The Summer Day is Done

by Mary Jane Staples

  After kisses had been bestowed and greetings were over, she sank low in a billowing curtsey.

  ‘Oh, great and corpulent Sultan,’ she began.

  ‘You mean opulent,’ said Tatiana. Her vitality was undimmed by her hospital work. She was like her mother only in her willowy elegance. She had a zest for life and an animation in company that had escaped the dreamful, introspective Alexandra.

  ‘Oh, great lord and commodious master,’ began Anastasia again, ‘I have been dreadfully distraught by your incapability—’

  ‘My what?’ said Kirby, his hand in Marie’s.

  ‘She means your incapacity,’ said Marie, ‘she’s so awfully ignorant at times that she makes us all blush.’

  ‘I’ll pinch you when we get home,’ said Anastasia. ‘Oh, reverend alabaster—’

  ‘Stasha, you horror!’ Tatiana choked on her laughter.

  ‘Well, I think reverend alabaster sounds perfectly lovely,’ said Anastasia, ‘it suits Ivan beautifully.’

  ‘Thank you, my little warbler,’ said Kirby.

  Anastasia shook back her ribboned hair and curtseyed again.

  ‘Alas, it is long since I slaved for my master—’

  ‘What a cheek,’ said Marie, ‘you never slaved at all, you only ever talked about it, and whenever Ivan wanted you you were never there.’

  ‘Only because I was already slaving on an errand for him,’ said Anastasia, ‘and to show him I’m not adamantly peeved about him being so long away I’ve brought my master an inexperienced gift. It’s a moon of solid gold.’

  And with a beamingly generous smile Anastasia presented Kirby with a fat, round, glowing orange.

  ‘Thank you excessively,’ he said, ‘but – er – inexperienced?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anastasia, ‘it’s not how much a present costs but the loving thought behind it, as Mama always says.’

  ‘You goose, you mean inexpensive,’ said Tatiana.

  ‘Actually,’ said Marie, ‘I’ve just brought you a nice orange, Ivan.’ And she produced an even plumper fruit.

  ‘Thank you too, Marie,’ said Kirby, ‘I shall have a very juicy time with these.’

  ‘You can spit the pips over the balcony,’ said Anastasia. ‘Alexis is away with Papa but I remembered to bring you something of his. It’s a rather nice piece of string, it’s for tying up things.’

  ‘My word,’ he said, accepting the length of twine, ‘if I can think of some things that need tying up when I’m not too busy, this could be the very thing. What a comfort it is to have friends like you young ladies.’

  ‘I should think it’s a shocking headache to have one like Anastasia,’ said Tatiana.

  ‘I shall now perform a slave dance that will make you sit up, great Sultan of the Seven Suns,’ said Anastasia.

  ‘I am sitting up,’ he said.

  ‘She means it will make you goggle,’ said Marie, ‘she’s the most frightful show-off.’

  Anastasia was always willing to accept such remarks as compliments. She smiled graciously at Marie. She began her dance, gliding around the balcony and describing what she considered were Arabian pirouettes with whisking swirls of her white dress.

  ‘Ah, a Spanish flamingo,’ said Kirby. ‘Yes, very goggling. Olé.’

  ‘Would you believe it,’ said Tatiana, ‘Ivan’s at it now.’

  ‘At what?’ said Marie.

  ‘Flamingo when he means flamenco,’ said Tatiana.

  ‘What’s a flamingo?’ asked Anastasia, breathless from a final pirouette.

  ‘Oh, just a pink goose on long legs,’ said Kirby.

  Olga arrived. She had managed to snatch time to bring his lunch and her own. She heard shrieks of laughter outside, went to the open windows and saw her three sisters around Colonel Kirby on the balcony. They were hilarious and he, infected by their gaiety, was helpless with laughter himself.

  For ecstatic moments there was to Olga no war, no bitterness, no suffering. There was only a warm, beautiful feeling that the happiness of Livadia had reached Tsarskoe Selo.

  Tatiana looked round. She saw Olga at the windows with a tray in her hands. Tatiana smiled, then caught her breath on a little dart of pain. Her adored sister’s eyes were brilliant with tears.

