The following morning, after spending the night at a hotel in Sevastopol, they took a small steamer over the bright waters of the Black Sea to Yalta. There they were met by servants from Karinshka Palace and from Andrei’s estate, together with carriages. Only Gregory, the secretary, took Andrei’s carriage. Andrei, reluctantly resigning himself to the whims of the temperamental princess, took his seat with Kirby. His valet followed in a second carriage with the servants and the luggage.
The Karinshka Palace was several miles from Yalta. It was on this coast that many of Russia’s most privileged aristocrats had built their great houses or palaces. Somewhere in the vicinity was the enormous estate of the Tsar himself, crowned by the Livadia Palace. At this time of year the Imperial family were almost always in residence. Livadia was adored by the Empress Alexandra. Only at Livadia did she find the complete peace so necessary to her spiritual well-being.
The road was white and dusty, the scenery breathtakingly beautiful, the hills and the valleys a riot of colour. Wild roses, wild grapes and every other kind of natural vegetation clothed the earth with heaven’s abundance. Princess Aleka, fully veiled to protect herself from the dust, was in a mood of sweet satisfaction.
A woman tossed a flower into her lap. She took it up and gestured her thanks to the woman.
‘You see,’ she said to Kirby, ‘they are real people here, not incurable serfs or priest-ridden peasants. All people should be real, should be proud. No one should be a servant.’
He thought she probably had a hundred servants herself and said so. She received that in contemptuous scorn.
‘I mean,’ she said bitingly, ‘that nobody should have a humble mind. One can serve without being at all humble. How can a man profess to have a brain if he can’t see that?’
‘I do see it. I took you literally, that’s all. I’m a wooden-head.’
‘Well, we’ll hope you get over it,’ she said, ‘but it’s here, in the Crimea, that we might start the revolution, because here the people aren’t humble.’
When they arrived at last at the Karinshka Palace, Kirby thought he had never seen anything so expansively soaring. It was built on a high green hill overlooking the sea. Cupolas gleamed in the sunshine, were outlined against the blue sky. It had been left to Princess Aleka by her father’s brother, an unprogressive old bachelor who had been murdered in the 1905 rebellion, and it was held in trust for her by her father, thereby overcoming the restriction placed on female inheritance.
Inside everything had a lofty vastness, walls and ceilings of gold and white, chandeliers immense and yet fragile. The wide central staircase was Russian baroque, winding and floating towards the upper floors. Princess Aleka, restless and subject to boredom, often no sooner arrived in one place than she was fidgeting to be elsewhere. But Karinshka was different. After nine months in France and England she had longed for it. She swept through, her pale green silk coat swirling. Servants bowed or curtseyed.
Aleka herself showed Andrei and Kirby to their rooms on the first floor. It was a huge suite, fit for a king, the wallpapers like fragrant watercolour murals. Aleka had perhaps wanted to impress her English guest a little, for she waited on his reactions as he surveyed the sumptuously furnished drawing room with its tall windows that opened on to the wide, sweeping balcony.
‘Will you be comfortable enough?’ she asked.
‘Comfortable? I shall drown in velvet magnificence.’
‘Oh? You would prefer, perhaps, to look for a tent in the garden?’
‘In the garden,’ he said, ‘I’ve only ever found the pen of my aunt.’
She had removed her veil. Her dark eyes were full of amusement.
‘Yes, when I was learning French I heard that joke too,’ she said.
‘I shall like it here,’ he said.
She turned as a servant came in. She said, ‘Ah, here is Karita. She is to look after you. She is a jewel. Karita, here is Ivan Ivanovich Kirby from England. You must see that he doesn’t find fault. The English are very critical of the rest of us. But there, he’s not too bad himself. Now I must go and see that Andrei Mikhailovich is happy. He’s a little sulky at the moment. Poor Andrei.’
She glided out.
Karita, the serving girl, floated a graceful curtsey to the Englishman. She wore a dress of sea blue, the colour of the Karinshka livery. The moulded bodice would have displayed a roundness had it not been covered by a crisp white front with pockets for house keys. Beneath the wide skirt petticoats rustled. Kirby smiled. He saw a girl in blue and white, with golden hair burnished and braided, without a cap. She had huge brown eyes, was slim-waisted and composed. She could not have been more than nineteen. She clapped her hands. Two other servants in blue livery appeared, dark and muscular men. They bore his luggage. There were two portmanteaux and a valise.
‘Just put them in there,’ said Kirby, indicating the bedroom, ‘I can manage.’
Brown eyes looked at him in horror.
‘But, your Highness—’
‘I’m not a Highness, I’m an English traveller.’
Karita looked calmly resolute. He knew she would insist that the servants did everything and he nothing. He had been in the houses of other aristocrats, in Andrei’s palatial St Petersburg residence. One did not do things for oneself. It upset the servants. The less one did the closer one was to the All-Highest in the eyes of servants.
‘Egor and Rudolf will see to your luggage, Highness, and I will unpack it,’ she said. He was very tall, very distinguished. He was obviously incognito, as many of Princess Aleka’s guests liked to be at times. A man so distinguished and with such fine eyes must be much more than a traveller. Egor and Rudolf came out of the bedroom, she nodded to them and they left. ‘Will you have Tanya run your bath now?’
‘Thank you. Who will put me in it?’
He was teasing her. Well! Karita drew herself up, clapped her hands again. Tanya, a maid, came hurrying in, she too in blue with a white front, but wearing a cap. She bobbed to Kirby, went through to the bedroom and into the bathroom. Kirby looked on indulgently. Sumptuousness and service were the keynotes of Karinshka. The blue and white elegance of the furniture, the walls adorned with paintings, enhanced the beauty of the bright, spacious drawing room. And Karita was not unornamental. Positively pretty.
