Chapter Twenty-Two
Kick
‘Might I ask something?’ Kick said to Brigid after dinner.
Without any discussion, they had set themselves a little apart from the rest, in a corner of the drawing room.
Now that the sun had finally set, and the lamps been lit, the grey walls and painted ceiling seemed to have drawn in and down, making it more intimate.
The pools of light cast by the many lamps that stood on every surface – lamps with fringed tassels, with glass shades in gaudy colours, angled to cast their glow now up, now down – deepened the colours and parcelled up the room into fascinating pockets, like a series of lighted tableaux or small stages.
Between each of them was the unknowable dark of an auditorium.
On one such stage was Brigid’s cousin, Maureen, looking cold and glamorous; on another Honor, pretending not to read although Kick could clearly see the book held in her left hand; her own mother, turning the pages of a big heavy book of photographs and watching Elizabeth flick ash from the end of her cigarette into the fireplace, missing so often that the hearth was littered with flecks of ash and even a few cigarette butts.
Elizabeth stood with one foot up on the fender and Kick wondered that she didn’t burn the sole of her shoe.
‘You might,’ Brigid said.
‘It’s about the prince.’
‘Fritzi? What about him?’
Kick paused. How to put into words what she wanted to know. ‘He was at my coming-out ball,’ she began.
‘Mine too,’ Brigid said. ‘I danced with him. Twice, if I recall.’
‘Me too. And he was seated beside me at dinner.’
‘And?’
‘Well, don’t you wonder? I mean, it’s like every time I turn around, there he is. But now it seems like every time you turn around, there he is too …’
‘I see what you mean.’ Brigid’s lip twitched. ‘You think they are setting us up?’
‘I do.’
‘I knew they were setting me up. Chips is shameless. He tells me all his plans because he thinks I’m a willing co-conspirator.
But what is one to do?’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, that’s what they do, isn’t it?
Set us up? Wonder and speculate and plot.
Who we might marry, who we must not marry, how high we may aim. It’s hateful, but it’s what they do.’
‘Is it? It isn’t in America.’
‘Well, now you are in England.’ She shrugged again. ‘Anyway, Chips may do what he likes. And I’ – she tilted her chin a little – ‘I shall do what I like.’ Then, with a giggle, ‘I say, do you think they know they’re in competition?’
‘As long as we know we aren’t in competition.’
‘Are we not?’ Brigid asked, giving Kick a level look.
‘Not. Leastways, I’m not. Not a bit of it.’
‘You seem awfully sure. He is a prince. And, if Chips has his way, will one day be an emperor.’ She burst out laughing.
‘Terribly cute,’ Kick agreed solemnly. Then, ‘But I am oh-so-sure. You see …’
‘Oh.’ Brigid smiled slyly. ‘There’s someone you like, isn’t there? Who is it?’
‘You can’t tell.’
‘Who would I tell?’
‘Anyone. You can’t tell anyone.’
‘Not a soul. Cross my heart and hope to die.’ She blessed herself quickly and sketchily, a loosely drawn sign of the cross, then saw the shocked look on Kick’s face. ‘I say, sorry! It’s what we used to say in the nursery at Elveden. It only means I promise I won’t.’
‘Well, OK then,’ Kick said after a moment. ‘He’s called Billy.’ Her voice snagged on the name.
‘Billy Cavendish?’
‘You know him? Well, of course you do. All you English know each other.’ But how well? she wondered in a sudden panic.
‘Everyone knows him,’ Brigid said. ‘He sat on my other side at my coming-out.’ She began to laugh.
‘Chips was quite persuaded he’d do. Until he thought of Fritzi.
’ She laughed again, then saw Kick’s face.
‘No one thinks he’d do now. Least of all me.
I mean, he’s a dear, sweet fellow. In fact, they say he might do for the princess Elizabeth … ’
‘She’s – what? – twelve!’ Kick said.
‘Yes.’
‘Awful!’ Kick made a face.
‘A princess,’ Brigid said, shrugging. ‘It’s what they do,’ she repeated. ‘Match names, families, houses, fortunes, consider all possibilities. And then move on to consider someone else. Like a game of chess, only with people. Anyway, never mind that, what do your parents think of Billy?’
‘Oh, they don’t think anything of him. They haven’t met.’
‘And have you met his parents? The duke and duchess?’
‘No. Debo thinks they won’t approve.’
‘Debo may be right.’
‘Oh, I’m pretty certain I can show them Americans aren’t so very different,’ Kick said comfortably. ‘After all, I’ve met other Americans here – Lady Astor, Emerald Cunard – and they do alright.’
