The Summer Day is Done (55 page)

Karita desperately wanted to be comforted,
desperately wanted to be loved. But Kirby was quieter than the silence itself and more remote. It was as if he stood not on the steel deck of a warship but in a place of his own, inaccessible to all others. But when at last the land was obscured and they could see no more of Russia she spoke to him.

‘Ivan, I’m so cold, so unhappy.’

‘Yes, I know.’ He turned to her at last, he put his arm around her shoulders. Their garments were little better than those they had worn for the last year and they drew together for warmth as the cold, wet sea wind bit into their bodies and stung their faces. ‘We’re leaving them all, Karita,’ he said. He remembered words Olga had spoken. ‘There were so many heroes, and all of them dead. Will they forgive us for going, do you think?’

‘I think, if they could, they’d come with us,’ said Karita. ‘They did not die for this kind of Russia, not those we knew. But, Ivan, we can’t mourn them for ever. We shall always remember them.’

Do not forget me, Olga had said. The pain wrenched him.

‘And the children, we shall always remember the children,’ said Karita. ‘How could we forget them and all those brave men and women we fought with? They were the best and most beautiful of Russians. But you and I have to live, and we have to speak for them. Ivan, we can’t go home to Aunt Charlotte looking as if we are dead too. Life is for today and tomorrow, not for yesterday.’

‘Yes, we have tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we at least have survived.’

‘God has been very good to you and me,’ said Karita.

He was not sure of God’s benefaction, not now.

His arm tightened around her shoulders. She pressed closer. They stayed there, oblivious of other people slowly drifting away to find warmer places or places where they might weep unseen. They stayed there with the sea wind tugging at their worn, belted coats, watching the wake of the steel ship as it took them from Russia and carried them home.

Everyone was on deck again to see new shores and to get in the way of the crew. The December afternoon was misty bright, the winter sun drawing up the vapours of melting frost. They saw the land, the greens as deep as those of the Crimea, they saw a multitude of anchored ships of war. In an hour they would step ashore.

‘I’m so glad to be here,’ said Karita.

‘Because it’s here that I don’t shout at you?’ said Kirby.

‘Oh, no,’ she said.

They heard the laughter of men above the buzz of excited refugees. Princess Aleka Petrovna was delighting some of the ship’s officers. She was fur-clad, she was brilliant and beautiful. She had bought the fur from a woman who had little else. She had received half a dozen proposals. She had laughed at all of them. She had loved only two men and one of them was dead. The other she
had lost, she knew she had lost and restlessly she looked for other stimulants. Officers would do for the time being. But at a pause in the laughter she excused herself and made her way over to Karita and Kirby.

‘Ivan,’ she said, ‘we’re to see each other in London? You’ll not desert me altogether?’

‘We’ll always be the best of friends, Aleka.’

‘I wish you’d stop saying that,’ she said. She smiled, her dark eyes sly. ‘I’ve arranged to buy a house in London. You must visit me often. Whenever you need love and not friendship I’ll be happy to make you happy, darling.’

Karita clenched her teeth.

‘You must think of yourself, Aleka, not of me, said Kirby. He owed Aleka something she did not realize. She had led him to Olga Nicolaievna. He would not desert her altogether.

‘I am thinking of myself, you fool,’ said Aleka. ‘But I shan’t sit around waiting on your magnificence, I shall join the British Socialist Party.’

‘Good God,’ said Kirby. He was a little sly himself as he added, ‘You must get to meet Sidney and Beatrice.’

She laughed. It was too spontaneous, he thought. Too brittle. The dark smoky eyes recaptured for him the moment when he had first met her at Nikolayev. But they were not the same eyes. And he knew she was haunted too. But not by the same things, the same people, as he was. She was haunted by disillusionment, by having lost all and gained nothing. Her revolution had lacked manners. That she could neither forget nor forgive.

She turned to Karita. Impulsively she put her arms around her, embraced her and whispered, ‘Oh, don’t be angry with me for ever, Karita, you don’t know how lonely I am, how I envy you.’ She pressed her mouth to Karita’s cheek and then went back to the stimulation of the officers. She was merry in moments.

‘Aleka Petrovna is laughing again,’ said Karita.

