The Summer Day is Done

by Mary Jane Staples

  Karita put her nose in the air.

  ‘In Russia,’ she said, ‘officers always take servants with them. How would they manage otherwise? How will you manage? Who will see that you have clean shirts and socks? It would be humiliating if you had no servant. They would think you were nobody. What would Aunt Charlotte say to that?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  ‘She would be most upset. She would not try to put me on some old train, she would insist that I came with you. You need only telephone the War Minister and he would tell you it would be disgraceful not to have a servant with you. He would have to find one for you and it would probably be some fat old thing nobody else wanted.’

  ‘Fat old things can be very comforting,’ said Kirby. ‘Fat old things don’t argue.’

  ‘Who is arguing?’ Suddenly Karita was very offended. ‘I have done something wrong? You wish to have another servant in my place?’

  ‘Where would I get one like you?’ he said. ‘You’re not my servant, you’re my responsibility. I just thought you might like to see your parents, that’s all.’

  ‘I will go to the Crimea when you go there,’ she said.

  He remembered Prolofski and Karita’s unconditional participation.

  ‘Well, I only hope it won’t be too martial for you at headquarters,’ he said.

  ‘I am to go with you, then?’ she said happily.

  ‘Either you or some fat old thing.’

  She laughed up at him. He kissed her. It surprised and confused her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I thought it was not supposed to be proper in Petrograd.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ he said, ‘that was a kiss from your mother and father.’

  She tingled a little, but not because of her mother and father.

  ‘I hope that when we get to Baranovichi you won’t have too many generals telling you what to do,’ she said.

  Kirby laughed. But Karita did not consider it funny. It never seemed right to her that there were men who could give him orders. She had remarked to Aunt Charlotte how disconcerting it was that Colonel Kirby was not a lord, after all.

  ‘Good heavens, child,’ said Aunt Charlotte, ‘he would look hideous in ermine.’

  What that meant Karita had no idea.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what to proffer to people.’

  ‘Proffer them the information that he’s a mystery to himself,’ said Aunt Charlotte. ‘All this wandering about, I really can’t understand him. I wish to goodness you’d marry him. That would settle him down very handsomely and heaven knows, he could not do better.’

  ‘Aunt Charlotte!’ Karita was in rosy shock. ‘Oh, hush! Such an improper consideration. If he heard you he would pack me off undressed.’

  ‘Undressed?’ Aunt Charlotte was in booming shock herself then.

  ‘Yes, he would pack me off immediately, as I am.’

  Aunt Charlotte’s bosom heaved with laughter. The girl was a treasure and so charmingly quaint.

  Karita was quite right, as Kirby had known she was. Russian officers had servants where British officers had batmen. Karita was accepted at Baranovichi by the Russians and viewed with raised eyebrows by the British. Kirby shared a railway coach with three British officers and Karita was housed with other servants in a mansion half a mile away. Headquarters itself was contained in a cluster of railway coaches screened by a wood, and Karita came every day to see to things. Within a very short time she had the coach compartments looking impeccable and the other servants thoroughly organized. She was always the most personable and irresistible of young women. As soon as she was introduced to the other British officers, all majors, she realized Colonel Kirby was their superior. She felt very satisfied about that.

  Kirby’s natural gift for liaison work was immediately obvious. He not only got on well with the Russians but seemed to understand them. British and French officers had a cordial enough relationship with their Russian counterparts, but found it almost impossible to understand the Russian character. The conviviality of the ebullient officer class was always in advance of their aptitude for being frank, so that one could get no real idea of how well or how critically a new battle was going, how a situation was developing.

  A French officer whimsically observed to Kirby that he understood nothing at all about the Russians except that, frustrating as they were, it was impossible to dislike them.

  ‘Is that what you really think?’ asked Kirby.

  ‘What I really think, mon ami, is that they turn their backs on all the bad news and that the worse the news is the more they smile.’

  ‘Then why despair? You’re halfway to understanding them. When there’s a crisis they clap you on the shoulder and tell you not to worry. That’s to let you know the sun sets and the moon rises, and you can no more change that than they can.’

