Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kelvedon, Essex
Honor
If she were to leave, go back to London, go to Elveden and her parents – go to the devil himself – would any of them even notice?
Honor wondered. She was like a ghost in her own house, moving from room to room unnoticed and unlooked for.
She drifted into conversations and drifted out again.
Nothing depended on her, nothing waited or hurried for her.
Anything that Chips didn’t do, Brigid did.
Even Rose Kennedy seemed more knitted into the fabric of Kelvedon than Honor was, familiar already with the kitchens, Mrs Bath the cook, the head gardener.
Her sharp-elbowed energy pushing into the house and grounds.
Chips should have married someone like that, she thought.
Such a person would have been a match for him.
Not someone so … reluctant, she decided, was the word.
She thought of Chips then with a different kind of wife.
Someone like Rose or Emerald, whom he could consult with, plot with, scheme with.
Would he have been proud of such a person?
Yes, undoubtedly. Would he have watched them betray him with another man and spoken only of money? Undoubtedly not.
She looked into the library. No sign of the ambassador’s screen or projector.
The room was still and withdrawn as though ashamed of the part it had played last night.
What was the man thinking? What had he hoped, showing those terrible things?
And how dared he presume to do so without a word?
Again, she couldn’t help thinking of her mother.
No one would have shown such images in a house where Lady Iveagh was, she thought. No one.
But by the time she got to the morning room, it was as though the day before had been wiped away.
As if a maid with a mop had come and simply scrubbed it out.
The tennis tournament had become a reality, and Brigid and Kick, cool in shorts and thin button-down shirts, were seated side by side at the breakfast table, empty plates pushed in front of them – china islands on the smooth polished surface – poring over a page on which they had written everyone’s names.
‘Chips is good, but he cheats, so we need to match him with someone who will keep him honest,’ Brigid said as Honor came in.
‘Well then you may put him with Kick,’ Ambassador Kennedy said. ‘She is the straightest person in the world. Wouldn’t know how to cheat if her life depended on it.’
Rose, beside him, looked composed in a crisp white cotton sundress.
On the chair beside her was a broad-brimmed white hat.
She nodded in agreement and said, ‘Duff, will you play?’ Honor heard the use of his pet name – only Maureen, and her family, called him that – and wondered at it.
Did the woman not understand the impertinence?
Maureen, she noted, wasn’t down yet. Probably wouldn’t be for hours.
Duff, head bent over The Times, only looked up quickly and nodded once, then went back to his reading.
‘You can play with me, Duff,’ Brigid said. ‘We are a good match. You are stronger, but you don’t concentrate as well as I.’
‘I had hoped I might be Lady Brigid’s partner,’ Fritzi, sitting opposite, said then.
‘You can play with Elizabeth,’ Brigid said. Kick giggled and Fritzi looked dashed. ‘It’s because I know you to be good,’ Brigid added kindly. ‘Chips has told me. And Elizabeth will need that.’
‘If she ever gets up,’ Chips said petulantly.
He was sitting at the head of the table.
Seeing Honor come in, he had patted the empty chair beside him.
But Honor chose to ignore him, instead taking a cup of tea and going to sit in the armchair by the window.
This was open and, beside it, a clematis had been encouraged to grow up and around.
The sweet almond scent of the flowers came to her like a reminder that outside, elsewhere, there were other ways to be, other things to do, that had nothing to do with this house and these people.
‘What about Maureen?’ Rose said then, looking around. She sat so straight it was as though she had stitched fine steel rods into the white cotton of her dress. She held an empty cup out towards her husband, who filled it from the silver coffee pot at the centre of the table.
‘My wife won’t play,’ Duff said with a quick grin at Honor. ‘She thinks her energies are better spent elsewhere.’
‘She won’t play because she knows she won’t win,’ Brigid said tartly. Then, catching Honor’s eye, ‘I say, sorry! In any case, there are no more men to partner with.’
‘My man would play, if needed,’ Fritzi said. ‘Albert. He is a stronger player than I am.’
‘I don’t see Maureen playing with a servant,’ Brigid blurted out.
‘He isn’t exactly a servant, more a companion. My grandfather—’
‘The kaiser,’ Chips said enthusiastically.
‘The kaiser,’ Fritzi agreed. ‘He didn’t want me to come to England entirely alone. Albert’s family have been with my family for a jolly long time. And so Albert came with me and has been companion, friend, sometimes valet, but mostly a chum.’
Idly, Honor wondered where exactly he had learned his English. It was faultless, but his expressions were wrong. Too schoolboyish.
Kick giggled again and Honor gave her and Brigid a look. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good friendship after all. Rose may have been thinking the same, because she said, ‘Kathleen, if you are done with breakfast, perhaps you would take a little walk with me. Prince Friedrich, would you join us?’
The prince stood immediately, while Kick blurted out, ‘Must I?’ Then, seeing her mother’s face, ‘Of course!’
Once they were gone, Brigid said she would speak to the gardener to make sure the court was properly marked, and left.
Honor felt a moment’s irritation at the easy way she assumed the right to take control, then realised that her irritation was more than balanced out by relief that she didn’t have to go herself.
It was hotter than the days before, with an angry kind of heat that felt ready to boil over.
‘Will you play?’ Chips asked her.
‘Not in this weather. I wish it would thunder. It’s been threatening it for days.’
‘We could wait ’til later, when it’s cooler,’ he said eagerly. ‘If you would like?’
‘Don’t bother.’ Why, she wondered, was he making such an effort?
She refilled her tea cup and sat again by the window, enjoying the sounds of the day outside whispering to itself about everything that must be and must be done.
It was like a hostess, she thought, making plans for the smooth running of a visit.
Birds chirped and called, branches rustled lightly, leaves shook themselves and spread out further into the warm air, plants swayed and scraped against their neighbours and, at the far end, the sound of the river moving lazily along.
She could see Rose Kennedy, Kick, Fritzi, walking slowly, stopping to admire a flower here, a bush there.
‘Hmph.’ Chips, at her shoulder now, was watching them too. ‘What does she mean?’ he said quietly.
‘What does who mean?’
‘Sshhh.’ He twitched his head irritably, back towards the dining room where Duff and the ambassador were now sitting side by side, with The Times spread open in front of them.
Honor could make out the headline: Hitler Calls Up 750,000 Germans for Military Exercises.
She had a vision of all those men, dressed in their tight-fitting uniforms as she had seen them on their visit to Germany two years before, doing star jumps.
‘I wonder what her plans are, that’s all,’ he murmured, looking back towards the gardens.
‘Must everyone have plans?’
‘Of course they must.’ He sounded honestly astonished. ‘Really, Honor. What do you think about all day?’
She considered her responses: How to live my life contained in such a way that the sides of it touch yours only as much as is absolutely necessary?
And even then, how to prevent my flesh from shrinking from that touch?
‘Right now, I am thinking about how to get Elizabeth up so the maids can do her room.’
That, he understood. ‘You should have seen the amount of gin she put away,’ he said with gleeful maliciousness. ‘Duff too. Egged on by her.’ Honor looked over at Duff again. He looked, as ever, dark, handsome, rather forbidding, but his eyes were bloodshot and there was a slump to his shoulders.
She went to Maureen’s room first, tapping on the door then going in when she heard her voice: ‘Come.’
The curtains had been opened and Maureen was sitting up in bed wearing a coffee-coloured silk peignoir. Her hair had been brushed and fell about her shoulders in shining golden curls. Beside her on the table was an array of pots and jars. Some were open and Honor could smell rose oil and beeswax.
‘I thought you were Duff,’ Maureen said crossly.
‘He’s downstairs, with the ambassador. Have you breakfasted?’
‘Yes. And yes I will get up, you needn’t badger me.’
‘I’m not. I only wanted to see how you were.’
‘You slipped off pretty smartly last night, didn’t you?’
‘I had the headache. All that sun … the ambassador’s film.’
‘Dreadful, wasn’t it?’
‘I quite thought Duff would murder him.’
‘He has some other plan in mind. And indeed, hard to know what to do after that. But all the same, Honor, disappearing like that with all those guests? Really, I don’t know why you invite people if you don’t know how to treat them. At Clandeboye, I am always last to bed.’
Goodness, she was cross, Honor thought. ‘What’s in all those jars and bottles?’
‘The only good piece of advice Mummie ever gave me: Care for your face the way Lapham cares for the silver.’
‘Really? The only piece of good advice?’
‘That, and Give your husband everything he wants,’ Maureen said. Then added, ‘Yes, Honor, everything,’ grinning maliciously.
‘I’m going to check on Elizabeth,’ Honor said, in order to escape.