Chapter Forty-One
Doris
The girls’ trick, their ghost story and its aftermath, had changed something, Doris could feel it.
Something had shifted in the air between all of them.
The ambassador and Rose had withdrawn. They were far too polished to make it obvious – indeed, were as polite as ever – but the willingness they had shown to be drawn into this group was gone.
Both avoided Duff now, who allowed them to, making no effort to regain the ground he’d lost, while Chips flitted almost awkwardly between the two.
He was like a bird building a nest, Doris thought, moving swiftly back and forth with a twig or piece of grass in its beak.
With Doris, however, they were a little more warm.
After dinner, Rose patted the seat beside her and, when Doris had sat down, asked her a great many questions about Dorset, almost none of which Doris could answer because they were so precise: did the temperature differ from London, and how?
How many men worked in her father’s quarries?
When the men joined them, Rose got up to offer her place to her husband, saying she must ring for water: ‘It’s the only drink they don’t bring,’ she complained.
‘I hope you aren’t going to ask me about Dorset’s micro-climate,’ Doris said with a laugh, leaning back. ‘Your wife knows far more about it than I do.’
‘I won’t,’ he assured her. ‘I don’t imagine you came here to talk about that.’
‘We’re back to that, are we?’
‘Only if you wish to be,’ he said urbanely, settling his back against the sofa and swirling the ice cubes in his whiskey glass.
‘Well, perhaps you’re right … You know,’ she dropped her voice, ‘I was asked to come here.’
‘I thought you might have been. Who by?’
‘That I can’t tell you.’
‘Well then, why?’
‘I can’t tell you that either – or not much. I can tell you that you were one of the reasons.’
‘I thought that too.’ How complacent he sounded. What was it his daughter called him, affectionately? The most popular girl at the dance. The man everyone needed.
‘I came because they asked me. But I came for my own reasons too. You have just been appointed as chairman of the Evian Commission, haven’t you?’
‘Vice chairman, but how did you know? The news is barely announced.’
‘Never mind that.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘So now you are the man who decides which refugees will find new homes outside Germany, and which will not.’
‘I am part of a committee…’ he said evasively.
‘All the same. Vice chairman …’ She smiled. ‘I hoped I could talk to you about it?’
‘What do you have in mind?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Can I tell you about someone I met? A girl, and her family?’
‘In Berlin?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. I can’t listen to individual stories.’
‘Why not?’
‘It doesn’t serve me.’
‘Must everything serve you?’
‘Well, yes. Otherwise I cannot do my job. Which is to serve America. If I get snarled up in sad stories and desperate tales – there are so many – I won’t be able to see what my way is.’
‘But surely your way would be lighted by those stories?’
‘You would think so.’ He said it pleasantly. ‘But no. They only cloud matters.’
‘You know, I used to think I couldn’t listen to individual stories,’ she said. ‘And for the very same reason. But now I realise they are the only things to listen to.’
‘No,’ he repeated.
‘You know your daughter called you the most popular girl at the dance?’
He laughed. ‘So I believe.’
‘Well, you should know what very often happens to that popular girl.’
‘Which is?’
‘In the end, everyone walks away from her.’
‘I see.’
‘I wonder do you?’
In all, it was an evening of strained conversation, with too many currents eddying between people so that every remark, even the most bland, seemed to offend someone or be designed to highlight something hidden.
It was barely midnight when the party broke up, even Elizabeth saying, ‘I think I’ll go up. ’
‘Good idea,’ Chips had said with relief.
The house quietened down quickly so that it was barely an hour later before Doris left her room and moved quietly along the hallway, down to the side door and out into a clear night that still sang with drips and the trickling of water.
The next morning had the meek beauty of a child who has behaved very badly and tries to charm its way to forgiveness.
It was so early that the edges of the day were still fuzzy, and the light was pale gold, without the yellow heat of the day before.
The poor battered plants were once more upright, rather than the sodden heaps of green they had been.
Able to see clearly, Doris was struck by the tranquil beauty of the place.
The tilled fields and evenly paced landscape.
No dramatic plunging and rising, no mountains, no moors.
It would have been a good place for a school, if managed better.
She remembered Miss Potts’; the friendlessness of it, the paltry comforts and kindnesses.
