The Summer Day is Done Page 17

  ‘Become an actress,’ he suggested.

  ‘My dear man,’ said Andrei, ‘she is already a prima donna.’

  ‘You see how Ivan can dislike me at times?’ said Aleka. ‘I don’t mind being beggared for the cause, but I do mind being disposed of. He’d dispose of me by putting me to work in the decadent theatre. That’s all he thinks I’m good for, to paint my face, put on costume and prance about. I should hope I was more invaluable to socialism than that. You see what love has done for him, Andrei? It’s made him sour. Poor Ivan, did you find her in love with another?’

  Kirby thought of Felicity Dawes.

  ‘I had an aberration,’ he said, ‘and now I daren’t look her in the face again.’

  ‘How fortuitous,’ said Andrei, ‘and how convenient. But that, of course, is what aberrations are for. I have had a hundred.’

  Karita was extremely impressed by St Petersburg. It was so different from any Crimean town, so much more expansive and inspiring. The snow might be cold and damp at the moment but by the turn of the year the atmosphere would become clear, sparkling and brilliant.

  Kirby introduced his glowing, excited servant to the city, and Karita, snug and warm in her new furs, rode with him in droshkies or sleighs that sped over every fresh fall of snow to set her face tingling. The centre of the city was dominated by the ancient Admiralty buildings, constructed under the guiding hand of Peter the Great, and the wide streets radiated in long, straight prospect from this focal point. The theatres and opera houses were cultural monuments to the city’s greatness, and Karita’s eyes opened wide at their magnificent exteriors. She liked it best at night, when the frozen snow sparkled with a million eyes of reflected light under the lamps, when the capital came to glittering life and its privileged aristocracy rode on their swift, jingling sleighs to theatres, restaurants and clubs.

  She did not mind the cold. She was healthy, the blood of her Tartar ancestors warm in her veins. In her fur hat and sable coat, her golden skin glowing, her brown eyes alive, she looked young, eager and beautiful. Kirby thought her the most attractive and companionable of persons. More, he found her interest in St Petersburg a channel into which he could pour the attention he could not give to Olga. Sometimes she even reminded him of Olga. That was when she was lost in wonder and curiosity, and when, because St Petersburg contained so much that was awe-inspiring, she was a little unsure of herself. Sometimes she even seemed shy. Not in quite the way that Olga was, but in the way that many girls of the era were.

  He had a tendency to tease her. Karita did not mind that a bit. He teased her because she always insisted on bringing breakfast to him in bed. Karita had never known any member of the nobility who got up for breakfast at Karinshka, and so she blushed at his suggestion that it would be easier and more convenient if they breakfasted together in the kitchen.

  ‘But that would never do, never,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not proper to start with. It would look very odd.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘People would think I was neglecting my duties if you had to get up to eat.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said from the comfort of his bed, ‘from now on I’ll take lunch and dinner in bed in addition to breakfast. We can’t have people talking about you.’

  ‘Lunch and dinner aren’t the same thing at all,’ said Karita primly, ‘and it’s no good looking down your nose, I know when you’re teasing me.’

  She was very upset one day at his suggestion that it might be desirable to engage a second servant, perhaps a cook.

  ‘I’m not satisfactory? I cannot cook?’

  ‘You’re very satisfactory, and you cook beautifully. But you do every bit of the work.’

  ‘But you make no work, only a little,’ she said. ‘Is it because I’ve done something wrong?’

  ‘No, little treasure, it’s because you ought to have company,’ he said, ‘I leave you alone too much at night. At Karinshka you were never alone.’

  But she was sure he had found some fault in her. She did not mind too much if he engaged another servant, but she would mind very much if it was because she was inadequate in some way.

  ‘But I’ve made friends with other servants in the other apartments,’ she said, ‘and we often sit together in the evenings. However, monsieur, you must decide, of course.’

  He smiled. Monsieur was how she now addressed him when she was on her dignity. He put his hand under her chin, lifting her face. It was a familiar gesture of affection. It turned Karita rosy. He was going to kiss her.

