The Summer Day is Done Page 2

  ‘Go to sleep,’ she said crossly, ‘and yes, I do. I want a democratic system of government, not a Tsarist Council of fat old Ministers.’

  ‘Under a democracy, what would happen to the Tsar?’ asked Kirby.

  Andrei shuddered. ‘Not so loud, dear fellow,’ he said.

  ‘But nothing will happen to him,’ said Aleka. ‘He’ll still be the Tsar but not an autocratic one. You’re against our Tsar? There, you see, Andrei, that’s an Englishman for you. He’ll hear nothing against his own royalty but wishes to do away with ours. Isn’t that outrageous?’

  ‘My sweet chicken,’ said Andrei, ‘why not let him speak for himself?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ she demanded, her silk dress whispering as she moved restlessly. ‘You can’t be a nothing for ever.’

  ‘It’s my earnest wish,’ said Andrei, ‘for all of us to mind our own business and not make life discomforting for our neighbours.’

  ‘Poor, ridiculous Andrei Mikhailovich,’ she said, ‘you’ll be swept away one day when there are no more corners to sit in. Mr Kirby, when you are in England do you belong to the rich or the poor?’

  ‘Comfortably off is the expression,’ he said. ‘In Russia I borrow Andrei’s servants.’

  ‘Oh, pooh,’ she said. ‘One day there will be no servants in Russia. One day it will all be very different. But not for a long time. Shall I tell you why?’

  ‘Don’t insist, dear chap,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Because you can’t change any system as autocratic as ours without first changing the people,’ said Aleka, ‘and Russian people will be harder to change than any others. They’re ridiculously bound by what they think is the will of God. It isn’t the will of God at all, it’s the will of the Boyars.’

  ‘You’re a Boyar,’ said Andrei. He wished she would be a little less formidable. He would be able to close his eyes then and wait peacefully for lunch.

  ‘I disown them,’ said Aleka. ‘Mr Kirby, I could dislike all my servants, not for being servants but for not wanting to change their lot.’

  ‘Why not give them each an acre of land and let them become their own masters?’ said Kirby.

  ‘They would sit on it and die,’ she said. ‘They would die of shame. They would say I was trying to make peasants of them.’

  ‘Dear me,’ he said.

  ‘So I keep them,’ she said, ‘but I don’t apologize for it. I too am trapped by the system.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said cheerfully, ‘under the system as it is Andrei is able to order champagne with our lunch.’

  Princess Aleka thought little of that nonsense.

  ‘It’s easy for you,’ she said. ‘You can play the uninvolved observer full of complacency because whatever you see is not your responsibility.’

  She said no more after that. She seemed suddenly moody. She was a paradox, an aristocrat desirous of making a backward Russia look forward. She favoured the elimination of privilege which she herself enjoyed. It was privilege which most of all held Russia back. Kirby did not see how she and others of a similar mind could replace Tsarist autocracy with a people’s democracy except by a miracle. Autocracy in Russia was immovably entrenched and was, moreover, accepted rather than objected to by the people. Such opposition bold enough to take violent action, notably in the uprising of 1905, had always been localized and easy to crush.

  Nevertheless, there had been some attempt to appease insistent and growing demands for the people’s representatives to be heard in the halls of autocratic power. So in 1905 the country was allowed an elected parliament, the Duma. But the Tsar did not relinquish his right to appoint ministers and to control defence and foreign policy. He also retained the power to boot the Duma into the street, although Nicholas II, being the mild man he was, would never have made it look exactly like that.

  Nicholas was inflexible in only one thing, his belief in the divine right of the Tsars. He could not allow the Duma to introduce and pass legislation which impinged on this divinity. He dissolved the first Duma after seventy-three days, applying the boot more in sorrow than anger. He genuinely believed, in any case, that the rapport between himself and his people made an intermediary organization, such as the Duma, an anachronism. However, he was willing to try, to be generous. The second Duma came into being and lasted one hundred and three days. The third Duma was, in 1911, in its fourth year of office, its mandate being for five years. So there was hope.

