The Summer Day is Done Read online

  ‘Dearest Aleka,’ he said, ‘you are the loveliest of women, the most imaginative of friends. Andrei will be sorry he missed this.’

  ‘Andrei,’ she said, ‘is deplorably inert, even at the gayest of balls. Even our Grand Duchess’s sixteenth birthday could not tempt him. He is a man for the intimacy of a boudoir, not a ballroom. He’s with some disgusting woman now.’

  ‘And I am here,’ said Kirby. ‘Thank you, Aleka Petrovna.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said, curious because he sounded so earnest. It was not like Ivan Ivanovich. He was not to be taken seriously most of the time.

  Afterwards Aleka danced with other men. He signed the cards of two or three other women. They were intrigued by his Englishness and his distinctive air of ease. They were willing to flirt outrageously with him. He responded but did not seek them out once he had danced with them. It was while he was watching Aleka in whirling movement with a Cossack officer that he was approached by an exquisitely uniformed personage whom he took to be a member of the Imperial suite.

  ‘Her Imperial Highness presents her compliments, monsieur, and asks that if it is convenient she would like to see you.’

  He accompanied the man. The Tsar and Tsarina were seated in red and gold chairs at the far end, viewing the dancers with interest and pleasure. He bowed to the Tsarina. Alexandra smiled.

  ‘Perhaps we might talk now, Mr Kirby?’ she said. She indicated a chair close to her own and he sat down. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ Again she spoke in English. Her Russian was only moderate and all her family conversed mainly in English. She and Nicholas also used this language in their letters to each other. It was, to Alexandra, the language of her mother, of poets, of love.

  ‘I’m enjoying myself immensely, Highness, and can’t thank you enough for my being here,’ he said warmly. ‘I’ve heard of the Livadia Palace but I had no idea it was as beautiful as this.’

  It was not politeness, it was sincerity. Alexandra smiled again.

  ‘I’m so glad you think that. It is beautiful, isn’t it? We are blessed by Livadia. Nicholas?’ She leaned towards Nicholas, who was lighting his inveterate cigarette. He was a compulsive smoker. ‘Here is Mr Kirby from England, whose home is at Walton-on-Thames.’

  The Tsar’s handsome face lit up. His smile was a warmth, a cordiality.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘that is splendid. There’s no place we speak of more often or with more affection.’

  ‘Has it changed at all, is it just the same?’ asked Alexandra. Her red-gold hair was as thickly luxuriant as Aleka’s. She was thirty-nine and as graceful as Olga at sixteen. ‘It’s seventeen years since we were there, but I should like to think it’s still as we remember it.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Kirby. ‘It never changes much, although I haven’t seen it for three years myself. I’ve been in Russia.’

  ‘For three years?’ Her interest deepened. ‘How much have you seen of our country, how much have you learned about it?’

  ‘Your Highness, I’ve seen some of its infinite variations but I don’t think I’ve learned anything. Except the extent of my own limitations. In Russia I only look and wonder.’ He felt self-distaste. The Empress was absorbed, Nicholas smiling and nodding. ‘Perhaps,’ he went on, ‘I’ve learned one thing. There are no people more friendly or more hospitable. I’ve travelled for three years and never wanted for anything. The poorest man will share his bread with you.’

  ‘Yes, the poor are with us,’ observed the Tsar, ‘but give us time.’

  ‘Imperial Highness,’ said Kirby, ‘I put that badly. I did not mean—’

  ‘I know you didn’t, my dear chap,’ said Nicholas, smiling, ‘but they are still there and it would only count against us if they couldn’t be mentioned. I’m not sensitive on the subject, only concerned that we can’t make it less of a problem overnight.’

  ‘It’s with us in England too,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Who are your family?’ asked Alexandra. She did not put the question because of any social implications, only out of interest. She was charmed by the Englishman, delighted that she felt no restraint with him. That alone was a sweet pleasure to Alexandra, to be at ease with a comparative stranger.

  ‘My father served in the British army,’ said Kirby. ‘He was killed during the Boer War and my mother died soon afterwards. But I have an aunt who is very dear to me.’

  ‘I am so sorry about your parents,’ she said, ‘but very glad about your aunt. Tell me about your place in Walton.’