‘Highness—’
‘I am only Ivan Ivanovich,’ he said, using both names in the Russian way.
‘Yes, indeed, Highness,’ she said. She regarded him a little cautiously. She had heard of England but had never seen anyone from that strange country. She had imagined all Englishmen to be dressed as soldiers and carrying swords, because they were always at war with someone. They were the warriors of Western Europe and carried their swords to the far corners of the world. She had heard that if an Englishman did not like the colour of a man’s hair or the sound of his voice, he considered either a good enough reason to take the man’s head off.
This Englishman was not in uniform but all the same Karita looked cautiously for a sword. He was without one.
‘Something is wrong with me?’ he said.
‘Oh, your most gracious Highness,’ she said, blushing, ‘you must forgive me for staring so.’
‘You are Karita and in charge of this suite?’ he said.
‘Yes, Highness.’
‘Well, Karita, don’t call me Highness or I’ll have your head off.’
Karita turned pale. Holy saints, it was true, then. She would lose her head. Not because of the colour of her hair but because of the way she spoke.
‘Monsieur,’ she said, coming to terms with the problem, and using the courtesy title accorded to someone who bore no other, ‘have you killed many people?’
He thought about it.
‘No, not very many,’ he said gravely. ‘Hardly any, in fact. Almost none, I think. Well, none that I can remember.’
‘None?’ She did not know whether to be relieved or dubious. ‘None at all, monsieur?’
‘I don’t think so.’ He thought more about it, giving it weightier consideration. ‘Well, if there are any I can remember, I’ll let you know. How will that do?’
She blushed because she knew he was amused. He was remarkably handsome. But he could not be telling the truth. She hoped he would never get angry with her. She was sure it would be terrible if he did.
‘It’s only what I’ve heard, your— only what I’ve heard, monsieur,’ she said.
‘What, about me?’ He was completely intrigued, finding her quaintness bewitching.
‘About the English,’ said Karita. It was a blessed diversion when Tanya came to say the bath was ready and old Amarov wheeled in the trolley containing the silver samovar and dishes of savouries. Karita filled a glass with tea, Kirby took the glass and a savoury and carried them through to the bathroom. The colour of the bath gave a blueness to the steaming water and Tanya had laid out what looked like masses of huge towels. He went into the bedroom, drank the tea and ate the savoury while he undressed.
In the drawing room Karita glanced over her shoulder.
‘You can leave the trolley, old one,’ she said, ‘his Highness will have what he wants when he’s finished his bath.’
Old Amarov, a retainer who had known many years of service with the Karinshka family, was white of eyebrow, sparse of hair.
‘He’s no Highness,’ he grumbled, ‘he’s only an Englishman. My father fought them at Balaclava.’
‘Your father fought everyone,’ said Karita. ‘Don’t let the Englishman hear you deny his nobility, he has slain a thousand men in his time. You’ve only to look at him to see that. It’s true he’s pretending to be ordinary but you can see he’s not. And he’s very kind.’
‘The wit of a woman is sharp indeed,’ said old Amarov, growling around, ‘and only a brainless donkey would question why someone who has slain a thousand men could be called kind.’
‘It was not out of kindness,’ said Karita composedly, ‘but in defence of his Tsar.’
‘Fool of a girl, England has no Tsar, only a king.’
‘Old one,’ said Karita, a little smile showing, ‘do you think her Highness favours him?’
‘What is the world coming to?’ Old Amarov was disgusted. ‘Go about your business, girl, and don’t let your nose grow longer than it is.’
Karita wrinkled a nose which she knew was not long at all. She sang as she whisked about the suite, seeing to this and that. With the Englishman in his bath she went into the bedroom and unpacked for him. She caressed the fine material of his English shirts, admired the soft strong leather of his footwear. Tanya helped her, stowing garments in the wardrobes as Karita handed them to her. She was careless with the leather case containing the Englishman’s comb, hairbrush and mirror and the hairbrush fell to the floor, hitting the corner of an open drawer on the way. Karita smacked her.
When Kirby, wearing a dressing gown, came in from the bathroom, Tanya was still tearful. She fled when Kirby appeared. ‘He will take your head off for your clumsiness,’ Karita had said. Karita apologized to him for what had happened and was distressed, she said, that Tanya’s carelessness had cracked the hairbrush.
‘Oh?’ he said.
She showed him the hairbrush. The back was of polished wood, inlaid with ivory. She pointed out a hairline crack.
‘Dear me, that is bad,’ he said.
Karita blushed with mortification. Oh, that Tanya! She lifted her worried brown eyes. But he was smiling. He was not being terrible at all.
‘If there’s anything else you want, you will ring, monsieur?’
‘What a treasure you are,’ he said.
Pink pleasure tinted her cheeks.
‘Her Highness doesn’t dine until nine,’ she said, ‘but there is food on the trolley if you wish it. I may go now, monsieur?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I think I shall miss you.’
She was used to being teased by the irrepressible friends of Princess Aleka but was never disconcerted by it. She was just a little disconcerted now. She tried to leave as composedly as she could. Outside she was free to indulge her emotions. She giggled.
Alone, Kirby took up the hairbrush. He twisted it, the ivory inlay was divorced from the polished wood and the back came away. He turned it over. What had been carefully inserted was still there, undisturbed.
He sat for a long while by the drawing room window, watching the sun in its slow, evening descent. He had enjoyed his bath, his feeling was one of relaxed well-being. The view was a panorama of sky and sea, of garden magic where the hillsides swarmed with greens and golds.