  Kirby had not entered Russia ignorant of its politics, its problems and its anomalies, and he had come to know more of these during his three years in various parts of the country. He could afford to linger. His father, an artillery colonel, had been killed in the Boer War. His mother, passionately devoted to her lively and flamboyant husband, did not long survive him and in 1905 Kirby at twenty-two suddenly found himself at the mercy of two possessive spinster aunts, who adored him. It was no great ordeal, for Emma and Charlotte Kirby were too lovable to make their possessiveness an irritation.

  Emma, the elder, owned a Georgian cottage at Walton-on-Thames. There both sisters lived and Kirby spent most of his time with them. When Emma died in 1909 she left her not inconsiderable investments to her nephew. She also bequeathed him the cottage, with the stipulation that his Aunt Charlotte should be in residence for her lifetime. As he had also inherited several thousand pounds from his mother, Kirby became an English gentleman in that he had independent means and did not spit in public places.

  Academically, he was the product of different schools and tutors, since his parents had disdained the normal practice of sending him to a public school, preferring to have him with them wherever his father’s postings took them. He had seen the world while he was growing up, acquired a cosmopolitan outlook and an understanding of people.

  He was observant. This trait had come to the notice of others. He was not as entirely uninvolved as Princess Aleka had suggested.

  Quite suddenly the brakes screeched, and the whole train rocked and shuddered. They were thrown into a disorderly heap on the floor. Shouts and screams sounded from one end of the train to the other.

  Kirby, conscious of slim legs in pale grey silk stockings, wanted to say, ‘Anyone for tennis?’ but decided they would think he was hysterical. He pulled himself up and helped Aleka to her feet. She dusted herself down angrily. Andrei unfolded himself disgustedly.

  ‘Really,’ he said to Kirby, ‘what must you think of our railways?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a fool,’ said Aleka, ‘go and see what has happened, both of you.’

  That autocratic command coming from a professed socialist was, thought Kirby, not quite what a democrat would have expected.

  ‘Is your leg broken? Are you in pain?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t be so damned whimsical,’ she said.

  ‘We’d better go,’ sighed Andrei, ‘she’ll be unpleasant if we don’t.’

  They left the coach, climbing down on to the track and mingling with passengers from other coaches. The engine was a roar of steam. Princess Aleka put her head out of the window. Kirby smiled up at her. Her hat was askew. Train officials hurried by. Andrei detained one of them to enquire what it was all about.

  ‘It is nothing, nothing,’ said the official and hurried on. Kirby followed, Andrei picked his leisurely way. The engine stood in huge, steaming aloofness. It had come to a halt only a few yards from the beginning of a sweeping bend. A collection of timber baulks had been jammed into its path and in such a way as almost certainly to ride the front wheels off the lines. The driver was down on the track, grimacing at the near miss. Officials and passengers seethed around him. The driver, grimy from woodsmoke, did not like being shouted at. He had not been at fault, he had not placed the obstruction there. It was not his job to clear it, he had more than enough responsibilities as it was. Had he not been alert and perceptive the train would have been wrecked. Officials who were demanding action from him were peasants. He refused to labour at removing the baulks. That was work for others.

  Kirby
knew they would argue interminably unless someone did something. He set to and with the help of passengers in more of a hurry to get to Sevastopol than the officials seemed to be, began to loosen the jammed timbers. The driver looked on approvingly.

  ‘Now there’s a man who’s not a dying bag of wind,’ he said to the officials. ‘You should be ashamed to stand aside and watch someone who has paid for his seat do your work for you.’

  ‘This was meant for the Tsar’s train,’ said one official, paling a little.

  ‘What?’ said the driver. ‘Can’t they tell the difference between my train and the Tsar’s? Do I show the Imperial standard? Do I pull coaches of blue and gold? What are things coming to when short-sighted fools put me at this kind of risk? When you find them I’ll feed them to my engine. All they’re good for is making fuel.’ He climbed back into his cab. ‘Here,’ he called to Kirby seconds later, and the Englishman came to take the enormous crowbar the driver offered. It made easier and shorter work of prising the timbers free.

  Andrei looked on as if he were going to faint. Close proximity to manual labour always gave him a sick headache.

  ‘I’m simply no good at this sort of thing, old fellow,’ he said to the sweating Kirby.

