy gesture the livid bruise on his temple and spreading beneath his hair. ‘There was only a small cut but it bled such a lot, and you were so still in the car, so pale, and I was so—’ She drew in breath. ‘Oh, I was very silly. See, you’re sitting up now and we need not worry about you at all, need we? But I’m not being very good for you, I’m talking too much and Mama said you were to have quiet.’

  ‘No, Olga Nicolaievna,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not being very good for you?’

  ‘You’re not talking too much.’

  Olga smiled happily at that. He did not know how happy she always was at finding how easy it was to talk to him. She could not help her shyness or the way it constrained her in conversation with people. She did not suffer in that way with Colonel Kirby.

  Colonel Kirby drank the hot tea slowly. Olga regarded him. His dark brown hair was unusually tousled. He had no beard. She must ask him about that. Perhaps Aleka Petrovna was responsible, not liking him with a beard. It did make him look younger. Tatiana would exclaim extravagantly over his handsomeness.

  ‘Colonel Kirby?’ Olga was suddenly aware that he was pale under his tan. ‘Oh, you aren’t feeling too well, are you? But I’m sure you will be in a few days and then you’ll be able to get up. The children can’t wait to see you and you should hear Tatiana—’

  ‘Ah, Tatiana,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Yes, she’s still quite devoted,’ said Olga, ‘but Mama says no one is to bother you yet, not even Tatiana.’

  ‘Will you thank Her Imperial Highness for me?’ he said. ‘But tell her it could never be a bother. Olga, I could not be more favoured.’

  She was like her mother in her sensitivity, and his sincerity had an alarmingly weakening effect on her. Covering up, she said brightly, ‘You’ve taken off your beard. Why did you do that?’

  ‘They don’t like them in the British army,’ he said, ‘I think they think beards get in the way.’

  ‘Well,’ said Olga, ‘I simply can’t conceive what they could get in the way of, but I’m sure Tatiana will consider you extremely dashing with a moustache and a broken arm.’

  ‘And my heroic tendency to fall off a horse,’ he said.

  Olga’s smile was quick with delight.

  ‘Oh, we’re all so glad you’re here,’ she said, ‘Livadia will be such fun again. Well, it will be when you can come down into the gardens. I must go now, I’ve tired you enough and Karita will come to serve you more tea if you wish it.’

  She did not want to go but her mother had said she could see Colonel Kirby for just five minutes. She could not stay longer, she gave him a smile and went. Kirby thought the room had been suddenly deprived of its brightest flower. He leaned back, his eyes turned towards the open windows.

  Outside Livadia was greenly alive with the warm freshness of spring, a spring that was like soft summer.

  He thought of Olga, of her unkissed mouth.

  He thought of the sophisticated beauty of Princess Aleka Petrovna.

  Olga had spoiled him for that.

  He dropped into welcome sleep. He awoke when the night had come, velvet and dark. He was out of bed and in the bathroom when Karita looked in. She saw the light under the bathroom door. She returned to his bedside and switched on the light there. It gave a shaded golden glow. She talked to herself until he came out of the bathroom wearing the blue linen pyjamas that belonged to the Tsar. Nicholas did not wear silk.

  ‘Well, you’re a fine one,’ said Karita, seeing how awkwardly he held his plastered arm to his chest. ‘Dr Botkin said you weren’t to get up and walk about yet, he’s not sure about your head.’

  ‘Sometimes, Karita, I must get up.’

  ‘You should ring first and I’ll come and help you.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘I haven’t lost a leg.’

  She ignored that. She saw him back into bed. She tucked in the bedclothes and straightened the pillows. He glowered at her. She ignored that too.

  ‘If you can’t sleep,’ she said, ‘Dr Botkin says you’re to take two drops of that in water.’ She showed him a small bottle next to a glass of water on the bedside table.

  ‘Very well, Miss Nightingale,’ he said.

  ‘Who is Miss Nightingale?’ asked Karita. In the glow of the lamp she looked warmly golden.

  ‘Someone lovely and compassionate. And strictly efficient. You’re just like her.’

  Karita made a final adjustment to the bedclothes.

  ‘You must go to sleep,’ she said. ‘Her Highness Princess Aleka Petrovna will be here tomorrow and you must be at your best for her.’

  ‘Is she coming to see if I’m dead or to see if I was drunk?’

  ‘Ivan Ivanovich,’ said Karita, holding herself in so that her desire to giggle was tightly constrained, ‘that is not at all a nice thing to say. A man came to see her this morning.’

  The irrelevance of this penetrated his ache.

  ‘Andrei Mikhailovich?’ he offered.

