The Summer Day is Done (45 page)

‘What can you tell me about them that I don’t already know?’ he said, smiling at her pretentiousness. He knew nothing of the happy times she had spent at Livadia, close to the Imperial family. Karita had never spoken of Livadia to him.

‘I don’t think you know anything about them,’ said Karita as they walked to the tram stop. ‘But you’re a nice boy and it will help you to know something.’

‘Boy?’ Paul had a warm longing for this golden-haired Crimean girl, and her casual definition of what he was to her dismayed him. He had studied everything there was to study on Russia and was academically mature and politically adult. A boy? From this young woman? Ridiculous.

‘Before you believe what some people say about others, you should find out about others for yourself,’ said Karita. A tram rattled by. They did not run to catch it at the stop. Trams were frequent. ‘I taught myself that, I discovered it was only fair to others. You must be fair too.’ And she went on to tell him about the Imperial family. He listened but did not believe. How could the Romanovs, directly or indirectly responsible for so much suffering and oppression, be the kind of people Karita said they were? If she had met them at all she had been dazzled by their outward magnificence. Some people, especially young women, were like that. They would express contempt for the Tsar, but if by chance they came close enough to him to receive a figurative pat on the head they reacted as if they had been blessed by God.

‘Perhaps they’re not as bad as some people make out,’ he said to humour her as they stood waiting for their tram, ‘but they’re still autocrats and in the end they’ll perish, Karita.’

It was strange how uncomfortable he felt then. He could not understand it, unless it was that the brown eyes she turned on him were without their usual softness. It was as if they burned.

‘If you were responsible in any way for harming them, if you helped to destroy any person I loved, I’d kill you, Paul,’ she said.

He was shocked but did not believe this, either.

He did not know Karita.

She went to see Colonel Kirby again the following day. She could forget the growing
hatreds outside when talking with him. He was like her. He did not believe in people hating each other. He liked people, he put up with their faults.

The summer had burst into excited splendour because of the magnificence of Russian victories against the Austrians in Galicia. The Tsar paid tribute to his heroic troops in person. He reviewed the wildly enthusiastic soldiers in the captured fortress citadel of Przemysl on a golden day. His visit inspired further triumphs, for a few weeks later the Russian steamroller advanced over the Carpathian mountains and, despite terrible losses in men, threatened the Danubian plain and Vienna itself. Europe trembled and politicians on both sides made great speeches. Almighty God received a mention in all of them.

Nicholas for once was held in considerable esteem by friend and foe. It was not to last, of course. He was too convenient a whipping boy.

Typically, it was Winston Churchill who, when all other prominent Allied statesmen were speaking slightingly of Nicholas on his abdication in 1917, declared him to be the inspiration behind all the heroic endeavours of his armies. He summed the Tsar up as a man of average ability but incomparable integrity and loyalty, as a simple man who accepted the titanic burdens of his vast responsibilities without complaint. And Churchill was frankly contemptuous of those who belittled him.

Churchill did not suffer small men lightly.

He did not consider Nicholas small.

Aunt Charlotte sat in the garden. It was shady under the old pear tree. Beyond the lawn the river glimmered through the delicate fronds of the willows. It was quiet. There weren’t the boats and the punts there used to be, except on Sundays. Everybody was so busy doing their bit. She herself was involved, helping with Red Cross work and knitting for the troops. Her knitting lay in her lap now. She was reading a letter from Karita. Her nephew John had written too and both letters had arrived in the one envelope, the envelope stamped OHMS.

Dear Aunt Charlotte. It is good and bad here, Colonel Kirby has been wounded that is bad, but it is good he is now more better. I go to see him in the hospikal where he was not sitting up last week but he is now so he is fine. I am cooking food in another hospikal it is not very good and I think it was more nice food when we gave the ducks to eat. How is ducks, good I hope and I speak very masterful English now Colonel Kirby say so. So now ducks understand me better when I see them again, also the postman and Mr Harris in the grochery. It is very bad war but will not be long to be over and then we come and see you again and be proper family. I am looking for someone very nice for Colonel Kirby to marry, then it be more family. Your loving Karita Katerinova
.

The adorable girl, thought Aunt Charlotte.

