The Summer Day is Done (32 page)

‘We think not, comrade,’ said Prolofski. ‘You’ll take the chance of reassuring Olga Nicolaievna that you acted for the best, even though you may have been mistaken.’

‘I see.’ Kirby still sounded calm. ‘But I must have time to think this out. When I leave Livadia I shan’t be a free agent, I’m under the orders of my senior officer and have no idea when I might be in Tsarskoe Selo at the same time as Rasputin.’

‘All that is nothing.’ Prolofski rolled spit. ‘You’re still under the orders of your friends in London, who are now pursuing a policy of co-operation with Russia. Your friendship with the Romanovs is encouraged, you may arrange to see them whenever you like as far as London is concerned. If you are simple, we aren’t. However, we’ll give you twenty-four hours to make up your mind. Come here tomorrow at the same time, spell out your decision and outline your own plan for this service to Russia. We’ll want to know every detail and when Rasputin is back in St Petersburg again, we’ll arrange the day with you. You might try arranging it with Olga Nicolaievna. Who knows, she might not look at the world in quite the way you think.’

Was the man as stupid as he sounded? No, thought Kirby, there was no stupidity here. Rasputin was to be executed and by an Englishman close to the Imperial family.
The complicity of Olga, real or suggested, was unnecessary, superfluous. It was meant only to show him that if he wished to offer a reason for the killing, this was the one that, with Rasputin’s reputation, had the basis of authentic possibility to it. It was also the one that would provide him with his best chance of escaping a charge of murder. Except that Olga would not, even to save his neck, support a story she knew to be horrifyingly untrue.

This was what did not fall into place. Simple as Prolofski had said it all was, this was not how Olga was to be used. They had some other role for her, some other tale of complicity that would involve her far more subtly and fix Rasputin’s murder far more securely to the door of the Romanovs.

‘I’ve never done this kind of work,’ he said, ‘and must tell you I may not be very good at it. I must think it over and see you again this time tomorrow.’

They let him go, they watched him go. It was dark now. Prolofski did not mind the dark as long as he could turn his moon face up to the sky.

‘He has gone out?’ Olga could not believe she had heard aright. ‘He can’t have.’

‘Your Highness,’ said Karita, ‘he has gone for a walk.’

‘A walk? Tonight?’ Something very close to angry resentment manifested itself in the young Grand Duchess. ‘If that is true – oh, it had better not be. Let me see.’

‘Your Highness—’

‘Karita!’

Karita, in an unaccustomed fluster at the temper of the most equable of the Grand Duchesses, hastily moved aside to let Olga inspect the suite for herself. Olga simply swept in and Karita thought her quite sweetly magnificent. But what had come over her? She was never like this. Following her into the empty drawing room, Karita heard the sound of footsteps approaching the suite. She turned, saw Kirby entering through the still open door and hastened in a silent rush to him.

‘What you have done I don’t know,’ she whispered, ‘but Her Highness the Grand Duchess Olga is here and seems very put out. Whatever it’s about, you will need to think quickly.’

Olga had gone through the drawing room and was rapping on the bedroom door before the sound of voices in the entrance to the suite reached her ears. She swung round and met Kirby face to face in the drawing room. Karita vanished, leaving the Tsar’s daughter to deal with the Englishman in her own way. Karita had a feeling that whatever the cause of the confrontation, it was Ivan Ivanovich who was going to come off worse.

It would do him good.

Olga regarded Kirby with fierce resentment. While everyone else had taken so much trouble, he was quite indifferent to the occasion. He was dressed so casually in flannel trousers and an old velvet jacket it was almost an impertinence.

He saw there was no diffidence of any kind
about her, she was angry, she was beautiful, and her pride and her tiara gave her a tallness. He would have spoken but with a gesture of her hand Olga made it very clear that she would speak first.

‘Colonel Kirby,’ she said, ‘will you tell me what has happened that you can’t attend on us tonight? Will you tell me why it’s safer for you to go out walking than it is to come to the ball?’

‘Your Highness—’

‘Oh!’ For the first time in her life Olga stamped her foot. She did not like him like this, he was dark, serious and had no smile for her, none at all. She was near to tears but her anger saved them from spilling. ‘Oh, to call me that! Now I see, we are not to be friends, then. I have done something quite shocking and so you go walking in the night to be out of my way and call me Highness when you do see me!’

