Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, had been of fascinating interest to Kirby on previous visits. It had lost its interest for him now. Now it was only a cloudy city harbouring a man called Spirokof, and until he located this man Kiev imprisoned him.
He missed Karita, missed her busy concern for his daily life. He missed all the familiarities of the new existence Empress Alexandra had created for him, the children, the laughter, the tranquillity of evenings bathed by red-gold. He missed Olga. He could not think of how far apart she was from him in every way without emptiness forming like a gaping darkness in his mind.
But he had an assignment to pursue in Kiev. It was a grey, monotonous pursuit to engage in. Its only redemption was in its connection with the Tsar.
He seemed detached from reality in Kiev, for what he had thought very unreal, his regard for a daughter of Nicholas, had come home to roost as an unarguable fact. It was unreal to emerge into light each day and not be able to see her.
He found friends he had made on earlier trips to Kiev, and one by one he renewed contact with men he had used years ago for obtaining information. It was a slow, tedious business. It meant the renewal of goodwill, the re-establishment of their confidence in him and the asking of questions. The questions brought blank faces, lifted eyebrows, or even a glance over a shoulder and an excuse to leave. Spirokof? Who was he?
It took weeks, it took what seemed like an eternity. But in the end there was a man whose acquisitiveness was more obsessive than his caution, and who silently put out his hand and flexed covetous fingers. It was only a question of how much, after that. Kirby went to a bank. It was not his inclination to haggle on this occasion, nor was it part of any personal fortune he was giving away.
He checked the information and sent to Anstruther a description of a man whom he saw entering and leaving a house twice in one day. Anstruther telegraphed an affirmative. Kirby had no intention of visiting the Okhrana, the secret police, to give them the information himself. They would ask questions of their own, scrutinize his passport, his background, enquire after his reasons and remember his face. He sent them the information in block letters on plain paper. For his own amusement he signed it in Lenin’s name.
Then he left Kiev and returned to the Crimea, going to Karinshka. It was quiet there, the best of autumn gone. But Karita was golden and glowing, enormously happy to see him. Old Amarov shook his head and said he wondered what it was all coming to. Kirby went with Karita to her home in the village of Karka and there he met her parents, the most dignified people he had ever known. They talked with him, they did not mention Karita directly but spoke circuitously about the mutual responsibilities of servant and master. It seemed to Kirby after a while that the responsibilities of the latter far exceeded those of the former.
He had to sign a document. When this was done they at last smiled, touched their foreheads with clasped fingertips and bowed in acknowledgement of the fact that they had given Karita into his service and care, providing Princess Karinshka also signed the document.
‘Now,’ said Karita, who had said nothing at all so far, ‘you are my father and mother, Ivan Ivanovich.’
‘And in time you will return her to us as good and as unspoiled as she is today,’ said her father.
Kirby put his hand on the document and inclined his head. He knew what was meant by unspoiled.
All the way to St Petersburg Kirby tried to teach Karita the basics of English. They had a first-class compartment but not a private coach. The other passengers became extremely curious and put Karita in some embarrassment. Not so her new master. He was quite himself all the time. Karita thought there were occasions when he gave the impression that the world belonged to him, that it had been made for his convenience, except that this was not to inconvenience others.
He did not actually ignore the fascinated audience but certainly he did not let anyone distract him. And of course it wasn’t long before some of them wanted to join in, and then it was very distracting and rather like turmoil. However, Kirby assured them it was all a very serious business and that if Karita Katerinova Sergova did not know the difference in English between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ by the time they reached St Petersburg, her life there would become intolerable with confusion and complexity. This so impressed the other passengers that they were nearly models of rectitude and co-operation from then on, except for the times when her flummoxed pronunciation brought gales of Russian laughter from them.
Karita bore this with dignity. It did not matter who laughed at her as long as Ivan Ivanovich didn’t.
It became colder as the train steamed farther and farther north-west and when they reached St Petersburg it was snowing. Karita was entranced but shocked. Entranced by the huge, drifting flakes, shocked by the damp cold. They procured a droshky, Karita wrapped in all the coats she had. Porters loaded the luggage.
‘We can’t have this,’ said Kirby, seeing her nose turn pink and observing her little shivers.
‘Ivan Ivanovich, it’s dreadful,’ she gasped, blowing flakes from her lips.
He wore a warm check cape over his suit and a soft check hat.
‘It isn’t like Livadia very much, is it?’ he said, and had the droshky driver take them to the shops.