  ‘No, Karita, you decide,’ he said, ‘and if ever you want another servant to help with the work, I’ll engage one. I’m more than happy to leave it to you. Are you moderately happy?’

  ‘Oh, I’m very happy, Ivan Ivanovich,’ said Karita.

  He smiled. But he didn’t kiss her, after all. Nor had he ever said anything about her sable coat to indicate that she was expected to be generous herself.

  The following day, in response to a message, he went to the offices of the Imperial Import & Export Company. Reflecting on the fact that the undercover administration of his trade was so often established behind the façade of this kind of business, he felt he couldn’t be the only one who realized this. The manager, a man from Hampshire called Brown, received him genially, took him into another office and there he was welcomed in fatherly fashion by Anstruther.

  ‘My, dear sir,’ said Kirby, ‘have you been promoted or demoted?’

  ‘You will have your little joke,’ said Anstruther. St Petersburg’s winter had paled his brown face somewhat, but to compensate he wore a chocolate-brown suit. ‘So you’re interesting yourself in politics?’

  ‘I’ve been meeting people while waiting for someone to call me,’ said Kirby, ‘but I’ve never been interested in politics. Politics benefit only politicians. I like people myself.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Anstruther, ‘it’s not like you to sound depressed.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Kirby.

  ‘But I agree with you, of course. Politicians must have their games to play. You and I are safer on the sidelines. Politics are made up of Utopian promises and unsatisfactory consequences. I must tell you that they think you’re doing an excellent piece of liaison work with the socialists here, but no one can trace the source of the assignment.’

  ‘It’s not an assignment, as you well know. I’ve merely attended some receptions given by the Princess Karinshka. They’ve been very wearing.’

  Anstruther looked sympathetic.

  ‘Yes, I can understand that,’ he said. ‘But interesting, all the same. And a fine piece of freelance work. Write us a report, will you? It will be useful to know the current opinions of the radicals, it might give us some idea of whose side they’ll be on in the event of an international crisis.’

  ‘What opinions d’you think I hear? People at a Russian reception all talk at once. You couldn’t hear a bomb drop.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ said Anstruther, toying with a sample tin of export pink salmon, ‘you must know what they’re saying. Every little helps, you know. And it’s for the benefit of the people in the long run. We’ll expect something from you in a couple of days. Meanwhile, comfort yourself with some personally good news. You’ve been gazetted into the army. It’s in The Times. In the spring you’ll join our mission of military observers at the Russian manoeuvres and so on. You’ll like the fact that it’s an entirely straightforward job, aside from the opportunity you’ll have of checking certain aspects of that armament and munitions report we had from you. You’ll make an ideal observer and we hope you’ll like the uniform. We’re committed now to being as friendly as possible towards Russia. We look upon them as our future allies. You can be nice to them without feeling the pangs of deceit. By the way, they’ve made you a colonel. There’ll be red tabs as well. Your home regiment is the 14th Hussars. I don’t suppose you’ll quibble at that. I’ll let you know when the uniform is ready. Until then just let us have a repo
rt now and again on how the radicals are thinking. I don’t think we want a revolution here at the moment. It could drastically affect the balance of power.’

  ‘I feel,’ said Kirby, ‘that you’ve been reading all that from The Boys’ Friend. It’s full of good clean fun and adventure. You don’t, I suppose, know what happens in the next chapter?’

  ‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ said Anstruther briskly. ‘Is your apartment satisfactory? It was the best we could get.’

  ‘My servant thought a house overlooking the river would have been better.’

  ‘H’m,’ said Anstruther, ‘your servant must think you’re a lord.’

  ‘She does,’ said Kirby, ‘I told you that before.’

  Princess Aleka was endeavouring to lionize him. He was her new interest for the moment, and she felt he was intriguing enough to do justice to her talent for finding social lions. He soon realized what she was up to. She was lionizing herself. On one occasion she introduced him to a circle of acquaintances and hangers-on as an Englishman who had rubbed shoulders with radical notabilities like George Bernard Shaw.

  He drew her aside.

  ‘I’ve never met George Bernard Shaw and he wouldn’t want to meet me.’