  ‘I own a small Georgian cottage there, its garden runs down to the river. It’s misty in winter and beautiful in summer. It has an apple tree, of course, and the grass is very green, but the landing steps are always slippery and I have been known to bathe when actually dressed for tennis.’

  For a moment the Imperial couple were caught out. Then Alexandra let a little laugh of delight escape her and Nicholas followed.

  ‘Oh, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘that is the funniest thing.’

  The noise and rhythm of the dancers were something apart at that moment. They were sharing laughter. And people who were always more interested in the Imperial family than anything else looked on in curiosity, wondering what the Englishman had said so to amuse the Tsar and Tsarina.

  ‘Nicky,’ said Alexandra, ‘I think Mr Kirby is endeavouring to entertain us.’

  ‘Truthfully, Highness, it did happen once,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Well, whether it did or didn’t,’ said Nicholas, ‘I’m a great believer in tennis as a pastime, and if I had to fall off some landing steps I should probably be dressed for tennis too. We must have a game sometime, my dear chap.’

  ‘Well, whatever happens there, Walton is the loveliest place,’ murmured Alexandra reminiscently. ‘Mr Kirby, this is our eldest daughter’s sixteenth birthday. She is engaged to dance most of the evening with our young officers, but if you’d be excessively kind how nice it would be if, for one dance at least, England and Russia went hand in hand. I am sure she would like that very much.’

  It was neither a command nor a condescension, only a request that he might make his own contribution to the success of Olga’s ball. The compliment astonished him. But it had been Olga herself who, fifteen minutes ago, had spoken to her mother.

  ‘Mama, it is all tremendously exciting and my feet have left the floor a dozen times.’ Then casually, as she fanned herself, ‘Do you think I might dance with the Englishman, Mr Kirby? It’s only that I’d like to talk to him about Walton in England, where you and Papa were so happy, and to tell him it was Anna he bumped into the other day in Yalta.’

  ‘Oh yes, now I remember, he was the man,’ said Alexandra. ‘I thought I’d seen him before. What a curious coincidence. Darling, this is your own ball, your own birthday, and you may ask for anything you want. I will arrange it, I’m sure Mr Kirby won’t refuse.’

  ‘Mama,’ said Olga, who was not without wit inside her own circle, ‘he cannot refuse. I am a Grand Duchess.’

  ‘Oh, my sweet,’ said Alexandra in a rush of warm pride and affection, ‘you are more, much more. Isn’t she, Nicky?’

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Nicholas, regarding his enchanting first-born smilingly, and Olga swept him a curtsey.

  Kirby was still sitting beside Alexandra when Olga returned from a gay cotillion. She came in a rustle of silks and satins on the arm of her partner, an officer in full-dress blues, who bowed as he returned her to her parents. The flush on her face was of unusual excitement. Quiet and reserved, Olga took life in, loved it, but kept her joys, her delights and her curiosity shyly to herself. She sank into the chair between her parents, glanced at Kirby, who had risen, and glanced away.

  ‘Your Highness?’ He stood before her. She knew why. Her mother had spoken to him. Suddenly it was no longer an impulsive birthday wish that she might dance with him, but an obvious declaration of her interest in a man who had smiled at her. Embarrassment engulfed her. Alexandra saw the suffusing tide of pink. In her complete
understanding of Olga’s sensitivity, she prayed that Kirby would be neither too clever nor too obvious. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘have you any idea of what I’d like to tell my grandchildren?’

  The chestnut-gold head was bent, its tiara a caressing intricacy of light. It lifted.

  ‘Your grandchildren?’ said Olga in amazement.

  ‘They are rather imaginative, aren’t they, as I haven’t even acquired a wife yet,’ he said, smiling. ‘But it could happen and when the time comes is it possible I’ll be able to tell them I once danced with the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna of Imperial Russia? They won’t believe me, of course, but what will that matter?’

  ‘Mama, listen to him!’ Her shyness was still there, but she hid it in her laughing appeal to her mother. ‘Oh, Mr Kirby, it would be terrible if they didn’t believe you about such a little thing, so you must give them proof.’ She took her gilt-edged ball card from the tiny jewelled evening bag that dangled from her gloved wrist. She gave him the card. He saw that only the final dance was available. He signed it. She took the card back and signed it herself. ‘There, when the ball is over I’ll give it to you, although I think you are teasing me a little.’