  They sent him away soon after. After the Russian advance over the Danubian plain had been checked, the Germans began to inflict massive defeats on the Imperial Army in Poland. They took Warsaw. Russia was stunned, bleeding. The need for more hospital beds became so critical that the very walls of the huge Catherine Palace seemed to bend outwards as wards were crammed to the limit of their capacity and beyond. They put five beds into Kirby’s room and sent Kirby himself to convalesce among Russian officers on an estate some thirty miles from Moscow.

  Dr Bajorsky apologized for the suddenness, the inconvenience, but there it was, the circumstances were such that there was no help for it and Colonel Kirby was to be evacuated immediately.

  Whatever Alexandra might have had to do with it, the fact was the hospital needed every inch of space and Kirby saw that this removal was a reasonable consequence of circumstances. He did not argue, only took the opportunity to thank Dr Bajorsky for all he had done. Dr Bajorsky, a tired ghost of a man now, shook his head.

  ‘I’d have taken your leg off, Colonel, as it happened,’ he said. ‘It was Her Highness the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna who prevented me. You owe more to her faith than you owe to my surgery.’

  ‘Dear God.’ It was an involuntary exclamation from Kirby. Dr Bajorsky, involved in so much of the frenzied activity of the morning, glanced at the Englishman and saw, perhaps, something of what he felt for the Grand Duchess. ‘Is she here?’ Kirby asked.

  ‘No. I think she has a late duty today. But if you wish to thank her then leave her a note. I’ll give it to her.’

  Kirby wrote it stiffly with his right hand.

  Olga knew nothing of his removal until she arrived later. She was stunned. Dr Bajorsky, explaining the reasons, was conscious of blue eyes looking frozen. He gave her Kirby’s note.

  My dear Olga. Thank you so much for everything.

  Thank you and bless you.

  They had taken away her escape to happiness. Now there was only the war.

  Chapter Four

  Karita was in splendid spirits. Kirby had written to her and she had gone to the convalescent retreat to join him. Paul Kateroff was astonished and angry. When he realized there was no thought in her mind of not going he told her that her subservience degraded her. She put her chin up.

  ‘Is it subservient to do what one wants to do?’ she said.

  ‘You’re no better than a serf, running when he says run, going when he says go—’

  ‘We are family, he’s my mother and father,’ said Karita.

  ‘You stupid girl, what does that mean except a lot of archaic nonsense?’

  ‘It means that I would rather be family with him than stay here and pull your silly nose,’ said Karita.

  Paul was so bitter that he made the mistake of saying things that made her blood rush and her body burn. But she let him finish, she was only thankful that Ivan Ivanovich was not present himself to hear what was said.

  Then she spoke. ‘I thought you better than some of the others, but when you insist on listening to so many lies and so much hatred it’s to be expected that you end up speaking obscenities yourself.’

  He had lost his golden-haired girl. He never saw her again. He died in the revolution, executed by Bolsheviks because he opposed their denial of free speech to all.

  On the estate given over by a patriotic landowner for accommodating convalescing officers, Karita lived among other servants. She was sad at times because the war was going so badly for her beloved Russia. But she would not have been less sad elsewhere, and elsewhere she would not have had her moments of warm satisfaction. Ivan Ivanovich was frankly delighted to have her there. He was so generous in his appreciation of all she did for him, her attentions liberally augmenting the cursory ministrations
of the limited medical staff, that Karita was almost embarrassed.

  ‘There’s no need to thank me so much for everything,’ she said, ‘after all, we are really family.’

  She had begun to say things like that. It amused him, endeared her to him. He laughed.

  ‘Karita, little one,’ he said, ‘I adore you.’

  ‘Oh, not improperly, I hope,’ said Karita.

  He shook with laughter.