  ‘But that is God’s will. A battle is conceived, fought and governed by men.’

  ‘That’s what you believe, my friend,’ said Kirby.

  The one person who did not indulge in smiling ambiguity was the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich. Nor did he permit this in members of his immediate staff. He was not in a position, however, to forbid the Tsar to smile.

  The Tsar did not let his concern over the progress of the war spoil his satisfaction in being at Stavka, as the field headquarters were called. The location was not far from the railway line connecting Moscow with Warsaw. Nicholas was happy to be at the centre of things. Nicholas did not interfere with the Grand Duke’s authority in any way and was always in unaffected pleasure whenever the commander-in-chief consulted with him or engaged him in discussion.

  Discovering that Kirby was among British observers present, he did not ask for the Englishman to be brought to him. He sought him out. He found him outside his coach, talking to a Russian officer. They both saluted. Nicholas, his uniform plain and without decorations, returned the salutes. Then he took Kirby’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  ‘My dear fellow, this is extraordinarily nice,’ he said. ‘Well, who would have thought it? You will be a general yet. Are you comfortable? Have they given you suitable accommodation? I’m afraid we’re not all that grand here.’

  ‘Everything is excellent, Your Highness,’ said Kirby. ‘May I express my own pleasure at seeing you again?’

  ‘Ah, but it’s not quite the same as meeting on a tennis court,’ said Nicholas. ‘What do you think of things?’

  They strolled around the cold encampment and discussed the war. Kirby found that the Tsar’s appreciation of the general situation was intelligent and keen, though his optimism was as obstinate as ever. Yet as always he felt it impossible not to have a warm, human liking for him.

  Kirby and other Allied officers sensed the ammunition problem was already critical. But to speak of it to Russian officers was to invite the inevitable response that cheerfully led nowhere.

  ‘Where did you hear that, old man? It’s nothing to worry about. How is the bewitching Karita? Absolutely damned splendid girl you have there, Colonel.’

  Kirby was kept busy on translation work involving decoding.

  It was when the early spring was softening the ground and turning frost into mud that one day the Grand Duke paid a visit to the divisional headquarters of a forward unit. Kirby, with another British officer and two French colonels, accompanied the commander-in-chief and his staff. They travelled in a galaxy of powerful staff cars, and it took them two hours to reach the division. They passed through various reserve camps on the way, the Grand Duke’s car rushing through to the sound of cheers.

  Not far from the divisional headquarters the Russians were solidly entrenched on their Polish soil, where their front ran for hundreds of miles. On this particular day the division had been under a bombardment that seemed erratic, the German guns switching from one sector to another. The limited Russian reply was symptomatic of their apparently incurable shell shortage.

  As the Grand Duke’s motorized cavalcade approached the divisional he
adquarters the distant bombardment increased, and the German cannonade intensified to a constant, rumbling roar. The house stood back about two hundred yards from the road. Kirby felt that the war had suddenly become very close, the noise of the guns impossible to shut out. There was activity inside and outside the house, the place full of guards, full of officers and men coming and going. The Grand Duke and his staff strode quickly up the steps, sentries sprang aside and presented rifles in salute. Kirby stayed on the steps, and a Russian cavalry major, his boots grey with drying mud and his head bare, came out. He had a glass of wine in his hand. He looked at Kirby’s British uniform with interest.

  ‘The old man has come a bit close to things today, hasn’t he?’ he said.

  ‘It was his own idea,’ said Kirby, ‘it sounds uncomfortably noisy here to me.’

  The major, liking this frankness and the faultless Russian, grinned. He was square and rugged of face, thickset and powerful of body.

  ‘Boris Gregorovich Kolchak, Fifth Ukrainian Cavalry,’ he said, introducing himself.

  ‘John Kirby, British liaison.’

  Major Kolchak, looking not unlike a friendly bear, watched the road. More artillery appeared, riders lashing at the straining horses.

  ‘That will make just about two hundred guns on this sector,’ he said, ‘outnumbering the shells by two to one.’