  She was smiling, her soft wide mouth parted, her blue eyes deep pools of life.

  ‘Thank you, your Highness,’ he said quietly, ‘and I am not teasing.’

  She watched him go. She said, ‘Mama, I was not too forward?’

  ‘No, of course not, my love,’ said Alexandra, ‘nor was he too suave. He is rather nice, I think. Perhaps Aleka Petrovna has found herself a man who will make her a very suitable husband and cure her of her restlessness.’

  Olga said nothing to that. She thought Aleka Petrovna so beautiful that it would not matter to a man what else she was.

  Not until the ball was coming to its end did Kirby think about any further commitment to Aleka. He had danced twice with her. He remembered he was engaged for a third. He asked to see her card. It showed his signature against the last number. He began to explain how in a moment of forgetfulness he had complicated his life. Aleka was incredulous.

  ‘What are you trying to say, that you have signed some other woman’s card for the same dance?’

  ‘It’s the Grand Duchess Olga—’

  ‘It’s who?’

  ‘Loveliest of friends, it’s her birthday and I could not—’

  ‘I am to sit out the waltz?’ Incredulity turned to outrage. ‘Alone of all these people I’m to have no partner? I don’t care if she’s the Grand Duchess of Imperial Heaven or whose birthday it is! Go and tell her you were previously engaged! Oh, you infamous cad, do you think I’m a peasant? After I’ve brought you to a ball a thousand others would have paid a million roubles to attend, you will jilt me of the waltz? Never, do you hear, never!’

  ‘I’m an utter swine, I know,’ he said, ‘but, my lovely sweet-hearted Princess, be forgiving.’

  ‘Forgiving!’ She was as flashing as her jewels. ‘Oh, the humiliation. I am discarded! I shall be a waltz wallflower, a laughing stock! She has a hundred officers she can command, why did you even ask her? Is it because you think the Tsar will decorate you? Oh, you have ruined everything for me. Even Andrei wouldn’t insult me in this way. Dance with her, then, and I hope you’re so clumsy that she falls over your feet. You won’t get decorated for that!’

  ‘Aleka, it was the Empress’s request. I could not refuse.’

  People were looking, aware of the altercation. If he was a little disturbed by this, Aleka was not.

  ‘Ah, now I have found you out,’ she said, ‘you are the worst kind of Englishman, a social snob. Go to her, then. Simper into her face. I shall find a partner. But I shall never forgive you. Ivan Ivanovich, we are no longer friends, we are no longer even speaking to each other!’

  She became as proud as a martyr. She enjoyed it tremendously.

  The final waltz came. Kirby made his way to the Imperial family around a cluster of generals and their wives, paid his respects to Alexandra and Nicholas and said to Olga, ‘Your Highness?’ She laid her gloved hand on the arm he extended and the Tsar, the Tsarina and their suite watched the unknown Englishman escort the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna into the last dance of her ball.

  The music was such as to haunt him for many years to come, when he could never hear it without pain in his heart or pictures in his mind. He never forgot the brilliance of that ball, its enchantment, its colour, its gaiety.

  Olga danced into his heart. How light she was, how adorably shy, her eyes lowered, her diamond tiara dazzling, her hair a shining crown. She was the Emperor’s daughter, she was sixteen. He had never felt so old. He was a lifetime apart from her. He was treacherously apart from her. His trade was espionage.

  ‘Mr Kirby?’ A whisper floated to his ears above the music.

  ‘Highness?’

  ‘You damaged Anna’s parasol. It won’t open properly.’

  ‘Oh dear me,’ he said.

  She lifted her head. He felt delight to see that her eyes were warm with laughter.

  ‘You’ll have to bring her a new one, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll have to bring her a very special new one. Who is Anna?’

  ‘Why our friend, Anna Vyrubova.’

  He had vaguely heard of Anna Vyrubova, personal friend and confidante of the Empress. Anna too was involved with the mystique of religion.