  ‘Don’t be so modest,’ she said, ‘and please don’t shout.’

  ‘Why not? Everybody else does.’

  ‘Don’t be tiresome, darling.’ She was cool and decorous in light grey, high-necked. ‘What’s the matter with you? Do you wish me to find you a woman?’

  ‘I’m still trying to find you a man.’

  ‘You are an absolute pig,’ she said. ‘Everything could so easily be perfect, we could make devastating love together, but no, you avoid me, you leave as soon as my receptions are over. Ivan, you aren’t a bit nice to me.’

  He surveyed her grey-clad elegance. She was as sly and as fascinating as a red-headed witch at the moment. It was an afternoon salon, her guests mostly radical intellectuals who were already launched into their habitual monologues. The buzz began to rise and fall.

  He had brought Karita with him. She was helping to look after the guests. Intellectuals were the most ravenous of them all. Karita’s main responsibility, however, was to use any excuse she could to get her master away by five o’clock.

  ‘Aleka,’ he said, ‘I can’t make devastating love to a woman who passes me around.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so bourgeois, you’re acting like a shopkeeper who goes home at night to be respectable. And I’m not passing you round, I’m having you meet people who matter. Please, darling, be a little intelligent this afternoon, there are people here who are dying to hear all about Sidney and Beatrice from you.’

  ‘Sidney and Beatrice?’

  ‘Yes, you know, the Webbs of London. They’ve written books about a new social order and are very expert on the principles of gradual socialism. They are greatly admired here, so I said, of course, that you’d talk about them.’

  ‘I don’t know the first thing about them.’

  ‘Now, darling,’ she murmured, ‘you can be very impressive when you’re in the mood, and you can make up whatever you like about them. You can talk about how you saved their lives when the House of Lords tried to assassinate them. There’s no need to look like that, I know that’s all a flight of my fancy, but you’ll be able to make it sound beautiful. You need not be modest. Also, it’s important that you emphasize how Russian socialists have the support of their British comrades.’ She refused to waste any more time. She swung round, picked up a little silver bell and rang it. The buzzing stopped and Aleka said, ‘Dear friends, some of you have already met Ivan Ivanovich. He’s from England, where he’s active in the cause of the people. And how wonderful, he is actually intimate with such great international socialists as Sidney and Beatrice Webb—’

  ‘Ah.’ It was a sigh of appreciation, an encouragement rather than an interruption.

  ‘Also,’ continued Aleka, ‘he has many times debated with George Bernard Shaw. I simply cannot tell you how delighted I am that he wishes to meet you all and speak with you all.’

  Good Lord, thought Kirby, as he stepped into the vacated limelight and came up against an expectant hush, they’re going to listen for once, only this time to someone with nothing to say.

  He had better think of something.

  ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘I think it must have been George Bernard Shaw who said that to conduct a successful circus you must first of all produce a lion. I’m not sure what happens if the lion fails to roar, however. Who would like to ask me some questions?’

  Karita, glancing from across the room, thought he looked tall and very sure of himself, but what he had meant by his reference to circuses and lions she had no idea.

  Yes, she had. She laughed to herself.

  ‘Monsieur,’ said a black-bearded man, quite benign despite the hirsute ferocity of his appearance, ‘where at present do the estimable Sidney and Beatrice Webb place the influence of trade unionism in a wholly capitalist society? Isn’t it true that they consider the confluence an anomaly and that healthy capitalism means weak trade unionism?’

  ‘How delighted I am, sir,’ said Kirby, ‘that you’ve answered the question so well yourself. Are there any more?’

  There were. Inevitably they all began asking at once. That is to say, the end of one question ran into the beginning of another, and all Kirby could do was to meet each question halfway.

  ‘Yes, that’s quite correct – no, the use of carrier pigeons for the importation of banned books for the masses is impractical because of the weight – madam, I’ve never seen Beatrice Webb in proletarian or non-proletarian hats – I’m sorry, sir, I lost the best part of your question – but to the gentleman on your left whose question is just arriving I’d say both Sidney and Beatrice are totally committed to the Japanese interpretations – yes, it’s very confusing – yes, please do all speak together, it concertinas the questions most conveniently – madam, I assure you, George Bernard Shaw and I ride the same horse – well, do repeat the question if you get a chance—’ And so he went on.

