Chapter Sixteen #2
‘But so very square and red-brick. So neat and tidy and contained. Nothing like Elveden at all. Quite the pocket squire, isn’t he?’
‘Maureen, if you’re going to be—’
‘I’m not, I promise. I’ll be as good as gold. It’s only that, in comparison with Clandeboye …’
‘Must we endlessly have comparisons with Clandeboye? Not everyone wants to live in a vast tumbling-down barracks of a place, you know. Why, there are entire wings that are scarcely habitable. And I believe you still have never seen the kitchens.’
‘Why would I want to see the kitchens?’ Maureen asked, eyes open wide.
Inside, Brigid ran about exclaiming at everything she saw.
Honor hadn’t been there since well before the work was complete, and found herself marvelling – again – at the sheer determination of Chips’ vision.
The last time she’d seen Kelvedon, there had lingered, still, a distinct memory of nuns and institutional living.
Dim light and the acrid smell of fatty oil lamps.
A kind of sad communality born of sacrifices to economic efficiency – how best to keep the most people, spending the least money.
It had been badly heated so there was a general air of damp and even patches of mildew.
Hasty sectioning of grand rooms had meant a warren of smaller ones; even – she shuddered at the recollection – a kind of communal lavatory block where a row of stalls stood side by side, seven or eight of them, each with a corresponding small washstand.
Now, not a trace of these bleak efficiencies remained.
Nor any hint of what she had then smelled in the air – boiled cabbage and dashed hopes.
Now, the hall was painted a celestial blue with plasterwork picked out in white.
A plump sofa upholstered in a deeper blue and white, heaped with silk cushions, stood invitingly in an alcove.
On the polished floor were thick Persian rugs, overhead swung a chandelier so fat with carved fruit and flowers that, should it crash to the ground, as seemed possible given its weight, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see actual pulp and flesh and petals mashed into the marble floor.
Through the open front door behind them came the smell of fresh-mown grass, joined from somewhere else by that of newly baked bread.
Chips, although he had left later, had taken a different road and made better time.
He came now into the hallway, Bundi padding beside him like a golden lion.
‘Welcome,’ he cried expansively. ‘I have tea ordered for the drawing room, but perhaps you would rather tea in your rooms, then gather by the swimming pool?’
‘I’m going straight to the pool,’ Brigid said. ‘No tea for me!’
‘Tea in our rooms,’ Honor said firmly. ‘Where have you put Elizabeth?’
‘Well,’ Chips said peevishly, ‘it wasn’t easy, at such short notice, and you know not all the bedrooms are ready, but I have had them prepare the Yellow Room.’
By which Honor knew he was very cross indeed.
The Yellow Room – all rooms were named for colours of wildflowers found on the estate, something Chips thought ‘charming, bucolic’, and Honor thought childish – was small and looked out to the stables.
Really, it was a room for a child. But then, Elizabeth, as Brigid had said, wasn’t exactly an adult, for all that she had been married and was now separated, and with an unsuitable lover.
‘Maureen, you are in the Fuchsia Room,’ Chips continued. ‘Duff is in the Green.’
Maureen’s face twitched irritably. ‘Where is my husband now?’ she asked.
‘By the swimming pool.’
‘I’ll go straight out. What time do your Americans arrive?’ She was careful, Honor saw, to distance herself from these unknown guests.
‘Not ’til this evening. Fritzi too.’
Chips followed Honor to her room – she knew he wanted to complain of Elizabeth, so she leapt in with ‘I have a headache. The drive down … intolerable. In fact, I may need to find an excuse to go back to town early.’ That silenced him. He needed her to play hostess.
‘A letter came for you, arrived to Belgrave Square just as we were about to leave.’ He fished it out of his pocket.
‘From Doris, if I were a betting man.’ On the corner of the envelope was a navy stamp with a profile of Adolf Hitler.
Doris indeed. The Führer looked better from the side, Honor thought, when you couldn’t see the silly way he parted his hair.
‘Well, what does she say?’ Chips asked a moment later. Honor hadn’t noticed he was hovering, so absorbed in Doris’ letter was she.
‘She’s coming back to England!’ she said, looking up, eyes shining. ‘She doesn’t say for how long or why, but says she is leaving soon, and asks can she stay. I must write to her immediately and tell her we are here.’
Chips’ face fell. ‘Surely she would be more comfortable in town? And we could see her when we are back? I don’t know that I care to have her here at the same time as the ambassador, with her no-doubt exaggerated tales of Berlin.’
‘Nonsense.’ Honor ignored him. ‘She must come straight here. I will write at once. And I will telephone to Belgrave Square to leave instructions in case she arrives there first. Her letter says she means to set off from Germany almost at once and it was written a week ago. We must send the motorcar back so it is there when she needs it. Will you ask Mrs Meadows to prepare the Scarlet Room?’
‘But I have given that to Fritzi.’
‘He can move.’
‘Very well.’ He gave in so easily that she wasn’t surprised when he added, ‘I thought we might stay on and spend some time together once everyone has gone?’
‘I have matters in town. My mother …’
‘Lady Iveagh wouldn’t mind at all.’ He came closer. ‘If she knew the reason …’
‘What reason?’
‘I thought, while we were here, if we had time alone, well, we might be more … companionable.’ He took her hand and traced his thumb in light circles over the back of it. Honor flinched.
‘No, Chips.’
He dropped her hand. ‘You think I don’t know about the baron, don’t you?’ he said, almost conversationally.
‘What are you talking about?’ She moved sharply away from him.
‘The baron, and your little affair. Very little … But of course I knew.’
How was he so … glib was the word that came to her. Why didn’t he care more? ‘You never said …’
‘No. I didn’t see the point.’ He shrugged. ‘These things happen.’
‘Not to everyone, they don’t. My parents—’
‘Naturally!’ he conceded gracefully. ‘But to so many marriages. And really, there is nothing to make a fuss about. Not when two people wish to stay together. When they have so much to stay together for. As we do. But given your lapse, surely you see that an effort is now required?’
‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’ she asked.
‘Hardly! I exert a little pressure, that’s all. Who could blame me?’
Who indeed? Most of the world, their world anyway, would think him perfectly correct. Perhaps he took her silence for acceptance.
‘We do well together, do we not, darling?’ he continued, coming closer again. ‘And think of Paul, whom we both love so much … You would do anything for him, I know you would. And a brother or sister is what he needs most.’
‘No, Chips. I cannot.’
He looked into her face for a long moment, then narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you sure it was you the baron found so attractive? Men of his type don’t usually make a play for you.’
‘Why should it not have been me?’ she responded wearily.
‘No reason. No reason. Only that kind of man, well, often it is money they find most irresistible.’
She left the room, even though it was her own bedchamber. Later, when they met before dinner, Chips was at his most charming and attentive, full of concern for her wellbeing – ‘You look tired, may I fetch you anything?’
But Honor couldn’t forget, as she had allowed herself to forget so much else.
Which was worse, she wondered – just in the way she might have pressed on a bruised or swollen ankle to see how much it hurt – that her husband found the idea of another man desiring her so ludicrous, or that he should think first of her money when he thought of losing her?
She pressed the sore place again. Both, she decided. Both were worse.