  ‘I know,’ said Kirby, levering with the crowbar, ‘but you’re a good friend, Andrei. Go and lie down somewhere.’

  When they returned to the coach Princess Aleka could not believe what she saw. The Englishman’s white silk shirt was smudged with dust and dirt, wet with patches of perspiration. And his hands were filthy. Andrei, still immaculate, sank into his seat, thankful it was all over.

  ‘What is all this?’ said Aleka, referring to the sweat and grime.

  ‘It’s something I keep picking up,’ said Kirby. She regarded the man behind the dirt. He returned her look with gravity. It made her sure he was laughing at her. ‘Shall I wash and change for lunch, do you think?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t mind whether you do or not,’ she said. Loudly, over Andrei’s head, she added, ‘It’s always nice to meet a man who is not afraid to sweat.’

  ‘It’s exhausting to others,’ said Andrei.

  Over the meal in the dining car Princess Aleka sparkled with life. The ornate, gilded car was full of diners and Kirby wondered if, in a compulsive desire to draw attention to herself, she was deliberately theatrical. She did not need to be. Her striking beauty alone was enough. The car was bright with colourful women, it hummed with conversation and was gay with laughter. Russians were never more alive than when they were eating and drinking.

  The champagne induced increased vivacity in Aleka, brought a delicate flush to her paleness.

  She looked at him. He wore a jacket with collar and tie now. He was not going to amuse her, she thought, he was only going to be politely charming. He seemed very sure of himself.

  ‘What is your name now?’ she said. ‘In English it’s John? Yes, I think that was it. I shall call you Ivan. What is your father’s name?’

  ‘His name was John too.’

  His use of the past tense did not evoke an enquiry.

  ‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘So you are Ivan Ivanovich. I am Aleka Petrovna. Now we know each other very well. When do you return to England?’

  ‘I haven’t made any plans,’ he said. The prawns were succulent. She only toyed with hers, making more of the champagne than the food.

  ‘It will be when you’ve walked all over Russia, I expect,’ she said. ‘Ah, then you’ll find England so insignificant you’ll take two strides and fall into the sea. What a ridiculous way to have an accident. Now that is very amusing.’

  She laughed.

  ‘You’re making people look, my dear,’ said Andrei, ‘and Ivan Ivanovich is English and therefore sensitive about such things.’

  ‘No one is looking at him,’ said Aleka, superb in her black-crowned auburn regality.

  ‘Some of the women are,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Pooh,’ she said, ‘old bitches will look at any dog.’ She forked a prawn and pointed it at Kirby above the gleaming tableware. ‘That was to insult them, not you, darling.’

  ‘I think I missed it,’ he said, ‘it’s all the noise.’

  ‘Oh, you are a wooden-head, like all Englishmen.’

  ‘Ah well, dear man,’ said Andrei, ‘take comfort in the fact that if you have a wooden head she says I have an empty one.’

  The uniformed waiter came to refill their glasses. His servility and deference displeased the socialist in Princess Aleka. She gave him a disdainful look. He replaced the bottle in its bucket and bowed low in exaggerated recognition of her disdain. She liked the cynicism of that riposte and smiled at him. He retreated with a numb feeling of having lost the brief battle.

  The scenery had changed, the train pulling them rapidly into the Crimea. The landscapes had lost their flatness, they were beginning to be greenly undulating. The sky was cloudless. Kirby did not know why she was still on his mind but as the sunlight danced on the window, casting reflections tinted with gold, he thought again of the girl with blue eyes.

  When they were back in the coach after lunch it emerged that Aleka had made up her mind about something. She had decided, she said, that Andrei and his good friend Ivan Ivanovich should stay with her at the Karinshka Palace near Yalta. Andrei, who had already closed his eyes, was shocked into opening them. He looked at Kirby. Kirby, who was to be Andrei’s own guest, did not feel he could comment. He only smiled non-committally. It was Andrei’s problem. Andrei realized he would either have to stay awake to make Aleka see reason or feign sleep and let her designs pass over him.

  He sank back and closed his eyes once more.