‘That was only because—’

‘I don’t care to hear why! What does the reason matter? You wish to be formal.’ Olga was surprising herself and Kirby even more. ‘Very well, we will both be formal. I can be so as much as you, and you are commanded, do you hear? You are commanded to attend on me. I will wait while you suitably attire yourself.’

His darkness was transfigured into astonished delight. His shy Grand Duchess was actually being imperious. There was something new to be discovered about her every day.

‘Suitably attire myself?’ he said, his eyes mirroring the delight he felt. ‘I am commanded? I am commanded, Olga?’

‘Colonel Kirby,’ she said, ‘are you laughing at me?’

‘Indeed I’m not,’ he said, ‘I’m in great admiration of you. Am I in such positive disgrace because I cried off? Well, there was this arm of mine and there are always so many young officers devoted to you. I thought it a night for you to dance with them—’

‘Oh!’ Again she stamped her foot. She disliked his words intensely. Not only did they amount to no real excuse at all, but they had connotations of horribly dismaying condescension. Young officers! As if she were no older than Tatiana. ‘Am I not able to please myself? Are you to tell me you know what is best for me? Oh, I have done something worse than shocking, that is very clear!’

Karita was right, Olga was very put out. He had not seen her so upset. He had asked Alexandra to excuse him because of his arm, but the real reason had been connected with the message he had received. There was, however, also the fact that he knew Alexandra wished him to exercise restraint in his relationship with Olga. Restraint was one thing, hurting her was another.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s I who have offended, Olga. I have hurt you. I am very sorry, will you forgive me?’

Olga caught at a lip that was suddenly trembling. There was something more than contrition in his expression, something that reached out to her. She could not maintain a demeanour so foreign to her, not when he looked like that, not when she was so unhappy. She melted in desperate appeal.

‘Oh, you aren’t commanded, but please come. Dear Colonel Kirby, what is the ball to Tatiana and me if you aren’t there? We have saved dances for you but you need not dance at all, we can walk in the gardens instead or watch Tatiana. You’ve no idea how lovely she looks tonight, her hair is up and she’ll never forgive you if you stay away, if you don’t see her in her new gown, if you don’t tell her how nice she looks. And see?’ She was running on, breathlessly outside her limits now as with gestures of her gloved hands she drew his attention to her own gown, to her hair and her jewels. ‘This is all for you, I took so much care—’

It was a rush into silence then, and the uncontrollable colour surged as she realized what she had said. He could not help himself, he had to tell her that the care she had taken had not been wasted.

‘Olga, you are always lovely,’ he said, ‘and now, look, you are more than that. You are quite beautiful tonight, has no one told you so? And of course I’ll come, since if Tatiana looks only half as splendid as her sister it would never do to miss her.’ He smiled as he went on, ‘I’ll suitably attire myself, then, but you shouldn’t wait, I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

She was aflame with vivid colour, with the unspoiled richness of youth and innocence.

‘I am not going without you, I am not,’ she whispered.

‘You should, you know.’

‘Colonel Kirby, it isn’t what one should do but what one does that really matters.’

They went together in the end. He wore a white jacket and black evening trousers. Uniforms did not impress Olga a great deal, except that she thought her father looked Imperially handsome in his. The gaiety of the ball had become infectious and Olga was radiant now. Cossack officers were dancing, their sabres floored, the music compelling blood to take fire, the men spinning and leaping. Tatiana came in shimmering swiftness, her face alight to see Kirby.

‘Oh, Ivan Ivanovich, you’re disgraceful,’ she cried happily. She gave him her hand, he kissed it. ‘But how maddeningly gallant you look with your wounded arm and wooden leg, and how nice that you’re here at last. Even Papa says his chicks are doleful without you. Tell me, do you like my gown, do you like my hair up, am I quite the loveliest thing?’

Tatiana, with her tiara adorning her gleaming auburn head, seemed crowned by silver and gold. Dear Heaven, thought Kirby, the beauty of this Imperial family. He would have spoken lightly, joked a little, and Tatiana’s eyes were bright with laughing suspicion that he would indeed make fun.

Instead he said, ‘Yes, Tatiana, you are. Quite the very loveliest.’