It would not do to tell her that the ducks had vanished. Aunt Charlotte suspected they had been nefariously abducted to augment the rations of people whose greed was greater than their scruples. Who but the unscrupulous would
slaughter innocent ducks in order to fill their stomachs for a brief period? One did not like to admit it, but the war brought out the worst in so many people.

What on earth did the child mean, she was looking for someone very nice for John to marry? Was he so remote from his responsibilities as a normal man that he couldn’t look for himself? Indeed, he didn’t have to look at all. It was about time he saw what was in front of him.

Convinced on that score, Aunt Charlotte took up her knitting.

‘
From the east to western Ind

No jewel is like Rosalind
.

Her worth, being mounted on the wind
,

Through all the world bears Rosalind
.

All the pictures fairest lin’d

Are but black to Rosalind
.

Let no face—

Are you listening, Colonel Kirby?’

‘Intently,’ he said. He was in a wheelchair out on the balcony, the Russian sun a balmy caress. Olga sat nearby, her Shakespeare open in her hands. She regarded him suspiciously over the top of the book.

‘I’m not sending you to sleep?’ she said.

‘You read beautifully, Olga. I’m fascinated by the promise of Rosalind.’

‘Are you? You looked to me as if you were about to nod off.’

‘It was the look of suspended bliss,’ said Kirby. ‘A natural state when one is under the spell of sunshine, and a transient Grand Duchess.’

‘Transient?’ said Olga, intrigued.

‘Yes. Here one moment, gone the next.’

‘That’s nothing to do with being transient,’ said Olga, ‘that’s to do with my being busy elsewhere.’

He did not need a nurse in attendance now. He had not needed one for quite a while. Olga only came to see him when a break in her ward duties permitted, when she would bring fruit to eat for her lunch and be with him while he ate his. She did not do this every day. She was too well aware that her mother considered she was stretching friendship with Colonel Kirby to the limit. She did not want her brief, irregular visits to be forbidden.

‘I know how busy you are, Olga,’ he said. The Germans had reinforced the Austrians in Galicia, the battles were bloody and serious, the Russian hospitals full again with casualties. ‘I know how limited your free time is and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate every minute you spare for me.’ It sounded stilted, ordinary. He wanted to say, he could have said, much more. He could have said that he loved her so much it might be better for his peace of mind if she didn’t come at all. Sometimes his desire to cherish her became what perhaps it was, an impossible chivalry, a virtuous fantasy. That often happened when she was close to him, stooping to tuck the hospital blanket around his knees, when she would look up at him, her smile asking him if he thought she was fussing him too much. Her mouth, unkissed in passion, offered a promise that her status denied him. It was on such occasions that
tender desire to cherish seemed anaemic and unreal beside desire that was an ache, a longing, a pain.

Olga could have told him that he was her only escape from the tragedy and suffering all around her in the Catherine Palace. She could have told him that only in this room was she happy. But by now she too was beginning to cover her emotions with lightness, to ward off the dangerous moments with whimsy.

So she said, ‘Well, yes, I’m really being very generous with my favours, you know.’

‘Oh? To whom?’ he said. ‘Is there a wounded Crown Prince here?’

‘Oh, there are a hundred,’ she said, ‘and all of them dashingly handsome. There’s one with a moustache that turns up, one with a moustache that turns down, and one with divinely white teeth who wants to eat me.’

‘Dear me,’ said Kirby, stroking his own moustache, ‘a royal gourmet of very fine discrimination.’

‘I don’t think being swallowed whole for dinner would feel like very fine discrimination to me,’ said Olga, ‘but since we’re speaking about them – Crown Princes, I mean – at least they don’t get themselves deplorably knocked about. One doesn’t have to worry about Crown Princes in wartime. They aren’t allowed to be fired at.’

‘I don’t like the sensation myself, I must admit,’ he said. He thought for a moment, then smiled as he said, ‘Yes, I wish I’d been born a Crown Prince.’

‘Oh,’ said Olga. She looked at her Shakespeare,
closed it. That was a very dangerous moment. She had nearly rushed into the most impulsive response. She steadied herself and said, ‘Oh, I don’t know if it would have suited you, Colonel Kirby. And you’d have had Marie and Anastasia following you about in the most embarrassingly ambitious way.’

‘I could have dealt with that,’ he said.

‘Please don’t be modest,’ said Olga, ‘tell me how.’

‘I’d have eaten them. I presume all Crown Princes have the same appetite for tender Grand Duchesses.’

