‘Karita, you’re making a speech, but I love you for it.’
She blushed a little. It was possible, he thought, that many people would consider themselves neither ignorant nor liars when laying the blame for Russia’s ills at the Tsar’s door.
‘Monsieur,’ said Karita, ‘it’s because of you that I’ve met the Imperial family, I am so fortunate to be here with you. Of course, that isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful at Karinshka, only that—’
‘Only that there are more ups and downs at Karinshka,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t going to say that at all,’ said Karita loyally.
‘Of course you weren’t,’ he said, ‘you are a treasure, Karita.’
He kissed her. Karita tingled. It was a very agreeable sensation.
His visit was nearly over now. He was drilling for the last time with Alexis. Alexis was giving the commands and Kirby was doing his very best. At last, he said, he knew his left from his right, and he owed it all to Alexis.
‘Oh, you’ve been jolly good, you know,’ beamed the boy.
The Grand Duchesses, white-bloused and blue-skirted, were as usual an hilarious and irreverent audience. Marie declared that Ivan Ivanovich really was the most comical driller poor Alexis had ever had to contend with. Tatiana said that he was fascinatingly droll and that she was head over heels in love with him.
‘When I’m married to the King of Denmark,’ she said, ‘I shall invite him to dinner every night.’
‘Darling,’ said Olga, ‘I’m sure nothing would please the King of Denmark more than being invited to dinner every night by his own wife.’
‘Goose,’ said Tatiana, ‘I meant I’d invite Ivan, then he’d spend all evening kissing my hand.’
‘Mama and Papa wouldn’t think much of that,’ said Marie.
‘Nor would the King of Denmark,’ said Olga.
‘And how awful for Ivan Ivanovich,’ said Anastasia, ‘fancy having to kiss someone’s hand while everyone else was eating all that scrumptious food.’
‘Not just someone’s hand,’ said Tatiana, ‘mine.’
‘Oh, help,’ said Anastasia.
‘Tasha, are you dreadfully, dreadfully in love?’ asked Marie.
‘She’s dreadfully everything,’ said Olga.
‘No one, simply no one,’ declared Tatiana, ‘has any idea of how terribly one suffers when one is in love.’ She waved gaily to Kirby. He waved back. Alexis was aghast. Didn’t Ivan Ivanovich understand that at drill a fellow simply did not wave at people, especially girls?
‘Great Scott, what a trial I am to both of us, Alexis,’ said Kirby.
‘Oh, I don’t mind too much,’ said Alexis magnanimously.
‘Oh, jolly good,’ said the much-improved recruit, ‘and I tell you what, give me a right incline and a couple of about-turns and then I’ll be too dizzy to wave to anyone.’
There was hysteria at that. Olga murmured, ‘Oh, dear delicious Mr Kirby,’ and then blushed crimson as Tatiana slyly peeped at her.
‘What does love really feel like?’ Anastasia asked earnestly of Tatiana.
‘One just can’t eat,’ said Tatiana. ‘Isn’t that awful, being quite starving and yet unable to eat a thing because of love?’
‘Never mind,’ said Olga, ‘when your love has departed you’ll be able to go back to eating like a horse.’
‘When he’s gone I shall be quite inconsolable,’ said Tatiana, who could remain immune to teasing, ‘but we shall write long passionate letters to each other, of course.’
‘How lovely,’ said Marie with a sigh, and Anastasia, who had a gift for histrionics, gave a very creditable imitation of love awaiting a passionate post.
Olga was suddenly wistful. He was leaving tomorrow.
He was going. The Tsar had already said a friendly goodbye to him. The rest of the Imperial family, together with Anna Vyrubova, were on the broad terrace at the top of the steps to see him on his way. Karita, having made her curtsey, stood to one side while he said goodbye to all of them. Anna was charming, Alexis kissed him. Tatiana gave him her hand and sighed. Marie was sweetly affectionate. Anastasia, giggling, kissed him too. Olga wanted to smile but her lips were stiff. Alexandra was gracious.
‘Perhaps you’ll be able to come and see us again before you return to England,’ she said.
‘Oh yes, you must,’ cried the younger children.