He thought about a man he had to see in Yalta. But it was not easy to concentrate when images of shy innocence were so intrusive. How young she had looked. He had glanced into the faces of a thousand girls, on the street, in restaurants and theatres, and everywhere else, but he could not call one of them clearly to mind. Except this one.
Karita returned to his suite at a little after eight.
‘I am to tell you her Highness expects you in the dining room at nine, monsieur.’
‘Then I’d better get dressed before then.’
‘It would not be out of place, monsieur.’ Karita too had a sense of humour. It was nice to see his smile of appreciation. She was beginning to find him unusually intriguing. It would not be at all unpleasant to be in charge of his comfort while he was here. If Englishmen were aggressive and quarrelsome, this one was not. It was better to make up one’s own mind than to listen open-mouthed to others.
She went into the bedroom and came out carrying his white-jacketed evening suit.
‘I will press it for you, Highness.’ It slipped out because she could not dissociate impulse from instinct.
She returned with the suit immaculately pressed and brushed within half an hour. It was warm and sleek from her attentions.
‘Karita,’ he said when he had thanked her, ‘try not to be too indispensable, it will only destroy my self-reliance. How would you like it if, when I had finished my stay here, I couldn’t even button up my own jacket?’
‘Monsieur,’ she said, the braids of her hair like beaten gold, ‘what a fuss to make over such a little thing as pressing your clothes.’
He laughed. She really was the prettiest and most self-possessed of young women.
She waited outside his door while he dressed. When he emerged just before nine Karita was quite delighted. He did her great credit. She curtseyed, then preceding him along the wide landing she led the way to the staircase. Slowly she descended. She found him by her side. She stopped in a little confusion.
‘Your Highness—’
‘If you call me that again I’ll do something terrible,’ he said.
She knew he would not, but it did sound alarming.
‘Monsieur, I’m so sorry, but I am to go first, you see.’
‘Very well. We must all do as Romans do, of course.’ He followed her down. There were liveried servants standing like sentries at their posts in the shining hall used for balls. Karita’s petticoats whispered and rustled. Footmen opened the doors to the dining room. Kirby saw the illuminating enchantment of one single vast chandelier, the colour of paintings and the resplendence of a long table laid for dinner. Silver sparkled, glasses reflected brilliance. Princess Aleka stood at the head of the table talking to Andrei, Andrei a sartorial elegance in a cream-coloured jacket and midnight-blue trousers. Princess Aleka was a revelation. Her low-bodiced brocaded gown was a shimmer of silver and gold. Her bosom was unashamedly, curvingly opulent, her white shoulders smoothly bare. Her piled auburn hair was jewelled. In warm marble, thought Kirby, she would have looked like a sculptured goddess.
‘Monsieur Ivan Ivanovich, your Highness,’ announced Karita.
Aleka turned.
‘Why, Karita, such formality,’ she said, ‘but how prettily you do it. You have more feeling for an occasion than I have. It is an occasion, isn’t it, when we have a handsome Englishman to dine with us?’
‘Indeed, Highness,’ murmured Karita. Aleka laughed and Karita smiled, then whisked away.
Looking after her, Aleka said, ‘You’re pleased with her, Ivan? You have the best servant here. Andrei has his own valet, of course, but no one is quite as invaluable as Karita. Am I not good to you? You’re comfortable? Everything is to your liking? Of course. What silly questions we do put to each other at times.’
She sat at the head of the table, Kirby one place down on her right, Andrei opposite him. The enormously long table was fully laid although there were only the three of them. Aleka explained to Kirby that it was not necessary for him to think every evening would be as quiet and boring as this, for she would have the most entertaining friends to dinner each night from tomorrow onwards.
Andrei winced. Kirby said, ‘I give you my word, Princess, in a world revolving as giddily as ours there’s nothing I enjoy more than quietude and boredom.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Andrei, ‘although I must say one’s enjoyment is governed by whom one is sharing the boredom with. There’s no boredom I couldn’t enjoy with you, dear Aleka.’
‘Imbeciles,’ said Aleka. She was not bored herself, not at the moment. She was at Karinshka and her guests were exclusively her own. She knew many intelligent women but much preferred her love–hate relationships with men. Love, arguments and quarrels all exhilarated her.
Blue-liveried retainers began to serve dinner. Kirby found himself involved with a stuffed egg sitting on a bed of caviar. Aleka, like all aristocrats, behaved as if the servants were only deaf shadows, naming names and places with the abandon of an unimpeachable bohemian as she told Andrei what she thought of some of his St Petersburg friends.
‘Good Lord, darling,’ said Andrei, ‘you must have looked through a thousand keyholes in your time.’
‘Indeed I’ve not,’ said Aleka, ‘I’m speaking of my personal knowledge of libertines. You have some frightful friends, Andrei.’
‘Horrifying,’ said Andrei, ‘and I do hope your personal knowledge was acquired as a result of victories and not defeats. To picture you trying to fight off Sergius Pavlich raises the most appalling images. The man is as hairy as a bear. Ghastly.’
Vodka was served with the first courses. Aleka wanted to hear more of England and the English from Kirby, but interrupted him frequently to remind him that she had been there far more recently than he had, and that therefore her impressions of things were fresher than his were. Eventually Kirby mildly observed over a dish of tenderly white fish that it was a pity she raised questions to which she knew all the answers. It made him feel unnecessary.
‘Darling, nobody is unnecessary,’ she said. They had been speaking of the separate Houses of Parliament and she was determined to put her point. ‘It’s just that you forget I’ve attended both Houses and that it’s not a question of my knowing the answers but of having opinions. Do you know what my opinion is of your Houses of Parliament?’
Her scent was delicately exotic and he was sure her bosom was powdered.
