The Summer Day is Done (7 page)

‘Voluptuousness in a cemetery would be diverting,’ observed Kirby.

‘There is no need for you to be ridiculous too,’ she said, but she was laughing. ‘Ivan, what is that you have?’ He showed her the ikon, she regarded it in light curiosity, her bosom a warm fullness seeking to escape from the half-hearted embrace of her bodice. ‘Did you buy this in Yalta?’

‘It was given to me by a friend.’

‘Oh?’ Her dark eyes danced. ‘So, you have a friend in Yalta who cares for your spiritual graces? It’s a Crimean ikon, so you have a Crimean sweetheart. Invite her, she shall stay with us. You’ll be late for dinner if you don’t hurry.’ She turned as Karita came to say his bath was ready. ‘Heavens, you grow prettier every day, child. Oravio is the luckiest of men.’

She glided out in a shimmer of green.

‘Karita,’ said Kirby, slipping off his jacket and undoing his tie, ‘I thought you said she was displeased with me.’

‘Monsieur, truly, she is up and down, down and up. It can be very confusing.’

‘Well, she is up now. Who is Oravio?’

‘Oh, he is one of the footmen, we are supposed to have an arrangement. It is all only perhaps.’

‘Well,’ said Princess Aleka to Oravio a few minutes before she went down to dinner, ‘where did he go?’

‘To Yalta, to the British consulate there,’ said Oravio. ‘Then he seemed to wander all over the Crimea, doing nothing except talk to people and drink with them. It was a good day for him, it was execrable for me. Only for the party would I spend all day following a long-legged Englishman.’

‘He met no one of importance?’

‘I don’t know who he saw at his consulate. Elsewhere he met only peasants.’ Oravio was darkly contemptuous, and not of Kirby alone it seemed. Aleka’s mouth tightened for a moment in anger.

‘Be careful how you talk to me,’ she said.

‘Yes, Highness. Always, Highness.’ His voice was a sneer, his bow an impertinence.

Andrei liked to be entertained. But he did not consider Aleka’s dinner parties entertaining at all. They sapped his powers of endurance. Aleka in the past had never been as restless as this, wanting always to have people and noise around her. It was a concession indeed to have dinner proceed in civilized quietness that evening, but Andrei suspected the respite to be extremely temporary. Something must be done to enable placid life to pour back into him. He must go to his own estate for a few days. He could not take Kirby. Aleka would never stand to be robbed of both guests. It would not matter to Kirby. He could manage admirably, being a man of adaptability.

The next day Andrei spoke on the telephone to Gregory, his secretary. It was, he said afterwards to Aleka, the most damnable thing, but there was a crisis on his estate and Gregory had implored him to go there for a few days. Aleka said it was more than damnable, it was a Machiavellian ruse to go off and consort with one of his aristocratic whores. Andrei declared he had an undying love for her alone, begged her understanding of circumstances beyond his control and slipped away. She was furious.

‘What about Livadia?’ she shouted after him as he hurried down the steps to the waiting carriage.

‘Perhaps, perhaps, but if not, beg their Highnesses to accept Ivan in my place,’ he called.

Aleka, absolutely livid for a while, almost had a stand-up fight with old Amarov. He gave her his notice. She accepted it but an hour later implored him to rescind it.

‘It’s impossible, old one,’ she said, ‘why, without you Karinshka would fall to the ground. Who else can I trust when I’m not here? Who else but you could command the servants? Look, I am on my knees. Stay, old ram, you shall have a horse of your very own. See, here are my tears as witness of all that you mean to us.’

Old Amarov peered. He saw soft, cajoling brightness but no tears. However, the last thing to trust in any woman were tears.

‘Your Highness, everything is as it was and there’s no need to give me a horse.’

‘I insist. It’s yours, old faithful. Bring me some tea and I’ll know all is well between us again.
And tell Monsieur Kirby to join me. He’s hiding away somewhere. I don’t know why it is, old Amarov, but some men have a damned indecent aptitude for avoiding a woman when she is most in need.’

‘What are you in need of, Highness?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Tea at the moment, I suppose.’

‘Ivan Ivanovich.’ She had just arrived on the terrace to find him stretched out on a long cane chair, reading a book he had borrowed from her library. The sea lay like a placid blue lake in the distance, the air was lazily warming. He was a deep, even brown, the flecks of gold in his beard intensified by the sun. She looked broodingly at him.

‘Princess?’