Olga’s blue eyes darkened. He had said nothing to her about returning to England.
‘Wherever I am, I shan’t forget Livadia,’ he said. He smiled. ‘It’s the loveliest place, full of the very nicest people. Bless you all.’
They waved to him and to Karita as he went down the white, shining steps with her to the carriage ordered to take him back to Karinshka.
‘Goodbye, Ivan Ivanovich, come again!’
Only Olga was quiet. When he had finally gone she disappeared.
Chapter Five
Princess Aleka seemed happier to have Karita back than Kirby. She fussed over the girl as Kirby made his way up to his suite. Karita was bubbling, full of Livadia and its splendours, enthusiastic about the Imperial family. Aleka let her go on, then boredom raised its head and she interrupted.
‘Who did he meet, Karita?’
‘Oh, everyone, the Tsar and Tsarina and all the children, Highness. You would never believe how much they all liked him and he was so good with them. All the Grand Duchesses are lovely and so sweet.’
‘Simpering angels, yes, I know.’
‘No, Highness.’ Karita risked her position with her quiet but firm contradiction. ‘They aren’t like that, truly.’
‘Oh, very well. There.’ She patted Karita’s cheek. ‘But I’m not interested in the Romanovs. What men did he meet? There are always the most intriguing ones who come and go at Livadia.’
‘There was old General Sikorski and officers of the Tsar’s guard,’ said Karita, ‘but he met no one else, Highness. He spent all his time playing tennis with the Tsar or bathing with the family or being with the children.’
‘Oh, was it as boring as that for him?’ Aleka laughed. ‘He is the soul of innocence and uneventfulness, poor man. Go along, Karita, and see if he wishes someone to run an uneventful bath for him.’
She went up herself a little later. He was writing a letter in his drawing room. He rose.
‘So,’ she said, ‘you have returned to the poor relations.’
‘Princess,’ he said, smiling, ‘it’s good to see you’re still yourself. But lovelier.’
Andrei came languidly in.
‘Welcome back, dear man,’ he said, ‘it’s gladdening to see you. You must tell us all about it.’
‘Must he?’ said Aleka. ‘It will only be about playing tennis with the Tsar and games with children. When that by itself has been said, what more is there?’
‘There are those delicious ladies of the court,’ said Andrei.
‘What is delicious about the virgin matrons of Alexandra?’ asked Aleka.
‘But, my chicken, surely you understand that their very respectability makes their conquest an esoteric journey into the unknown?’ said Andrei. ‘Surely they were included in Ivan’s games?’
‘Darling,’ said Aleka, her paleness overlaid by honey unavoidably caught from the sun, ‘do you seriously think our virtuous Ivan would play games with court ladies under the nose of his beloved Alexandra? I’ll swear he didn’t attempt to unlace the most willing of them.’
‘I didn’t have time,’ said Kirby, ‘I had so much drilling to do.’
‘Drilling?’ said Andrei faintly. ‘Drilling?’
‘I’ll tell you all about it at dinner,’ said Kirby.
Aleka looked hard at him. God, how insufferably pleased he was with himself, he was the damnedest man to shake out of self-satisfaction. ‘I think we can manage without being patronized,’ she said. ‘Do you imagine you’re the only man who’s knelt at the feet of our autocrats and been patted on the head? Ah, I suppose that next you expect to winter at Tsarskoe Selo?
’
‘You are the sweetest friend to have, Princess,’ he said.
It sounded like a pat on the head.
‘Andrei,’ she said, ‘when you first picked this dreadful man out of his little pond why didn’t you throw him back?’
‘My dearest,’ said Andrei, ‘I would have if I’d known you were going to adore him.’
That brought laughter from her.
‘Ivan Ivanovich,’ she said, ‘it’s nice you’re back. Don’t go away again. It makes me cross.’
‘I can’t stay for ever,’ said Kirby, ‘I must return to England fairly soon.’
‘England? That little place? Why, you ridiculous man, it will give you claustrophobia.’
That gave her the last word. She glided out happily then. Andrei winked and followed. Left to himself again, Kirby finished his letter of thanks to Alexandra.