  ‘A different kind of man,’ said Karita, ‘who only looks at you and doesn’t speak to you. He has eyes like a fish four days old. His name is Prolofski. He would only speak to her Highness.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘How should I know? It was while he was there that the Empress telephoned and I came here. Ivan Ivanovich, is there anything you want?’

  ‘Yes, I want to know why you’re telling me about a man called Prolofski,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Oh,’ said Karita casu
ally, ‘people have heard of Prolofski. He is against our Father Tsar.’

  ‘Thank you, Karita. And there’s nothing else I want. Goodnight, sweet one.’

  She put out a hand to the light switch. He was lying on his back, his eyes open, reflective. She was in confusion at herself for a long time afterwards at what she did then, but impulsively she bent and kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped and switched out the light.

  ‘How nice,’ said Ivan Ivanovich from out of the darkness and she heard a murmur of laughter, affectionate and comforting.

  The Tsar looked in on Kirby the next morning and was delighted to see him sitting up and reading. Karita was quite beside herself with pride and pleasure as she brought Nicholas through, and her curtsey as she left would have graced the most elegant women of the court.

  ‘A charming girl,’ said Nicholas, ‘a credit to you, my dear man. Now, how are you? What a wretched business it was. You have the most violent-looking bruise, we were far more worried about your skull than your arm.’

  Kirby assured him it was nothing, although it had been a sick pain when he woke. Now it was back to being a bearable ache again. Nicholas talked, his flow of words easy as he passed from one light subject to another. His greatest gift was his ability to charm people, to set aside any suggestion of high and unapproachable majesty. All his children had inherited something of his personality. It was his simplicity and his friendliness that softened the harshness of every gaoler the Bolsheviks vindictively thrust upon him after the October Revolution. That was until they found Yurovsky, the one gaoler whose sadistic brutality could not be softened by man or God.

  Nicholas had only come to enquire after Kirby’s health, to say a few cheerful words, but he stayed twenty minutes, talking of everything but the worries and problems which were never absent and on which he pondered conscientiously but indecisively day by day. His was the indecisiveness that afflicts every peaceable, good-natured man.

  Finally he said, ‘Your arm is an inconvenience to you, Ivan, and a disappointment to me. There’ll be no tennis except with generals or ministers. Whatever talents generals and ministers have, they leave them behind on a tennis court. You have no idea, my dear fellow.’

  ‘Perhaps I have a little idea, sir,’ said Kirby.

  Nicholas chuckled.

  Apart from the Tsar and Karita, who looked in from time to time to see to things, Kirby was left alone that morning. He supposed that Alexandra was being adamant in her insistence that he was to have quiet. It was very quiet. Even Karita, whenever she popped in, seemed elusively disinclined to converse. Karita, in fact, could not imagine what Ivan Ivanovich must think of her. It was not improper for him to kiss her, she supposed, but it was dreadfully improper for her to kiss him. Whenever she was in his bedroom she was confusedly aware of his eyes following her and laughing at her. It was quite the best thing to say nothing but to whisk about busily.

  Princess Aleka arrived during the afternoon. First she paid her respects to Alexandra, whose sciatica had not improved and who spent more of her time in her boudoir. The princess imparted news which astonished and displeased Alexandra.

  ‘Ending your betrothal? Aleka Petrovna, I can’t believe you to be serious.’

  ‘I am very serious, Your Highness,’ said Aleka, cool and striking in black. Alexandra thought it a most unfortunate colour, seeming as it did to convey sombre finality. Nor did a black half-veil help to dispel this impression.

  ‘But you and Colonel Kirby, you are so well matched,’ said Alexandra. She knew Olga had not been overjoyed to hear of the engagement. How Olga would react to the news that it was off she could guess. She would begin to dream impossibly again. ‘The Emperor and I were so pleased for you, it seemed quite the happiest thing.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Aleka unemotionally, ‘we are not in love. You will agree, Your Highness, that that is all-important? Yes. It was an engagement brought about by circumstances rather than by mutual affection.’

  ‘I am sorrier than I can say.’ Alexandra regarded Aleka with disappointment and regret. ‘Oh, I wish both of you would think this over.’

  Aleka, paler than usual and smoky-eyed, said, ‘When I tell him I’ve decided to end it, I’m sure he’ll agree with me that to think it over would be a waste of time.’

  ‘When?’ Alexandra was more astonished. ‘You mean it’s your decision alone and that you have yet to tell him? Aleka Petrovna, you can’t tell him now, not when he’s so unwell. It was only by God’s blessing that he didn’t have his head kicked in. Dr Botkin said his escape was miraculous, and only time will tell whether there is any real injury.’

  Aleka did not seem to be moved.

  ‘I will see how he is, Your Highness,’ she said.

  Alexandra sensed an inflexibility that was bitterly emotional. She thought of Olga and sighed.

