Authors: Mary Jane Staples

The Summer Day is Done (30 page)

BOOK: The Summer Day is Done

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Kirby could not help being impressed. And he was intrigued anew by the character of Russia. It was entirely typical of its people to be irreconcilably divided politically and socially and completely integrated on such religious occasions as this. He wondered what a hundred million Russians would do in a moment of supreme national crisis, whether they would form an indivisible whole or each turn a different way, each choose any path but that of his neighbour.

On Easter Day the Imperial Palace was thrown open to hundreds. Peace and tranquillity happily made way for feasting and celebrating. Livadia swarmed with the Emperor’s subjects. Nicholas was delighted and Alexandra, never more content than when the people showed their love and esteem, was a fount of hospitality. She was always happier among the people than among the aristocrats. Catching Kirby’s eye when she was dispensing the little Easter cakes to yet one more contingent of children, she smiled. He was talking to other children, shy village children, and the noise and the activities had set his head thumping. He interpreted Alexandra’s smile as a request and went to her. She was in flowing white with a single necklace, elegantly beautiful.
Always she gave him the impression that she associated majesty with humility.

‘Imperial Highness?’ he said.

‘Colonel Kirby, Ivan,’ she said, ‘you’ve been so good, helping to look after so many of the children. I wish others might be as kind.’ He knew she referred to courtiers who were inclined to be too easily bored by ‘the people’. ‘But you’ve done enough – yes, you have, I can see you have. You’re excused. You’re to go and sit outside and I’ll have tea sent out to you.’

‘I’m not quite as done up as that, am I?’ he smiled.

‘Enough for you to be excused, so you are not to argue.’ She returned his smile. He could not remember any time when Alexandra had not shown him kindness and graciousness. Whatever their faults, he believed in Alexandra and Nicholas.

He was, in fact, pleased to leave the festivities for a while. His head was a swine. The bruise had lost its external ugliness but occasionally, as now, it thumped out its sensitive reaction to noise. He went out into the gardens, found chairs and a table by one of the massed rose beds, the table under the shade of a tree. He sank into a chair, the palace behind him rising in strata of tall, shining windows and sparkling white stone. The noise slipped away and there was only the warm tranquillity he loved.

‘Tea, O Lord of a missing slave?’

That could only be Tatiana and it was. She herself had brought a samovar down on a tray, with a plate of Easter cakes. It would not be
long, he thought, before undiminishable beauty invested Tatiana. She had a quicksilver grace now, grey eyes that were forever laughing, and the endearing enchantment of youth. He had a special affection for Tatiana, so responsive in her humour, so close to Olga.

‘Tatiana Nicolaievna, how did you know I was in need?’ he asked.

‘Mama told me,’ said Tatiana, setting the tray down on the table. ‘Oh, it’s no bother to slave for you, Ivan, especially when your official slave is so dreadfully busy flirting with boys. I’m to tell you that, you know, because then I can tell Stasha whether you’re atrociously jealous. You’d better be, she’ll be alarmingly put out if you aren’t.’

He looked up at her. He was very amused. She thought him devastatingly English with his lean, brown look, his military moustache and the smile that was always so quick to show in his eyes.

‘Tell Anastasia I’m so jealous that I’m the one who’s alarmingly put out,’ he said.

‘Oh, fiddle,’ said Tatiana, ‘it’s just not fair to favour her when we’re all equally devoted to you. Actually, I’m the most devoted.’

‘Tatiana, is it permitted to say I love you all very much?’

She lost her teasing look. She knew that he was far from teasing. She felt as if there were strange shadows falling.

‘Ivan, we would all be terribly miserable if you did not,’ she said. She looked down at her hands. She said, ‘Oh, if only you were a Crown Prince.’

‘Fat or thin?’ he said.

‘It’s not a joke, Ivan,’ said Tatiana, ‘you know it’s not, don’t you?’

