Chapter Seventeen
Maureen
Honor must have forgotten to tell Chips to put them in the same room, Maureen thought crossly.
Typical. She really was too vague these days.
Barely half-engaged in anything, forever slipping away to read or God knew what.
And she couldn’t ask that Duff’s things be moved into her room.
Not now. It would be too mortifying. Servants carrying bags to and fro, guests whispering … Damn Honor, she thought.
Chips had said Duff was out by the pool.
He liked to lie in the sun far more than Englishmen usually did.
His dark, almost swarthy complexion meant he did not freckle and burn the way others did.
He would be out there, sprawled on a sun chair, surrounded by books and newspapers, perfectly happy.
Or so she hoped. The idea made her hurry, impatient of the butler who was leading the way in that stately fashion butlers always had.
Even Manning, at Clandeboye, who was positively a villain, liked to adopt a measured formality when they had visitors.
‘I see it,’ she said, catching sight of a curved sweep of aquamarine water shimmering in the late afternoon haze. ‘No need to come any further.’
Sure enough, there was Duff, already turning brown, lying, book in hand, beside a wrought-iron table on which stood a pitcher of something cool.
In the water, Brigid, in a striped red-and-white bathing suit, was splashing up and down.
Bundi lay in the shade close to the pool, watching her, head sunk onto his paws.
‘Ahoy!’ Brigid cried gayly, waving over.
Maureen ignored her. That child was altogether too noisy, she thought.
‘Good trip?’ Duff asked, stretching a hand out to her. She went and sat on the reclining seat with him.
‘Elizabeth slept and snored, and Honor couldn’t make up her mind whether to lead the attack against her husband or spring to his defence. Most agitating.’
‘Interesting,’ he said. Then, ‘What do you think of this?’ He swept a lazy arm up and around, to take in the pool, a pair of terracotta statues of women with deep bosoms and flouncy robes that stood at either end, the copper-roofed pavilion beside it, stretches of green rolling lawn and the house behind them.
‘Like a doll’s house,’ Maureen said. ‘Neat and cosy and al-together a little bit silly. Hardly a real country house. More a pretend. Perfect for Chips.’ She smirked.
‘Something Germanic about it,’ Duff said, glaring at the pool pavilion. ‘Chips described it as “neo-Austrian baroque”.’ He sounded revolted. ‘There isn’t a patriotic bone in that man’s body.’
‘Rather blissfully comfy though, isn’t it?’ Maureen said, wriggling right down so that she lay beside him. He shifted over and put an arm around her. If Brigid hadn’t been there, she would have kissed him. As it was, she moved in closer.
‘Comfort!’ Duff said darkly. ‘What man cares for such things?’
‘What are you drinking?’
‘Gin fizz.’
‘Pour me one, then tell me what you are reading.’
She was nearly asleep, drowsing in the last of the sun’s rays, when the butler returned, this time leading a young man of such golden beauty that, watching him from under half-closed lids, Maureen found that she wished she had gone to her room following the journey after all; had at least reapplied lipstick and brushed her hair.
‘Prince Friedrich of Prussia,’ the butler announced.
How butlers loved a title, Maureen thought. As much – more, almost! – as Chips. So this was the young man he raved about. It was no wonder. He really was exquisite. And Chips, well, Chips liked exquisite young men. Was that why he had invited this prince? Surely not.
‘Please,’ the young man said, coming forward and bowing slightly, ‘you must call me Fritzi. All my friends do.’
‘Fritzi,’ Maureen said obligingly.
‘Prince Friedrich,’ Duff said.
Brigid pulled herself up and out of the pool in one swift movement, and stood dripping on the stone flags.
‘Lady Brigid,’ Fritzi said, ‘how charming to see you again.’
‘Charming,’ Brigid said, so that it wasn’t at all clear if she meant it was charming to see him, or agreed that it was charming for him to see her. Maureen swallowed a laugh.
‘There you are, dear boy.’ Chips came hurrying up. ‘They told me you were down here. I would have been on hand to meet you if I had known. You are early. It is wonderful’ – lest there be any doubt. ‘Have they settled you in? And your man, Albert, is it? Have they shown him to the servants’ hall?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Fritzi said something stiff then about what a pleasure it was to be received in such a gracious house. Maureen sank back down beside Duff and sighed. The handsome young man was going to be a bore.
‘Maureen,’ Chips said, looking beadily at her, ‘there are plenty of extra sun chairs, you know.’
‘I know,’ she said lazily, draping a leg over Duff’s and, turning her face in towards his neck, inhaling deeply. The heat of the day had brought out a sheen of sweat; he smelt, she thought, better than ever.
Brigid, drinking from a glass of lemonade the butler had brought, choked, and Chips said, ‘Really, Maureen, I hope you will behave better when the ambassador arrives.’
‘Why, will I compromise Anglo-American relations?’ she drawled.
‘You jolly well might,’ Chips snapped.
‘I think they’re compromised already,’ Duff said, putting his book down, ‘by the mealy-mouthed inclinations of the ambassador himself, and his determination to talk England into retreat.’ He glared at Chips, who took a step back.
‘I hope you won’t be argumentative, dear boy,’ Chips said.
‘As it happens, I won’t,’ Duff said shortly. ‘In fact, I hope it might be possible to talk sense into the man.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’ Chips asked. ‘I did wonder, when you can hardly be brought to leave Churchill’s side. Or should I say, let go of his hand? I do hope you’re not going to spoil my party.’
‘Hardly possible,’ Duff said dryly. Maureen’s lips twitched, but she kept her face straight. ‘No, I simply want him to meet other English people,’ he emphasised the word English, ‘and listen to views that aren’t the views of Emerald Cunard or Lady Astor.’
‘Darling, you aren’t going to talk endless politics, are you?’ Maureen said, touching the side of Duff’s face with a finger.
‘It’s not politics,’ Duff said shortly. ‘It’s now the stuff of life. When will any of you realise that?’
‘We do realise,’ Maureen said softly. ‘We’ve all been fitted for gas masks and even practised those dreadful air raid drills. But must one think of nothing else every minute of the day?’
‘It will come right,’ Chips said reassuringly. ‘Mr Chamberlain goes to Munich in just a few weeks, where he will head off all this unpleasant talk of war. You’ll see, he will arrange everything. There will be no need of these precautions.’
‘It is already not right for Czechoslovakia,’ Duff said, sitting up sharply so that Maureen almost fell from the sun chair. ‘Hitler will hardly rest until he has taken the Sudetenland. And even then he will not rest. All of Europe may wake to find his army massing at their borders.’
‘Not here, dear boy, where our borders are protected by the ocean,’ Chips said comfortably.
Duff might have said more – indeed, Maureen knew that the kind of provocation Chips gave could mean long, angry diatribes about ‘wilful blindness’ and ‘cowardice’ – but just then Elizabeth, dressed in a white sundress – presumably Honor’s, that she had belted tightly with a wide black belt – and a floppy sunhat, came towards them.
‘There you all are. Isn’t this nice?’ The others murmured agreement and Fritzi did his stiff little bow again.
Elizabeth, ignoring him, poured herself the rest of the gin fizz and handed the empty jug to Chips.
‘Ring for more, darling,’ she said, and settled herself on a chair beside Maureen.
‘Now, I was thinking – after dinner tonight we could get up a game of some kind.’
‘Ooh yes!’ Brigid said, coming to sit, dripping, on the stone tiles at Elizabeth’s feet.
‘No games,’ Chips said.