The afternoon was already darkening, the white city was damp rather than sharp. The lights began to go on and almost at once the leaden flakes became spiralling swirls of glittering white. It was a bright wintry revelation to the Crimean girl.
They stopped adjacent a shop whose windows were a splendour of shining furs. Kirby took her in, Karita numb in more ways than one. She was to have a fur coat and hat, he said. She crimsoned.
‘Monsieur, I can’t, you can’t, it isn’t proper,’ she whispered frantically at the approach of a gowned assistant. But how warm the shop was, how enormous, and how ready he was to take no notice of her dismay.
‘You can, I can and we must,’ he said. ‘If you freeze, sweet child, what will be said about me?’ He spoke to the assistant, who seemed grander than the Empress in her manner. Whatever it was he said to her, her grandness melted. She looked at Karita, smiled in totally committed admiration of the girl’s colouring and led her up three carpeted steps to a wide, deep alcove sumptuous with padded chairs and tall mirrors. The next thing Karita knew was that she was being helped into a thick sable coat, deeply, glossily black. Oh, the warmth, the enclosing warmth and richness, the sensation of comfort and elegance. Kirby did not ask the price. It was not that kind of establishment. He merely said it would do very nicely.
‘That is, if it will also do for you, Karita. Will it?’
Every mirror told her it would, and her shining brown eyes told him. She was gold and black. Madame herself joined them and was enraptured. She had a girl bring fur hats and they found one to match the sable coat. Karita pulled it on over her braided hair. The sable coat and the Cossack-style hat eliminated Karita the maid and presented her as a vivid, radiant beauty. Kirby felt an immense pleasure.
‘Ivan Ivanovich?’ she said faintly and in entreaty.
‘Look at yourself,’ he smiled, and she turned and the mirrors reflected the rich, glossy picture that was herself.
‘Beautiful, oh so beautiful,’ said the gowned assistant.
‘Enchantée, enchantée,’ said Madame, to show she was on speaking terms with the nobility. She clapped her hands discreetly and the inevitable samovar appeared. The hot, steaming tea was drunk and the transaction settled most congenially, the cost not being mentioned until the very last moment and then confided in no more than a murmur. Karita was dumb now as well as numb. She was to keep the sable on, her damp coats carefully wrapped and put into a silver-coloured box.
They went to another shop and he bought her warm winter boots. And when they were in the droshky again, Karita, booted and furred, was warm and beautifully snug, except for the tip of her nose. But the cold on her face was an exhilarating tingle now that she was so warm everywhere else.
However, her situation needed thinking about. She was not a simple girl and the Karinshka Palace had never been a rest home for the purely conventional. Princess Aleka and her guests had always been far from that. Karita knew that when some men gave expensive gifts to girls it was not in unconditional benefaction. What she did not know was whether the Englishman would require payment for gifts rendered.
If he turned out to be such a man as that she would rather give the gifts back. And it would never be the same after that.
The droshky swished over the snow, the horse’s clop-clopping muffled. The city was alive now, bright with lights, a white fairyland under a black sky. People walked about in brisk defiance of the cold.
‘Karita, are you all right?’
‘I’m in amazement at you, Ivan Ivanovich.’
‘Are you really, now. Will you tell me why it’s monsieur one moment and Ivan Ivanovich the next?’
‘It’s new to me to have you for my father and mother,’ she said, ‘I’m not used to it yet.’
‘Naturally, it doesn’t confuse me,’ he said. ‘What are you in amazement at, about me?’
‘You’ve spent a fortune on me,’ she said.
‘Well, as your father and mother I’ve a right to. And you look lovely, little pink nose.’
Her eyes shone, the flakes melting as they touched her lashes. The droshky went on to the east side of the Neva, taking them to the apartment which his people had selected and rented for him. The driver pulled up outside the tall, five-storey building, its many windows soft with curtained light. As Kirby helped Karita descend to the pavement a closed carriage came along. Its passenger, a woman, peered through the falling snow. She called out and the carriage braked to a halt, the horse slithering a little. The door swung open, she almost leapt from the vehicle and came swiftly over the snow, her furs glistening, her pale face alight.
‘Ivan! Oh, Ivan Ivanovich!’
Ignoring Karita and caring nothing for the droshky driver, who had descended to help with the luggage, she flung herself into Kirby’s arms. She pressed close, her dark eyes like black shadows, her auburn hair enclosed by her fur hat.