‘I know you’re going to tell me,’ he said.
‘One House,’ she said, ‘is nothing to do with the people, it’s full of lords and dukes and ancient nobodies. The other House is full of monkey-faced politicians who are supposed to have everything to do with the people but don’t give a damn for them.’
‘We try to believe,’ said Kirby, ‘that the House of Lords protects us from the indifference of the Commons.’
‘Impossible,’ said Aleka, ‘because your House of Lords is full of aristocrats like Andrei. Andrei couldn’t protect a dog from a flea, he couldn’t even protect himself from one. Forgive me, Andrei, but that is so, isn’t it?’
‘Perfectly so, my little peahen,’ said Andrei.
She regarded him with exasperated affection.
‘Sometimes, Andrei, I love you because you’re like a rich man lost in a jungle, all your gold helpless to save you from the cannibals. And sometimes I don’t know why I love you at all.’
‘To be loved for any reason is uplifting,’ said Kirby, ‘but to be loved for no reason at all is destructive to any man.’
‘Why?’ she demanded.
‘He assumes himself to be an indescribable perfection and surrounds himself with mirrors so that his perfection is always a delight to his own eyes. He dies the death of Narcissus. I think, by the way, that I read that in a book.’
‘Then it was a very stupid and badly written book,’ said Aleka.
The vodka was followed by a Crimean wine, full-bodied and heady.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Aleka, ‘it will all be much more exhilarating.’
‘God forbid,’ said Andrei, shuddering. ‘I have to tell you,’ he said to Kirby, ‘that Aleka Petrovna has an extraordinary liking for loud voices.’
‘Oh?’ said Kirby. He reflected. ‘Shall I speak up a little, Princess?’
‘Ivan,’ she said, ‘I should be very disappointed if you really did turn out to be a fool. It would be just my luck. Almost all my friends are idiots. But it’ll be exhilarating, all the same. There’ll be people here every day from now on. They’ll come calling tomorrow and never stop. You’ll find much to talk to them about.’
As a servant refilled his wine glass Kirby said with an air of disarming sincerity, ‘I shall look forward to it. But how does one talk to idiots, Princess?’
‘Idiots? Oh,’ she flashed, ‘that should be easy for you, it will simply be as one fool to another.’
‘Touché, darling,’ said Andrei.
A girl of sixteen stood on a balcony of the Imperial Palace at Livadia. The night was warm, the sky bright with stars, a velvet indigo encrusted with jewels. She wondered why she was thinking of a man she had glimpsed for no more than a few seconds, of his warm, friendly eyes and the smile he had given her.
It was silly.
Her sister came, putting an arm around her.
‘Olga, what are you dreaming of out here?’
‘Do you dream when you’re awake, Tatiana?’
‘Goose,’ said her sister, ‘when I’m awake I’m full of wishes, I only dream when I’m asleep.’
‘It’s you who are the goose. Wishes are dreams too, silly.’
Karita brought Kirby his breakfast.
He was awake, lying on his back, his hands folded behind his head. The huge windows let in the bright morning. Karita opened them and there came the scent of gardens, hills and sea. She herself was even brighter than the morning.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘My lord,’ she began, then blushed at his laughter.
‘Karita, my lamb, you’ve been deceived again. Who has done it this time?’
‘I asked Count Purishkin and he said you could not be less than a duke. A duke is an English lord, isn’t he? You see, I knew I was not mistaken, but I’ve kept it to myself in case you wanted no one else to know.’
‘Well, lords and dukes of course are very funny about who should know and who shouldn’t,’ he said seriously. ‘Your mind is made up that I’m a duke?’
‘Highness, who was to tell Count Purishkin he was wrong? It would not have been proper for me to do so.’
‘Karita, I’m not a duke, so don’t call me my lord or anything else. That would be even less proper. What’s all this you’ve brought me?’
The breakfast trolley was mountainous with food. Karita began to itemize the dishes. Kirby sat up, shook his head and told her to take it all away, leaving only fruit and bread. Karita, a picture in her bright blue and immaculate white front, stood her ground.
‘Her Highness said – well, she said—’
‘Yes?’ He thought her quick little smile delicious.
‘She said that Count Purishkin had been starving you, monsieur.’
‘I must tell Andrei Mikhailovich that. So her Highness wishes to fatten me up. Are her friends coming to eat me, then?’
Karita could not restrain a gurgle. He was in such good humour again. And he did not really need to be fattened up, he was very sinewy and that was how a man should be. The open neck of his silk pyjamas showed flesh brown and hard.
‘You need only eat what you wish, monsieur,’ she said. ‘Also, her Highness said that if you would like to bathe in the sea this morning she will be ready for you to accompany her at eleven.’
‘Is it recommended, Karita?’
Karita’s smile flirted around her lips, then she said, ‘It’s recommended that you be ready by eleven, monsieur.’
He smiled.
‘How old are you, Karita?’
‘Nineteen, my lord. I mean monsieur. Oh dear, because of one thing and another and Count Purishkin, I don’t know what I do mean.’
‘We won’t go into all that again. Nineteen is lovely, Karita. Thank you for my breakfast.’
Karita went away feeling pleasantly disconcerted. He was very teasing. He was quite unlike Oravio, who was so serious and earnest. Oravio was a senior footman. It was understood by their families that in a year or two he and Karita would marry. Karita herself had not said yes or no. Oravio said she did not have to. It was something their families would decide. Karita did not tell him that her mother had said she could do better for herself than that. Her mother did not consider Oravio would be a monumental catch.
Certainly Oravio was dark and handsome. But he was not gifted with laughter. He admired his own seriousness, he said there was little to laugh at in Russia, anyway.