‘Tatiana?’ He was vaguely disturbed. Tatiana looked up. There was just the suspicion of tears. This was alarming. She knew. He supposed there were moments when his love for Olga must have been obvious to someone as observant as Tatiana. There was nothing he could do, no declaration or denial he could make. Either would be futile. He shook his head. ‘One doesn’t have to be a Crown Prince to love you all, does one, Tatiana?’

‘No,’ she said wistfully, ‘but—’

‘I should be a great joke as a Crown Prince, I can’t even stay on a horse,’ he said lightly. He saw there were two glasses with the samovar, two plates with the cakes. ‘Are you staying to drink tea with me?’

‘I’d like to very much,’ said Tatiana, ‘but Mama wishes me to do a hundred things for a million people and I must simply fly. I think someone older and more entertaining is coming to keep you company.’

‘General Sikorski?’

‘Do you wish him? Then I’ll see. You are the dearest man, Ivan.’ And she bent to kiss his cheek before hurrying away. She met Olga coming round from the terrace. Olga was flying. She checked her pace when she saw Tatiana.

Alexandra had called her and said, ‘Olga sweet, I’ve sent Colonel Kirby to have some tea in the gardens. He’s been doing too much. But I think he might like a little company. If you can
spare some time would you like to join him for a while?’

It had been difficult for Olga not to show pleasure. But she managed a little restraint as she said, ‘Mama, I think I could spare a little time.’

Alexandra smiled. Olga was as readable as an open book. But it was Easter Day, a time for giving, not denying.

‘Well, you deserve a rest too before the evening. Go along, darling.’

Olga knew it was even more difficult to disguise her feelings from Tatiana. Her sister would know why she had been hurrying.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Tatiana, ‘it’s you. He said he was looking forward to seeing General Sikorski.’

‘Tatiana? Who said that?’

‘Ivan. I’ve just taken tea to him. Mama asked me to, she said she would see if you could spare time to sit with him. Imagine him preferring General Sikorski.’

Olga assumed a complete innocence of what it was all about. She patted her sister’s cheek and said, ‘You mustn’t go on so, darling, you’ll wear your tongue out one day. I shouldn’t mind too much but you would miss it dreadfully.’

Tatiana laughed in delight. Olga was delicious at times. Oh, how remiss of Ivan Ivanovich not to have been born a Crown Prince. It would have put her dearest sister in heaven. Tatiana went back into the palace in sighing wistfulness while Olga went on to join Colonel Kirby.

She was in a dress of Easter white, the sun caressing her and enhancing the golden
overtones of her chestnut hair. He rose, his arm in a black silk sling.

‘We received your message,’ said Olga, ‘but General Sikorski couldn’t come, he’s fallen asleep in a dish of cream cheese. So I came instead. Now I expect you’ll fall asleep too. But I’ll pour the tea first.’ She was demure in her humour. She began to fill a glass.

‘General Sikorski? Well, I don’t know. Olga, you look—’ He checked himself. So often he almost committed the error of using words that Alexandra would consider unfortunately presumptuous. He could flatter Olga as others did, meaninglessly. He could not go beyond that.

‘Oh, I look, do I?’ Olga was smiling. ‘I know what you mean, but I’ve been rushing madly about. There are so many people being received and I suppose I do look rather like a broom in the wind.’

He imagined the right meaningless response to that would be to tell her she looked as if she’d been sweeping them all off their feet. Instead he said, ‘I was going to say you look better at serving tea than General Sikorski.’ That was just as meaningless. He smiled wryly to himself.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you are as gallant as anyone, Colonel Kirby.’

Her smile was not a mere pleasantry. It had its message. Because she was so young, seventeen, he sometimes forgot how intelligent she was. He knew that she knew his gallantry was meaningless. Safe. She did not mind. She understood.

‘You aren’t going to take tea standing up, are you?’ she said. She waited until he sat down
again, then seated herself at the opposite side of the table. ‘Isn’t it lovely out here? We’re in the best place, are we not? It’s become so hot inside. Are you very tired?’

