Chapter Fifty-Two
Doris
At breakfast the ambassador announced, with a great show of regret, that he ‘… must leave. Urgent business requires me in London,’ he said, eyes gleaming behind his glasses.
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Doris said. Honor had been right, she thought.
‘You’ll stay for lunch?’ Chips asked hopefully.
‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ The flat ‘a’ was more pronounced than usual. He sounded, she thought, thoroughly American.
‘But Mrs Ambassador and Kathleen will stay a little longer? A few more days?’
‘We must all go.’ Kennedy was firm in the face of Chips’ pleas, and finally, Chips had to settle for a promise of a night in London soon: ‘Theatre and a late supper,’ he said, already starting to plan.
The weather had broken without fanfare and the day was grey and drizzly.
Doris retreated to the library after breakfast, hoping to see no one until Honor came down.
She sat in the corner with the best light and started a piece about the failure of Lord Runciman’s mission to Czechoslovakia, but didn’t get on well with it.
She thought of Albert, late at night, his face half-visible in the light of a thin candle.
The stable block had no electricity yet.
She thought of all her carefully artless questions – what did he think of England?
Did he miss Germany? – and the blandness of his answers that suggested a dull mind.
Or deliberate dissembling. Which was it?
How he had asked his own questions – equally artless – and the studied dullness of her answers.
She almost laughed: two people, so very careful in their carelessness. It had been a relief when dawn had arrived. It was a relief now when Kick came in.
‘Am I interrupting?’ the girl said, standing half in, half out of the doorway.
‘Not if you make up your mind to come in or go out,’ Doris said with a smile.
‘Well, I’ll come in then,’ Kick said. ‘If that’s OK?’
‘Are you pleased to be going back to London?’
‘Yes.’ Kick sat on the arm of a chair, swinging her bare legs. She wore a green summer dress and a white cardigan. Her legs were brown and freckled and strong. ‘It’s been an interesting visit, that’s for sure.’
‘Interesting? That bad?’ Doris asked with a smile.
‘I learned some things,’ Kick said. ‘And no, they weren’t terribly nice.’
‘What things?’
‘That my father will always do what suits him, even when he knows it will be hard on us. But I suppose I knew that already. And that being Catholic here is different to what it is back in America.’
‘How?’
‘There are the ones, like Diana and Mosley, who behave as though being Catholic is like a game, kind of silly really. And then there are the ones like Billy’s parents, who behave as if it’s a secret society and not a very nice one.
As though there is something dark and a little bit …
unsavoury about us. I just don’t know why it’s such a big deal here.
But it’s pretty rough weather, being despised for something that isn’t anything you’ve done, but only what you are. ’
‘It is,’ Doris agreed. ‘Hard, but not at all unusual.’
‘You know, I said that very same thing, almost anyway, to Brigid, and she looked embarrassed, said No one could despise you, darling, and changed the subject,’ Kick said, swinging her legs harder.
Doris laughed. ‘That sounds like Biddy alright. Don’t be cross; she doesn’t mean anything except that she doesn’t know what to say, because she can’t really imagine what you’re talking about.
With the Guinnesses, it goes the other way, you know.
They are admired, not always for what they do, but for what they are. Do you want to tell me more?’
‘Somehow, I feel that I do,’ Kick said. ‘You were the only one to stick up for us, when all that awful mess happened, with Duff …’ She moved her legs around and allowed herself to fall into the armchair.
‘I wish you’d been there when Billy’s parents visited.
Maybe Moucher’ – she said the name with heavy inflection – ‘wouldn’t have looked at me as though I were something strange and unpleasant.
A train running late. How is it you know what to say? ’
‘I know this story. I’ve heard it before. I’ve watched it and listened to it. And been part of it.’
‘You?’ Kick asked, astonished. ‘But everyone is in love with you.’ She sounded wistful.
Doris smiled. ‘Not a bit of it, they aren’t, although some might pretend or even believe it for a little while. But yes, me.’
‘How? Why? You’re not Catholic. Are you?’ she asked hopefully.
‘No. Jewish.’
‘I see.’ By the long pause that followed Doris thought that, yes, she did see.
‘And so I know all about the prejudices of this lot.’ She gave an unhappy smile. ‘Only I refuse to take them to heart.’
‘Hard not to.’
‘Not hard at all,’ Doris insisted. ‘I no more listen to their views than I wear the same clothes, eat the same food, go to the same half-dozen places as they do. Easiest thing in the world.’ She laughed.
‘Imagine if everyone thought like Chips? Like Billy’s mother, charming though she is?
Like his pleasant but impossible father?