  Above the rumbling thunder Kirby said, ‘Is this normal or is there an offensive today?’

  ‘Yes, it’s noisy, isn’t it?’ said Major Kolchak. ‘But they’re always at it, Colonel. The trouble with the Germans is that they can’t fight a friendly war. Unless they’re creating a little bit of hell for someone somewhere they’re not enjoying themselves.’ A dispatch rider driving a motorcycle combination roared up the long drive and Major Kolchak waited for the engine to be cut before going on. ‘I don’t know why they’re raising hell today. They can’t be thinking of making a move. With this thaw the whole country is like a bog.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a demonstration,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Demonstration?’

  ‘To acknowledge the visit of the Grand Duke.’

  Major Kolchak grinned again. ‘Come inside,’ he said, ‘it’s just as noisy but at least you can have a drink.’

  Coincidentally, the guns stopped then and amid a bleak silence they went into the stone-built mansion. In a large room full of tables, maps and men, the Grand Duke was making himself heard in an altercatory discussion with the divisional commander. It seemed that contact between headquarters and some forward sectors was dangerously tenuous and the Grand Duke was insisting on remedial action. Major Kolchak glanced at Kirby and shrugged as if to indicate confusion was a state familiar to division. He drew Kirby into another room, where a few officers were taking a cold lunch standing up. Kirby helped himself to a slice of cooked meat and some bread, leaving the more exotic food alone. Major Kolchak poured some wine. It seemed that the major was in command of a cavalry troop bivouacked a mile away. He had been summoned to headquarters and told to wait for orders. He had been waiting two hours.

  Outside the mess the corridor was suddenly alive with booted feet hurrying. The Grand Duke and his staff, after half an hour at headquarters, were on their brisk way out. Rooms began to spill men and papers.

  ‘Orlovsky!’ Major Kolchak, sighting a divisional staff officer, shouted at him down the corridor. ‘Orlovsky, my orders!’

  ‘Damn your orders,’ the officer shouted back, ‘we’re overrun. You’ll have to pull back.’

  Major Kolchak swore.

  ‘I think I’d better go,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Russia,’ said the major, ‘breeds more incompetents and lunatics than a bear breeds fleas. We’d all better go.’

  What had been a place of activity, overlaid with a hint of civilized anxiety – ‘Nothing to worry about, Your Highness, nothing at all,’ – became metamorphosed into a bedlam of rushing panic. When they reached the top of the steps outside, with headquarters disgorging men in all directions, the Grand Duke, ramrod in his grimness, was already being driven away, his motor car belching through the gates and on to the road. His staff were following in other cars. The foreign liaison officers, two French and one British, were in the last car, waiting for Kirby. They beckoned him impatiently.

  ‘D’you want to come with us?’ Kirby felt he had to ask the hospitable and likeable major.

  ‘In that?’ Major Kolchak raised a contemptuous grin at the car. ‘I’ve still got a horse somewhere. He’s a brute but a reliable one.’

  The guns began again, opening up in a frightening roar of sound.

  ‘God, they’ve burst through us!’ Major Kolchak was in anger and despair.

  A shell dropped a hundred yards away, and exploded crumpingly in soft ground.

  ‘Come on!’ roared the British officer to Kirby. Kirby hesitated, but Major Kolchak had gone to the open doors of the house and was bawling for a Captain Brusilov.

  Kirby went down the steps two at a time to the drive. The guns seemed on top of headquarters, the cannonading roar an outrage to the ear. Another shell struck, hitting the roof of the mansion with a tremendous crack, and slate and stone rained down. Kirby, about to take his place in the car, already moving slowly forward, turned at the thunderclap and saw Major Kolchak at the moment when a slate struck his right shoulder. His knees buckled and he dropped. Kirby sprinted back up the steps, reaching the major as he made to rise.

  ‘That damned Brusilov,’ he said. He put a hand to his shoulder. He winced as Kirby helped him to his feet, his rugged face a little white. A cavalry captain appeared, spilling from the doorway in company with shoving men carrying divisional records of every kind. ‘You dallying idiot,’ roared the major, ‘get my horse!’