‘Well I never,’ said Kirby, ‘my good fortune, I presume, Highness?’
‘Devil, monster!’ cried joyful Princess Aleka and kissed him resoundingly. Her mouth was warm from her closed carriage, his had been touched by the damp cold, and the contact was a tingling, emotive sensation for each. ‘Oh, how happy I am, Russia has reclaimed you, I’ve reclaimed you. Russia and I are both irresistible. I—’ She broke off, conscious now that the person she had ignored was a girl in a rich black sable coat. ‘Who is this?’ she asked disgustedly.
‘Your Highness,’ said Karita, ‘we have come to see you.’
Aleka peered incredulously.
‘Karita? What are you doing here, for God’s sake?’ The sky rained snow on them as Aleka stared at Karita’s furs, at the elegance and beauty they gave her. She swung round on Kirby. The driver was torn between wanting payment and wanting to witness. He coughed. Aleka ignored him. ‘How dare you,’ she said to Kirby in fury, ‘oh, how dare you!’
‘Her Highness,’ observed Kirby to Karita, ‘is already up and down.’
‘Libertine!’ hissed Aleka. ‘You have torn this innocent from my protection and from her loved ones! I will have you shot!’
‘Highness, no,’ cried Karita, ‘oh no!’
It was intensely interesting, thought the driver, but it was the sort of thing that could go on indefinitely and cost a man money. Didn’t they realize how competitive it was plying for hire? No, the fact was they were the kind of people who didn’t have to ply for hire. Theirs was a world of comfort and talk. Talk, talk, talk. And here they were now, going at it in the snow and having the time of their lives. He shifted crunchingly from one foot to the other.
‘Oh,’ sneered Aleka, ‘you’ve run off with him, have you, girl? The seducer has won you with a fur coat, has he? Karita, I blush for you. You whom I’ve seen grow from a child. Oh, fool of a girl. Do you think a fur coat can make you happy? Do you think a man can? Karita, I blush for your lost innocence and your stupidity.’
‘Your Highness, you are blushing very unnecessarily,’ said Karita.
‘Oh, my word,’ said Kirby and found it difficult to keep his face straight. ‘Let me pay the driver and deal with the luggage, and then we can all talk about it in my apartment.’
The driver had lumbered off the luggage, it stood bulkily in the snow. Kirby paid him off so handsomely that the man took back all he had said to himself, and to clear his conscience he spoke out.
‘God go with you, Highness,’ he said to Kirby, ‘and may He do more than that. You’re in for a fiery time with these two and will need all the help you can get.’
‘You insolent!’ shouted Aleka. He touched his whip to his shaggy hat, mounted and drove off grinning and happy. Kirby brought the apartment porter out to deal with his luggage and then went up. The apartment was on the second floor. Karita was in immediate approval. She had been afraid he would not do himself justice and could not think why he had not taken a magnificent house. But she could not fault the spaciousness of the apartment, the number of rooms and the effects and furnishings. The drawing room was laid with a deep red carpet, spaced with red-padded chairs. There were warm velvets and brocades, rugs and tapestries, a dining room of panelled walls and two bedrooms.
He and she looked it over. Princess Aleka followed them about, a vision of pale, accusatory beauty. She was ready to cry with temper.
‘Princess,’ said Kirby at last, ‘please sit down. There’s nothing wrong, I assure you.’
‘Oh, damnation,’ she said, ‘are you married to her, then?’
‘Your Highness!’ Karita was inexpressibly shocked.
‘What the devil are you doing here together, then?’
Kirby made her sit. The apartment was warm, she was stifled in her furs but refused to remove even her hat. She would suffer bodily discomfort as well as mental turmoil. Nothing would make her believe that Ivan Ivanovich had brought Karita to St Petersburg for the good of her soul. The man was a swine. They all were.
Kirby explained. Karita helped. Aleka began to listen. The atmosphere became calmer. Kirby put it all very concisely. The swine sounded sincere enough. Karita looked angelically so.
‘Oh, don’t go on,’ Aleka said suddenly, ‘isn’t it enough that you let me make a fool of myself? Ivan, you do some unspeakable things to me. And then you wish me to do you a favour, to release Karita. Where did she get that sable?’
‘She got it because she needed it. Aleka sweet, would you have her perish?’
‘I only want to protect her.’
He looked into her brooding, suspicious eyes. His look made her flush a little angrily.