Karita did not know why, when she saw him on the landing, his sober, swarthy handsomeness suddenly seemed unexciting. He glanced at the door she had closed behind her.
‘Why are you so pleased with yourself this morning?’ he asked.
‘It’s my lord Ivan Ivanovich,’ she said, ‘he’s making comical faces over his breakfast.’
‘Why do you call him lord? He’s no lord, he’s only another arrogant Englishman.’
There, thought Karita, there is someone else trying to think for me.
‘He’s not a bit like that,’ she said.
‘They’re all like that,’ said Oravio sternly, ‘keep away from him.’ He passed on. Karita tossed her head, tilted her nose and looked into a huge wall mirror. Well, you do not look all dark and intense, she said to herself. She went happily on her way.
‘Ah,’ said old Amarov when she entered the kitchens, ‘what has tickled you today, my bright one?’
‘See?’ said Karita, pointing to his chest. He looked down and Karita brought her hand up and tweaked his flowing white moustache.
‘Chit of an impudence,’ he shouted, ‘where is your respect for your betters?’
‘You are a lovely old man, old one,’ said Karita and kissed his cheek.
‘What are things coming to?’ muttered the old one. ‘What are they coming to?’
Later that morning Princess Aleka, Andrei and Kirby bathed from the golden beach exclusive to Karinshka. They changed in the beach hut, which to Kirby had all the size and amenities of a miniature mansion. It stood back on the bluff, it had a terrace and was pleasantly suitable for lunch to be taken there if desired. But Aleka was expecting visitors at the palace.
She appeared in a blue costume, the skirt edged with white, and she wore a blue bathing hat with a white band. The legs of the costume were shamelessly short, buttoned only just below the knees. Her limbs were smooth, shapely, her skin white. She looked hard at Kirby in his black costume.
‘How nice,’ she said slyly, ‘you aren’t as thin as I thought, Ivan.’
‘Princess,’ he said, ‘I’m still full of breakfast.’
Andrei emerged, a figure of fashionable beachwear in striped red and white.
‘Goodness,’ murmured Aleka, ‘you are almost formidably beautiful, Andrei.’
‘Has the sun turned blue?’ he said. ‘No, it is divinity in the shape of Aleka Petrovna. Must we go into the sea? It is a pity to spoil the way we look.’
‘You see?’ said Aleka to Kirby. ‘He is even a coward about getting wet.’
She was expressively graceful in the water, her breaststroke fluent and effortless. Kirby was entirely physical, distressing Andrei with his foaming, sea-beating crawl. Andrei himself merely floated on his back.
‘Really, my dear chap,’ he murmured to the sky as Kirby splashed by. Aleka plummeted above him and pushed him under. ‘Dear God,’ he gasped on emerging, ‘the whole sea is ours and three is still a crowd. I’m going to lie on the beach. Ask Ivan to avoid treading on me when he comes out.’
She pushed him under again.
‘Andrei, are we not to be lovers any more?’ she asked.
Andrei spat water.
‘That is disgusting,’ she said, ‘I don’t spit in the sea, why should you?’
‘Perhaps when I’m half drowned I have spit to spare,’ said Andrei.
‘Andrei, speak to me of love,’ she said, treading water.
‘Dearest angel, last night I was exhausted. The tiresome journey, you know.’
‘Is there another woman, you cad?’
Andrei, drifting languidly on his back again, said, ‘Darling, what was I to do for nearly a year? A desolate man must be comforted. Where is Ivan?’
‘Trying to carve a divide in the Black Sea,’ she said. ‘Andrei …’ She went close to him, he straightened up in alarm and they both trod water. She reached long white arms under the translucent blue. ‘Andrei …’
‘By every precious saint,’ said Andrei faintly, ‘is this love?’
‘Andrei, I am starved, starved, I tell you.’
‘Well, darling,’ he said, treading water sensitively, ‘you’re making quite a meal of the first course.’
In a flash of temper she pushed him away. She swam. She found Kirby. He too was now floating on the warm, caressing water. Irritably she placed a hand over his face and pushed his head under. The water was suddenly alive and she screamed as she was lifted and tossed. She smacked into the sea. She rose to the surface in a fury, kicking and scratching.
‘Swine! How dare you!’
‘My mistake,’ said Kirby, holding her off, ‘I thought it was a game for two.’
She was still in a temper when they returned to the palace but brightened when she saw there were visitors waiting. There were cries of delight at her appearance. Expansively Aleka invited them all to stay for lunch. It was no more than they expected, anyway. Lunch was noisy, merry and prolonged. The visitors gay and boisterous, restless and insatiable, talked and ate, ate and talked. Aleka’s friends were like herself, temperamental, volatile and intensely Russian. Every emotion was uninhibitedly declared, expressed, revealed. They knew of Aleka’s political views, they teased her, mocked her, derided her. Aleka herself did not seem to mind that everything she said battered vainly against the opposing flow, was drowned and swept back to die. There was such exhilaration in flinging sarcasm at derision, logic at mockery. She loved every moment. Her dark eyes flashed, she smote the table and broke her wine glass. Kirby watched her. Her pale face glowed, her body vibrated. She revelled in their company, despised their outlook.
Not until a little exhaustion set in among some did others make themselves heard. A young man with a jewelled tie pin and lips as glistening as a woman’s said he had never seen a socialist who did not look like a tram conductor in search of a non-paying passenger. Aleka eyed him as if he had been born under rotting timber.