Several days later he went into Yalta. Anstruther made him fairly welcome. Kirby wrote out an official letter of resignation and pushed it across to him. Anstruther read it in his fatherly way, scrawled ‘Unacceptable’ over it and pushed it back. He then brought up the subject of leave. Kirby had had virtually none for more than three years. Anstruther informed him he had now been given six months, and that this stood even though Kirby had been disappointingly negative over the question of how totally Russia was committed in her alliance with France. Kirby insisted he had never had any intention of stepping on that ground.
Anstruther took it manfully and told him to enjoy his leave.
The Crimean autumn was still warm and beautiful when he made up his mind to return to England. But there were shadows in his mind and an image of the impossible, and the bright, fragrant days only reminded him of young, breathless loveliness. He must leave Russia, where he was so dangerously close to being haunted by a child of the dawn. She was sixteen. Sixteen. A Grand Duchess. The moon could not have been more unassailable. In a few years she would marry one of her own kind. She could not escape, would not wish to, for as the Tsar’s daughter she could not trade in fairy stories.
Aleka was incensed when he told her. She had been remarkably equable since his return and had become so affectionately tolerant of Andrei’s indolence that Andrei confided to Kirby that he was sure he was experiencing a loving prelude to a proposal. It would be entirely consistent in Aleka to take this initiative. How, said Andrei, could a man say no to Aleka and not end up with his throat cut?
Kirby had a feeling that the princess now would willingly take the knife to him.
‘So, you wish to leave us! You’re so drunk from drinking with Romanovs that we’re too dull for you! Go back to England, then. You’re bored with us. I’m not so self-centred that I haven’t noticed that.’
‘Aleka, I swear that isn’t true,’ he said. ‘I swear that you know it isn’t. You and Andrei are the least boring people I know. Isn’t it possible that I can want to return home for a while without you thinking I’m trying to insult you? Sweet Princess, you are the most stimulating woman in Russia and one of the loveliest. When I come back you’ll be the first person I’ll look for.’ That was a lie but he had to say it. Temperamental and outrageous, the princess had still been fascinating and generous, she had given him friendship, provocation and the freedom of Karinshka.
Her mood changed. Sweetness replaced anger.
‘Ivan, you aren’t compelled to go. You are free to do as you like. You have no responsibilities to anyone, have you?’
‘It’s not that,’ he said, ‘only that I haven’t seen my own country for over three years. And I do have an aunt who likes to see me once in a while.’
‘But she has had so much of you in the past,’ said Aleka, ‘and here we are just beginning to know you, to like you. Ivan, stay with us, come to St Petersburg with us when we go there.’
He was in her suite, where Aleka had been dressing for dinner. She had draped a green silk negligee over her petticoats, and her unbraided hair was a spilling auburn richness. He could not deny her loveliness. She only lacked innocence. Ruefully he wondered what he was coming to that he should be in such absurd consciousness of innocence, which sat so coyly and uncomfortably on so many women.
‘I’ll come to St Petersburg after I’ve been to England.’
‘Oh, thank you for that crumb,’ she said, ‘how generous of you. Oh, why must you go? Together we could turn everything upside down in St Petersburg and outrage everyone. You’d be able to meet far more interesting people than you’ve met here, you’d become a lion instead of going back to England and only being a mouse.’
‘Well, let me be a mouse for a while and turn me into a lion later.’
‘Oh, stop trying to be clever and amusing.’ Then a sudden intuition sprang. ‘Ivan, you’re in love, that’s what it is.’
‘You’re easy to fall in love with, Aleka Petrovna.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t be so damned fatuous. It isn’t me, it’s someone else. Why, I know now, you were already in love the day I met you on the station at Nikolayev. It showed then. You were a thousand miles away all that day. Is it this woman in Yalta?’
‘It’s no one.’
‘Imagine you lying about so sacred a thing as love.’ She was a little mocking. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘Not altogether, love.’
‘God, you can be a cad sometimes,’ she said. She flung back her hair. ‘Oh, if your mind is made up, I suppose it’s because she’s in England herself. Ivan, you’re a dreadful disappointment to me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Aleka, thank you. Karinshka has been wonderful.’
‘Yes, but I wish you hadn’t been thinking of someone else all the time,’ she said. She shrugged, she smiled, she shook her head. She laughed.