  Karita was not only his comfort, she was his ally. He needed one here. The Russian armies were being battered and pounded on every front in the west, and the Russian officers were becoming bitter. Colonel Kirby was English and therefore the natural target for their bitterness. What was England doing apart from allowing Russia to make nearly all the sacrifices? The British sat safely in their French trenches and no doubt gambled only with cards while Russia lost thousands of lives a day. It was no wonder England could always win the last battle when every preceding battle was fought by her allies. Kirby used maps to try and explain the British case, he used population figures to show why Britain could not put such massive armies into the field as Germany or Russia. But he knew he sounded apologetic rather than convincing. Karita soon became aware of how he was being assailed by her countrymen and showed her resentment by actually arguing with them. They were astonished at first, then always they roared with laughter, smacked her on the bottom and told her to go and put ribbons in her hair. Karita was tempted to smack some of them back but one could not do that to men who had lost an eye, an arm, a leg. But they were very unfair. She knew that her Englishman loved Russia as much as they did.

  Kirby was using a crutch. He hopped about on this like a wooden-legged sailor, she said. She also said he was not to take too much notice of what the Russian officers said.

  ‘They’re trying to blame you,’ she said, ‘and you couldn’t have done more for Russia unless you had been blown completely to bits. Oh, why are people so stupid? And why is it the Germans are winning? It’s very sad, isn’t it?’

  ‘It isn’t because the Germans are better or braver, Karita,’ he said, as they sat together on a terrace overlooking a landscape of brown fields, ‘it’s because we’ve cared less about guns than they have.’

  ‘Why do you say we? You aren’t a Russian, it isn’t your fault.’

  ‘We all hide from reality if we can, we all tend to say it was the other fellow.’ His expression was sombre. ‘I may not be a Russian but I’ve had everything from Russia a man could want.’

  ‘Oh, you are nice to say that,’ she said. ‘So many people say terrible things about their own, but I’ve never heard you say anything at all terrible. And there’s so much trouble again, so much of people throwing bombs again. We put Peter Prolofski into a hole but there are more like him every day, all coming up out of different holes.’

  It was the first time she had mentioned Prolofski since that dark night at Livadia. They shared the secret very easily and with a great deal of mutual respect.

  ‘I remember Prolofski, Karita,’ he said, and put his arm around her shoulders. It made her feel warm and wanted. It was an extraordinarily nice feeling. ‘Now the Tsar is going to take over command of his armies from Grand Duke Nicholas. What do you think of that, Karita?’

  They looked out over the landscape of sunlit brown. It was pleasant enough, but without the colours and contours of the Crimea. The war was not so far away here. The Germans had overrun Poland. The atmosphere was unhappy.

  ‘The Tsar will beat them, you see,’ said Karita.

  ‘Perhaps, if they’ll give him guns and shells,’ said Kirby. She looked at his profile. She had never seen him so sombre. Her heart sank. If Ivan Ivanovich could not smile any more, what had happened to Russia? What was happening to it?

  ‘I wish he’d take you with him,’ she said, ‘you could think how to beat them.’

  He turned his head. Her brown eyes were full of trust in his infallibility. He shook his head. He laughed. Karita smiled in return. Anything was better than to have him gloomy.

  ‘Karita, I know nothing of how to move armies, I’m really only a desk soldier,’ he said. ‘All I know at the moment is that I don’t like the Tsar being so committed to isolation from his capital. Every enemy he has will move against him.’

  They were moving, but not so much against Nicholas as Alexandra. Totally unequipped to take on the role of autocratic regent, Alexandra nevertheless attempted it. Immediately she was attacked on all sides, and the attacks were venomous. Particularly hateful to her were the renewed accusations that she was pro-German. The slanders that attached implications to her relationship with Rasputin were unbearably crude and vicious. But because of her faith in the holy man and her devotion to God, she suffered every calumny with a spiritual strength that was unbreakable.

  The Russian retreat slowed down and a defensive line was established. But the loss of Poland had been a shock, and it was one from which the armies and the nation never really recovered. Alexandra did nothing to improve morale at home. All that she did do seemed to worsen things, yet she was utterly sincere in her conviction that all she did was for the good of Imperial Russia.