  Princess Aleka was almost panting with the effort of controlling her hysteria as she retreated to hide herself among the servants.

  ‘Will we serve tea now, Highness?’ asked Karita.

  Aleka leaned helplessly against the wall.

  ‘Karita, oh that fiend, he really is turning my afternoon salon into a circus,’ she gasped.

  ‘Highness?’

  ‘That terrible Ivan Ivanovich – he’s a monster of upside-down perfidy. Yes, you had better serve tea before I kill him.’ She choked with laughter. Karita permitted herself a giggle.

  The real questions were beginning to falter, the guests beginning to put fingers into their ears and to look glassily at Kirby.

  ‘I am sure,’ observed benign black-beard to his neighbour, ‘that the fellow is mad.’

  ‘Egocentric, I’d say. Ah, here is the tea.’

  They swarmed around the samovars, glad to escape from the roaring lion. They munched cakes and pastries. Aleka took Kirby by the arm.

  ‘Ah, my dearest friend,’ she whispered, ‘when they’ve gone I will kill you.’

  ‘Why?’ He took the glass of tea Karita brought him and gave her a smile. She was sure he winked as well. He was dreadful. ‘I thought I was impressive and I’ve still to tell them how I fought off the House of Lords single-handed while Sidney and Beatrice made their escape.’

  ‘Make a fool of yourself if you must,’ said Aleka, ‘but not of me. You are maddening. And it’s so funny.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Darling, you’ll find you’ve made yourself an enormous success. They will all go away and talk about you. Even so, don’t you dare do it again. The cause is not to be ridiculed.’

  ‘Ah, there’s Karita signalling me,’ he said, ‘I must go.’

  ‘Oh, you infamous coward, you dare!’ Her eyes flashed. ‘When they’ve gone you and I will be alone – Ivan, you’re to be nice to me—’
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br />   ‘I must definitely go,’ he said, ‘or I shan’t be nice to you at all. Do you want your dress torn?’

  ‘Yes, violently,’ she said.

  But he left while her guests were still gulping and munching. He took Karita with him. Aleka fumed.

  It was Andrei who told him he had heard the Tsarevich had been very ill since the autumn. Andrei mentioned it casually. Kirby took it to heart. The Imperial family, in residence at Tsarskoe Selo, were close enough for him to visit. He thought, however, that Alexandra might not want that. She had always been kind but it was reasonable enough for her to want to discourage his further association with Olga.

  So he wrote Alexandra a letter of concern and sympathy. She replied some days later, briefly but in her usual sincere fashion, thanking him excessively for writing about Alexis and telling him the boy was better but still very weak. She did not say what had been wrong with him and she did not ask Kirby to visit them.

  He understood.

  Chapter Eight

  It was mid-January and the season was in full swing. Alive and invigorating at this time of the year, St Petersburg was a capital full of people in search of culture and pleasure. Its aristocrats were either oblivious of the country’s unrest or untroubled by it. Any unrest in the city itself was always dealt with so speedily by the authorities that it was never more than a temporary headline. The power of the Okhrana, with its vast army of servants and informers active throughout Russia, was such that potential agitations and demonstrations were crushed before they could be publicly organized. The nobles were confident too that the Tsar, when he eventually came to his senses, would disband the Duma once and for all. Indeed, if he would only instruct its president, Rodzianko, then Rodzianko would smother it by the sheer formidability of his will and his weight. Rodzianko was an aristocrat of great size and competence.

  Unfortunately, he was not altogether in favour with Alexandra.

  He did not like Rasputin.

  The holy man had prophesied that while he lived the Tsar and the throne would be safe. Whether he said this out of genuine mystic conviction or to keep people like Rodzianko off his back, only Rasputin knew. Nothing he did or said made clear, practical sense: there was always an element of ambivalence, of ‘I alone know what I and God are talking about.’