Karita was undisguisedly upset. When she had superintended his packing the next morning and the other servants had gone she said to him, ‘I am to say goodbye to you, monsieur?’
‘I hope not, Karita.’ He was dressed for travel, in light cord trousers and belted jacket, white shirt and velvet tie of brown. ‘I hope to be back if her Highness invites me.’
Her brown eyes were unhappy. Her relationship with him had been entirely without friction, it had become something that gave her a warm pleasure. She had almost come to feel a permanency about it and now it wasn’t permanent at all. It was very silly, but his departure made her feel unwanted, unnecessary. Worst of all, his good humour and his affectionate treatment of her had spoiled the special relationship she had had with Oravio. She knew indeed that she did not want to marry Oravio at all. She would only become someone to whom Oravio would say, ‘Woman, do this,’ or ‘Woman, do that.’
‘It will be very nice if you do come back, monsieur,’ she said.
‘Karita?’ He put a hand under her chin and lifted her face. Her eyes were brimming, ‘Karita, what’s this?’
‘Oh, monsieur, forgive me, but you’ve been so kind to me and it was so lovely at Livadia.’
‘Yes, Karita,’ he said gently, ‘we share that, you and I. We know Livadia. That we will never forget, will we?’
‘Never,’ said Karita.
‘Sweet one, what will I do without you? I’ll misplace everything I own.’ He kissed her. His mouth was warm and firm, the kiss not light but lingering and affectionate. She trembled, the tingling rushed through her body. ‘There, that was to tell you I’ll be back again.’ He smiled, not without regret. Karita was the prettiest and most companionable of persons. She smelled of the woods and the fields, the flowers and the sun, and she was the personification of all that was best about the Crimea.
‘Oh, monsieur,’ she cried and rushed from the suite.
He said goodbye to old Amarov and then to Aleka and Andrei. Andrei was exhibiting a faintly forlorn look. He liked Kirby unreservedly. Kirby did not make demands on a man. He minded his own business about things. He was a good fellow.
Aleka was not deceived by the kiss Kirby gave her. She was sure he was relieved to be going. It made her feel very dissatisfied an
d she suffered the pressure of his lips stiffly and unresponsively. She could bring herself to say no more than, ‘Goodbye.’ It was irritating to listen to Andrei professing he would miss Ivan confoundedly. Good God, anyone would think he was in love with the man himself.
When Kirby had gone she became furiously in need of action and stimulation.
‘To the beach,’ she cried to Andrei, ‘now, at once, this instant.’
‘Dearest angel,’ he said, ‘as we are, without that which will keep us decent?’
‘Without anything, anything,’ she said, running down the steps.
Naked in the warm blue sea, the beach a golden desert, Aleka plunged and frisked, Andrei gently bobbed. Aleka rose from the depths, hair streaming, white body flashing, breasts gleamingly wet.
‘Oh, dear heaven,’ murmured Andrei.
‘Tonight you shall make love to me, darling,’ she said.
‘My own,’ said Andrei. And, as he let himself float, ‘My God.’
Chapter Six
Lenin, the most inflexible revolutionary of them all, who considered that if a man had logic he did not need emotions, was active in exile. He believed in systems. It was systems that Russia required. It did not require compassion, charity or humanitarianism. It did not even require politics. He was a headache to many of his fellow exiles. He talked for hours on end. He was unanswerable, uncontradictable. A man of logic was like that.
The Duma seemed agreeably reasonable to the Tsar one day, disagreeably unreasonable the next.
Peter Stolypin, the far-seeing prime minister who might have saved everything for everyone given time, was dead. Assassinated. The assassin, as usual, had been a man of passion and little sense. He thought, as all assassins do, that violence was superior to argument.
Gregor Rasputin was in bad odour again. The belching old fool, for this was what his addictive gourmandizing and his loud mouth made him at times, had only himself to blame. He had seduced an Imperial servant. But his Imperial champion, Alexandra, would hear no word against him. He was a holy man. The suggestion by her mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Marie, that everything would be rosy again if the holy man was kicked all the way back to his Siberian village, was received coldly and rejected firmly.
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