‘No,’ said Kirby, ‘she isn’t. We all lost something, Karita.’

‘But the war is over now, now we have tomorrow, don’t we?’

It was over, except in Russia, where they still fought each other and murdered each other. Here in England and Europe the politicians were already preparing to write their memoirs, which would be full of reasons why it was all someone else’s fault. Pageantry and glitter had gone, empires had disintegrated. Republicanism in a plain suit was claiming its turn. There would be less privilege, more equality.

There would be less poverty, less oppression and less blindness.

The beauty and the graciousness had been too expensive.

The world would be painfully reborn.

The land was closer, they could see the harbour, the rooftops, everything soft and hazy in the winter sunshine.

‘Ivan,’ said Karita, her eyes on the flowing sea, ‘did Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna love you?’

The pain was there, the longing, the sadness.

‘She wasn’t an ordinary girl, Karita, she wasn’t allowed to love like other people.’

‘That’s not an answer,’ said Karita, ‘but I didn’t really need to ask. You’re luckier than so many men, aren’t you? Olga Nicolaievna did love you. There were so many things that I saw but didn’t think about at the time. And Aunt Charlotte loves you. I love you. And Aleka Petrovna wants you.’

‘Karita, my sweet,’ he said in affectionate concern.

‘Oh, I would so like to be loved myself,’ she said.

Heedless of the crowded deck he turned her, he lifted her face up to his. He felt shock. Karita Katerinova, with whom he had shared so much, endured so much, and to whom he owed so much, was crying.

‘Karita, can you think I don’t care for you? We have been together so long, you and I, shared joys and sorrows, tragedies and love. When I look at you I see everything I’ve had from life, everything I’ve had from Russia. In you I see Russia, I see Livadia and yes, even Olga. You are everything I love about your country, you’re my life, my happiness, my tomorrow. In you I see the sun and the snow, I hear the children of the Tsar, I hear their songs and your songs, I see Russia as I loved it, as I still love it. I dearly wish you’d marry me, Karita. If not, then I’ll have nothing, no beauty, no peace, no tomorrow. What Olga meant to me was a cherishing of innocence, what you mean to me is yourself. Karita, my little one, I love you very very much.’

Karita was sobbing as if all the tears of Russia were drowning her. People were looking, gaping.

‘Karita, will you marry me?’

The grey warship was gliding through calm, sunlit waters. Karita’s golden head lifted and she smiled through her tears.

‘Oh, I would like to so very much,’ she said, ‘we should be such a proper family then.’

He kissed her on the lips.

Aleka Petrovna saw. She winced.

Kirby took Karita’s hand as they stood side by side and watched England come to meet them. He did love her. She was very dear to him. He would never tell her how close Olga would always be to him, however, never tell her how Olga would always be first in his heart. He would live with that and in such a way that he would not cheat Karita of love.

Her hand was warm, her fingers long and slim, loving and possessive.

He looked into the sun, and it was Olga’s hand, soft and clinging, that he felt around his.

She came out of the sun, her blue eyes dancing, her lustrous hair tipped with gold.

‘Colonel Kirby, you have been a very long time again …’

Mary Jane Staples was born, bred and educated in Walworth, and is the author of many bestselling novels including the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family.

Down Lambeth Way

Our Emily

King of Camberwell

On Mother Brown's Doorstep

A Family Affair

Missing Person

Pride of Walworth

Echoes of Yesterday

The Young Ones

The Camberwell Raid

The Last Summer

The Family at War

Fire Over London

Churchill's People

Bright Day, Dark Night

Tomorrow is Another Day

The Way Ahead

Year of Victory

The Homecoming

Sons and Daughters

Appointment at the Palace

Changing Times

Spreading Wings

Family Fortunes

A Girl Next Door

Ups and Downs

Out of the Shadows

A Sign of the Times

The Soldier's Girl

 

Two for Three Farthings

The Lodger

Rising Summer

The Pearly Queen

Sergeant Joe

The Trap

The Ghost of Whitechapel

Escape to London

The Price of Freedom

A Wartime Marriage

Katernia's Secret

The Longest Winter

Natasha's Dream

Nurse Anna's War