Chapter Nineteen
Kick
The drive down to Essex had reminded Kick why she disliked being alone with her parents.
It was that they so patently disliked being alone with one another.
If Jack or Joe Jnr had been there, the conversation would have been assured; their father would have questioned them closely on everything they saw, demanding their opinions on the size of English farms, crop production, cattle.
And Joe and Jack would have done what they always did – answered to the best of their ability, while also teasing him gently, but only ever as much as he would take.
They all knew the line. And what happened to those who crossed it.
The little boys, Bobby and Teddy, would have distracted everyone with their chatter had they been there.
Rosemary too brought distraction – not to their father, who tended to ignore her, but to their mother, who watched her so carefully that she had no attention left.
But alone, there was not enough conversation after the first half hour, and they lapsed into silence.
Her father read the newspaper. A different newspaper to the one he had read that morning.
Rose looked out her window, occasionally touching her hair with a gloved hand when they rattled over a bump or hole in the road.
Kick tried to play silent games with herself – she awarded herself a point for every horse (two for a grey) she saw, and took a point away for every field of cows.
It had to be a field, she reflected; individual cows were too many.
Even so, she was well into minus numbers when they drove over a particularly deep pothole and the car bounced high, jolting them all out of their silence.
‘You will come and say your prayers with me before bed each evening,’ Rose said, turning to Kick. ‘It won’t be possible to attend mass. I imagine there isn’t even a church, so that will have to do.’
‘Of course, Mother.’ Kick spoke eagerly.
That was the time she and her mother were most in harmony – at mass or saying prayers together.
Kick, of all her brothers and sisters, was the most conscious of her faith.
In her trunk, packed into a silk purse stitched in the papal colours of yellow and white, were the rosary beads and holy picture she never went anywhere without.
Each night they sat beside her bed and were the last thing she laid eyes on before she turned off the lamp.
The times she spent on her knees in silent contemplation, either in church or at the little Prie-dieu in her bedroom, were some of her happiest. The repetition of words known so much by heart – ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …’ – and the way in which her mind, anchored by the familiarity, was set free to roam by those words, given structure by their rhythm; the sound of her mother’s voice alongside hers; the way their two voices, together, became something greater, swelling into a broader chorus – all these things were, not a comfort, as others called them, but to her, a delight.
And then her father surprised her. ‘I want you to be nice to the German prince, Kick,’ he said, folding the newspaper in that deliberate way of his.
‘Why?’ Rose demanded, head whipping up like a bird that sees something move on the lawn below.
‘Because we need to know about him.’
‘Know what about him?’
‘What he is about. Who he stands for.’
‘Princes usually stand for themselves, I should think,’ Kick said.
She expected a laugh, from her father at least, but didn’t get one.
God, this car journey was long, and hot, she thought.
She tried to open the window, just a crack.
Her mother reached a hand out and stopped her.
Rose’s hair didn’t stand for sharp breezes.
‘Know what about him?’ Rose persisted.
But the ambassador didn’t answer that.
‘Anyway, what do you mean by “nice”?’ Kick asked.
‘I want you to listen to what he has to say.’
‘OK, I’ll listen,’ she said cheerfully.
‘And remember.’
She knew what the remembering meant. It meant that he would quiz her later – what had the prince said?
What did she think he meant by it? Half, Kick was flattered by these questions – that her father should ask them of her and listen to the answers – but she found herself more and more confused about how to answer.
Through Billy, Andrew, their other friends, she now understood that many saw her father not as she always had – a hero, a peacemaker – but as a coward; as ‘yellow’, as Randolph Churchill had dubbed him.
Someone concerned for his money if stability should be disrupted.
Concerned for the safety of his own sons if America should decide to join England and go to war with Germany.
Ready to sacrifice dignity, honour, what was right, for safety and prosperity.
She didn’t believe it of him, but who really knew what her father thought?
Or rather, when he clearly thought so many things, who could be sure these weren’t among them?
She must ask Jack, she decided. He seemed to understand the many tight compartments of their father’s mind, far better than she did.
She wasn’t used to questioning anything the ambassador thought or said.
How uncomfortable it was to feel new thoughts growing in her, pushing up through tightly packed ground and into the light; spikey and insistent.
Especially when these thoughts brought her into conflict with what Billy said to her.
Recently, he had told her more than he used to of what he felt – his shame that Chamberlain tried always to appease, to placate – ‘rolling over like a puppy, to show his stomach’ – and how he refused to believe that peace at any price was worth having.
Kick listened and said little, but she thought about what he said. She had tried to ask her father – ‘Maybe resisting Hitler is right after all?’ – but he dismissed her: ‘War is a terrible thing, and must be avoided.’ They couldn’t both be right. And yet, how could she decide who was wrong?
They swept through a pair of gate lodges that arched above them, as though linking arms, and up a broad driveway far better surfaced than the road they had just left.
Kick rolled her window down. Now that they were moving slowly, her mother allowed it.
She wanted to hear the sounds of this place.
Above the crunching of tyres on gravel, there was the swelling of evening birdsong and the scraping rattle of someone pushing a lawn-mower, along with a throaty clicking noise that made her think of crickets.
Did they have crickets here? The house came into view, square and neat and red, like the doll’s house back home in the nursery.
