The Summer Day is Done

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Tasha, have they sent you to take a rest too?’

  ‘Olga, perhaps you should come,’ said Tatiana.

  ‘Now?’ Olga looked up at her sister. Tatiana tried to smile. It was so unlike her to make hard work of a smile. ‘Tasha?’ Olga rose, gripped by intuitive fear. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘It’s Colonel Kirby. Olga, he’s rather bad, but perhaps not dreadfully bad – oh, I thought you’d want to know and to come, but don’t tell Mama I came for you, she would think it too pointed.’

  Olga snatched up her headdress. She said nothing, but she was pale and her fingers made fumbling work of the simple task of fixing it.

  Then, as she went with Tatiana, she said, ‘Is he going to die, Tatiana? Is he going to be a hero?’

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ said Tatiana matter-of-factly, ‘that isn’t like you at all, that’s silly.’

  They had brought him off the hospital train two days after he and Major Kolchak had been carried to the nearest base in a wagon. Nicholas himself had sent a message saying that whatever the best was, he would like Colonel Kirby to have it. Alexandra had received the message, dashed off in a hurry by Nicholas. Because the Tsar himself had interceded, the hospital staff did their initial best in respect of a bed. The Catherine Palace was overflowing, every ward crowded, so they took Kirby to an upper room that was the smallest in the vast place. It was a room used for storing truckle beds, and the beds had been restacked and space found to accommodate the patient.

  Alexandra had been appalled by his condition, his greatcoat dirty and muddy, thrown around him and buttoned to keep it on. Beneath this his uniform was just as dirty, and it was ripped and slashed where field medicos had attended to a smashed right arm and a badly wounded leg. Dried black blood caked his khaki, the field bandages solid with it. His forehead was bruised and he was unconscious, his pulse erratic. It was while Alexandra was taking his pulse rate that the shocked Tatiana slipped away.

  She came back accompanied by Olga, by which time Colonel Kirby had been stripped. He lay on top of the blanketed bed, a sheet and other blankets over him. A doctor was examining his right arm. Olga, seeing the extent of the wound, the gashed flesh, the seeping blood, paled to stricken white.

  ‘Oh, Mama,’ she gasped.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Alexandra spoke kindly enough but was a little disapproving.

  ‘I couldn’t rest with so much to do,’ said Olga, blue eyes frozen as she stared at the stillness of the Englishman. ‘I came back, I heard about Colonel Kirby – Mama, it’s only his arm, isn’t it? He’s not really as bad as he looks, is he?’

  ‘His leg has been hit too,’ said Alexandra, ‘but Dr Bajorsky will see to him. You had better go to your ward, my love.’

  ‘Mama, please—’

  ‘Hush now,’ whispered Alexandra, concerned at Olga’s distress in the presence of the doctor and a nurse. The nurse, at a nod from the doctor, gently pulled aside the coverings to reveal the injured leg. Olga turned to ice. She had seen many wounds, many victims of bullet and shrapnel, and she knew the consequences of some wounds. Colonel Kirby’s shattered arm was bad enough, his leg was dreadful. The flesh from the knee upwards was an angry, swollen blue, the wound itself was of torn and contused muscle and sinew, and how the bone itself was affected she dared not think. Dr Bajorsky examined the leg as he had examined a thousand others, with the knowledge of his profession and the experience of concentrated months in this hospital. Experience of this kind was often a greater decider than knowledge.

  Kirby’s stillness was a help to the examination. He remained deeply unconscious. Dr Bajorsky straightened up. Young less than half a year ago, he was old-looking now. He turned to the Empress.

  ‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘even giving him the very best help we can, his leg will have to come off, but with luck we can save his arm.’

  Tatiana stifled a cry, Olga trembled.

  ‘God is with him and with you, Dr Bajorsky,’ said Alexandra quietly, crossing herself.

  ‘No,’ said Olga wildly.

  ‘Olga!’ Alexandra was inexpressibly shocked.

  ‘God is always with us, I know that,’ said Olga, ‘but if his leg is amputated Colonel Kirby will die. Mama, you have only to look at him.’

  ‘He will die if it isn’t amputated,’ said Dr Bajorsky. ‘You will excuse me, Your Highness? I will make the theatre arrangements.’

  He left the room. Olga hesitated, then followed him.

  ‘She’s very distressed,’ said Alexandra, ‘but we can only put our trust in God.’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ said Tatiana palely, ‘but I am distressed too.’