‘Colonel Kirby – oh, you are – do you know what you are?’

‘What am I?’

‘Greedy,’ said Olga.

And, as they so often did, they laughed together.

‘Excuse me.’

Startled, Olga looked up. At the open windows stood a young, fair man attired in a formal morning suit and carrying a well-used Gladstone bag. He smiled apologetically. Olga rose.

‘How charming,’ he said, taking a longer look at this blue-eyed nurse. ‘Do forgive this intrusion, but I knocked and no one answered and I’m afraid I came in without being asked. I’m here to see Colonel Kirby, if I may.’ His Russian was awful, his accent English.

‘Oh?’ Kirby regarded the young man from his chair on the balcony. ‘You have the advantage, I think.’

‘Oh, are you Colonel Kirby?’ He spoke in
English now. ‘Delighted to meet you, sir. I’m Ronald Vine from the British Embassy. What a lovely spot in which to recuperate. The view of the park is wonderful.’ He looked at Olga again. ‘By Jove, I almost envy you, sir. Charming, charming.’

Olga blushed a little. Mr Vine’s admiration was very frank. Kirby smiled. Olga, for all that she would be twenty this year, could still not deal sophisticatedly with strangers.

‘I’ll leave you to talk to Colonel Kirby, Mr Vine,’ she said. Her perfect English, with its softest of accents, shamed his execrable Russian. He almost blushed himself. He glanced after her as she left the balcony and entered the room.

‘Quite stunning,’ he murmured.

‘Quite,’ smiled Kirby. ‘Sit down, Mr Vine.’

Vine took the chair Olga had vacated. He was a cheerful, confident young man.

‘They thought someone ought to come and see you, sir,’ he said. ‘You’re so well thought of. His Excellency is most impressed.’

‘Really?’ Kirby spoke drily. ‘What about?’

‘Oh, everything,’ said Vine. ‘By the excellent relations you maintain with our hosts, for one thing, and then there’s a copy of a letter he’s seen from a Major Kolchak.’

‘What letter?’

‘Why, the one in which Major Kolchak asks that due recognition be given you for heroically saving his life.’

‘For heroically trying to make a run for it is more like it,’ said Kirby. ‘Major Kolchak and I were blown up together and when it happened
I had my back to the enemy and the enemy was still miles away. Good God, you don’t mean someone’s thinking of giving me a medal?’

‘Well, a citation, perhaps.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Kirby, ‘I’d never be able to look Karita Katerinova in the eye again.’

‘Who is she?’ asked Vine.

‘Someone who knows I shake in my shoes when there are heroics going on. Tell His Excellency that Major Kolchak didn’t know the truth of it.’

‘Just as you like, sir,’ said Vine breezily. ‘By the way, His Excellency said that if it hadn’t already been arranged by your superiors, he’d do his best to see that as soon as you’re fit he’d get you back to England for your convalescence. By George, think of the theatre in London and the hunting in Berkshire.’ He checked his breeziness, aware that Colonel Kirby was looking thunderous. He coughed. ‘By the way, sir, we wondered if you’d like some work to do? Entirely up to you, of course, but I hear you don’t like being idle even as an invalid.’

‘I’m not an invalid, I’ll be running about in a week.’

‘Jolly good. Well, look, sir, there’s an awful lot of translation work which I hear you’re superb at, much of it right in your class. Nothing confidential, of course, but something just to keep your hand in. If you’d care to, of course.’

Something like a grin softened Kirby’s scowl. It was a relief to the cheerful Mr Vine.

‘Leave it on the bed,’ said Kirby. It was work he liked. It would help the hours go by.

‘Oh, that’s damned good of you, sir,’ said Vine,
‘we’re so short of staff at the embassy. I must say,’ he went on happily, ‘that’s an extraordinarily charming nurse you have. Rather makes a fellow want to stay on, don’t you think?’ This time he thought Kirby was looking at him as if he wore all the hallmarks of incurable idiocy. ‘I say, have I said something gauche?’

‘How long have you been in Petrograd?’ said Kirby.

‘Ouch,’ said Vine, ‘does my inexperience show up my immaturity?’ He gave an engaging grin. It made Kirby like him. ‘I’m very new, I’m afraid, I’ve only been out here two months. The shine hasn’t worn off, has it?’