‘Alexis, foolishness is bad enough, ignorance is worse,’ she said. ‘Russia is groaning and what do you do? Plaster ignorance all over your foolishness. Poor Alexis. How does it feel to be unforgivably stupid? Privilege is bleeding the people to death and you’re indifferent to it. The Tsar’s ministers are either corrupt or incompetent and you’re grinning about it. It wouldn’t be so bad if grinning suited you, but never have I seen anyone who looks more like a laughing donkey. There, it isn’t your fault. You can’t help your face and your teeth. If you wish you can leave the table and hide yourself in the cellars. Old Amarov will pour wine over you and you can grin and soak all day.’
They laughed at the young man. He grinned the more.
‘Come, Aleka Petrovna,’ said a smiling man, ‘in Russia it’s always as bad as you say but never turns out worse than it was before. It’s always an exaggeration.’
‘When it’s not an exaggeration and the people are skinning you with sickles,’ said Aleka, ‘you’ll all say why didn’t someone tell you.’
‘Darling, you tell me,’ murmured a blonde woman to Kirby. She was festooned with ropes of pearls and sat next to him. Her features were cosmetically cared for, her eyes speculative and hungry.
‘About Russia?’ he said. ‘Alas, as Princess Aleka will tell you, I know so little about my own country that it would be regrettably inappropriate for me to set myself up as an observer of Russia.’
‘Oh, Aleka Petrovna is vastly amusing,’ she said, ‘but there’s no need to take her seriously. I am always interested in what the English have to say about us. I have been interested ever since Aleka introduced us before lunch. I shan’t mind if you’re dreadfully rude about everybody, everyone else is.’ She went on and became so immersed in the game of claiming his attention that she quite lost the thread of her original gambit and any desire she had to hear opinions that really did not matter. She passed on to the international flavour of Paris which, she declared, was the only capital city in Europe where foreigners felt themselves incipiently at home. Since everyone else seemed to have resumed talking as well, Kirby gave up trying to listen to her alone and let the whole become a tableau of mouths that never closed.
It was like that for days.
They bathed in the mornings, they returned to become embroiled in marathon, noisy lunches. The visitors took their carriages back to their own estates late in the afternoon and most of them appeared for dinner at night. The dinners were even more exhilarating than the lunches, excepting only to Kirby and Andrei.
‘The trouble with Russians, dear man,’ said the exhausted Andrei, ‘is that we’re all so infernally egoistic. We’re so frightfully Russian.’
‘Well, perhaps that’s better than being frightfully Chinese.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t doing the Chinese an injustice?’
‘No, I’m not sure at all.’
Kirby wanted to go into Yalta. He asked Karita about the possibility of taking a carriage. Karita passed the request on to old Amarov. Old Amarov asked the princess. She was still in bed. Kirby was requested to make a personal appearance. Karita took him to Aleka’s suite and through to the bedroom. She lay in a bed huge enough to accommodate six voluptuous concubines. His feet sank into the thick pile of a deep red carpet. There were enough slender-backed chairs to suggest she sometimes held court there. She sat up, her silken nightdress off her shoulders, her auburn hair a luxuriant disorder, her face at its palest.
‘Why do you want to go into Yalta?’ she asked.
‘To see friends I know there.’
‘Can’t you invite them here?’ She sounded a little annoyed.
‘You’re kindness itself, Princess, but my friends are workers and couldn’t leave their jobs. Is there a carriage I might take?’
‘Workers?’ She looked at him disbelievingly, while Karita, in dutiful attendance by the door, looked anywhere but at the princess. Unconventional though she knew Boyar women were, Karita thought that the princess, in choosing to appear as if she were emerging nakedly from her nightdress, was going a little too far. The black silk seemed dangerously insecure against the white curving flesh, the wide, ruched neckline with its plunging front loosely low around the arms. But the Englishman did not look embarrassed, only casual as he regarded the princess with an expression entirely pleasant. ‘Workers?’ she said again. ‘You have friends among workers in Yalta?’
‘At the British consulate,’ he said. ‘Princess, you only need to say yes or no. If it’s inconvenient—’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ she said crossly. He thought she was perhaps liverish. It would not be surprising. ‘Heavens, it’s not a crime to be interested in the movements of one’s friends, is it? You aren’t going because you’re bored here, are you?’
His smile was an immediate denial.
‘I haven’t been bored at all and I’m certainly not now. Have you been painted in oils lately, Princess? Stay like that and I’ll ask Andrei to come in and put you on canvas while I’m in Yalta.’
Long lashes lifted. She looked challenging, as if daring him to exercise impropriety, to lower his gaze. Then she said, ‘Karita is to take a carriage in thirty minutes, she has a free day and is going to see her parents. You can ride with her and then take the carriage on to Yalta. But you’re not to forget to return. Ivan, if I thought you really were bored—’
‘I’ll be back later,’ he said. He took her hand and kissed it. Aleka made a little face, but was not displeased.
The carriage did not arrive promptly but it was there in the end. Karita, in bright blouse, flowing skirt and linen bonnet, said she would sit up with the groom. Kirby said he would prefer her company himself as the groom had the horses to talk to.
‘Monsieur, it’s not proper for me to sit with you,’ she said. She looked remarkably attractive.
‘Well, let’s be improper for once, no one will notice,’ said Kirby.
Her smile came, brightening her golden face. She sat up with him, her back very straight, her attitude as proper as it could be under the circumstances. He talked to her, asked her about her parents. She said her father farmed the land and her mother was very wise. She always went to see them when she had a free day.
She alighted when they had gone three miles. She thanked Kirby, said goodbye to the groom, and Kirby watched her turn off the road into a narrow lane, flanked on both sides by rolling carpets of colour. He saw the white rooftops of the village of Karka in the distance, where Karita’s parents lived. She turned and waved. She looked as colourful as the landscape.
