Chapter Fifty-One
Honor
When Honor came back after seeing Diana and Mosley off, Chips’ mood had switched to a curious, un-focused gaiety.
At first she thought it was simply relief – the same relief she felt – at dispatching their unexpected guests, but soon she realised he had been at his powders – his ‘dynamite’.
She saw all the signs. He proposed cocktails outside, on the terrace.
‘There won’t be much more of this weather,’ he said.
‘I believe it breaks tomorrow. We may as well enjoy the last of it.’ It was true, Honor thought.
There was a dampness in the air, an underlying coolness that was nothing like the sudden explosion of the storm – was it really only two days ago?
– but instead a reminder of a bill past due: the usual disappointments of an English summer.
‘I can bring my gramophone,’ Kick said excitedly. ‘It winds up.’
‘As long as you don’t play it too loudly,’ her mother said.
Outside, the birds, perhaps stirred to competition by the sounds of Duke Ellington’s ‘Prelude to a Kiss’, sang their own evening songs louder, more aggressively.
Albert was brushing leaves from the tiles around the pool into neat piles.
There was a feeling of tidying up, of setting things back into place that had been disrupted by their coming.
But it wasn’t his job to sweep up, and Honor felt irritated by what felt like presumption.
Why couldn’t he leave the gardeners to do that?
Why was he suddenly diligent? Was it to distract from the fact he’d been skulking around the village all day?
Fritzi and Brigid danced a few steps, cheered on by Chips who called ‘Exquisite!’ from over by a small table that had been set up, where he was mixing drinks.
‘If only Billy were here to dance with you, Kick,’ Brigid said. There was a sharp little pause, and then she blurted out, ‘I say, sorry!’ which only made everything worse.
‘I always said we needed more men,’ Elizabeth drawled. ‘The poor prince will be worn out.’
‘Fritzi is equal to anything,’ Chips said, and for a minute Honor was grateful that he had turned the conversation from Billy; she could see the way Rose was looking at her daughter, and how carefully Kick avoided her mother’s gaze. But only for a minute.
‘I’ve always said it, dear boy,’ Chips continued, ‘and your grandfather has too. You are the very person to succeed him, and to restore the position of the family. Not your father, not any longer’ – he shook his head sadly – ‘and not your brothers. You, Fritzi.’ He stirred the cocktail jug with a long glass stick that had a silver pineapple in place of a handle.
He held it up like a baton, for silence.
‘We have discussed it many times, your grandfather and I.’ He twinkled at them all. ‘There could be no one better suited than you to be emperor. Play your cards right, my boy, continue as you are – be careful, be discreet, say nothing bad about the Nazis, but watch them—’
‘Channon, this is not the time or place for this conversation.’ Duff stood up so abruptly, spoke so loudly, that everyone turned to stare at him, even, Honor saw, Albert, who was now gathering various discarded items from the chairs by the pool – towels, an inflatable ball, a shirt that had been draped over the back of a chair.
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Chips said, waving him away. His eyes were like saucers, big and black. ‘We are among friends. Anyway, I have long said it. You remember, Fritzi, when we first had this conversation, a year ago? And you were not at all against the idea then?’
‘Yes, but so much has changed since …’ the prince began.
‘Not so very much,’ Chips said. ‘Not so much at all. When one considers the thousand years the Hohenzollern family have ruled.’ He looked gayly around at them all.
‘Why, this last decade is a blink of an eye.’ His powders always gave him a rolling, roiling confidence beyond even what he usually had.
There was a sheen of sweat across his top lip that he dabbed at with a handkerchief.
‘We have talked about it, a great deal, your grandfather and I. How you, of all your brothers, are the most possessed of the personality, the temperament shall we say, for the job.’
‘Hardly a job,’ Elizabeth muttered.
‘You have the élan, the brio—’ Chips had his arms spread wide now.
‘Is he just going to keep saying made-up foreign words?’ Elizabeth asked no one in particular.
‘—the comme-il-faut—’
Elizabeth giggled loudly. She was clearly a little high too.