  Kirby greeted Aleka with a smile. He thought her appearance in sombrely soft black incongruously conspicuous. It was as if a pale-faced mourner had entered the brightness of Livadia. She did not sit down. She stood looking at him, almost with an air of disinterest.

  ‘You didn’t think I was dead, did you?’ he said as she lifted her veil.

  ‘I only heard that you fell off your horse,’ she said.

  ‘And would you believe it, I was sober at the time.’

  She did not respond, she only said, ‘Are you better today and able to talk without groaning?’

  ‘I felt better the moment I found I was still alive,’ he said. ‘But how attractively bereaved you look, Aleka love.’

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ she said. ‘So can people. The joke is over, Ivan Ivanovich. Shall I surprise you by telling you it never began? Did you think I believed your professed innocence? As soon as I saw that announcement I knew it could not have been worked out without your help. My dear stupid man, it was all too obvious. You were all too obvious. No one would walk around Russia for three years for the mere fun of it. There are so many more exciting things to do if you have money. I did not believe you were genuine from the start. Sometimes I hoped you were, because you’re not an unexciting man. Sometimes I hoped you would love me. But you have always been in love with someone else and you have always had other things to do. You are a British government agent. And as an agent, a spy, a man without principles even where friends are concerned, you tried to make me look a fool, tried to discredit me politically. But I am rooted in the cause and it would take a far better, a far more ingenious and persuasive man than you to pull up those roots.’ A little glitter appeared in her eyes. ‘I was your friend, Ivan, I was ready to be more than your friend. You betrayed me.’

  He was very still, his back against heaped pillows, an open book on the bed.

  ‘I thought it was a way of saving you from your other friends,’ he said, ‘they will only lead you to Siberia.’

  ‘Siberia would not be lonely, many of my associates are there already.’

  ‘We all have our causes to serve,’ he said, desperately conscious of how close he was to his own destruction. Accusation by itself would smear him. If she had proof, destruction was inevitable. The Imperial family would look at him in horrified disbelief. The blue eyes would freeze.

  ‘Causes?’ Princess Aleka was savagely mocking. ‘Do you call yours a cause? Espionage? Espionage is for humanity’s rejects who are not fit for anything else. What friends have you made in Russia whom you have not sought to use or deceive? What did you do in your three years of travelling? What strengths and weaknesses of Tsarism did you discover? And now you have made a friend of the Tsar himself. Now you will use him, deceive him, and carry his very soul back to England in a locked box. What a triumph for you, Ivan Ivanovich. What a story you could write. A spy at the court of the Emperor of Russia. Have you looked into every cabinet, under every bed?’

  He wondered if he was sweating. He felt he was.

  ‘You have your beliefs, Aleka, I have mine. You believe in revolution and would do anything to a
chieve it. I believe you are wrong and would do what I could to save you and Russia. The Tsar needs time, help, tolerance. He will give you justice in the end. However I’ve served my own government, I’d do nothing now to hurt Russia. How did you find out, by the way?’

  ‘You’re very calm,’ she said. ‘Is it because you have no real feelings? Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? People like you must be cold. It need not bother you how we found out. You were very suspect. You were always alone. Where is there any rich Englishman who travels without even one servant? Karita must have been an embarrassment to you at times. You were lucky that she isn’t the kind to listen at doors, to spy on the spy. But we have the proof we need, all the names of your own special friends in Russia, everything necessary to have you sent to Siberia. Indeed, perhaps Alexandra Fedorovna will be so upset that she will have you shot.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. His head throbbed. Pain stabbed.

  ‘Yes, that’s a great worry to you, isn’t it?’ Her smile was bitter. ‘How our charming Imperial family will look at you when they know. It doesn’t matter about lesser people, their feelings don’t signify. But the Emperor and Empress, ah, they are different.’

  ‘They are better than you think, Aleka. That is why they should be offered something kinder than revolution. That is why I’m for them, not against them.’

  She made a gesture of rejection with her hand.

  ‘Spare me your penitence,’ she said, ‘I’d like to think you were more of a man than that. And spare yourself tears for the moment. I’m not going to tell them. Those aren’t my orders. You’re safe on one condition. Oh, do you think I care about spies, who are really only very little men? I don’t care about such men, not in the smallest way, whether they live or die or what happens to them. I don’t care if you’ve stolen a million secrets from Russia, one person like old Amarov is worth a thousand people like you, all with a million secrets each. So don’t think I care about what happens to you, whether you’re caught and shot or caught and hanged. There are real tyrants we’re concerned with, real wrongs, real betrayers, all vastly bigger than you. You are to go free, but only if you remember that you will work for us now. When we want you we will use you.’