Chapter Six #2
‘It’s only Fritzi,’ he said. ‘Company for Lady Brigid. You remember him, Brigid; you danced with him at your coming-out ball?’
‘I danced with everyone at my coming-out ball,’ Brigid replied.
‘Why does she need company?’ Honor interjected. ‘I am company for her.’
‘I have asked Ambassador Kennedy to join us too,’ Chips said smoothly. ‘He is still quite newly arrived from America, and given my position in parliament—’
‘Secretary to an under-secretary,’ Honor said scathingly.
Chips ignored her. ‘—I must make an effort. After all, it is vital he meet the right sort of English person.’
‘And what sort might that be?’
‘The sort who will steer him away from belligerents like Churchill. Who will show him the side of the angels, led by Chamberlain, those dedicated to finding common ground with Germany, which I believe is exactly what he wants. I have asked Emerald too,’ he added.
‘He must meet “the right sort of English person”,’ Honor said, ‘and so you bring him together with two Americans – oh, you may be lapsed, and Emerald may be married to Lord Cunard, but you and she are still Americans – and a Prussian.’ She started to laugh.
‘Chips, you are the limit.’ Her laughter was thin wire, Brigid thought, but he smiled benignly at her.
‘If you say so, my dear. But we understand the ambassador’s mission more clearly than most. The importance of it.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is simple.’ He looked triumphant.
‘Roosevelt must be persuaded to follow his heart and keep America out of international affairs. And Ambassador Kennedy is the key to that. If we can let him see there is no appetite here for a fight with Germany, that on the contrary, we are a country keen to stay friends, to foster better understanding with the Reich, then all the dreadful talk of war will disperse, simply melt away.’ He fluttered his fingertips at her.
‘And we can all get on with things again.’
‘You mean things like buying objets, filling the house with silly bits and pieces, and scheming to advance yourself ever further?’
He sat back in his chair, right away from Honor. ‘I mean men and women going about their daily lives as they wish without fear that those lives will be plucked from them by a row they do not want over far-away territories they do not care about.’
He succeeded, Brigid thought, in sounding grand and stiff and also sorrowful.
‘So much to accomplish in one afternoon,’ Honor said, indifferent to his grand sorrowfulness.
‘Indeed. You see now why I have invited that dear boy Fritzi? So that he might be company for our young guest while we elders talk politics.’
Brigid rolled her eyes. ‘Such a fun time as I am to have.’
‘And I,’ Honor added.
When Fritzi was shown in some moments later by Andrews – who announced ‘Prince Frederick George William Christopher of Prussia’ in a way that caused Chips to smile approvingly, and Honor to mutter ‘good God’ under her breath – he stood in the doorway and clicked his heels smartly together, bowing slightly from the waist. Now that she saw him, Brigid did indeed remember him from her party.
Even amidst that whirl of dazzling creatures, the boys and girls equally beautiful, and beautifully dressed, so that they had seemed like the shiny floating ribbons on a maypole, Fritzi had stood out for his unruffled beauty.
He was like the surface of a lake, Brigid had thought then, as he whirled her into a waltz that had seemed to perfectly fit his solemn grace.
His was not a charming beauty nor a lively beauty.
He might have been a marble statue from classical times, except for the rosy glow that lit him to the tips of his perfect ears.
But it was a beauty as undeniable as the blue of her own eyes or the fact that she was left-handed.
When he finished bowing, he crossed towards the fireplace and bent over Honor’s hand. Only that Honor snatched her hand back, he would have kissed it, Brigid thought with an inward laugh.
‘Fritzi, darling boy.’ Chips clasped his hand warmly. ‘You know my sister-in-law, Lady Brigid Guinness.’
‘Of course.’ Fritzi bent over Brigid’s hand.
‘How could I possibly forget?’ His English was faultless, in a way that said immediately that he wasn’t English.
She caught Honor’s eye over the top of his head and thought she was about to laugh outright.
Luckily, behind her, Andrews announced, ‘Ambassador Kennedy.’
The ambassador did not pause in the doorway.
He came straight in with a smile that lifted his top lip high above big white teeth but didn’t reach his eyes, shrewd and veiled behind spectacles.
He walked like a man swimming, Brigid thought.
Or at least a man smoothly moving a weightless force out of his way.
‘Good to see you again,’ he said to Chips, shaking his hand vigorously.
He did the same with Honor and with Fritzi, although he seemed to pause slightly as Chips reeled off the boy’s title and give a sharper look from behind the steel-rimmed spectacles.
When it came to Brigid’s turn, he asked her, ‘How old are you?’ without any kind of ‘How do you do?’
‘I am eighteen,’ she said.
‘Are you indeed? Well.’ He paused and contemplated her. Then, ‘I have a daughter. Kathleen. Also eighteen.’
‘Ambassador Kennedy is here with quite the retinue,’ Chips said gayly. ‘His wife, Rose, and seven of their nine children.’
‘Nine!’ Honor said. An expression of distaste crossed her face.
‘Indeed. Is he not blessed?’ Chips said, and managed to look both approvingly at Ambassador Kennedy and pointedly at Honor, in some way that Brigid didn’t understand.
‘My daughter Kathleen,’ the ambassador showed no sign of allowing himself to be distracted by niceties, ‘she’d be mighty pleased to meet you.’