‘Not a bit,’ he said, ‘I’d just begun to creak a little, that’s all.’

They laughed together at that. He relaxed over the tea. She pushed back a wandering tress of hair. Their eyes met and held. She was quite still, her back to the sun, her face softly shadowed. Time seemed in suspense. Suddenly she was suffused with colour, she dropped her eyes and stared unseeingly at her clasped hands. A bird called, sweet and piping. The scent of flowers magically distilled the air. Olga’s head was bent, her hair a cascading curtain.

‘Olga?’ he said. She looked up. He felt pain. Her eyes were brimming.

‘It’s nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘It was just a little hurt that caught me. But nothing, really. Will it relax you if I read to you? I have my Shakespeare with me.’ She indicated the white bag she had brought.

‘That would be very pleasant as well as peaceful,’ he said.

She took the black-bound volume from her bag, opened it up and rifled through the pages.

‘I haven’t read all the plays yet,’ she said, ‘or even half of them. I like
The Merchant of Venice
. Shall I read something from that? Or there is
The Prince of Denmark
, which Monsieur Gilliard says is very highly favoured by the theatre.’

‘Make it a surprise,’ he smiled, ‘read from that page where you have your hand.’

She lifted her hand from the page she had flattened, looked at it and said, ‘I don’t know if you’d like this, it’s
Romeo and Juliet
, which is all about terribly young people suffering miserably because of love.’

‘Mmm, yes,’ he murmured, ‘hardly the thing for terribly old people like you and me, Olga.’

‘Well, you will see,’ she said. The breeze lifted a strand of her hair and it brushed across her face. She pushed it back. ‘If it isn’t to your liking,’ she said, ‘it will be your own fault for choosing so indiscriminately.’

‘Am I to be read to or not, young madam?’

‘Don’t be impatient,’ she said, ‘it will only make me nervous.’ She regarded the written word and he regarded her soft, wide mouth. ‘This is to do with Juliet’s nurse,’ she said, ‘in conversation with Juliet, and I shan’t mind if you fall asleep.’

‘Good,’ he said.

‘Oh, you had better not,’ said Olga. ‘It’s the nurse speaking, she’s just returned to Juliet with a message from Romeo but all she says is,

I am aweary, give me leave awhile
,

Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunce have I had!

‘Then here, a little further on, taking no notice of Juliet’s anxieties, she says,

Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I!

It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces
.

My back o’ t’other side; O, my back, my back!

Beshrew your heart for sending me about
,

To catch my death with jauncing up and down
.

‘All this while poor Juliet is dreadfully desperate to hear about Romeo and saying, let me see – yes –

Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?

‘And what does the exasperating old thing say to that? She says,

O! God’s lady dear
,

Are you so hot? Marry, come up, I trow
,

Is this the poultice for my aching bones?

Henceforward do your messages yourself
.

‘There, Colonel Kirby, what do you think of that for a most tantalizing nurse and an indiscriminate choice?’

She looked up from the book. Kirby, entranced by her delicious humour, saw her smile. He had not known it possible to love a girl as he loved this one.

‘Lovely,’ he said, and he knew that if Tatiana had been present she would have guessed he was not talking about Shakespeare.

‘Well, at least you didn’t fall asleep,’ said Olga. ‘Now I insist on
The Merchant of Venice
, I’ll read you how Portia addressed Bassanio when he made the correct choice of caskets. It was a tender part of the play I liked very much.’

She turned the pages, found the extract she
wanted and said, ‘See, this is what she says to Bassanio.

You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand
,

Such as I am: though for myself alone

I would not be ambitious in my wish
,

To wish myself much better; yet, for you

I would be trebled twenty times myself;

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich;

That only to stand high in your account
,

I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends
,

Exceed account: but the full sum of me

Is sum of nothing; which, to term in gross
,

Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised;