Chapter Twenty
Brigid
Minnie was right, Brigid thought. After the vile drink, the throbbing in her head began to recede and in a while she sat up, pushing the hair out of her eyes, and looked critically at the dress Minnie had laid out.
Crisp white linen with a full skirt embroidered with tiny white flowers in silk thread.
Would it do? After all, this American had been chosen as Most Important Debutante of the season by the Tatler.
Not that Brigid cared – she had come out the year before, and anyway, who paid heed to such nonsense?
But still, she thought, the girl might be snooty, best not to give her anything to be snooty about.
‘Minnie, is there anything more grown-up?’
‘It’s a country-house dinner, not a London party. White linen is very suitable.’
‘Suitable!’ Brigid muttered. ‘Still, I suppose one doesn’t want to look like one has tried too hard …’ She knew Minnie wouldn’t give in, no matter what she said. She had strict ideas about what was ‘suitable’. ‘What are your rooms like, Minnie?’
‘Room, not rooms, and it’s just as it should be,’ Minnie said. ‘Why would you ask such a thing?’
‘I want to know.’ Then, ‘What about Kathleen’s maid; has she brought someone?’
‘There’s a maid has come with Mrs Kennedy – I assume she’ll do for both. And a gentleman for the prince.’
‘What’s he like?’ Brigid was curious. ‘The prince is German but doesn’t sound it. Not that he sounds English either … What about his man?’
‘German, and sounds it, though he speaks good English, I’ll allow. Albert, he’s called.’
‘What kind of a fellow is he?’
‘Young; dark hair.’
‘Handsome? Will he do for you?’ Brigid laughed, and caught the sparkle in Minnie’s eyes that said she did too, but all she responded was, ‘That’s enough, Lady Brigid, or I’ll write to your mother and tell her that Elizabeth Ponsonby is here and you’ll be sent for, straight home.’
‘Do you know everything, Minnie? How did you even know she was here when she didn’t know herself until the very last minute?’
‘Molly told me.’
‘Of course. The servants’ chorus, passing news and snippets by your own mysterious means.’
‘By which I suppose you mean that we sit and have our tea and talk, just the same as you do.’
Brigid laughed again. ‘Don’t disappoint me. I wish to imagine you have secret ways.’
The dinner bell went as Minnie was putting the finishing touches to Brigid’s hair, and she turned her head this way and that before the glass, finally nodding and saying, ‘Very nice.’ Minnie had coiled her hair in a thick roll at the top of her head, allowing strands to fall loose in easy curls on either side.
‘I bet the American girl wears lipstick. May I? Just a touch?’
‘No. Not in the country. In London, it might be allowed but not here, not at your age.’
‘Well, it will be your fault if I am quite eclipsed.’
‘No one will eclipse you,’ Minnie said fondly.
The pale blue carpet in Brigid’s room gave way to highly polished floorboards on the corridor and landing, so that her feet in their pointy white shoes made a pleasingly grown-up sound as she walked.
She made her way slowly down the stairs and towards the drawing room, hoping she would meet Honor or Maureen along the way and not have to go in alone.
It wasn’t just that she disliked Chips speculating about who she might marry – although she did – it was the way that being talked about made her feel breathless and prickly, like she was only half-dressed, had forgotten to put on underclothes or shoes.
She hoped there would be others in the drawing room, even the American girl who was new and therefore someone for others to be curious about instead of her.
But she was early and only men were gathered.
The drawing room, she saw, was like the concentrated essence of the house.
So painted and plastered and upholstered, so set about with things, that there was not an inch of it that did not seem as though it had been dressed.
It reminded her of Cook and the way she made a pie: first rolling out pastry, carefully lining a tin, placing the filling, then the top layer; cutting leftover pastry into swirls and curls to decorate the crust, then brushing it all with a beaten egg so it would glaze in the baking.
That, she thought, was what Chips had done with this room.
The whole house, yes, but this room most of all.
The walls were grey-green, like lichen, and the chairs and sofas set about were piled high with silk cushions in different shades of green.
The ceiling was painted with a mural of London city in smoky greys and blues.
She could make out St Paul’s, Nelson’s Pillar, a cluster of buildings in between.
The effect of so much colour – no white – was to draw the room in on itself, close it over at the top so that they were in a sealed cauldron.
She wondered had Chips done it on purpose. And if so, why?
Although the evening was warm, a fire was laid in the wide grate; a pile of burning logs that cast a glow of light as well as heat. Too much heat. She wondered how the men could stand so close to it.
Chips was there, with Duff and the ambassador, who wore white tails.
Chips introduced her – ‘Ambassador Kennedy, you remember my sister-in-law Brigid’ – and Kennedy said, ‘Of course, how do you do?’ and gave her hand a firm shake.
He looked expectantly at her, lips peeled back over his big white teeth as though waiting for an answer, so Brigid said, ‘Jolly well, thank you,’ but her voice came out too high and she felt gauche.
Kennedy looked disappointed, and as though he might say something else.
‘Drink this.’ Chips handed her a cocktail and the ambassador turned away.
Brigid took the drink with relief. Duff gave her a sympathetic look but stayed silent.
There didn’t seem anything more to say so she clicked her fingers for Bundi and walked to one of the large windows, open to the evening air.
She stood looking out into the garden that shrank even as she watched, retreating steadily as it veiled itself behind the blackout curtain of night.
‘Spencer-Churchill?’ she heard Duff say, jerking his head towards the ceiling.
‘Yes indeed. How quick you are,’ Chips said, pleased. ‘I commissioned it specially. He worked on it for many months.’
‘What is he to your Winston?’ Ambassador Kennedy asked.
‘Nephew,’ Duff said.
‘And an artist, not a politician?’ the ambassador said thoughtfully. ‘Churchill also paints, I believe? Maybe he too should allow himself to retire and pursue it. More painting, less politicking.’ He looked at them, eyes veiled behind his spectacles.
‘Churchill is the greatest statesman we have,’ Duff said calmly. ‘The fact that he won’t retire, can’t, while all this is going on is proof of that.’
Chips looked panicked, and Brigid nearly laughed out loud. She wanted to remind him how much more blunt Duff could have been, how uncareful.
Honor and Maureen came in together: Honor large and flushed in red, Maureen like an icicle, Brigid thought, cool and elegant in palest blue satin that trailed along the floor after her.
Behind them, after a beat, came an older woman, whippet-thin, in yellow, and a tall girl wearing a black dress picked out with white flowers that was almost the mirror image of Brigid’s, only hers was of shiny silk, with a tulle underskirt that rustled.
Her hair was brushed back off her face and pinned to frame it. And yes, she wore lipstick.
‘Mrs Ambassador! Kathleen!’ Chips moved smoothly forward, making introductions, handing around drinks, cigarettes, pulling forward a chair for Mrs Kennedy and, finally, bringing Kathleen over to where Brigid still stood by the window, scratching Bundi’s heavy golden head.
‘How do you do?’ she said politely to Kathleen.
‘Oh, I do great,’ the girl assured her. ‘Just great.’ She looked around.
‘Isn’t this room neat? And the weather! I don’t know why people say England is a damp country when since I have been here there has been just the most glorious sunshine, day after day.
’ No wonder Ambassador Kennedy had found Brigid’s Jolly well, thank you inadequate.
‘Anyway,’ the girl continued in a rush, ‘you must call me Kick. Everyone does.’
‘Why do they?’ Brigid asked, careful to sound as though finding out were the least important thing in the world to her. It was a trick she’d learned from Maureen.
‘I think it’s not meant to be a compliment,’ the girl said with a laugh, wrinkling her nose.
She had blue eyes that flashed in her tanned face.
They weren’t blue like Guinness blue, Brigid thought; that pale, almost ethereal colour.
Kathleen’s – Kick’s – were deep, almost inky, like flax or cornflowers.
She had even white teeth, a big nose and a firm jaw.
She wasn’t beautiful, Brigid decided, not at all really, but she was sort of concentrated.
As though, squashed inside one person was enough energy, opinions, lively expectation to do two.
‘I have the most terrible habit of kicking off my shoes everywhere I go. Probably I’ll do it right here, in a little while.
Why, I was at a weekend party at Hatfield only last week and some of the boys took all my left shoes and hid them. ’
‘I was meant to go to that party,’ Brigid said quickly, reflexively. ‘But I had another party to go to.’ Then she blushed for being so childish.
‘Well, I wish you had,’ Kick said warmly.
‘What did you do?’ Brigid asked. ‘About the shoes?’ It was, she thought, just the kind of mean trick those boys would play.
She knew the ones – Eton-and-Oxford-educated, heirs to estates and ancient titles; the kind of young man who could do no wrong in Chips’ eyes, but who could be – where they felt encouraged by a person’s timidity or lack of place in the world – thoughtless, even mean.
‘Why, I wasn’t going to let them see I cared, so I walked around in two right shoes for the whole time, one black and one white.’ She burst out laughing. ‘I limped a bit, but that was OK.’
Brigid, who had planned on looking pained and polite and walking away, found herself laughing too. ‘I’m sure they thought you wonderful,’ she said kindly.
‘I think one of them asked me to marry him,’ Kick said with a grin, ‘but the next day I couldn’t remember which – don’t they look the same, some of those fellows? – so I said nothing about it.’
Brigid burst out laughing again. She had never heard anyone talk like this girl – a mix of audacity and deprecation that meant you had no idea what she might say next, but you waited eagerly all the same.
‘Where is Elizabeth?’ Chips asked then, loudly, fretfully, consulting his watch.
The dinner gong had gone a second time and still there was no sign of her.
Fritzi had arrived, impeccable in his dinner jacket, and was being made much of by the grown-ups, as Brigid thought of them, over by the fireplace.
‘Probably passed out,’ Maureen drawled. ‘I saw the cocktail tray being brought up to her quite some time ago.’
Chips winced.
‘I’ll go and knock on the door,’ Brigid said. ‘Perhaps she can’t hear the gong.’
‘Everyone can hear the gong,’ Chips said. ‘I had it designed purposefully that they would.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Kick said. The girls set off together, Kick chattering happily as they went.
She admired everything they saw, the paintings, statues, rugs, even lamps.
‘You know, I was scared half to death to come here,’ she said as they rounded the top of the stairs and set off towards the Yellow Room.
‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ Brigid said.
‘Oh, but I was, I assure you!’ Brigid thought how she, in Kick’s place, would never have admitted such a thing.
And how disarming it was that this the girl ’fessed up so cheerfully.
‘Then I asked myself, what’s the very worst that could happen?
Maybe I use the wrong knife, or turn up in the wrong gown, or say the wrong thing in that game you English play, where questions like “How do you do?” aren’t supposed to get an answer.
’ She burst out laughing. ‘And I decided, I can live with those things.’
‘I can’t believe you care about any of that.’
‘Well, I guess you’re right. I don’t really.
My mother, though – she does. Ever since they went to stay at Windsor Castle with the king and queen, which by the way, don’t you know, she describes as “the fifth best weekend of her life” – well, she cares a very great deal that I shouldn’t disgrace myself, or the family. ’
‘Only fifth best?’ Brigid couldn’t bring herself to say weekend. ‘What were the others?’
‘I don’t exactly know, but certainly a visit to the Vatican and an audience with His Holiness must come first.’ Kick spoke so unselfconsciously that it took Brigid a moment to realise she wasn’t joking.
Imagine mentioning something so mortifying as your religion – especially if you were Roman Catholic – so casually like that!
‘Here we are,’ she said, knocking politely on the door of the Yellow Room.
No answer.
‘You need to knock louder than that,’ Kick said. She hammered briskly on the door with her knuckles. ‘Who is this Elizabeth, anyway?’
‘Oh, you’ll see,’ Brigid said on a gurgle of laughter.