Schools were always neglected, she thought.
Places of thin blankets, watery gruel, ice on the surface of the wash basin on winter mornings.
She must remember to tell Duff that, if he was still talking to her.
It wasn’t Catholics; it was everyone. Parents sent their children to school and asked almost nothing of their care.
Her own father – comfortable Dorset merchant that he was – had been horrified by the spartan dormitories, the worn trestle tables in the refectory.
Had wanted to take her straight home, certain there had been ‘a mistake’ and this wasn’t – couldn’t be – a place where the gentry sent their children.
Doris had understood, and had insisted on staying.
It was, she said, ‘exactly’ what she needed.
And it had been. She had met Honor, and because of her, with her, Doris had left the pleasant comfort of her upbringing and moved into this absurd, intoxicating world of people who spoke in code intended to confuse and deceive.
Once there, she found she was as good – better – at it than any of them.
And so she had chosen to work where they only played.
To take the skills of dissembling and disarming they had taught her, and use them in a way that was deadly serious.
She crossed the garden quickly now, drawing her coat close about her.
Not that it would provide much real protection – it was bright red, ‘the colour of tomato sauce’, Honor had said – but at least with the collar up she could shield her face.
Not that anyone would be watching. It was too early.
Or so she hoped. She reached the side door.
The one she had come through the night before, an hour after going to her room, when the house had seemed quiet and in darkness.
The door was locked. Drat. She tried the handle again, in case, but no, it was definitely locked.
Someone must have come after she had slipped out.
The front door was certainly locked too.
There was bound to be a way in through the kitchens, she thought.
She stepped back out of the porch, thinking that if she made her way by hugging the side of the house, there was less chance she would be seen from any of the bedrooms. Just then, above her, the sound of a window being pulled open.
She looked up, before realising that, really, she should have ducked back into the shelter of the porch.
‘Doris?’ It was Honor. What luck. She recalled Honor saying how badly she slept, and hoped she hadn’t been awake too much of the night.
‘Darling,’ she hissed up. ‘Come and let me in, will you? The door’s locked.’
‘Of course.’ Honor, bless her, asked no more questions, simply ducked back into her room and closed her window. Alas for Doris, it scraped noisily. Loudly enough for whoever was in the bedroom next to Honor’s to hear. A face appeared, peering out, then that window too was raised.
‘Well!’ It was Chips, eyes still heavy with sleep, but already a look of delight was dawning.
‘Locked out, are we?’ he whispered, but loudly and not as though he cared who he woke.
‘It can’t be much after five. You are an early riser.
Or perhaps a late retirer …’ He smirked down at her. ‘Shall I come and let you in?’
‘Please don’t trouble yourself,’ Doris said, sighing. ‘I will be in in a moment.’ Just then Honor reached the side door, and Doris heard the sound of the bolt being drawn back, then the key turned.
‘What are you doing out here?’ she whispered once she had got the door open.
‘Nothing much. Come on, back to bed. We can talk in the morning.’
‘It is the morning.’
‘Later in the morning,’ Doris said firmly. ‘I must get a few hours’ sleep.’
By the time she got up and bathed and dressed, a few hours later, the promise of the dawn had been more than fulfilled with a day that sparkled and enticed, begging her to step out into it.
Downstairs, breakfast was laid in the morning room. Silver dishes covered with silver domes were heaped on the sideboard, the long table set with many places, most occupied.
‘Doris.’ Chips, of course, looked up immediately she came in. ‘I’m surprised to see you.’
‘Surprised and no doubt delighted,’ she said, crossing to the sideboard.
‘Surprised that you have not already breakfasted,’ Chips explained patiently, ‘when you were up and about so early. What were you doing, out in the garden at that hour?’ His eyes gleamed at her and she felt the force of his curiosity like a dog or horse, nudging at her, demanding something.
‘An early walk,’ she said, shrugging slightly. She looked around for the coffee pot.
‘Must have been early indeed, if it happened before Andrews made a tour of the house and locked all the doors,’ Chips said, eyes open wide and innocent.
‘Usually, he does that shortly after everyone has gone to bed. Certainly while it’s still dark.
And yet there you are, locked out in the bright light of early morning. ’