‘Channon,’ Duff spoke louder. ‘Hush! It is not the time.’ He dropped his voice, almost to a whisper. ‘It is not the time,’ he repeated.
‘Emperor Friedrich,’ Chips said, bowing low at the waist.
Poor Fritzi started and took a step back.
Duff laughed out loud. It was a laugh without any real mirth, and unusual enough for everyone to turn and stare. ‘You are joking,’ he said.
‘Why should I be joking?’
‘Emperor of what?’ Duff demanded. ‘There is no room for emperors where there is already a dictator.’
‘Not emperors, just one emperor,’ Chips said.
‘One teeny-weeny-tiny little emperor,’ Elizabeth mocked.
‘Can you not be quiet?’ Chips suddenly rounded on her. ‘Why are you even here?’
Elizabeth’s round eyes grew rounder again, like a baby encountering pain – confused as much as hurt by this thing it doesn’t understand. And, just like a baby, her eyes slowly filled with water, their blue submerged and diluted, like the bottom tiles of the swimming pool, Honor thought.
‘Chips!’ she said. ‘There is no need to be cruel. Elizabeth, I beg you not to listen to him.’
‘I think we should go indoors.’ That was Duff.
But the drawing room was no better. ‘You are born to this,’ Chips declared.
Fritzi by now looked as though he too might cry.
‘Stop hounding him, Chips,’ Brigid said, indignant.
Chips ignored her. ‘And when your grandfather dies – and after all, even the kaiser cannot live forever – there will be a wave of Hohenzollern sentiment that you must be poised to take advantage of—’ He was flapping his arms now, like some kind of great bird.
Honor imagined him taking off, borne aloft on the wave of excitement that had overtaken him, disappearing out the double doors that stood open behind him and up into the saturating sky.
‘Do not say such things!’ Fritzi suddenly spoke more sharply than Honor had ever heard him, instantly backed up by Duff.
‘Do not,’ he agreed loudly. He crossed to the doors behind Chips, shut them firmly and drew the curtains across.
‘Maureen, perhaps you would play something for us?’ He looked at his wife, then at the piano and, to Honor’s astonishment, Maureen – who was not musical and could barely play at all – looked back at him and nodded.
No caustic reply, no display of searing wit.
Just a nod. She went and sat down and opened the instrument.
She played one of Bach’s Preludes, badly, and too fast, but loudly and for long enough – she played it twice, starting at the beginning the very moment she reached the end – that they had a chance to settle themselves, for the agitation in the air to dissipate.
Honor watched them move about the room and form smaller groups.
Kick, Brigid and Fritzi gathered by the door as though looking for an escape.
Doris and Elizabeth went to stand with Duff in a way that seemed almost protective.
The ambassador and Mrs Kennedy sat close together, at a remove, and Honor realised that the visit, from that perspective, had been a failure.
They had not been folded in, in the way Chips had hoped.
Or the way Duff had hoped. The early promise – the charm of Kelvedon, of the lazy days and good weather, Rose’s inclination to be intrigued by Duff – had all come to nothing.
Was it the Catholic outburst? she wondered.
Kick’s obvious attraction to Billy that was just as obviously disapproved of by her parents – and his, she thought, remembering Moucher’s look of horror when Kick had airily said, We saw His Holiness?
Chips’ clumsy and unwanted championing of Fritzi’s cause?
Maybe all those things, and enough time spent together to realise that, after all, they didn’t understand each other nearly as well as hoped.
They would make their excuses and leave early, she realised.
As early as the next day even. The ambassador would find a reason why he must return to London, would insist his wife and daughter came with him.
Chips would be disappointed. He would feel his failure all the more keenly after this evening.
But perhaps it was time for them all to go, she thought, looking at Brigid and Fritzi, laughing together at something in a magazine. Whatever might or might not be happening there, she would slow it down, she decided. Not encourage it.
Maureen finished at the piano and gave a mocking bow, to scattered applause. She came and sat beside Honor. ‘I had no idea you played so well,’ Honor said politely.
‘I don’t and you know it,’ Maureen said, lighting a cigarette. ‘But it was that or juggle.’