  Olga caught up with Dr Bajorsky.

  ‘Dr Bajorsky, I beg you,’ she implored, ‘I know why you’re going to take his leg off. It’s because there are hundreds of other cases just as bad and you and the other doctors are so desperately pressed. It’s easier to take off a man’s leg than spend hours trying to piece the bone together. Amputation is swifter, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nurse,’ he said, for this was what the Grand Duchesses insisted on being called in the hospital, ‘the Emperor himself has asked us to do all we can, and we will. However pressed we are, do you think I’d allow myself to be governed by expediency and not by compassion? You do me an injustice.’

  ‘Truly, I don’t mean to,’ said Olga desperately. ‘You’ve worked harder than anyone else here and done so much for so many, and you’re terribly tired. But Colonel Kirby deserves more than compassion even. He’s an Englishman and we can’t let Russia take his leg off when he’s given us so much of himself, he’s been the truest friend Russia could have. He’d give his life for us. He will give his life for us if you amputate, because if you do he’ll die, I know he will.’

  He was moved by her desperation, but he shook his head tiredly.

  ‘He may die either way,’ he said, ‘for an operation such as you suggest will take many hours. In his condition would he survive that?’

  ‘Yes, he would, he would survive the longest hours but not an amputation.’ Olga did not know if she really believed this, she spoke more in faith and hope than professional conviction. She begged and pleaded, detaining him in the corridor, and finally she said, ‘Dr Bajorsky, try, oh please try. We will all be eternally grateful – oh, that must be what hundreds have said to you about other men, but give Colonel Kirby time, your time. Save his leg, God will do the rest. It will exhaust you, I know, but Dr Bajorsky, dear Dr Bajorsky, please?’

  He had never realized just how lovely this Grand Duchess was, how earnest and urgent with faith she could be, how striking her intensely blue eyes were.

  ‘You’re asking the impossible,’ he said, ‘but when we get him into the theatre we’ll have a longer look at the impossible. I can promise nothing beyond that.’

  ‘You will try, I know you will,’ she said.

  ‘I will see, I cannot promise,’ he said. He smiled to give her some hope as he went on his way.

  Olga returned to the room. It looked uncomfortable and depressing with its stacked bed frames and other stores. The nurse had applied temporary new dressings and enclosed Kirby in blankets. He lay very still, his breathing quiet. Alexandra had gone but Tatiana was there, sitting by the bed. She looked strained. Her day had been quite full enough without this. The nurse, carrying a bucket full of stained, dirty bandages, left the room.

  Olga looked down at him, at his thick, tousled hair, his bruised forehead, his closed eyes. The nurse had cleaned his face, only the bruise discoloured his features.

  ‘Tasha, I told him,’ whispered Olga, ‘I told him not to be a hero.’

  ‘Men don’t always listen to women,’ said Tatiana.

  ‘Oh, Colonel Kirby,’ said Olga, ‘how very very silly you are.

  His lids flickered, he opened his eyes. He saw her. The train was moving, the window dancing with light, the sun was in her eyes and her hair was a bright cloud.

  ‘Nikolayev,’ he said as if his mouth was full of cotto
n wool. But she heard him.

  ‘Colonel Kirby,’ she whispered, ‘oh, how badly you have let us down.’

  He frowned, trying to understand why everything was so curious. The shining cloud of bright hair became a whiteness flowing around her head, her face, her shoulders. She was all whiteness. Then he remembered. It came quite clearly from out of the fog.

  ‘I told you we manage to get ourselves deplorably knocked about,’ he said.

  Tatiana put a hand to her mouth. Olga smiled brightly, brilliantly through wet eyes.

  A spasm of pain came. He closed his eyes and slipped away again. Olga stood there, silently imploring him not to leave them.

  ‘Olga,’ said Tatiana, swallowing, ‘if he loses his leg how shall we bear it? How will he ever play tennis with Papa again?’

  ‘I’ll sit with him,’ said Olga in a tense voice, ‘you go and rest, darling.’

  The moment belonged more to Olga than any of them. Tatiana rose, clung to her sister for a second and then went. Olga looked around the room. That they could have brought him to so depressing a place. It was a room for dying in, not living. She leaned over him. Lightly and hesitantly she touched his hair, smoothed its disorder.