‘Talk to me,’ she said, lowering her white-clad body on to an adjacent chair.

‘How peaceful it is,’ he said.

‘God,’ she said, ‘that’s brilliant, isn’t it? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you like women? Don’t you like me?’

He had liked a number of women, had thought he loved more than one of them. He could not remember why. The only clear picture he had in his mind these days was the face of an enchanting girl.

‘You aren’t serious, are you?’ he said.

‘Of course I damn well am,’ said Aleka.

‘Then I love you,’ he said.

‘Must you be an echo of Andrei? Andrei is always declaring his devotion and backing away
from it. You would do the same. It’s not necessary to love me, you know, only to like me. Ivan, put that book down. Look at me.’

He looked at her. Her dark eyes were soft. Her white dress, high-waisted, gave her an unusual air of virginal charm. White was the purest and yet the most illusory of colours.

‘You’re excessively beautiful,’ he said.

‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I have the strangest feeling that although you’re saying that to me you’re thinking of someone else. Is it the God-fearing woman who gave you that ikon? Do you want to go and join Andrei on his estate? You can be quite frank, I shan’t lose my temper.’

‘My dear Princess, I like it here,’ he said in relaxed satisfaction. ‘There’s everything to do or there’s nothing to do, and you don’t mind either way. Who could be a more agreeable hostess than that? Is there something perhaps that you would like to do?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘let’s go down to the beach.’ They went.

They bathed. Aleka loved the water, its warm embrace dispelled her resentment of Andrei’s desertion. Once immersed she was active and sinuous, her cotton costume clinging to her, wetly sheathing her curving body as she swam. Her blue-capped head rose above the water, her eyes mischievous as a child’s as Kirby came close. She jackknifed and dived under him. She glided beneath him, came to the surface, rolled on to her back and kicked water.

‘Ivan,’ she called. He swam around her, Aleka a figure of buoyancy, her breasts a convex of wet, glistening blue. ‘Love me,’ she laughed.

‘Here? Impossible,’ he said.

She flirted water into his face.

‘Well, kiss me at least,’ she said. He stood, his feet touching bottom, as she floated. He kissed her. As his mouth pressed down on hers she sank. She came up gasping and outraged. ‘Oh, animal!’ she cried.

‘What is my wet lady’s wish then? Shall you sink again or swim?’

Sometimes, she thought, his eyes were damnably devilish, and he was always so good-humoured he was almost complacent. She floated again, looking up at him. His brown beard was wet, his teeth white in the sun.

‘I think,’ she murmured, ‘I think I’ll risk being sunk again. But please, Ivan, more gently this time.’

The water was so caressing. She lay passively upon it. He bent above her, her expression mocking, provoking, her mouth wet from the sea. There was the faintest smile on Kirby’s face. Her lips pursed. He kissed her again, gently, his mouth moving over hers. Her white legs stirred, rippling the water. Her arms reached up, wound around his neck. His mouth was warm, vibrant. It pressed. She sank, unwinding her arms to beat wildly at the enclosing water. She re-emerged in a fountainous flurry.

She gasped and coughed up salt sea.

‘Ivan! You pig! Am I to be drowned by a kiss?’

He was laughing. She stretched her legs, linked them around his beneath the surface and heaved her body to pull him from his feet. He went backwards amid splashing, tumbling water.
They both bobbed upwards. He was still laughing. Aleka burst into laughter of her own.

‘Ivan, I love you.’ It was entirely playful. ‘Oh, what fun you are. There’s nothing one can do with Andrei, but you and I can be children again. Who is to care? Kiss me.’

‘Is that being children?’ he asked.

‘But of course. Children kiss. Haven’t you seen them? If it weren’t for ridiculous and interfering adults, some of them would make love too.’

They stood together, the water lapping their backs. She pressed close. He put his mouth to hers, their costumes merged wetly, revealingly. Spitefully, shrewishly, her fingers dug into his back and her nails raked his flesh through the cotton. He shuddered from the unexpected pain of it. He stooped, lifted her and flung her from him. She came up breathless, rageful.

‘Ivan!’ She trod water furiously. ‘Ivan, you pig of an Englishman!’

‘What fun,’ said the pig of an Englishman.

Aleka laughed until the tears ran. They stayed long in the water, as active as porpoises until Aleka was tingling and exhausted. ‘There, aren’t the real pleasures of life the simplest things?’ she said on the way back to the palace.

‘Like drawing blood, you mean?’