‘I’m sure that would be delightful,’ Brigid said, turning vague and charming. Any English person would immediately have taken the hint. But Ambassador Kennedy was American.
‘That’s settled then,’ he said. ‘You’ll like her. Everybody does.’
Brigid stifled a groan. Must she now be responsible for some poor little fish-out-of-water? Anyone who ‘everybody’ liked could only be impossibly dreary.
Emerald arrived, wearing a hat trimmed with so many feathers that she looked, more than ever, like an ancient exotic bird, all beaky nose, deep wrinkles and bright jewel colours.
She and the ambassador greeted one another cordially, and soon they were deep in conversation about something called the Imperial Policy Group.
‘Chamberlain understands,’ Chips said. ‘As long as he keeps far away from that old warmonger, Churchill, it’ll be alright … ’
He might have been talking about horses sharing a stable, Brigid thought; which animals did well together and which ones didn’t.
‘From what I hear, Churchill wants war and will say anything to get it,’ Ambassador Kennedy said bluntly.
‘All his talk of England’s duty, the need to resist Hitler, is nothing more than the empty words of a man who has made up his mind to brawl.
You can see them in any dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen on a Friday after payday. ’
‘We think so too,’ Emerald said soothingly. ‘Most of the country thinks so. There is no appetite for war among the people.’
Honor, after ringing for tea and passing cups around when it arrived, followed by plates of tiny sandwiches and two kinds of cake, picked up her book again – Rebecca the title said in bold black letters – and buried herself in it. Bundi lay at her feet, drowsing happily in the warmth of the fire.
Fritzi turned to Brigid. ‘Lady Brigid, how much do you enjoy opera?’
‘As much as the average English person,’ Brigid said cautiously.
He wagged a finger at her. ‘I see what it is you are trying to do. You are trying to dissemble in that charming way you English have. But I can’t allow it.
’ He wagged the finger again. ‘Because, you see, I intend to invite you to the opera, and so I must know how much you care for it. That way I will know whether to get tickets for Puccini, say – something easy, comfortable – or if you might be able for our Germans, Wagner or Albert Lortzing.’
Why did men always treat one as though one were a fire made with damp wood? Brigid thought. A feeble flame that must be coaxed and gentled? Fritzi was sort of hearty in his coaxing, but in a way that felt fake.
‘But I haven’t said I will go to the opera with you,’ she said.
No sign that he thought her rude crossed his smooth face. Instead, he smiled, showing such even white teeth that Brigid thought suddenly of Peter Pan, who had the perfect pearly teeth of childhood always. And how strange that was in a grown man.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But I hope very much you will.’
Before she could respond, Chips cut in. ‘Brigid, you are coming to Kelvedon for some days soon, is that not so?’
‘Yes,’ she said gratefully. ‘The great unveiling. Chips has not allowed any of us to see this new home, even though he bought it nearly a year ago,’ she explained to Fritzi.
‘It wasn’t fit to be seen,’ Chips said. ‘A party of nuns had had the place. First as a school, then an asylum of some kind.’ He shuddered.
‘Only a man of your vision could have seen past that,’ Emerald said reassuringly.
‘Thank you.’ He leaned forward and pressed her hand warmly.
Honor looked up from her book, from one to the other, and smirked a little.
‘I have had Gerald Wellesley – who will be Duke of Wellington,’ he explained to Ambassador Kennedy, ‘working on the place and finally, it is ready. We go down as a family party in a week or so. Fritzi, why not do us the honour of coming too?’
Fritzi bowed again and said, ‘I would be delighted,’ so quickly that Brigid knew immediately he had been asked already. Had already agreed, and that this was only pantomime for her benefit.
‘I must go,’ she said, standing. ‘Mamma expects me back.’
‘I doubt it,’ Honor said, head bending once more to her book. ‘She is at the Women’s Institute all afternoon. Destitute widows. Or is it orphans?’
‘Both. And nevertheless, I must go,’ Brigid said, furious that Honor should have contradicted her. She said only the briefest of goodbyes and ran down the stairs calling, ‘Andrews, my coat,’ as she went.
‘Wait, Brigid!’ Chips caught her in the hallway.
‘Why did you do that?’ She rounded on him.
‘Invite him. I do not want him there at all. He is like a man made out of cardboard. Like the footmen in Cinderella, except they are made of mice. Or is it rats?’ She was getting confused and incoherent in her anger.
It always happened to her. Just when she most needed to be calm and aloof, she became flustered and tied herself in knots.
‘You’re cross,’ Chips said. ‘I understand. I see it in your face. The way you stick your lower lip out – adorable!’ And he reached a hand out and placed it against her cheek.
His hand was smooth and cool and rested lightly, for just a moment.
But the gesture was possessive. And something else that she didn’t understand.
His hand may have been cool but his eyes were hot.
‘I will make it up to you,’ he promised. ‘I will ask your cousin Maureen—’
Brigid rolled her eyes. ‘Hardly a real cousin. Years older. Honor’s cousin, if you will; not mine.’
‘Well, for Honor then, I will ask Maureen and Duff. Even though he is not at all sound on Germany. And for you, Kathleen Kennedy, so that you shall have a friend of your own.’
‘You can’t arrange us as you see fit, Chips,’ she said in irritation. ‘We are not flowers in a vase. And I am not a child. You do not need to find friends for me.’
‘Of course you are not,’ he said. ‘Not a child at all.’