‘She’ll be safe with me and from me,’ he said, ‘but if you say so, she must remain in your service and go back to Karinshka.’
Karita seemed to wince. She turned and went into the main bedroom to unpack his luggage. Aleka regarded Kirby from under drooping lids. He was so bronzed that she felt anaemic. He was seducing her from her resentment with that smile of his. She wrenched herself away from it, got up and flung her coat off, revealing a deep green dress that brought her paleness to life.
She turned to him. She was smiling. She took off her hat and tossed it on to a chair. Her auburn hair was dressed to softly shade her forehead.
‘Ivan? You’re pleased that we met tonight? You haven’t said so.’
‘I’m always pleased to meet you, Aleka. You’re an excitement.’
She came forward and put her hands on his shoulders, her lightly rouged mouth provocative.
‘You could not tolerate dull little England after Russia, could you?’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have gone, I told you not to. I should have gone to Karinshka if I’d known you were at Livadia. Alexandra would not have refused to have me there too. Why didn’t you let me know? Oh, of course, that wouldn’t have suited you, would it? There was Alexandra Fedorovna to fetch and carry for. I should have been excessively in the way. It isn’t very flattering to feel I’m less stimulating than she is. Although she’s an Empress, she’s not exactly pulsating.’
‘Do Empresses have to be?’ he asked.
‘Oh you, with your silly words.’ She smoothed his shoulders, her hands lightly caressing. ‘I’ve been everywhere except to the Crimea. Ivan, everything is beginning to be tremendously active and I’ve been sticking pins into ministers. Tonight I’m having a late supper after the theatre. Come at half past ten.’
‘What about Karita?’
She flashed into fire again.
‘Oh, is she so indispensable that you have to bring her too?’
‘I mean, what about releasing her to me? Will you, dear Princess?’
‘Let us see,’ she said and she called Karita. Karita came from the bedroom, looking more as Aleka remembered her in a neat blue dress cuffed and collared with white. ‘Karita, you can’t live with Ivan Ivanovich. What would people think?’
‘Where else would his servant live, Highness?’
‘But not just you alone, Karita, there must be others.’
‘Highness, it’s not for me to decide about others.’
‘You have a great deal to learn, silly girl. Do you really wish this new life, to be away from the Crimea and old Amarov, and have Ivan Ivanovich walk your legs off? He has a habit of wandering far and wide, you know.’
Yes, he had wandered off to Kiev, thought Karita. That had been upsetting. But what was that compared with other things? She would be serving a friend of the Tsar himself, and the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna had wished very much for her to do that. Then there was the obvious fact that Ivan Ivanovich needed her. He simply had no idea of the injustice he did himself – what must people have thought of him at times, a man of his position without a servant? Besides, he made her laugh, he teased her. It would be terrible if he engaged someone else instead of her. She would miss her chance of going to England. That would make her parents look foolish as well as herself. And he would make someone else laugh in her place.
‘Highness,’ she said, ‘if it doesn’t upset you too much I would like to be in his service. I’m to go to England with him if you agree.’
‘Are you indeed?’ The princess looked as if she had made the one discovery that mattered. ‘So that’s it, is it? He’s going back to England already, is he?’
‘Before you go on to say I can’t get her there quickly enough,’ said Kirby, ‘I’ve already explained I’ll be in St Petersburg for some time.’
‘Now he’s cross with me,’ said Aleka. ‘That is what you’ll have to put up with whenever you speak out of turn, Karita. But if this is what you really wish, then I’ll agree. There, have I pleased you both?’
‘Oh, your Highness,’ said Karita, grateful, ‘you’ve pleased me very much.’
‘Did you wish it as much as that?’ said Aleka sweetly. ‘Be careful, child.’
Karita, with a modestly innocent look, dropped a curtsey, bobbed her head to Kirby, and returned to her work in the bedroom. There she permitted herself a happy whirl or two in waltz time.
‘Well, Ivan?’ said Aleka.
‘Thank you, Princess.’
‘Oh, how formidable you are to deal with! Am I myself to ask for a kiss when I’ve just released the sweetest girl in the Crimea to you?’
He kissed her, his arms around her, his mouth warm with friendship and gratitude. She closed her eyes, hiding the laughter in them, but it communicated itself physically in quivers.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked.
‘At you, darling. At myself. At us. How silly we all are, and we are nothing compared with events. But how lovely to have friends, how sublime to laugh with them. Dear Ivan, that’s what life is all about. You know it, I know it, Andrei almost knows it, but there are so few others.’
