Chapter Thirty-Three
Kick
The first match had been a bit of a dud, Kick reflected, but she was looking forward to playing that Doris girl.
There was someone who knew how to swing a racket.
Although, she reflected, the speed with which Duff had been drinking whatever was in that jug – gin, mainly, judging by the taste – was unlikely to have improved his serve.
She must make sure not to get partnered up with him if they played again.
That fellow Albert was more like it. How funny the English were about servants, she reflected.
The way they had drawn back from him, as if he had some kind of rash or cold they might catch, until Fritzi went on about how he wasn’t exactly a servant …
Even then, they had been pretty wary. Except for Doris. She, Kick thought, seemed alright.
She dried her hair vigorously with a towel. A tap at the door. Her mother.
‘Kathleen! Put that towel down.’
‘But my hair …’
‘Will dry fluffy. Leave it. I will send Wilkes to you.’
‘Oh, who cares?’
‘Don’t be irritating, Kathleen. I am not having this conversation again. What did you make of all that?’ she asked, sitting carefully on the edge of Kick’s bed and smoothing out the counterpane on either side of her with thin fingers.
‘Brigid would play well if she concentrated better. Chips isn’t bad either, but he gets excited and misses easy shots …’
‘I don’t mean the tennis. All that with Maureen and Duff’ – Kick looked at her mother sharply. Something about the way she said his name – ‘and then Fritzi and his manservant. That girl Doris arriving …’
‘That’s the English,’ Kick said wisely. ‘Always pretending to have everything so perfectly under control, whereas in fact they’re just a few steps away from chaos, like the rest of us.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s a thing they do. I’ve seen it before.
’ As she spoke, she was magnificently conscious, for the first time, of knowing more than her mother.
Knowing this place better than her mother.
‘They make such a deal about everything being exactly as they expected it – nothing unplanned, ever. Except it’s an illusion.
Plenty of unexpected things happen, only they immediately all get together and make believe they are anticipated. ’
‘But surely if they all do it together, they all know it isn’t true?’ Rose sounded honestly baffled.
‘Maybe, but it’s the pretence that matters. They behave as though there is an invisible audience to everything they do, watchers with pens poised, ready to make judgement, who they must deceive.’
Kick expected to be complimented for her clever understanding, but all her mother said was, ‘Don’t waste too much of your time understanding all this, Kathleen.
It is important that you get on well, now, for your father’s sake.
But after all, we won’t be here so very long.
’ And, when Kick didn’t answer, ‘Let us say the rosary now because it will be difficult to get away later.’
So Kick took up her beads from the bedside drawer where she had placed them; not exactly hidden, she thought, but out of sight.
They knelt together at the side of Kick’s bed.
Her mother began in low, clear tones, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven …’ Kick listened, then joined her voice to her mother’s, her mind free to wander as the familiar words she loved ran their own course.
Even though they didn’t talk at these times, beyond the saying of prayers, there was a harmony between them that she treasured and that was as much a part of her religion as the mysteries and miracles.
When she said, ‘Hail Mary,’ it was Rose’s face she saw – only Rose’s face as it so rarely was: gentle and soft. Without criticism or calculation.