Chapter Fifty-Four
London, September
Kick
Kick had begged every way she knew how. She had pleaded how much she wanted to stay; how useful she would be – all the things she could do for her father once Rose was gone; how she could keep Rosemary company, because Rosie, it seemed, was to stay.
But the ambassador was adamant. She was to go home, sail on the Washington with her mother and siblings. Jack was here to escort them home.
‘Why does Rosie get to stay?’ Kick demanded.
‘Rosemary is settled here. It wouldn’t be good to move her,’ was the evasive answer.
‘I am settled here too,’ she protested.
‘You are more adaptable,’ her mother said crisply. She didn’t say It doesn’t matter where Rosemary goes but Kick felt it.
‘But why can’t we both stay? We can be company for one another,’ Kick begged. ‘I can’t go now. Think how bad it will look, when Brigid and Debo are learning to drive ambulances and make themselves useful, for us all to run, as though we are afraid.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re not English, Kathleen, may I remind you. You are American. What happens here, now, is none of your business. England is at war, America is not. It doesn’t matter what people here think of you. It’s time for you to go home.’
‘But Pa is American too, and is not going home,’ she said.
‘I will be,’ her father said shortly. ‘Now that it’s war, there’s nothing for me to stay for.’
Still Kick couldn’t reckon with the word ‘war’.
She had heard it for so long, out there, part of every conversation, but no more substantial than the weather.
Will it rain and must I bring a coat? Will it be war and must I go back to America?
Each as insubstantial as the other. Because sometimes it didn’t rain, even when you had a coat.
And so many times, it hadn’t been war, even when they were told for sure it would be.
But now it was.
And suddenly all the new rules were overthrown.
The way her parents had learned to listen to her and consult her about what she did was finished.
Now, she was no more than Pat or Eunice, to be sent where they decided.
The views she heard when out with friends that she had passed along to her father, these mattered no longer.
The rush to enlist, to learn bandage-folding and basic nursing duties, the ambassador didn’t care to hear about them.
And when Kick complained that she felt left out, all he said was, ‘It’s not our war. ’
*
‘At least you tried,’ Brigid said later, when they sat in Kick’s bedroom, with the gramophone playing softly; Glenn Miller, ‘Wishing (Will Make It So)’. She lit a cigarette, breathed in deeply and coughed.
‘Smoking?’ Kick asked.
‘Trying. It seems the thing, no? Now that I have a job.’ She wore the slightly baggy green dress and burgundy cardigan of the Women’s Voluntary Service with as much pride as she had ever worn Schiaparelli, Kick saw.
‘Don’t,’ Kick begged. ‘It’s so unfair.’
‘Well, it’s foul,’ Brigid said, dropping the cigarette onto a saucer. ‘I cannot make any headway with it.’
‘Not the smoking, silly, the job. I’m so very jealous.’
‘Jolly hard work,’ Brigid insisted cheerfully.
‘Yesterday we lugged old saucepans and ladles about for hours, great piles of them, all to be melted down. Mamma was frantic that we didn’t have more to give.
Silver isn’t much use, they say. Then Papa pointed out that we’ve already had all the iron railings taken up around Grosvenor Place and Elveden, and even the great iron knocker from the front door, and perhaps that would do for now. ’
‘Here too,’ Kick said, looking out the window.
‘It’s like an obstacle course out there.
’ The railings outside Prince’s Gate and all around Hyde Park had been torn up and out so that only deep holes remained.
It looked, she thought, as though some angry, careless creature had lost something, and dug all over in a frantic effort to find it.
Without railings, the streets and green spaces seemed to bleed into each other.
Trenches had been dug across the entrance to the park, deep scars of brown in the soft green; graves, open and waiting.
And the very same people who, only a year ago, had scolded Teddy and Bobby for trampling the grass or knocking a flower had watched without comment, except to say, ‘They won’t be driving any tanks through here,’ with quiet satisfaction.