‘And the poor and oppressed?’
‘That’s the strength of the poor and oppressed, they can still laugh. That’s what makes them worth every sacrifice.’
‘You might sacrifice your wealth,’ said Kirby, ‘but what else?’
She picked up her handsome fur, he took it and helped her into it.
‘My friends, my scruples and my pity,’ she said. ‘Did you enjoy Livadia?’
‘Very much.’
‘But of course. If you were a Russian I’d tell you it was healthier not to become too intimate with the Romanovs. But you’re not. So.’ She shrugged. She smiled. ‘Ivan, we’ll enjoy the season together in St Petersburg.’
‘I enjoyed some of it last year with Andrei. Will it be different with you?’
‘Much more stimulating, darling,’ she purred. ‘Andrei avoids people who matter. I like to meet them. Of course,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘my time isn’t all my own, but we will see as much of each other as possible. You see, I have a new lover at the moment.’
‘Well, how delightful,’ he said very agreeably, ‘I hope he’s stimulating. You deserve that, however new he is.’
‘Cad,’ she said. ‘But I thought I’d tell you.’
‘I appreciate it. Thank you.’
‘Most Englishmen are fairly civilized,’ she said, picking up her hat, ‘but you are damnable. You’ll come to supper tonight?’
‘I’ll look forward to it very much.’ He saw her to the door.
As he opened it she said, ‘I lied, you know. I don’t have a lover, not at the moment.’
‘Aleka Petrovna,’ he said, ‘that’s anybody’s fault but yours, and I’ll do all I can to find you one.’
She looked for a moment as if she would claw him. Then she burst into laughter.
‘Oh, Ivan Ivanovich, how good that we’ve met again. There are only two men I adore, you and Andrei Mikhailovich. You’ll see him tonight. Goodbye now.’
She gave him her hand. He kissed it. She was laughing when he straightened up. It might, he thought, have been the democrat in her that was ridiculing the outmoded mumbo-jumbo of the privileged.
Later he went to Aleka’s supper reception. Karita did not mind a bit being left.
‘Goodness, you are not to consider me,’ she said.
She was very quaint.
The reception reminded Kirby of the boisterous carousings at Karinshka last year. It took place in the magnificent drawing room of her palatial house in the Prospekt Nevskiy, a hugely roaring fire adding heat to the fire of the conversation. It differed from the conversation at Karinshka in that it took place standing up. The supper was served buffet-style, but plates, forks and full mouths did not impede the flow of words. Nothing could get in the way of Russian voices. Forks indeed could emphasize the more telling points. The sound of discussion and argument rose and fell like surf around the eardrums.
At Karinshka the guests had all been of the nobility, the young, cynical and irresponsible kind. Here in St Petersburg Aleka drew to her house a much more varied collection of individuals. She strove for an intellectual symposium, Kirby supposed, but the effect seemed just the same. There were young and burning progressives, whose command of political phraseology was such that every sentence was an oration.
‘Only a combustible agglomeration of the most incorruptible ideals exploding as one will bring down the bastions of reactionary philistines, only—’
‘Yes, yes,’ roared a well-fed journalist with a face like a paunch, ‘but have you got a match? My cigar’s gone out.’
He had to roar. The din of discussion was indescribable. Even then the burning young orator didn’t quite catch the whole of the roar and passed him a clean fork instead.
There were intense students. They were either pale-faced young men or terribly earnest young women. They assailed the ears of writers and painters, and were assailed in their turn or out of their turn. Aleka moved from group to group, joining arguments and starting new ones. She was goddess-like in a gown of palest cream. In her excitement, her half-covered bosom rose and fell, and the paunch-faced journalist said he was damned if she had any right to introduce that factor into an aesthetic argument on the principles of inalienable factory rights for workers.
‘What,’ he said in a loud aside, ‘has a bosom to do with any principles?’
‘Well,’ said Kirby, who received the full force of the aside, ‘it does belong to our hostess. One must allow her some advantage.’
‘I suppose one could look at it in that light, but it’s damned unnerving,’ said the journalist.
Andrei had found a chair. He reposed limply, gratefully. He had been delighted to see Kirby again. He lifted a languid hand in acknowledgement as the Englishman came to join him.
