The Summer Day is Done (22 page)

‘I don’t know the first thing about them.’

‘Now, darling,’ she murmured, ‘you can be
very impressive when you’re in the mood, and you can make up whatever you like about them. You can talk about how you saved their lives when the House of Lords tried to assassinate them. There’s no need to look like that, I know that’s all a flight of my fancy, but you’ll be able to make it sound beautiful. You need not be modest. Also, it’s important that you emphasize how Russian socialists have the support of their British comrades.’ She refused to waste any more time. She swung round, picked up a little silver bell and rang it. The buzzing stopped and Aleka said, ‘Dear friends, some of you have already met Ivan Ivanovich. He’s from England, where he’s active in the cause of the people. And how wonderful, he is actually intimate with such great international socialists as Sidney and Beatrice Webb—’

‘Ah.’ It was a sigh of appreciation, an encouragement rather than an interruption.

‘Also,’ continued Aleka, ‘he has many times debated with George Bernard Shaw. I simply cannot tell you how delighted I am that he wishes to meet you all and speak with you all.’

Good Lord, thought Kirby, as he stepped into the vacated limelight and came up against an expectant hush, they’re going to listen for once, only this time to someone with nothing to say.

He had better think of something.

‘My friends,’ he said, ‘I think it must have been George Bernard Shaw who said that to conduct a successful circus you must first of all produce a lion. I’m not sure what happens if the lion fails
to roar, however. Who would like to ask me some questions?’

Karita, glancing from across the room, thought he looked tall and very sure of himself, but what he had meant by his reference to circuses and lions she had no idea.

Yes, she had. She laughed to herself.

‘Monsieur,’ said a black-bearded man, quite benign despite the hirsute ferocity of his appearance, ‘where at present do the estimable Sidney and Beatrice Webb place the influence of trade unionism in a wholly capitalist society? Isn’t it true that they consider the confluence an anomaly and that healthy capitalism means weak trade unionism?’

‘How delighted I am, sir,’ said Kirby, ‘that you’ve answered the question so well yourself. Are there any more?’

There were. Inevitably they all began asking at once. That is to say, the end of one question ran into the beginning of another, and all Kirby could do was to meet each question halfway.

‘Yes, that’s quite correct – no, the use of carrier pigeons for the importation of banned books for the masses is impractical because of the weight – madam, I’ve never seen Beatrice Webb in proletarian or non-proletarian hats – I’m sorry, sir, I lost the best part of your question – but to the gentleman on your left whose question is just arriving I’d say both Sidney and Beatrice are totally committed to the Japanese interpretations – yes, it’s very confusing – yes, please do all speak together, it concertinas the questions most conveniently – madam, I assure
you, George Bernard Shaw and I ride the same horse – well, do repeat the question if you get a chance—’ And so he went on.

Princess Aleka was almost panting with the effort of controlling her hysteria as she retreated to hide herself among the servants.

‘Will we serve tea now, Highness?’ asked Karita.

Aleka leaned helplessly against the wall.

‘Karita, oh that fiend, he really is turning my afternoon salon into a circus,’ she gasped.

‘Highness?’

‘That terrible Ivan Ivanovich – he’s a monster of upside-down perfidy. Yes, you had better serve tea before I kill him.’ She choked with laughter. Karita permitted herself a giggle.

The real questions were beginning to falter, the guests beginning to put fingers into their ears and to look glassily at Kirby.

‘I am sure,’ observed benign black-beard to his neighbour, ‘that the fellow is mad.’

‘Egocentric, I’d say. Ah, here is the tea.’

They swarmed around the samovars, glad to escape from the roaring lion. They munched cakes and pastries. Aleka took Kirby by the arm.

‘Ah, my dearest friend,’ she whispered, ‘when they’ve gone I will kill you.’

‘Why?’ He took the glass of tea Karita brought him and gave her a smile. She was sure he winked as well. He was dreadful. ‘I thought I was impressive and I’ve still to tell them how I fought off the House of Lords single-handed while Sidney and Beatrice made their escape.’

‘Make a fool of yourself if you must,’ said Aleka, ‘but not of me. You are maddening. And it’s so funny.’

‘Is it?’