  Meanwhile Kirby found an ally with a more authoritative voice than Karita’s. Major Kolchak suddenly arrived. He seemed to have one shoulder awkwardly lower than the other and his arm threatened to be permanently stiff. He had the look of a man who had nearly been hanged. He was delighted to renew his acquaintance with Kirby, and on his first visit to the mess listened with his square, rugged face gradually darkening as fellow officers attacked Kirby for England’s shortcomings.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Major Kolchak’s voice startled them all into silence. ‘You’re forgetting yourselves. Colonel Kirby is our guest. He’s also my friend. Shall we talk of women we have known?’

  Yet in his own way Major Kolchak was the bitterest of them all. He directed his anger not against the Allies, however, but against Russian incompetence and corruption. He foresaw more than the possibility of Russia’s defeat, he foresaw the complete collapse of civil administration and the plunge into revolution. He had long conversations with Kirby. He was convinced that the first to go would be the Tsar himself.

  ‘Those who hate Nicholas or are envious of him include certain Romanovs,’ he said. ‘But if they contrive to destroy him then they themselves will be eliminated by the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries, once they have got rid of the reigning Romanov, will make sure they aren’t saddled with another. What an inglorious mess we’re in, my friend. And look at me, I’ll be lucky if I can draw a pistol in defence of the Tsar, let alone fire it.’

  ‘Stand behind me,’ said Kirby, ‘I’ll fire for both of us – but with my eyes shut.’

  Major Kolchak liked that.

  ‘Ah, we are two of a kind,’ he said, ‘I am a coward too, by God. And a useless one now.’

  But the human body being the resilient machine it is, Major Kolchak was declared fit enough to return to his unit in August. And not long afterwards Kirby returned to Petrograd.

  Alexandra, on one of her periodical visits to headquarters, casually mentioned what a remarkable recovery Colonel Kirby had made. He had written to Alexis, telling the Tsarevich he would soon be back in Petrograd where he expected to receive orders that would return him to the British military staff at headquarters.

  ‘I couldn’t be more pleased,’ said Nicholas. The strain of his new responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief showed in the new lines around his eyes. But he seemed relaxed at the moment. He always enjoyed Alexandra’s visits. To the stark militarism of Stavka she brought the luxury of trivialities, the news of friends or relatives. There was no time during their married lives when these two people were not happy to see each other, no time when Nicholas did not listen attentively to her ingenuous opinion of a minister’s failings or her homely recital of a domestic happening.

  ‘Colonel Kirby is a fine man,’ she said, then went on to talk about the children. She touched on Anastasia’s tendency to favour
things that made her fat, then on the wretchedness of circumstances that were spoiling the most exciting years of Olga’s life. ‘She works so hard, Nicky, and is under so much strain with her nursing. She will do more than she should. It’s such a shame that it should all be like this at a time when life ought to be at its sweetest for her. We must do all we can to see that the most important things don’t pass her by.’

  ‘Marriage, for instance?’ Nicholas mused on that subject, always a complicated one, always governed as much by politics as anything else where any of his children were concerned. ‘I don’t think she’s in any great hurry, my love, and I don’t think she will be while we’re still at war.’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ said Alexandra, close to him in the austere comfort of his railway coach, ‘I only feel we shouldn’t use the war as an excuse to overlook the matter or we may find we shan’t want to lose her at all. We must be fair to her.’

  ‘My feeling is that Olga would prefer us to leave it to happen rather than have us contrive it,’ said Nicholas. He could not quite see the point of Alexandra’s concern. There were simply no eligible suitors in the offing with the war situation as it was. Indeed, most of such suitors were on the side of the enemy.

  ‘But it would be unwise and unfortunate if she wanted us to leave it for the wrong reasons,’ said Alexandra. Never in the best of health now, she too had her other worries. There were dark shadows under her eyes.

  ‘Well, there’s little we can do except pray for victory and peace,’ said Nicholas in his philosophic way. For Nicholas there was always the hope that things would be better tomorrow. ‘Nobody will be happier then than Olga. She’ll think of marriage then, my love.’

  ‘I pray to God for victory, peace and Olga’s happiness,’ said Alexandra earnestly. Then for some reason she said, ‘As to Colonel Kirby, I’m sure he’ll be fretting for more active service when he returns from convalescence. It would be nice to be able to help him. What a pity we can only do so indirectly. If he were in the Russian army we could do so much more for him.’