‘Dear man, did you ever?’ he said, his lazy handsomeness accentuated by a displaced lock of black hair. ‘The supper is beyond reproach, old boy, but how can one digest food in this atmosphere?’
Nobody else was having that kind of trouble. The more the guests talked the hungrier they became.
‘I’m surprised you’re here,’ said Kirby.
‘Compulsive reaction of twitching limbs, my friend. She calls, my limbs obey.’
‘I can’t think why you don’t marry her, you’ll suit each other perfectly.’
‘Love is one thing,’ said Andrei, ‘to be devoured is another. Is there some champagne?’
A liveried servant, self-trained to telepathic perfection for moments like this, bore down on them with a tray of filled glasses. They each took a glass. The golden liquid popped around the rims.
Not until the food had gone did the guests depart. They were as loquacious as ever and for minutes the street outside was full of loud voices, and then all was quiet. Aleka slumped into a chair, stretched her legs in ecstasy. The room was littered. Cigarette smoke curled lazily around walls and ceiling. The roaring fire had subsided.
‘Open a window,’ said Aleka.
Andrei paled.
A servant appeared, parted vast hanging curtains and opened a window. Damp, icy air rushed madly in to heat itself. Andrei shivered. Aleka breathed deeply. Earrings ruby red depended from her pierced lobes and three strands of matching stones rested like fire around her neck and over her bosom. Kirby put his head out of the window. The Prospekt Nevskiy was a cold, brilliant white.
‘Man’s inhumanity to man is a sad thing,’ said Andrei, and retreated from the incoming cold to stand with his back to the fire.
‘You can shut it now,’ said Aleka. Kirby closed the window. ‘Well, Ivan, what did you think of my guests?’
‘Didn’t I meet most of them at Karinshka last year?’ he said.
‘Are you mad?’ she said.
‘They sounded the same.’
‘Andrei, did you hear that?’ She was reclining in feline content. ‘That is our Ivan come back to us, isn’t it? Andrei, isn’t he precious? How did we ever manage to be amused without him?’
‘I haven’t been amused,’ said Andrei, ‘not with everyone so distressingly agitated about everyone else. No one is taking the time to enjoy life, everyone is in a hurry to make things respectably dismal for the rest of us. They are all talking about saving Russia. Ah, poor innocents, in saving it their way they’ll destroy it, and then they’ll say, “What happened?”’
‘Andrei, you see,’ smiled Aleka, ‘is at last becoming involved. He’s actually beginning to talk. We will all talk. It is nice now, just the three of us. Ivan, socialism is getting stronger all the time. We shall yet have it while we’re still young.’
‘You won’t like it,’ said Kirby.
‘Oh, you are a Tsarist, of course. You can’t see any good in socialism.’
‘I can see it would work for others,’ he said, ‘but not for you, Aleka.’
‘Because I’m a Boyar and wealthy? Pooh,’ she said, ‘you think I wish to remain privileged? I am for a socialist Russia and I can’t make conditions to preserve this for myself or that for myself. I wouldn’t want to. If I have to I’ll work. I would not be ashamed to. I will work for the state.’
She never could, thought Kirby. It would drive her mad. She would die if she were chained, and she had no idea of what work entailed, even less idea of what work for the state meant. Others could accept it, would accept it. Aleka could not. She wanted to think she could, but it would stupefy her, destroy her. She was born to invigorate people, to amuse, to shock, to entertain. When Rome burned, aristocrats turned to their fiddles. Socialists did away with fiddles. Cromwell did away with them in England. The people hated it.
Before Aleka could endure it in practice, socialism would have to become sophisticated. It would have to grow up.
There was only one way she could work for the state. In the theatre. There she would make the workers laugh and cry.
‘Become an actress,’ he suggested.
‘My dear man,’ said Andrei, ‘she is already a prima donna.’
‘You see how Ivan can dislike me at times?’ said Aleka. ‘I don’t mind being beggared for the cause, but I do mind being disposed of. He’d dispose of me by putting me to work in the decadent theatre. That’s all he thinks I’m good for, to paint my face, put on costume and prance about. I should hope I was more invaluable to socialism than that. You see what love has done for him, Andrei? It’s made him sour. Poor Ivan, did you find her in love with another?’
Kirby thought of Felicity Dawes.
‘I had an aberration,’ he said, ‘and now I daren’t look her in the face again.’
‘How fortuitous,’ said Andrei, ‘and how convenient. But that, of course, is what aberrations are for. I have had a hundred.’