‘Darling, you’ll find you’ve made yourself an enormous success. They will all go away and talk about you. Even so, don’t you dare do it again. The cause is not to be ridiculed.’

‘Ah, there’s Karita signalling me,’ he said, ‘I must go.’

‘Oh, you infamous coward, you dare!’ Her eyes flashed. ‘When they’ve gone you and I will be alone – Ivan, you’re to be nice to me—’

‘I must definitely go,’ he said, ‘or I shan’t be nice to you at all. Do you want your dress torn?’

‘Yes, violently,’ she said.

But he left while her guests were still gulping and munching. He took Karita with him. Aleka fumed.

It was Andrei who told him he had heard the Tsarevich had been very ill since the autumn. Andrei mentioned it casually. Kirby took it to heart. The Imperial family, in residence at Tsarskoe Selo, were close enough for him to visit. He thought, however, that Alexandra might not want that. She had always been kind but it was reasonable enough for her to want to discourage his further association with Olga.

So he wrote Alexandra a letter of concern and sympathy. She replied some days later, briefly but in her usual sincere fashion, thanking him excessively for writing about Alexis and telling
him the boy was better but still very weak. She did not say what had been wrong with him and she did not ask Kirby to visit them.

He understood.

It was mid-January and the season was in full swing. Alive and invigorating at this time of the year, St Petersburg was a capital full of people in search of culture and pleasure. Its aristocrats were either oblivious of the country’s unrest or untroubled by it. Any unrest in the city itself was always dealt with so speedily by the authorities that it was never more than a temporary headline. The power of the Okhrana, with its vast army of servants and informers active throughout Russia, was such that potential agitations and demonstrations were crushed before they could be publicly organized. The nobles were confident too that the Tsar, when he eventually came to his senses, would disband the Duma once and for all. Indeed, if he would only instruct its president, Rodzianko, then Rodzianko would smother it by the sheer formidability of his will and his weight. Rodzianko was an aristocrat of great size and competence.

Unfortunately, he was not altogether in favour with Alexandra.

He did not like Rasputin.

The holy man had prophesied that while he lived the Tsar and the throne would be safe. Whether he said this out of genuine mystic conviction or to keep people like Rodzianko off his back, only Rasputin knew. Nothing he did or said made clear, practical sense: there was always an element of ambivalence, of ‘I alone know what I and God are talking about.’

The only thing that was obvious about him was his uncomplicated passion for women. Single-mindedly, unashamedly, he bore down on them like a bull. They were either seduced or ravished, overwhelmed or numbed. Some of them enjoyed it immensely.

However, he was not in St Petersburg at the moment and the city felt the better for his absence. On a white glittering night, clear and tinglingly sharp, the Imperial Opera House drew into its tiered auditorium patrons who had been privileged to acquire tickets for Tchaikovsky’s ballet
Swan Lake
. The critics in their tendentious search for the vague and abstract scorned the traditional appeal of
Swan Lake
. They proclaimed it rubbish, thus following in the footsteps of equally enlightened critics who had declared many of Beethoven’s works to be garbage. The people, in their simple rusticity, took Beethoven to their bosom and, in this later era, adored
Swan Lake
.

The Tsar was there that night with his two elder daughters (Alexandra rarely went to the opera or theatre). When he entered the Imperial box, the girls following, every member of the audience rose. The enthusiasm was emotional,
the acclamation put a flush on the faces of the Grand Duchesses. The national anthem was sung with roaring Russian fervour, and at the end the Tsar responded with smiling gestures and this evoked more enthusiasm. Not until he sat down did the brilliantly dressed audience subside. He looked handsome, happy and resplendent in his uniform, and Olga and Tatiana were almost tearfully proud.

They sat one on each side of him, behind them a small, select entourage. Tatiana was eager, alive. In her sixteenth year her elegance was superb. In white gown, long white gloves, her auburn hair up and crowned with a tiara, she responded to looks and stares with unselfconscious smiles and nods. Olga was also gowned in shimmering white, with a tiara in her bright hair. Outwardly she seemed composed but the pink began to tint her cheeks at the attention focused on her. Whereas Tatiana looked around, hugely enjoying the atmosphere, her face expressive of her excitement, Olga took refuge in her programme, and because of her genuine interest in the ballet soon became absorbed in the notes.