  She remembered Livadia, his health, his strength, his smile that always seemed so much for her. She remembered the feeling of ecstatic freedom when she had gone with him to Yalta, how he had taken such good care of her. She bent lower and touched his face with her fingertips. Then, in a breathlessly soft caress as fleeting as her shyest smile, Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna brushed his mouth with her lips.

  ‘I love you, I love you.’

  He too dreamt of Livadia.

  They took him into the theatre an hour later.

  He was still there when the evening became cold and dark. A message came for Olga. It was from her mother. She was to return to the Alexander Palace immediately. For the first time in her life Olga wanted to disobey her mother. She wanted desperately to wait until it was all over, when they would be able to tell her what chances he was left with.

  She returned to the Alexander Palace, she could not disobey the command. She did not think she could even close her eyes that night, let alone sleep. But she did sleep. She was in a fever at breakfast, wanting to know why no one had telephoned from the Catherine Palace. The chatter of the others was subdued, everyone knew that Ivan Ivanovich was very bad. Even so, it strained at her nerves. But she could not go to the hospital in advance of her mother and Tatiana. To wait and to look composed, to hide her tense anxiety, was an ordeal.

  As usual, the three of them went together in the end. The warm spring sunshine was like a burst of bright hope. Tatiana said that she wondered how Ivan was. Alexandra said nothing about him until they reached the Catherine Palace.

  ‘Olga,’ she said then, ‘we must find out how Colonel Kirby is this morning. While I see the doctors perhaps you’d go up to him.’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ said Olga. She wanted to fly up the stairs but walked them. At the door of the room she tried to let her pounding heart slow down before entering. She went in. All the lumber had been removed, the curtains were opened wide and the sunshine beamed. The room was bright and clean. Colonel Kirby lay in his bed. The nurse sat by his side. She smiled at Olga.

  ‘He hasn’t wakened yet,’ she said, ‘he was in the theatre for such a long time.’

  But he was still alive. Olga wanted to ask questions but could not. Her throat was dry, tight.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ said Nurse Nicola Bayovna, ‘they thought he might lose his arm and his leg, but he still has both.’

  Oh, how wonderful. Dear dear Dr Bajorsky.

  He came in then. He was tireder, blue shadows ringing his eyes in his thin face. He managed a smile.

  ‘Well, we gave him all the time we could,’ he said, ‘and he has survived so far.’

  ‘God is good to us always,’ said Olga, ‘and sometimes very good. Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘That I don’t know yet,’ said Dr Bajorksy, going to the bedside. ‘It’s impossible to put either his leg or his arm in plaster yet, the wounds are so bad. We’ve had to strap him, it’s going to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant for him, and not very easy for the nurses.’ He lifted the coverings and Olga saw the bulkiness of heavy bandaging, the straps that bound the right arm to the body and long splints to his leg. He wore hospital pyjamas, the left leg of which had been cut away. She saw that the bandages ran thickly from his knee to his thigh.

  But she was happier now. It did not matter what Dr Bajorsky thought. She knew that Colonel Kirby was going to recover. She knew.

  ‘You’re a wonderful man, Dr Bajorsky,’ she said in gratitude.

  ‘Exhausted is the word,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. But thank you.’

  ‘Yours was the faith,’ he said, ‘and we’ll see, we’ll see.’ He did not seem dissatisfied. He looked at the temperature chart, his lids heavy. He glanced at Nurse Bayovna. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘he is not to move or have his dressings touched until I say so.’

  ‘Yes, I understand, Doctor,’ said Nurse Bayovna.

  ‘Good, he’ll be safe with you,’ he said and with a smile for Olga he left. He had had only ten hours’ rest in three days.

  Olga did not want to leave herself. But the duty here belonged to Nurse Bayovna. She had her own duties elsewhere. She turned as her mother came in. Alexandra had found out that there had been no amputation, after all, and she did not know whether to be in concern or relief.

  ‘Mama, he’s better already,’ said Olga, seeing Colonel Kirby’s face turned peacefully into the pillow.

  ‘Olga, how can you know that?’ Alexandra looked austere in her white uniform and although she was always kind, the nurses were often in a little awe of her. Nurse Bayovna effaced herself slightly.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he is,’ said Olga. ‘Mama, I will nurse him—’

  ‘No, darling,’ said Alexandra firmly, ‘you can’t. How would it look if you devoted all your time to one man alone?’

  ‘But he’s our friend.’

  ‘Olga, we aren’t here to only nurse our friends.’

