Chapter Sixteen
Kelvedon, Essex
Honor
Bringing Elizabeth meant that Duff had to travel with Chips and Bundi.
Which clearly annoyed Maureen because she sat in silence, staring out the window, Pugsy on her lap, ignoring Elizabeth’s chatter until eventually Elizabeth fell asleep, head tilted back against the upholstered seat of the car, mouth slightly open.
Honor plucked the smoking cigarette from her fingers and flicked it out the window.
‘Who is she?’ Brigid asked in a fascinated whisper as Elizabeth started to snore.
‘Who was she, more like,’ Maureen said.
‘Don’t be cruel.’
‘When we were all as young as you are now, and doing the season, Elizabeth was the girl of the moment,’ Maureen said.
‘She knew all the best parties, and planned many of them. She was outrageous and wild and the despair of parents everywhere, not just her own. She was up to everything, neck deep in everything, invited everywhere.’ She watched Elizabeth draw a ragged breath in and exhale on a snore.
‘And then everything changed, and everyone changed, but Elizabeth stayed exactly the same so that now, she is like finding a faded dance card and seeing the name of a young man you once danced with. You may not remember him at all clearly, but you might feel a moment’s sadness because, back then, it was probably terribly important that he danced with you … ’
Maureen sounded almost wistful, Honor thought. Which was so unlike her that she looked over, a question in her eyes. But Maureen turned her face to the window.
‘She seems rather fun,’ Brigid said thoughtfully. ‘Though not at all like a grown-up.’
‘She is like those poems by Mr Hilaire Belloc, so cleverly illustrated by Duff’s father: A Cautionary Tale,’ Honor said.
Brigid began: ‘There was a girl, her name was Lizzie,
Who always seemed so terribly busy
She plotted here, she planted there,
But all she produced was empty air.’
‘More like a limerick, but jolly good,’ Maureen said.
‘I’m sure it is very unsuitable that she should be coming with us,’ Honor said. ‘Please do not tell Mamma. I am certain she wouldn’t like it.’
‘You needn’t worry,’ Brigid said, ‘I bet I’ll hardly speak to her.
Apparently I shall have dear little Kathleen Kennedy to keep me busy.
’ She sighed. ‘Not to mention Prince Fritzi. Of all the … I don’t know why Chips does such things …
When all I wanted to do was play tennis and walk and swim and ride, and try to forget all about London and parties and who wore what. ’
‘What a funny child you are,’ Maureen said. ‘At your age, it was the tennis and riding I wanted to forget, the better to think only of parties and who wore what.’
They were finally clear of the city – even the trailing fingers of small, dirty houses and narrow streets that lingered so long after the city proper was wound up, were gone now. Around them, the landscape grew broad and the air settled to a thick yellow glow.
‘It’s like driving through custard,’ Brigid said.
The car purred along, eating through miles and miles of road, fields of cropped golden stubble stretching out on either side, bordered by trees already leaking copper into the green leaves.
The harvest was in early, Honor’s father had told her, almost with the pride of a man whose livelihood depended on the safe gathering of a few small fields.
No wonder there was an air of dreaming over the countryside, she thought.
A feeling of quiet celebration. She imagined the setting right of houses and barns, the mending of fences, all the chores that would have been left undone in the great rush to take in the hay.
And the voluptuous sense that there was time, finally, to do these things.
She thought of pies baking, fruit pickled safe into jars. She sighed happily.
‘Did you bring your gas mask?’ Brigid asked.
‘I almost forgot, only Minnie ran out after me to remind me. I said she should take it in their car with the luggage, but she insisted that, no, I must carry it with me.’ She patted the bulky black case beside her.
‘I cannot get used to them. They make me think of poor sweet elephants with their trunks cut off. Too sad.’
‘Chips says there will be no need of them,’ Honor said. ‘But I confess, I had Molly pack mine anyway.’
‘Duff says there will be need, but not yet. He wants me to go to Clandeboye if things get worse,’ Maureen said.
‘Will you?’ Honor asked, curious.
‘Certainly not. To be buried in the Irish countryside would be even more terrible than anything that could happen in London. In any case, nothing will happen. I know Duff. He likes to “look life in the eye”, as he puts it. Prides himself on not taking the easy road. Only it can make him pessimistic. He’s so busy not swallowing easy lies that he hunts down difficult ones. All will be well, I’m sure.’
‘I should like to join the Women’s Voluntary Service if there is a war,’ Brigid said vaguely. ‘Or drive a truck. But Mamma says I may not.’