‘You deserved that,’ she said. ‘All God gave women to defend themselves with were claws. Most women are afraid to use them but I’m not. Ivan, you don’t dislike me, after all, do you?’

He was quite astonished. He said, ‘Dislike you? Princess, what have I ever said to make you think that?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are damnably stiff the way you will call me “Princess”. I am Aleka Petrovna to my friends. Ivan, we are to be friends, aren’t we?’

On either side of the winding ascent wild roses danced in the sun, nature was a fragrance and Russia seemed at eternal peace.

‘That,’ said Kirby, ‘is a lovely thought, Aleka Petrovna.’

‘Who is the woman who gave you that ikon?’

‘Someone’s mother,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ she mused, ‘is it the someone or is it the mother you have designs on? She had better be more than a promiscuous peasant. I don’t like to lose my friends to women I don’t approve of. I hate every one of Andrei’s women. Ivan, I forgot!’ She was dramatic in her suddenness. ‘You are to meet the Tsar and Tsarina. Imagine that I didn’t tell you. It is Andrei’s fault. I have an invitation for Andrei and myself, there’s to be a ball at Livadia in honour of Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna. It’s her birthday. Although I’m not quite in favour from time to time because of my politics, I’m in favour at the moment. You see, I made myself pleasant to the Empress years ago. I was pleasant because so many others weren’t. She’s German, you know. But she’s the kindest of persons and has always remembered that I was kind to her …’

‘Can I interrupt?’ said Kirby. ‘What’s all this to do with me? How am I to meet their Imperial Highnesses?’

‘But I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘Andrei has deserted me and I wouldn’t let him escort me
even if he were back in time. I telephoned the Empress this morning and explained that as Andrei Mikhailovich is suffering from nervous exhaustion I should like to have you escort me instead. She was very sweet and so you are invited in place of Andrei. It will be very magnificent but criminally sumptuous, considering there are so many people who can’t even get enough bread to eat. But I suppose if the Grand Duchess Olga can’t have a birthday ball things would be sad indeed. What am I saying? They are sad. They are worse than sad. Ivan, we will go to the ball and you can help me convert the Tsar to democracy. Ivan, are you listening?’

She kicked him.

She could not tolerate even the suspicion of a deaf ear.

Two nights later they went to Livadia, their carriage one of a multitude drawn up outside the steps of the Imperial Palace. Kirby had thought Karinshka Palace imposing. Livadia was breathtaking. Built of white limestone, it overlooked the Black Sea and was a majestic example of man’s genius for complementing nature. It was the constant joy of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna and she and Nicholas, Emperor of All the Russias, were never happier than when they were there. Tonight, to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of their eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Olga, their Imperial Majesties were giving a full-dress ball.

Caught up in the queue, it took time for Princess Aleka’s carriage to reach the steps. Kirby spent the waiting period gazing entranced at the palace. It was ablaze with lights, yet with its brilliance softly diffused in the evening light. There were columned balconies, cloistered walks and gardens of colour and magic. The air was heady with the scent of roses.

‘Magnificent,’ he said.

‘It’s only another palace,’ said Aleka, magnificent herself in a tiara. She sat close to him in the carriage, the warmth of her body an allurement. ‘And it will be full of bores stuffed into uniforms and old harridans stuffed into corsets. Ivan, think of the poor and the starving. Then this will seem what it really is, an unforgivable extravagance.’

‘I thought of the poor and the starving when you gave your first dinner party,’ he said.

‘You unspeakable cad,’ she said.

‘Dear Aleka,’ he said placatingly.

At last they went in, gowned women and uniformed men preceding them, others following on as each carriage disgorged its occupants. Kirby felt himself caught in an immensity of glittering splendour. He smiled as by his side he heard Aleka humming the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s
Sleeping Beauty
. Her cloak was taken, her pale golden gown bared her shoulders but for once her bosom was not threatening to escape. She knew the Empress well. Alexandra Fedorovna did not approve obtrusive exposure. Kirby, in black tails, was content to be effaced by her brilliance, her jewelled tiara an emblem of her rank, setting her glossy auburn hair on fire.

Karita had been overwhelmed with pleasure that he was to attend so splendid a ball, and she had seen to it that he had looked his best. But as for the implications of full dress, he could do no better than wear his tails. There were few men who were not richly ceremonial in their attire. White jackets hung with medals, honours and awards predominated. Well, he could not help
that. He had nothing to hang. He hoped he would not look naked.