  ‘I’ll share the nursing then.’ Olga tried to speak casually but could not disguise nervous appeal. ‘Speak to Dr Bajorsky, Mama. Just for a few hours a day. Papa would say we owe it to him, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, lamb, you’ll make it so hard for yourself in the end,’ whispered Alexandra. But she could not deny Olga completely. Her heritage would deny her so much as it was.

  So Olga shared the duties with Nurse Bayovna. But it was Nurse Bayovna who was present when at last the patient opened his eyes. He regarded her dreamily, wonderingly.

  ‘You weren’t here before,’ he said faintly. Nicola Bayovna understood. Patients were peculiar in the way they conceived an immediate affection for certain nurses. She had had a hundred wounded men fall temporarily in love with her. This one had chosen the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna as the object of his affections. How ambitious.

  Nurse Bayovna smiled and said, ‘Someone else will not be long.’

  She sent for Dr Bajorsky. He came as soon as he could. He and his patient regarded each other. Dr Bajorsky looked whimsical, Kirby as if the business of being awake was only for the contemplation of more sleep.

  ‘Ump,’ said Dr Bajorsky. He listened to Kirby’s heartbeats, looked into his pupils and moved the big toe of his left leg. ‘Ump,’ he said again. He ignored the swathed arm and leg. ‘If he stays awake,’ he said to Nurse Bayovna, ‘he can have some soup. If he doesn’t stay awake it doesn’t matter, sleep is more important than food at the moment.’

  When he had gone Nurse Bayovna, a strong, vigorous-bodied young woman with a gift for remaining calm when others could not, sent a message to Olga. Olga came flying, bursting into the room with a rush.

  ‘He’s been looking at me as if I don’t belong here,’ said Nicola, ‘so if you can stay a few moments I’ll see if I can fetch him some soup. Dr Bajorsky has seen him and said he migh
t have some.’

  As she left on her errand, Olga could hardly contain her desire to run to the bedside. But she approached without any apparent haste. His sleepy eyes looked wonderingly up at her.

  ‘Colonel Kirby, you’re awake,’ she said. It was very trite, very obvious, but it was said gladly, happily.

  ‘Am I?’ he said. His voice was slurry. ‘Let me see you.’ He seemed in abstracted contemplation of a stranger. ‘How odd,’ he said, seeing blue eyes when Nurse Bayovna’s had been green.

  Olga felt sudden panic. If he were to go into delirium … But there was no flush, no perspiration.

  ‘Nicola Bayovna has gone to find you some soup,’ she said as calmly as she could.

  He closed his eyes. He opened them again. He smiled. She wondered when the pain would return to him.

  ‘Good,’ he said dreamily.

  The panic went, beautiful relief flooded her.

  ‘Oh, you’re better, I know you are,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare be anything else after Dr Bajorsky has done so much for you. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you, Olga Nicolaievna,’ he said.

  He went to sleep again. He would not want the soup now. But what did that matter? She sat down by the bedside and waited happily for Nurse Bayovna to return.

  There were complications but none so serious that Dr Bajorsky could not deal with them. And when visitors were allowed Karita came to see the patient. She had returned to Petrograd from Baranovichi and had found a small apartment for herself.

  Paul Kateroff, a handsome student, accompanied her to Tsarskoe Selo. He was twenty-two and had been a student for many years. He did not want to be anything else until Russia had been turned upside down and made a fit place for a worker. His lank, black hair fell carelessly over his forehead, his eyes held the bright, burning light of the zealot. He refused to enter the Catherine Palace, saying he would wait outside until Karita had finished her visit.

  ‘I’ll not put one foot inside such a place,’ he said, ‘it’s a marble symbol of a libertine and an oppressor. I’ll only enter it when good Russians have cleansed it.’

  ‘How anyone so nice can be so silly, I don’t know,’ said Karita. Paul lived in an apartment above hers, sharing it with other impecunious students, with whom he talked and argued far into every night. No wonder he looked so thin and pale. But it was a look that appealed to certain women, for when he emerged he looked like a poet who had spent the night starving in his garret. Karita thought he would be very attractive when he had grown up. She left him pacing in restless contemplation of Russia’s problems. With help she found her way to the sickroom. Her knock was answered by no less a person than Grand Duchess Olga, looking clinically efficient in her uniform. Olga smiled, Karita opened her eyes in surprise, then dipped in a curtsey as she entered. This seemed to startle Olga.