Honor was still puzzling out what exactly she meant, when Duff came over and put his hand on Maureen’s shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Maureen leaned her cheek sideways so it rested against his hand.
‘No need to thank me,’ she said, looking up at him.
Maureen, who insisted on being thanked for the smallest kindness.
And to Honor’s astonishment, she turned her head and kissed the back of his hand where her cheek had been.
Her eyes were strangely bright, and Honor, if she hadn’t known better, might have said she was crying.
*
Later, in her bedroom, where Doris was brushing her hair, a tap at the door. Brigid. ‘Can I come in, or are you telling secrets?’ she asked, putting her head round.
‘Come on.’
‘What a horrid evening.’ Brigid sat on the bed, tucking her feet under her and leaning back against the end-board. She wore striped flannel pyjamas and had a mug of something hot so that steam rose around her face, making it glow pinkish. She looked, Honor thought, about twelve.
‘Horrid,’ Honor agreed. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Cocoa. Minnie insisted on making it for me. I said I didn’t want it, and then, when she brought it, I realised it was exactly what I wanted.’
‘Clever Minnie.’
‘So,’ Brigid asked, looking first at one then the other, ‘what was that all about? Chips was like a madman. Poor Fritzi. It was like watching a hare chased by hounds. Every way he turned, Chips was there before him, shouting about emperors.’ She laughed a little.
‘You mind that he should be hounded?’ Honor asked.
‘I felt sorry for him, that’s all.’
It was, Honor thought, looking at her sister, the truth. Mostly the truth, anyway. ‘I doubt it was anything much,’ she said. ‘Just Chips being, well, himself.’
‘Rather more than himself, I thought,’ Brigid said. ‘Like one of Cook’s concentrated sauces. Boiled right down and all the more intense for it. What was he complaining about before dinner, anyway?’ she asked then. ‘In here? I heard him as I passed by.’
‘He thinks it’s my fault that Paul is throwing tantrums and cheeking the tutor.’
‘And the nanny,’ Brigid added. ‘He cheeks her too. I’ve heard him. Adorable child,’ she hastened to say, ‘but terribly bold.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. And now Chips.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Yes. Chips has decided it’s because I’m not with him enough. Although I don’t at all see what I could do, when Chips is the only person Paul pays attention to. I don’t see how my being more with him would make any difference.’ She looked at them both, desperate for agreement.
‘I think perhaps children are like puppies,’ Brigid said. ‘Look at Pugsy, who is only ever with Maureen; how disagreeable and snappy he is. I feel sure that if he were with, say, Kick, he would be quite different. Outdoorsy and jolly.’
‘How clever you are, Biddy.’ Doris gave her a quick smile.
‘You may be right,’ Honor said sadly. ‘But even if you are, it won’t change anything.’
‘Will it really not?’ Doris asked her gently.
‘No. I can’t let it. I have made up my mind that I must go.’
‘Go where?’ Brigid said.
‘Anywhere. Anywhere that Chips is not.’
‘I see.’
‘And if that means leaving Paul also, then it is wise not to get too fond of him.’
Neither Doris nor Brigid said anything. Brigid stared at her mug of cocoa, now empty, as though afraid to look up and meet Honor’s eyes. Doris was silent too, but she held Honor’s gaze in the looking-glass and after a moment said, ‘Shall I see if Molly will bring you up cocoa too?’
‘That would be nice,’ Honor said. ‘Biddy, you should go to your room. Doris, will you stay a while?’
‘I must get back to my room too,’ Doris said.
She spoke evasively, so that Honor, as soon as Brigid had gone, asked, ‘Surely you aren’t going to the stables? It isn’t safe.’
‘It’s safe enough. Anyway, it’s what we decided. In the telephone call. I need to, Honor. Will you be sure to let me back in?’
‘Of course. I was unlikely to sleep anyway, and even less likely now. But I can’t like this, Doris. You are shooting completely in the dark.’
‘I am, rather,’ Doris agreed. ‘I don’t much like it either. But perhaps tonight I will learn more … In any case, it’s what we decided,’ she repeated. ‘What they decided.’