Beside her, her mother sat up a little straighter and dug an elbow into Kick to do the same.
At the house was the usual receiving line of servants, spreading out in a fan shape from the front door.
The first such country-house visit, Kick had said hullo, warmly, to the young man at the end of the line, only to have Debo squeeze her arm tight and whisper, ‘No.’ Later, Debo had explained that if she must say hullo, ‘at least say it to the butler, darling. Not the lowliest footman who’s probably just a boot boy in a borrowed uniform, put there to make the family look good. ’
‘What would I do without you?’ Kick had responded with a laugh.
The motorcar drew to a gradual halt, stopping exactly opposite the open front door. ‘Dear friends!’ That was Chips, she assumed, coming down the front steps towards them, arms spread theatrically wide. ‘Welcome.’
He was unexpectedly handsome. Blond, well-made.
With the skill given her by her drawing teacher, Kick noted the even proportions of his face, all his features held in perfect balance.
Looking a little closer, when he took her hand in his and shook it vigorously, she saw the beginnings of pouches under his eyes, a network of tiny red veins across his cheeks, a softening of jawline that hinted at disappointment.
He made her think of that curious book she had read the summer before at Hyannis Port, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
She had never finished it – her mother had come upon her reading it and immediately taken it away – but she remembered it well enough that now, looking at Chips, she thought immediately of the painting starting to corrupt, leaking signs of dissolution into the perfect beauty of its subject.
‘Let me show you to your rooms,’ he was saying, leading them in through the door to the hallway.
He paused a moment, the better that they might admire, Kick thought, looking dutifully around.
It was a hallway thick with things. Why, it would take a whole day to look at everything he had crowded in there – paintings, lamps, vases, china and glass objects, a tiny gold clock – all proudly craning forwards to be admired.
Above them was a white marble chandelier with carved fruit and flowers so thick upon it that they looked, she thought, like clusters of insects.
Fat beetles or moth chrysalises. She imagined them all hatching at the same moment, swarming out of their cocoons and drying themselves on the light. She shuddered.
‘Some of the others are down at the pool,’ Chips continued. ‘You’ll meet them when the bell goes. How well you will all get on, you’ll see!’ His enthusiasm was either infectious or excessive, she couldn’t decide which. She was too tired after the journey.
‘There’s a pool?’ she said. ‘May I swim?’
‘Now?’
‘Yes. Please.’ She stood on one leg, eager for him to say yes. ‘It is so hot and the drive was so stuffy. Mother didn’t want the windows down for fear of flies.’
‘The bell is about to go,’ Chips said. ‘It is nearly time to dress.’
‘Really, Kathleen!’ Her mother. Then, with a gracious smile, ‘My daughter is impatient.’
‘Oh, let her swim, Chips. There’s time.’ That was a tall man with a heavy, dark face, wearing creased linen trousers and a white shirt. He came through the hallway from the back of the house and passed them, going upstairs.
‘Well, alright,’ Chips said. ‘I will have someone show you to your room.’
‘Honestly, you need only tell me and I will find it. No need to show me.’ Barely waiting for instructions – ‘around the bend in the landing, third door on the right, the Mauve Room’ – Kick dashed upstairs, hoping that the mysterious alchemy of English country houses would mean her trunk was already there.
It was. And her little portable gramophone.
She put the needle on the record, thrilling as always to the loud crackle that seemed to demand quiet and attention.
Cole Porter’s voice filled the air: ‘It’s delightful …
’ She changed quickly into her bathing costume and took a towel that lay folded neatly at the end of the bed.
Shoving her feet into sandals, she went back the way she had come and out towards what Chips had proudly called ‘the pavilion’.
She met no one, but everywhere there was a sense of waiting – of doors about to burst open and send forth beautifully dressed men and women, of plans set in motion that needed only a signal to begin to play themselves out.
The air was so hot it resisted her, and the pool, when she reached it, abandoned.
The relief of getting into the water was such that she nearly whooped, stopping herself only because, looking back towards the house, she could see that windows everywhere were open.
She imagined the effect of a really loud whoop – figures appearing in each open frame, peering out to see who had done this unseemly thing.
Instead she flung herself underwater, kicking right down to the bottom of the pool and touching its smooth tiled floor before rising up again to burst above the surface.
Drat, she thought, wiping water from her eyes, now her hair would be a sight.
She wondered would Mrs Wilkes, the stern lady who was her mother’s maid, have time to set it to rights.
Probably not, but what did it matter. She could simply brush it and tie it back.
Through the thickening evening air she heard the sound of a gong.
Time to go in. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the cool water just yet.
She lay on her back, looking up at a sky the colour of spilled ink.
At the far end of the pool, swallows were diving, skimming the smooth surface, then rising abruptly, only to circle about and swoop again.
They were like the paper aeroplanes her little brothers and sisters made and flew from the windows of Prince’s Gate, light and swift, wings angled to catch the wind.
If made well enough, they flew as far as Hyde Park so that sometimes when she was out riding she came across one, stuck in a tree or a bush, and laughed to think of Bobby or Teddy or Eunice, folding the paper this way and that energetically, then flinging it out, borne aloft on eager hope.
The gong went again. Now she would be late. She pulled herself up and out of the pool and, catching a towel, set off barefooted towards the house.