  ‘Hold it!’ shouted Kirby. He came down the steps, forcibly pulling Major Kolchak with him. The car was forty yards away. Before they reached the last step a shell smashed like the glowing iron fist of Mars into the bonnet of the moving car. The whole thing blew up, erupting into a blazing inferno of mutilated men and jagged metal. Kirby was hurled sideways over the steps, the major with him. He found himself spreadeagled partly over the drive, his head and shoulders buried in the stiff wet grass of the verge. His breath whistled from squeezed lungs. He lifted his head and saw the fiery wreckage of the car.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he gasped.

  Men were running in all directions. Horses were shrill with alarm, jerking at their tethers. He heard a groan. The major came slowly to his knees, his injured arm dangling, his face whiter. Horses clattered. Captain Brusilov had returned. He rode one horse, led another. The major grunted painfully and said painfully, ‘You’d better find one for yourself, Colonel.’ Kirby got to his feet, helped the major into his saddle with the assistance of Captain Brusilov, and then ran to take the major’s advice.

  The road was alive with retreating Russians, cavalry going pell-mell and cursing the advent of artillerymen riding sweating horses pulling salvaged guns. There was a thumping in Kirby’s head that was familiar and made worse by the scream and crump of shells. His horse was a pounding, bony beast that carried him through the turmoil of retreat with the enthusiasm of an animal only at its best in a riot. Major Kolchak, riding with one arm useless, kept bawling questions at cavalrymen and the grey-faced men bawled hopeless answers back at him.

  The road was becoming clogged, the gun carriages a lumbering impedimenta. The German guns were ranging, with the road and its immediate environs under fire. They appeared to have divisional headquarters pinpointed now. Kirby heard explosions rocking chimneys, buttresses and roofs.

  ‘Ride over the fields,’ said Kirby, ‘you’re in no condition to charge through this little hell.’

  ‘Damnation,’ said the major, but turned his horse.

  There was a whine, a sense of catastrophe and a vomiting belch of gravel and stone as a shell struck the road itself. It took the legs from horses, smashed men into eternity by blast or shrapnel, and a gun carriage danced, lifted and crashe
d. The blast itself reached far enough to engulf Kirby and the major with rushing heat that almost sucked them from their saddles. Kolchak groaned. A man staggered up from a kicking, dying horse. It was Brusilov. The next salvo whistled, earth on either side of the road was torn from its bed and hurled in mighty clods. Kolchak swayed in his saddle and blood dripped from the sleeve of his jacket. He began to fall sideways. Kirby flung himself from his saddle and caught the Russian as he limply fell. Men and horses were flying from the road, galloping in all directions to escape the salvoes.

  This is hell right enough, thought Kirby, and one I wasn’t born for. He dragged Major Kolchak away from the road. Something thudded into his right arm at the same time as he felt the numbing shock of white-hot shrapnel smashing into his left leg above the knee. He was flung violently downwards over the collapsing body of Major Kolchak. The thumping ceased and he lay still amid the uproar of German guns pounding retreating Russians.

  Chapter Three

  Olga sat in the room she shared with Tatiana at the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoe Selo. It was bright today, even if cold. The snow had gone and the sun was doing its best to bring life to long-frozen green. It had been a bad time at the hospital for two days. The Germans had almost broken through in Poland, it was said. But Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich had stopped them, thrown them back.

  Today had been frenzied, so many casualties again. She had worked without stopping until four o’clock, and then they had insisted that she take a rest. She would go back for a while this evening.

  She longed for peace, for the world to be sane again. Livadia was an impossible dream away now. How remote was its sunshine, its flowers, its gardens, its happiness. How far away was the pleasure of seeing Papa playing tennis with Colonel Kirby.

  He might have written. Only to Alexis, of course. But he hadn’t. Mama would not mind a bit how much he wrote to Alexis. He had said he would come to see them when he was on leave. Oh, he had better.

  ‘Olga?’ It was Tatiana in her hospital uniform. She sounded a little tentative.