Karita was extremely impressed by St Petersburg. It was so different from any Crimean town, so much more expansive and inspiring. The snow might be cold and damp at the moment but by the turn of the year the atmosphere would become clear, sparkling and brilliant.
Kirby introduced his glowing, excited servant to the city, and Karita, snug and warm in her new furs, rode with him in droshkies or sleighs that sped over every fresh fall of snow to set her face tingling. The centre of the city was dominated by the ancient Admiralty buildings, constructed under the guiding hand of Peter the Great, and the wide streets radiated in long, straight prospect from this focal point. The theatres and opera houses were cultural monuments to the city’s greatness, and Karita’s eyes opened wide at their magnificent exteriors. She liked it best at night, when the frozen snow sparkled with a million eyes of reflected light under the lamps, when the capital came to glittering life and its privileged aristocracy rode on their swift, jingling sleighs to theatres, restaurants and clubs.
She did not mind the cold. She was healthy, the blood of her Tartar ancestors warm in her veins. In her fur hat and sable coat, her golden skin glowing, her brown eyes alive, she looked young, eager and beautiful. Kirby thought her the most attractive and companionable of persons. More, he found her interest in St Petersburg a channel into which he could pour the attention he could not give to Olga. Sometimes she even reminded him of Olga. That was when she was lost in wonder and curiosity, and when, because St Petersburg contained so much that was awe-inspiring, she was a little unsure of herself. Sometimes she even seemed shy. Not in quite the way that Olga was, but in the way that many girls of the era were.
He had a tendency to tease her. Karita did not mind that a bit. He teased her because she always insisted on bringing breakfast to him in bed. Karita had never known any member of the nobility who got up for breakfast at Karinshka, and so she blushed at his suggestion that it would be easier and more convenient if they breakfasted together in the kitchen.
‘But that would never do, never,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘It’s not proper to start with. It would look very odd.’
‘What else?’
‘People would think I was neglecting my duties if you had to get up to eat.’
‘Very well,’ he said from the comfort of his bed, ‘from now on I’ll take lunch and dinner in bed in addition to breakfast. We can’t have people talking about you.’
‘Lunch and dinner aren’t the same thing at all,’ said Karita primly, ‘and it’s no good looking down your nose, I know when you’re teasing me.’
She was very upset one day at his suggestion that it might be desirable to engage a second servant, perhaps a cook.
‘I’m not satisfactory? I cannot cook?’
‘You’re very satisfactory, and you cook beautifully. But you do every bit of the work.’
‘But you make no work, only a little,’ she said. ‘Is it because I’ve done something wrong?’
‘No, little treasure, it’s because you ought to have company,’ he said, ‘I leave you alone too much at night. At Karinshka you were never alone.’
But she was sure he had found some fault in her. She did not mind too much if he engaged another servant, but she would mind very much if it was because she was inadequate in some way.
‘But I’ve made friends with other servants in the other apartments,’ she said, ‘and we often sit together in the evenings. However, monsieur, you must decide, of course.’
He smiled. Monsieur was how she now addressed him when she was on her dignity. He put his hand under her chin, lifting her face. It was a familiar gesture of affection. It turned Karita rosy. He was going to kiss her.
‘No, Karita, you decide,’ he said, ‘and if ever you want another servant to help with the work, I’ll engage one. I’m more than happy to leave it to you. Are you moderately happy?’
‘Oh, I’m very happy, Ivan Ivanovich,’ said Karita.
He smiled. But he didn’t kiss her, after all. Nor had he ever said anything about her sable coat to indicate that she was expected to be generous herself.
The following day, in response to a message, he went to the offices of the Imperial Import & Export Company. Reflecting on the fact that the undercover administration of his trade was so often established behind the façade of this kind of business, he felt he couldn’t be the only one who realized this. The manager, a man from Hampshire called Brown, received him genially, took him into another office and there he was welcomed in fatherly fashion by Anstruther.
‘My, dear sir,’ said Kirby, ‘have you been promoted or demoted?’
‘You will have your little joke,’ said Anstruther. St Petersburg’s winter had paled his brown face somewhat, but to compensate he wore a chocolate-brown suit. ‘So you’re interesting yourself in politics?’
‘I’ve been meeting people while waiting for someone to call me,’ said Kirby, ‘but I’ve never been interested in politics. Politics benefit only politicians. I like people myself.’
‘Dear me,’ said Anstruther, ‘it’s not like you to sound depressed.’