There was silence then, all faces turned towards the windows, watching the steady unfolding of fields and hedges, small copses and winding rivers.
It was, Honor thought, like a film reel, something that felt both near and distant, real and imagined.
She tried to imagine it all torn up, ploughed not by farm machinery but by guns and the tramping feet of soldiers; the gold turned to black, the green scorched to brown.
But she couldn’t. And there was no need.
There would be no war. Chips had said it.
She no longer had the habit of believing what he said of himself – where he had been, who he had seen – but in this, how could he be wrong?
He spent so much of his time, both in the House and out of it, talking about what would happen.
Talking to Chamberlain, whom he adored; to Rab Butler, who after all was deputy foreign minister; to von Ribbentrop, who had the ear of the Führer, and Mussolini’s man Dino Grandi. How could he be wrong about this?
‘So, did Chips want Kelvedon because of how it sounds so like your own dear Elveden?’ Maureen asked after a while, breaking the silence. ‘Perhaps he sees himself as another Lord Iveagh?’
Brigid sniggered and Honor gave her a cross look. ‘I’m just glad he settled on somewhere at last. You have no idea the pain of these last few years, looking at country house after country house, only for him to find fault with everything.’
‘Like the Three Bears,’ Brigid piped up. ‘Too big, too small, too shabby, too old …’
‘Not old enough,’ Maureen joined in.
Honor stirred irritably. ‘Must you?’
‘Yes,’ Maureen replied. ‘I must. When it comes to Chips, everyone must. His bumptiousness can only be kept in check if all who know him tease him mercilessly. And now that his political career is finally taking off …’ She smirked at Brigid as she said it, but it was Honor who answered.
‘Parliamentary private secretary to Rab Butler. Hardly a career taking off.’ She spoke dismissively.
‘Not by the standards of your family, maybe,’ Maureen said, with a curious look at her. ‘But all the same, not nothing.’
‘And he is terrifically pleased,’ Brigid chipped in.
‘Of course he is,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ve seen Chips receive a passing remark on the size of his dog as though it were the most delicate personal compliment.’ She began to laugh. ‘He really is able to spin gold out of the drabbest of metals.’
‘Dear Bundi …’ was all Honor said. ‘Chips talks of getting a second dog, but I do not know how I could ever love another as I love Bundi.’ She fell silent then, remembering the background to this talk of another dog.
‘Where is Paul?’ Maureen asked, as though reading her mind.
‘At Kelvedon already, with Nanny. And Sheridan?’
‘At home in London. With the Nanny. Duff wanted to bring him …’
‘Oh, how sweet,’ Brigid cried. ‘I wish you had.’
‘Don’t be silly, Brigid,’ Honor said. ‘Babies aren’t puppies, you know, to be dragged around and played with. They need routine, order, discipline.’
‘Exactly,’ said Maureen.
It was late into the afternoon by the time they arrived at Kelvedon Hatch, a village of pretty cottages that lay beyond the walls of Kelvedon Hall. The motorcar drew up to the front gates, black and very new, with, in the centre of each, a hefty wreath-shaped crest painted in silver.
‘What is it?’ Maureen asked, in genuine curiosity. ‘The Channon coat of arms?’ She started to laugh.
‘Don’t tease, Maureen. Chips is very pleased with it.’
‘Look.’ Elizabeth was awake. ‘There’s a tiny disembodied arm coming out the top, clutching, what is that … mistletoe? I suppose that would make sense, given Chips’ reputation …’ Then, catching sight of Honor’s face, ‘Sorry, darling. Too much?’
‘Too much.’
The gates were opened by a small boy in a checked cap, his face burnt and freckled by the sun.
On each side of the road stood a shiny new lodge, the two joined by an archway overhead.
‘It’s like driving through a wedding cake,’ Brigid said, looking around at the glossy white plaster of the lodges and up at the castellated arch above them.
They continued in silence up the straight tree-lined avenue until they came within sight of the house at the far end of a long, manicured lawn.
No trace here of the blistering sun that had parched the fields and turned London streets fetid.
Everything was green and fresh and soft and new, grass mown in stripes like a calico bedspread.
Maureen started to laugh. ‘How very like Chips.’
‘What do you mean?’ Honor asked. Half of her wanted to hear Maureen mock Chips as only Maureen could. The other half felt furious that her cousin should think to sneer at the man she had married.
‘After all that – all that looking, all that rejecting, all that talk of somewhere fitting to his place in society – and in the end he settles for something so … suburban.’
‘Hardly!’ Honor said. ‘Georgian. Late Georgian.’