The lights faded, the overture began. And when the curtain rose to admit the audience to the ballet’s magical world, Tatiana became entranced. Olga too lost herself heart and soul in the heaven of Tchaikovsky’s music, and as the story of Odette unfolded her blue eyes dreamed and she was utterly still.

At the interval the Imperial party retired from their box to the reception room where Nicholas, never free from social trivia on occasions like
this, received the manager of the Opera House and various members of the company before enjoying some refreshment. He was in his usual good form, charming everyone and showing not the faintest sign that his Empire, as always, was rocking.

Returning to their box Tatiana acknowledged a gesture from the box opposite with a little wave of her hand.

‘Who is it you’re waving to?’ asked Olga.

‘Aleka Petrovna,’ said Tatiana, seating herself, ‘she’s here tonight with friends.’

The lights were fading as Olga glanced across. Princess Aleka was very much there, her silvery gown worn with risqué abandon off her shoulders. There was another woman and some men, but the lights dimmed to leave the box in semi-darkness as the curtain went up. Olga sought her opera glasses but was too shy to use them until the audience had become absorbed again in the ballet. Indeed, she had never used glasses on an audience, only to magnify a stage view. Within the shadows of the box she raised the glasses to her eyes and picked out the ballerina, a fantasy of spinning
pas seul
. Olga held the magnified image of light and grace, the brilliance of the fixed stage smile, and then briefly focused the glasses on the opposite box. The profile of Aleka Petrovna emerged from the half shadows, relaxed and engrossed. But during the short seconds of her observation Olga could not distinguish who the men were.

When the ballet reached its melodic, haunting end, Tatiana emitted an ecstatic sigh. Olga sat in
pure, dreamy bliss, and only when the bouquets were being presented to the prima ballerina and the audience was still noisy with rapturous applause did she glance again at the box opposite. There were three men. She did not know any of them.

Tsarskoe Selo, some fifteen miles south of St Petersburg, was where the Imperial family spent most of the winter season. Removed from the life, opulence and political atmosphere of the capital, they created their own world of parochial detachment in well-guarded seclusion. At Tsarskoe Selo the antics of the Duma, the discontent of the people and the noise of revolutionaries were not intrusive. Here the family lived in united harmony, and the sounds of Olga or Tatiana at the piano created the atmosphere of happy Sundays in a middle-class home. The warmth and the peace within kept at bay the snow and the cold outside.

There were two palaces at Tsarskoe Selo. These were surrounded by the Imperial Park, and around the high iron railings of the park scarlet-clad Cossacks patrolled in mounted vigilance night and day.

The old structure, the Catherine Palace, was a hugely ornate edifice. It was entirely characteristic of its flamboyant builder, Catherine the Great. The Alexander Palace, the smaller of the two, had been erected by Alexander I on a less pretentious scale, and it was typical of the modest Nicholas to use the smaller and simpler building. Even so, the Alexander Palace
had more than one hundred rooms, each one exquisitely furnished. Porcelain stoves heated the rooms, the stoves fed with timber. And throughout the winter Empress Alexandra kept the palace fragrant with a multitude of flowers, many of which were brought by train from her beloved Crimea.

Beyond the Imperial Park were the houses and mansions of the court nobility, making of Tsarskoe Selo an expansive Tsarist suburb.

It was warm, it was family in the Alexander Palace.

‘Olga, there you are,’ said Tatiana, entering the music room. Olga was sitting at the piano. Her elbows were on depressed keys, her chin cupped in her hands, and there was an open book propped on the music stand. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I am practising Bach,’ said Olga.

‘Do you think you’re better at it when you play with your elbows?’

‘I couldn’t be worse,’ said Olga.

‘But you aren’t playing, you’re reading. Move up.’ Tatiana pushed and made room for herself on the piano stool, achieving a precarious equality for both of them. ‘What is it you’re reading?’ She reached for the book. Olga reacted too late. Sisterly companionship turned into a whirl and scurry as Tatiana fled around the room with the book, Olga in pursuit.

‘Tatiana! Give it back!’

Tatiana hared back to the piano, ducked behind it and feigned to go first one way, then the other. Olga darted. Tatiana emerged, Olga
swooped. She caught her sister by the hair. Tatiana yelled, astonished that Olga could be so fierce.