Even like your own mother? Think your own things, Kick. Whatever they are, make them your own.’
The girl looked struck. ‘I see what you mean …’ she began.
‘Which reminds me,’ Doris said, ‘Diana and Mosley?’
‘What about them?’
‘I didn’t realise you knew them. Or certainly not so well.’
‘I don’t. I mean, I’ve been to dinner, once, with Debo. But when they arrived yesterday and Diana was so very friendly, well, I wasn’t expecting it.’ Doris looked at her a moment. Kick was flushed. ‘Honestly, without Debo there, I didn’t know what to say to her.’
Doris laughed. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I always forget with Diana, and even Mosley, that underneath all that charm, really they are no different to the rough men I see on every street corner in Berlin; who shout and break things and shove people, protected behind the Nazi armbands they wear. It takes me a while to remember that, when I meet them again. But I think you are cleverer than I am. Certainly clever enough to see beyond the charm. And to understand that when someone wants something, how careful they are to appear terribly friendly.’
‘Terribly friendly, and really quite frightening,’ Kick admitted.
‘More frightening than you know.’ Doris took up a piece of embroidery that lay on the table beside her and, turning it over, examined the knots and stitches that made up the hidden side. ‘Look how different they are,’ she said, showing Kick first one side and then the other.
‘I guess I see what you mean,’ Kick said.
‘If one dislikes prejudice – as I see you do – it’s terribly important to dislike it in all guises,’ Doris said. ‘Otherwise one is a hypocrite.’
‘I’m not that,’ Kick said stoutly.
‘No, I was certain you were not.’
‘Mosley is like Pa. He wants to avoid a war …’ Almost, it was a question.
‘I have seen things that are no different to war,’ Doris said. ‘As cruel and ugly and stupid. Only as it is, there is no force to oppose them. In a war, there would be two sides. There would be a fight. Right now, there is only one side and the things happen without a fight. Without resistance.’
They sat in silence then and Doris picked at a loose thread, a piece of yellow silk that had come unravelled. She tied a careful knot in it.
‘I think if Diana asks me again, I will say no. To dinner,’ Kick said.
‘I think the ambassador might thank you if you did.’
‘Wasn’t he brilliant?’ Kick said with a laugh.
‘I’ve never seen anyone evade so successfully.’ Then, after a while, ‘Was anyone else at the dinner?’
‘Unity.’ Doris made a face. ‘Debo, of course. A man called David.’
‘David Envers?’
‘Yes, that was it. He barely said a thing.’
‘I see. Did he—’ and then she broke off. ‘Never mind.’ There was no point asking more. No point asking what she most wanted to know – did Envers talk about her? Ask after her? The answer belonged in a past she dared not dwell on.
‘Would you rather I didn’t say anything, even to Pa?’ Kick said then, getting up and stretching her arms high above her head.
‘I would. The Jewish side of my family is a secret, for now. I’ve had some long talks with your father about Germany and what’s happening there. I hoped to persuade him to take a different view although I’m not sure I’ve succeeded.’
‘Hard to, when Pa has made up his mind about something,’ Kick said sympathetically. ‘They think he’s a coward. Billy and Andrew and Hugo. I’ve heard them say it. But it’s not that. He really, truly believes war is terrible and must always be avoided, whatever the cost.’
‘Whereas your young men, like all young men, believe shame is worse than war?’
‘I guess they do.’ She looked gloomy. ‘What do you believe?’
‘Does it matter?’ Doris said. ‘Does it ever matter what women think about war? Does it much matter what anyone thinks at this stage?’ From overhead came a thump, then the sound of a door slamming. ‘The house awakes,’ she said. ‘We’d better get on.’
‘Will you go back to Berlin?’
‘I will. For a while anyway. Now, go and pack. I heard your father say they have ordered the motorcar for twelve.’ She twisted her wrist to look at the tiny gold watch. ‘That gives you half an hour.’
Outside the library, the house was full of comings and goings. A second door slammed and there was the sound of running feet on the back stairs. Doris decided she’d go outside. But she was too late.
‘Doris, might I have a word?’ Chips bustled up. He was clearly bursting with news of some kind.
‘If you must.’
He gave her a beady stare. ‘Fritzi’s man, Albert, has disappeared.’
‘People don’t disappear.’
‘He can’t be found. He didn’t wake Fritzi this morning – the dear boy almost missed breakfast; I had to send my chap to shave him – and no one has been able to find him. He is certainly not in the house or anywhere in the grounds.’
‘I see.’
‘I wondered whether you might know anything?’
‘Anything about what?’
‘About Albert.’