  ‘You will come, of course, Andrei. You too, Ivan. You will like Karinshka, Ivan. We will all have fun. It’s not at all necessary for you to go to your own place, Andrei, it will only make your life empty again. Andrei, for God’s sake, I’m talking to you.’

  Andrei, without opening his eyes, mumbled his way into expressions of flattered delight but begged his little chicken to forgive him for his inability to accept. He was already committed to so many things on his estate.

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ said Aleka.

  ‘You are the dearest, loveliest lady,’ murmured Andrei, ‘but it’s the arrangements, you see. What an extremely excellent lunch it was.’

  ‘Please kick him awake,’ said Aleka to Kirby. ‘If you don’t I will.’

  ‘I’m not asleep, darling,’ said Andrei placatingly, ‘only at rest. Why don’t you go into the coupé and get into something comfortable? Call if you need me.’

  ‘You ridiculous man,’ said Aleka, ‘what are arrangements to do with you? Gregory will see to all of them and without falling over you all the time. You won’t do anything except indulge your passion for lying around. You can lie around at Karinshka. I’ve invited you. Do you wish to insult me? In front of Ivan? Worse, do you wish me to be bored? You know I can’t stand my own company for more than a day.’

  ‘My dearest—’

  ‘He is arguing with me,’ she said to Kirby, ‘he has no damned manners at all.’

  ‘Heaven forgive me,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Good,’ she said, ‘it is settled, then.’

  ‘I meant—’

  ‘What are you doing to me?’ She was suddenly in a temper. ‘You have always come to Karinshka, is it some woman keeping you away this time? It had better not be. And what about Ivan Ivanovich? Don’t be so damned selfish. He would like to come, but no, you are so concerned with yourself that his wishes don’t count. Andrei Mikhailovich, I insist, do you hear?’

  ‘Dearest,’ sighed Andrei, ‘we shall both be there and it will be enchanting.’

  And as the train carried them through the profusion of Crimean hills, woods and colour, he went to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  The following morning, after spending the night at a hotel in Sevastopol, they took a small steamer over the bright waters of the Black Sea to Yalta. There they were met by servants from Ka
rinshka Palace and from Andrei’s estate, together with carriages. Only Gregory, the secretary, took Andrei’s carriage. Andrei, reluctantly resigning himself to the whims of the temperamental princess, took his seat with Kirby. His valet followed in a second carriage with the servants and the luggage.

  The Karinshka Palace was several miles from Yalta. It was on this coast that many of Russia’s most privileged aristocrats had built their great houses or palaces. Somewhere in the vicinity was the enormous estate of the Tsar himself, crowned by the Livadia Palace. At this time of year the Imperial family were almost always in residence. Livadia was adored by the Empress Alexandra. Only at Livadia did she find the complete peace so necessary to her spiritual well-being.

  The road was white and dusty, the scenery breathtakingly beautiful, the hills and the valleys a riot of colour. Wild roses, wild grapes and every other kind of natural vegetation clothed the earth with heaven’s abundance. Princess Aleka, fully veiled to protect herself from the dust, was in a mood of sweet satisfaction.

  A woman tossed a flower into her lap. She took it up and gestured her thanks to the woman.

  ‘You see,’ she said to Kirby, ‘they are real people here, not incurable serfs or priest-ridden peasants. All people should be real, should be proud. No one should be a servant.’

  He thought she probably had a hundred servants herself and said so. She received that in contemptuous scorn.

  ‘I mean,’ she said bitingly, ‘that nobody should have a humble mind. One can serve without being at all humble. How can a man profess to have a brain if he can’t see that?’

  ‘I do see it. I took you literally, that’s all. I’m a wooden-head.’

  ‘Well, we’ll hope you get over it,’ she said, ‘but it’s here, in the Crimea, that we might start the revolution, because here the people aren’t humble.’

  When they arrived at last at the Karinshka Palace, Kirby thought he had never seen anything so expansively soaring. It was built on a high green hill overlooking the sea. Cupolas gleamed in the sunshine, were outlined against the blue sky. It had been left to Princess Aleka by her father’s brother, an unprogressive old bachelor who had been murdered in the 1905 rebellion, and it was held in trust for her by her father, thereby overcoming the restriction placed on female inheritance.