Yalta was balmy with autumnal warmth. Holiday Russians were strolling and shopping. Kirby stepped out and asked the groom to return with the carriage in a couple of hours. He sauntered in the sunshine, the town brown and mellow. The atmosphere was one of peace, although in St Petersburg there was another minor crisis and there had been unrest in the Urals. He had coffee, black and strong and sweet. He felt a sense of freedom. Princess Aleka did not make friends, she possessed them. In his meandering abstraction, he almost collided with a rather dumpy woman as she emerged from a shop. She, stepping hastily back, dropped her folded parasol. He picked it up and offered it to her with apologies for his clumsiness. As he did so a slender woman, accompanied by a girl in summery white, also emerged from the shop. She looked at Kirby, at the woman he had brushed, and said in enquiry, ‘Anna?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ The woman Anna, pleasant-faced, smiled away any suggestion of importunity on the part of Kirby.
‘Only that I was clumsy,’ he said in his faultless Russian. ‘I am terribly sorry, madam.’
‘Really, it was nothing,’ she said again, taking the parasol and shaking it out.
He felt a peculiar consciousness of the familiar. He turned his head and looked into blue eyes regarding him in curiosity. Immediately her shyness rushed into pink, startled recognition. Her chestnut-gold hair was a profusion beneath her white, ribboned bonnet, her youth an almost absurd enchantment to him. Their glances touched, held and were broken. She dropped her eyes at his ghost of a smile and went on her way with the slender woman and the dumpy one, parasols opening, swirling and perching. The girl seemed to float, her white dress a whispering caress.
He went on his own way and took with him a new image of a girl as sweet as dawn itself. He entered a building and found the offices he wanted. He went in. A clerk looked up. He asked for Mr Anstruther, a consular representative of His Britannic Majesty. Mr Anstruther came out. He was middle-aged and fatherly.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, seeing Kirby, ‘come through, will you?’
His office was brown. Brown leather chairs, ancient brown desk and mahogany paintwork. The curtains were of brown velvet and wooden filing cabinets stained brown. And Anstruther himself was brown.
‘I was expecting you two days ago,’ he said, indicating a chair. Kirby sat down. ‘I hope nothing cropped up.’
‘It was only that I came under the ownership of Aleka Petrovna, the Princess Karinshka,’ said Kirby.
‘Oh?’ said Anstruther, looking interested.
‘It took a few days to free myself. To have come before would have looked impolite.’
‘To whom?’ Anstruther was slightly sarcastic.
‘I understand your impatience.’
‘Not impatience, Mr Kirby,’ said Anstruther mildly, ‘we can always wait as long as we’re put in the picture. Worry is the word when we aren’t. However, you’re here. Have you got what you promised?’
‘Yes,’ said Kirby. He brought out the wafer-thin rice papers that had lain within the cavity of his hairbrush and laid them on the table. ‘The information covers location of plants, factories, depots and so on. There are calculated yearly outputs, estimated stocks, types of armament, factors of obsolescence and everything else I could get. My estimation is that they’re short of every essential, particularly ammunition. They could fight a war on manpower alone, but how the devil they could successfully take on a major power I don’t know. By the way, it cost me a dickens of a lot to get certain of the information. That’s been included in the report and perhaps you’ll have it credited to my account at Coutts.’
Carefully Anstruther studied the papers. Figures were construable but all else was in code. He looked up, his expression cautiously agreeable.
‘Major power? Mmmm,’ he said, ‘you must have sensed the situation is changing. Rapidly. We don’t anticipate being in dispute with Russia in the foreseeable future. Russia in the foreseeable future is more likely to be an ally. Either way, however, these figures should be invaluable. How reliable are they?’
‘Only as much as I am. How reliable is that in the minds of our masters?’
‘I hope you’re being facetious,’ said Anstruther. He put the papers into an envelope, slid the envelope into a drawer and locked it. ‘You know, with the way things are going at the moment, if there is a war it could only be with Germany.’
‘Is that reliable?’ asked Kirby.
‘We think so.’
‘Russia,’ said Kirby, ‘is opposed in all things to Germany. It’s traditional and it’s incurable.’
‘Is it?’ Anstruther stroked his chin. ‘There is the Tsarina to be reckoned with. An extremely good and religious woman, I believe, but German and with her own ways of influencing the Tsar. However, much as the Kaiser seeks to foster a closer personal relationship with the Tsar, Nicholas will never forgive him the fiasco of the Bjorko treaty. The Kaiser browbeat Nicholas into it and made them both look fools. It ran counter to the Russian alliance with France.’
‘And Willy and Nicholas have since cooled off?’
‘Considerably. The Kaiser still tries but Nicholas manages to stand aloof when they meet. He does it most agreeably.’ Anstruther got up and walked about. ‘But things are changing every day. You know, everything that can be done to make your figures look vastly better than you suggest would almost certainly coincide with the official line now.’
‘Well, will you add a few noughts or shall I?’
‘I mean,’ said Anstruther testily, ‘we’d approve an increased Russian output.’
‘You’d better talk to the Tsar about that,’ said Kirby. ‘I’d like a holiday myself. I’ve poked my nose into so many places these last three years that all I want for the next three is to mind my own business.’
Anstruther permitted himself a brown, fatherly smile. He looked at Kirby, comfortably at ease in his chair. That was the man’s forte, his ability to be at ease, to make friends and invite confidences. He was a better observer of a country than the finest official ambassador. He was invaluable in Russia.
‘Well, your time is your own for the moment. We might get you back to England for a vacation if you like.’
Kirby mused on that, then said, ‘Thanks all the same but no, not yet.’
‘You mentioned – let me see, who was it now? Princess Karinshka? Mmmm, I think we’ve got a file on her.’