‘Dear me,’ said Kirby.
‘But I agree with you, of course. Politicians must have their games to play. You and I are safer on the sidelines. Politics are made up of Utopian promises and unsatisfactory consequences. I must tell you that they think you’re doing an excellent piece of liaison work with the socialists here, but no one can trace the source of the assignment.’
‘It’s not an assignment, as you well know. I’ve merely attended some receptions given by the Princess Karinshka. They’ve been very wearing.’
Anstruther looked sympathetic.
‘Yes, I can understand that,’ he said. ‘But interesting, all the same. And a fine piece of freelance work. Write us a report, will you? It will be useful to know the current opinions of the radicals, it might give us some idea of whose side they’ll be on in the event of an international crisis.’
‘What opinions d’you think I hear? People at a Russian reception all talk at once. You couldn’t hear a bomb drop.’
‘Oh, come now,’ said Anstruther, toying with a sample tin of export pink salmon, ‘you must know what they’re saying. Every little helps, you know. And it’s for the benefit of the people in the long run. We’ll expect something from you in a couple of days. Meanwhile, comfort yourself with some personally good news. You’ve been gazetted into the army. It’s in The Times. In the spring you’ll join our mission of military observers at the Russian manoeuvres and so on. You’ll like the fact that it’s an entirely straightforward job, aside from the opportunity you’ll have of checking certain aspects of that armament and munitions report we had from you. You’ll make an ideal observer and we hope you’ll like the uniform. We’re committed now to being as friendly as possible towards Russia. We look upon them as our future allies. You can be nice to them without feeling the pangs of deceit. By the way, they’ve made you a colonel. There’ll be red tabs as well. Your home regiment is the 14th Hussars. I don’t suppose you’ll quibble at that. I’ll let you know when the uniform is ready. Until then just let us have a report now and again on how the radicals are thinking. I don’t think we want a revolution here at the moment. It could drastically affect the balance of power.’
‘I feel,’ said Kirby, ‘that you’ve been reading all that from The Boys’ Friend. It’s full of good clean fun and adventure. You don’t, I suppose, know what happens in the next chapter?’
‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ said Anstruther briskly. ‘Is your apartment satisfactory? It was the best we could get.’
‘My servant thought a house overlooking the river would have been better.’
‘H’m,’ said Anstruther, ‘your servant must think you’re a lord.’
‘She does,’ said Kirby, ‘I told you that before.’
Princess Aleka was endeavouring to lionize him. He was her new interest for the moment, and she felt he was intriguing enough to do justice to her talent for finding social lions. He soon realized what she was up to. She was lionizing herself. On one occasion she introduced him to a circle of acquaintances and hangers-on as an Englishman who had rubbed shoulders with radical notabilities like George Bernard Shaw.
He drew her aside.
‘I’ve never met George Bernard Shaw and he wouldn’t want to meet me.’
‘Don’t be so modest,’ she said, ‘and please don’t shout.’
‘Why not? Everybody else does.’
‘Don’t be tiresome, darling.’ She was cool and decorous in light grey, high-necked. ‘What’s the matter with you? Do you wish me to find you a woman?’
‘I’m still trying to find you a man.’
‘You are an absolute pig,’ she said. ‘Everything could so easily be perfect, we could make devastating love together, but no, you avoid me, you leave as soon as my receptions are over. Ivan, you aren’t a bit nice to me.’
He surveyed her grey-clad elegance. She was as sly and as fascinating as a red-headed witch at the moment. It was an afternoon salon, her guests mostly radical intellectuals who were already launched into their habitual monologues. The buzz began to rise and fall.
He had brought Karita with him. She was helping to look after the guests. Intellectuals were the most ravenous of them all. Karita’s main responsibility, however, was to use any excuse she could to get her master away by five o’clock.
‘Aleka,’ he said, ‘I can’t make devastating love to a woman who passes me around.’
‘Oh, don’t be so bourgeois, you’re acting like a shopkeeper who goes home at night to be respectable. And I’m not passing you round, I’m having you meet people who matter. Please, darling, be a little intelligent this afternoon, there are people here who are dying to hear all about Sidney and Beatrice from you.’
‘Sidney and Beatrice?’
‘Yes, you know, the Webbs of London. They’ve written books about a new social order and are very expert on the principles of gradual socialism. They are greatly admired here, so I said, of course, that you’d talk about them.’
‘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.