  They danced on, the state room with its mirrors reflecting a revolving, shimmering whirl of movement. Olga’s eyes were lowered again, she circled with him, then she looked up. She seemed very happy.

  ‘Mr Kirby?’

  ‘Forgive me, Highness, I was thinking of my grandchildren.’

  ‘Oh, such stories you think up.’ She was deliriously amused. ‘This is my most wonderful birthday.’

  ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is my most unforgettable ball.’

  They circled close to the open glass doors. The night air, exotic with scent from the rose gardens, was an invitation. Olga stopped dancing and took his hand.

  ‘It will go on and on until no one has any energy left,’ she said. ‘Have you been into the gardens?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Would you like to?’ She was diffident in her modesty. ‘It won’t be cold but it won’t be hot, either. It isn’t because I’m not enjoying myself, indeed I am very much, but to go into the gardens at night is to feel you can return to dance on and on.’

  ‘I’d love it,’ he said and went with her into the warm Crimean night. She took him out on to one of the balconies first. It overlooked the cliffs and the sea. He was silent, absorbed in the wonder and tranquillity of the world at night. The moon was a huge disc of pure white, its light investing the palace, the gardens and the silent sea with opalescence. The scent of flowers, of emergent buds and night-closed blooms, was like ambrosia. The rose gardens were justifiably the Empress’s pride and joy.

  Olga was as silent as he was as they let the beauty of the night embrace them.

  Then she said, ‘Will we go down, Mr Kirby?’

  He had been received by the three of them, Nicholas, Alexandra and Olga. He had met them and talked with them, and he had found neither stiff formality nor grand aloofness in any of them, only friendly warmth and great charm. They did not command, they requested.

  ‘I think we will, don’t you?’ he said, and Olga took his hand again as they left the balcony and made their way down into the gardens. There the moonlight turned the night into silvery day. Other people were there, strolling in every direction, the jewels of women a sparkling iridescence. Olga’s gloved fingers were curled happily around his and she breathed in the scented atmosphere as if it was the sweetness of life itself. Kirby saw immense flower beds, expansive lawns and cloistered walks, all bathed in bright light. Livadia was a world of beauty and Kirby had no adequate words for it.

  At last Olga said, ‘Did you ever know so lovely a night?’

  ‘I’ve never known so lovely a place, Highness,’ he said.

&n
bsp; ‘It was you at Nikolayev station, was it not?’ she said shyly.

  ‘Yes, and it was you on the train,’ he said. ‘I must have been half asleep not to realize who you were. Heavens, I didn’t even raise my hat to you.’

  Grand Duchess Olga laughed. The opalescence silvered her tiara, made her white teeth shine.

  ‘Mr Kirby, oh, you are so funny,’ she said.

  ‘For not raising my hat to you? But at least I did to Anna Vyrubova. Now you’ll think I only raise it to ladies I almost knock down.’

  ‘If you did, that wouldn’t be funny, it would be eccentric,’ she said, ‘and usually that is the privilege of old gentlemen. You aren’t quite an old gentleman yet, are you?’

  Her shyness was gone. She was in unaffected pleasure of the moment, happy that she could talk to him and laugh with him.

  ‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘you are a most entertaining Grand Duchess. More, it is you yourself who have made this a very beautiful ball indeed.’

  Olga flamed into colour. He thought for a moment he had said the wrong thing, been too personal, but then she whispered happily, ‘That was said for my birthday, was it not?’

  ‘And for my grandchildren.’

  Her smile, impulsive, was that of a girl in delight.

  ‘Mr Kirby, you will bring Anna a new parasol, won’t you?’

  ‘I can’t deny I owe her one.’

  She put her hand in his again as they returned to the ballroom where, as she had said, the waltz was going on and on.

  ‘You see, I told you,’ she said, ‘and I should so much like to join in again now.’

  ‘Will you permit a not quite old gentleman, Highness?’

  ‘Oh, I am sure you will hardly creak at all,’ said Olga demurely.

  They danced again and she floated, floated in a whirl of pink. Those who knew her well remarked that they had never seen Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna look so unreservedly happy, although they could not quite understand why she had chosen to bring her ball to a close by dancing on and on with an unknown, untitled Englishman.