Tatiana laughed in delight. People were looking, people who found the Grand Duchesses’ preoccupation with the Englishman much more intriguing than the dancing Cossacks. If Olga was sensitively aware of this, Tatiana did not give a fig.

‘Olga,’ she said, ‘do you think he meant that, do you think he’s serious?’

‘I’m sure he’s doing his very best, darling,’ said Olga.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Tatiana, ‘he has a lot to make up for, staying away from us for hours and hours.’

‘Let Alexis give me a good talking-to tomorrow,’ said Kirby, ‘I can face up to it better when it’s man to man.’

Olga thought that richly amusing. And Tatiana thought how much more easily joy and laughter came to Olga when it was Ivan Ivanovich she was in company with. They watched the dancers. Tatiana slipped her arm through Kirby’s.

‘You’re such good fun, Ivan,’ she murmured, ‘and the one we all love the best.’

‘I shall always love Livadia, Tatiana, always love the Imperial family.’

Tatiana glanced up at him. He was smiling but his eyes were strangely dark.

‘I know,’ she said softly.

Olga, on the other side of Kirby, could not hear their murmured talk above the noise of the stamping dance. But she saw that Tatiana had her arm in his and was exchanging the most affectionate of smiles with him.

Kirby danced, after all. He said that now he was here he was going to be extravagantly active. He took the cards of the Grand Duchesses. There were several vacant numbers on each card. He signed for two dances on each. Olga said nothing for the moment but when she returned to him after a mazurka with an elastic-limbed young
guardsman, she remarked how safe his choice had been.

‘Safe?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Olga, ‘if you choose to dance twice with me and twice with Tatiana, that’s very safe, isn’t it?’

‘I didn’t think about it being safe, only rather greedy. Have I asked for too much?’

She framed a word with her mouth. He was sure it was ‘Coward’. Olga had grown up. He danced with her. His arm was no real problem. Olga was light and graceful, but she became a little concerned about the necessity of avoiding other dancers. He might get his arm knocked by some ruffian of a young officer, she said. The kind, she said, that he had thought she would like to dance the ball through with.

‘Did I say that?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it was very clear that you were disposing of me in just that way,’ said Olga. ‘Colonel Kirby, please keep to the outside. If anything happens I don’t know what Dr Botkin will say. Not until he takes your plaster off can you be considered yourself again, then you can fling your arm about as much as you like.’

She whirled, returned to him, whirled and returned again. He said, ‘I’ll have to be back in St Petersburg soon, they’ll take my plaster off there.’

She would not let him disturb her happiness. She said, ‘I’ll speak to Papa, you’ll see. We are not permitting you to be in St Petersburg while we are still at Livadia.’

He danced with a lady-in-waiting who had a
fondness for him because he liked the Imperial children so much. He danced with Tatiana, who thought he managed extremely well.

‘Oh, goodness,’ she gasped as they circled, ‘for a man with a crooked arm and a wooden leg, Ivan, you are
so
adaptable.’

‘What’s this about a wooden leg?’

Tatiana, unsparing of vitality on a night as gay as this, took in air before answering, then said, ‘Well, a crooked arm is no excuse for not coming to a ball, so it must be that you’ve got a wooden leg as well.’

‘Tatiana, you are very endearing.’

‘And you are just a little dark yourself, do you know that?’

‘Surrounded by youth I have lost my own.’

‘Oh, poor old bones,’ said Tatiana. ‘Ivan, isn’t Olga just beautiful tonight?’

They circled amid others. He said, ‘Preciously beautiful, Tatiana.’

It was far into the night when the ball reached the final number. The orchestra sighed its way into the opening chords. Kirby, not engaged for the waltz, was talking to old General Sikorski. Tatiana appeared. Had the general forgotten he was obligated to her? The old soldier begged her forgiveness for his remissness, Tatiana put her hand on his arm and he led her proudly on to the shining floor. Tatiana had denied a score of young gallants and happily given the privilege of the last dance to the general. It was entirely within character.

Olga was talking to her father, Nicholas still resplendent and genial. He signalled to Kirby
and Kirby went over. Officers were in attendance behind the Tsar.

‘Ah, my dear fellow,’ said Nicholas.

‘Your Highness?’

‘It’s been splendid, don’t you think? So many delightful young people.’