‘On Princess Karinshka?’
‘Let me see.’ Anstruther unlocked a cabinet, extracted a file, returned to his desk. He opened the file, perused a few entries. He looked up. ‘Did you know she’s a socialist?’
‘She says she is. She doesn’t live like one.’
‘That’s not uncommon. Convert her,’ said Anstruther briskly, ‘a revolution in Russia would be no help to any of us at the moment.’
‘Except to the people. Well, except to some of the people.’
Anstruther brushed that aside.
‘One revolutionary aristocrat is worth ten thousand conventional revolutionaries in a country like this. It might only mean containing her particular pocket of trouble, but I’m sure you’ll do your best. We’ll leave it to you.’
‘Princess Karinshka could eat me,’ said Kirby, ‘so I’ll leave it to you. I’m going to take that holiday. If you want me for anything really important, I’m staying at the Karinshka Palace. I don’t know for how long. She’s not a woman who can put up with the same faces indefinitely.’ He got to his feet.
‘I’ll get your report sent,’ said Anstruther, ‘and let you know sometime what they think of it.’
‘If they want to show enormous gratitude,’ said Kirby, ‘tell them to make me a lord. It will please a friend of mine and make me look more proper to her.’
He got back to Karinshka quite late. He wandered with the groom around Crimean villages, intensely interested in the Tartar people and all the bargains they had to offer him. He accepted a great deal of hospitality, drinking their black coffee and their Tartar liqueurs. The groom, a Tartar himself, drove the carriage in lazy happiness, stopping whenever Kirby wished and joining the bargaining, the drinking and the establishing of friendship. He did not drink much coffee, however, he opted for something more infectiously convivial. He was singing when they arrived at Karinshka. Old Amarov kicked him all the way to the stables for being drunk.
The sky was purple, the descending sun slashing the colour over the horizon. Karita appeared when Kirby reached the door of his suite and followed him in.
‘It’s not my place to say so, monsieur,’ she said, ‘but her Highness is dreadfully put out.’
How quaint she was. He was warm with bonhomie.
‘Is she?’ he said. ‘What has Andrei Mikhailovich done now?’
‘It isn’t Count Purishkin, monsieur,’ said Karita, her brown eyes slightly reproving. ‘Who could be put out by so inoffensive a gentleman as he is?’
‘Her Highness, perhaps?’
‘Indeed no, monsieur, never. Well, almost never. It is you. You have been gone all day. You see, she is so sensitive. She thinks you must be bored here. Monsieur, are you?’ She seemed touchingly anxious to hear that he wasn’t.
‘Never, little one.’
‘I am so glad. Monsieur, you must be ready by nine or she will not permit you to dine with her.’
‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘Well, never mind. You can bring me something up on a tray. If her Highness is having her usual visitors she won’t miss me.’
‘Monsieur!’ Karita was aghast. ‘She would kill us both.’
‘I must save you from that,’ he said. ‘I’ll get ready, then. Did you enjoy seeing your parents?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She looked pleased at his interest. ‘I spoke to my mother of you. It was because you’re English and I wanted to tell her you didn’t go around fighting everyone.’
‘I didn’t realize she suffered such anxieties about us,’ he said. ‘I hope she believed you.’
‘Monsieur,’ said Karita, ‘you tease me dreadfully. But see, my mother has given me an ikon for you.’ She slipped a hand into the pocket of her dress beneath her white front and brought out a tiny bas-relief of polished wood. ‘She said it would bring you closer to God.’
‘Oh, she thought I was a heathen too, did she?’
‘She didn’t say so, only that she would like you to have it. Of course, if you don’t wish it—’
‘I wish it very much,’ he said. He studied the ikon, carved to delineate the head of the Virgin Mary. ‘I will value it very much. Thank your mother for me. And thank you, Karita.’
He bent and kissed her. Karita felt the momentary pressure of warm, firm lips and then an intensely disconcerting confusion. She looked up at him, her face hot. She saw laughter but kindness too, and affection.
‘Oh, goodness,’ she said, then the door opened to a knock and Princess Aleka swept in. She was gowned in deep green, her auburn hair brilliant, her jewels a radiance.
‘Ivan, you utterly deplorable man,’ she cried, ‘where have you been? Andrei and I have been off our heads about you.’
‘I’m sorry I’m so late—’
‘Yes, old Amarov told me how drunk the groom was. You aren’t drunk too, I hope. No. How nice to have a friend who can drink in a hundred villages and still remain sober. But we thought we had lost you. Andrei said you had probably gone walking from Yalta to Kerch, it’s only a hundred and fifty miles.’ She was apparently not a bit put out, she was in her most vivacious mood. He glanced at Karita, edging her way towards the bedroom, intent on running his bath. Karita gave a very expressive shrug. It clearly said that she could not understand her Highness any more than he could. ‘Ivan,’ Aleka went on, ‘I’m sorry but it will be quiet tonight. There will be none of our friends to dinner, I have had to put them all off. It is Andrei’s fault. Can you imagine it, he said I am turning Karinshka into a zoo and that if I didn’t give him a rest from the monkey house tonight he would hang himself! Oh yes, you can smile, but Andrei is like that. You simply could not trust him not to hang himself if he could find someone to knot the rope. So I have invited no one to dine with us. I hope you will be able to bear the awful silence. How nice that you’re back in time to join Andrei and me. You and I must talk him into realizing that a monkey house is far more entertaining than a cemetery. Do you know, he said he would always prefer a cemetery as long as there were dancing girls around and their embonpoint was sufficiently diverting. Yes, that is the ridiculous kind of man he is.’
‘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.
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.