‘It’s not being American …’ Brigid began awkwardly. ‘Not anymore. We’re used to Americans. It’s …’
‘It’s what?’
‘Well, you’re Roman Catholic, aren’t you?’ She squirmed a little, Kick saw.
‘What of it?’
‘They do say the duke has rather strong views. Why, I read a pamphlet he wrote only a few weeks ago. Chips gave it to me. He thought it would be a good conversation starter with Billy.’ She giggled, then broke off when she saw Kick’s face. ‘Sorry!’
‘What pamphlet?’
‘About Catholic girls marrying into the aristocracy, and what a threat it is. Terribly silly stuff,’ she added hastily. ‘Only it does rather seem he believes all that papist conspiracy rot.’
‘What papist conspiracy rot?’ Kick was confused.
‘Well, you know … That Catholics aren’t to be trusted.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not really sure. I mean, I don’t pay attention to that sort of thing. But I think it’s the incense …’ Brigid said thoughtfully.
‘Incense?’ Kick was baffled.
‘Yes. It chokes people, makes them think of, I don’t know, rich spices and hidden things and complicated intrigues, you know.’ She made a vague motion with her hand, sketching something in the air. ‘It makes Catholics exotic. And that’s never good.’
‘But we’re just …’ Kick trailed off.
‘Of course you are,’ Brigid reassured her briskly. ‘Only the burning and chanting makes it seem like you aren’t.’
Kick paused for a moment. ‘I don’t pay any attention to that sort of stuff,’ she said decidedly. ‘It can’t be one bit relevant.’ She changed the subject. ‘He’s a bit like King Midas’ son, isn’t he?’ she said, nodding her head in Fritzi’s direction.
‘After he gets turned to gold?’ Brigid asked thoughtfully.
‘Maybe midway? Sort of statue-like and composed and not terribly human but not actually solid gold yet.’
‘I wonder which way he’ll go?’ Brigid mused. Then, ‘Tell me more about all your brothers.’
So Kick began to describe the summers at home, at Hyannis Port, and the way the days were entirely given over to being outdoors – to sailing and tennis and games of football.
Of the blue sky and sea that seemed to swap shades between them.
Of the rivalry between Joe Jnr and Jack that meant that everything one did, the other had to do too, no matter how dangerous, so that even in a gathering storm when Joe boasted that he would sail around the farthest marker and back, Jack had instantly run for his own boat, and how they had only been persuaded not to when Bobby, then barely ten, had said he too would go.
Of the holiday mood when their father came to stay for a few days when he wasn’t working – ‘Before he was the ambassador he produced motion pictures, you know?’ – and how everything changed in his presence.
‘Like turning on an electric light switch,’ she said, glancing over at her father fondly, then describing how he took them out, to the theatre, the ballgame; how he sought their thoughts and opinions on everything, allowed them to say whatever they wanted – never complaining that something wasn’t ‘suitable’ or was ‘mean’ as long as it was clever and the arguments were sound and, crucially, not boring.
To be boring was unforgivable. ‘It matters more what the boys say,’ she said frankly, ‘because of what they will do in the world, but he makes sure that Eunice and Pat and me can hold our own too.’
‘Not Rosemary?’
‘Rosie is different,’ Kick said. ‘The dearest girl alive, and the one we all go to when we are unhappy or in trouble, but she doesn’t take part in the discussions so much.
She dislikes arguments and cannot be made to see that a disagreement is just that, not personal.
She cries if the boys are too hard on her, and tears always make Mother angry, so we have learned to leave Rosie out of it. ’
It was more – far more – than she usually said about Rosemary, and still not enough to fully explain how much she worried.
There was a part of her that knew her mother wouldn’t wish her to reveal even that much.
More, even, there was another part of her that felt the sharp sting of disloyalty at putting into words the things about Rosie that made her different – as though to say such things made her seem less a Kennedy.
But Brigid’s face was so sympathetic, her expression so warm, that Kick had been borne along. And Brigid seemed to understand that she had said enough. ‘What about the younger ones?’ she asked, skilfully changing the subject. ‘Surely they don’t debate too?’
‘Oh yes. Even the little boys – Teddy and Bobby – give as good as they get.’
‘I worry you will find Kelvedon very dull,’ Brigid said. ‘For we are not at all like that.’
Kick shook her head, smiling. ‘Maybe not, but with you it’s all hidden,’ she said. ‘We are all out in the open and even quite blunt, and no one needs to wonder for very long what it is that someone thinks or wants. Here, everything is a mystery. How can that be dull?’