‘Somehow, one doesn’t think war will be so practical,’ Brigid said thoughtfully. ‘Everyone talks of sacrifice and duty, but in the end it’s miles and miles of bandages to roll and jumpers to knit and pots of tea to make and pour.’
‘How I wish I could stay, and roll and knit and pour with you,’ Kick said. She lay back on her bed, arms behind her head. ‘How sickening it is to leave now. To run away.’ She looked sideways at Brigid. ‘I guess our friends think I’m the worst sort of coward?’
‘No one thinks that, darling,’ Brigid said vaguely. ‘We know you’d stay and help if you could.’
‘I still hope to persuade Pa. The Washington doesn’t sail for a week yet.’ She sat up, suddenly energetic. ‘Why, anything can happen in a week.’
‘Anything,’ Brigid agreed. Then, ‘What of Billy?’
‘Joined his regiment weeks ago. The Coldstream Guards.’ Kick knew she sounded proud and tried to be nonchalant. ‘Andrew too. And Chatsworth is to be a boarding school for girls.’
‘I see,’ Brigid said slyly. ‘And what does your mother have to say about all that?’
‘Doesn’t know. Or not much.’ Rose may not have known, Kick thought, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a sense.
Or something. She had asked Kick to stop seeing Billy, to give up all thought of him, and Kick had said she would.
It was the first time she had deliberately lied to her mother.
Because of that, she no longer found any comfort when they prayed together, and maybe her mother sensed it, because bit by bit, they began to pray alone.
‘Have you said your prayers, Kathleen?’ Rose would ask, but she no longer suggested Kick come to her bedroom and say them with her.
It was the opening of a gap that could only get wider.
Kick knew it. But she didn’t know how to stop it.
‘Did you really leave the south of France in your tennis clothes?’ Brigid asked.
‘We did.’ Kick laughed. ‘There I was, about to win a set, and the message came from Mother that Hitler was invading Poland, and me and Eunice were to leave at once – that very minute! – and our things would follow.’
‘How exciting,’ Brigid spoke enthusiastically.
‘It was. I suppose. But you know, it was … well, it was sad too. Mother said something about who knew when we would be back on French soil, and what it would look like by then, and suddenly I sort of thought a great deal more about what war might actually mean …’
‘Yes,’ Brigid said. ‘In all the talk of what must be done, one rather forgets all the things one can’t, any longer, do.’
‘You know Jack and Joe were in Germany just two weeks ago? How strange it seems now …’ Kick trailed off, then reached over to stub out Brigid’s cigarette, which was still smoking in the saucer.
‘They saw Unity. Jack thought she was about the strangest person he’s met.
Said she was the most fervent Nazi he ever encountered, and quite in love with Hitler. ’
‘Poor Unity.’ Brigid got up and walked to the window.
She pulled herself up onto the rather high window seat, and sat with her legs tucked under her, looking out to the street below.
‘What does Debo say?’ She opened the window a crack.
The air smelt cold and fresh, of apples and wood fires, in contrast with the heat of the bedroom and its clinging hint of perfume.
‘That only Unity could take a bullet to the brain and survive. That she will outlive them all. You know Debo.’ Kick shrugged a little.
‘And underneath she is terribly sad and sorry and rather mortified, only she won’t ever say it.
Even insists that it’s a good thing Unity pulled the trigger herself, because of how she’s a terrible shot, and if someone else had done it – and they most surely would – they wouldn’t have missed and she’d be dead by now. ’
‘Which is exactly what everyone else wishes had happened,’ Brigid said bluntly, turning back towards Kick.
‘Then they would be able to commiserate decently with Lord and Lady Redesdale, and forget all about it. This way, no one knows what to say and it’s terribly awkward.
Chips is simply furious. Says it’s So like Unity, who always was impossible. ’
Kick laughed. ‘How like Chips.’ Then shuddered. ‘Can you imagine? She is in hospital in Munich, and they say the bullet cannot be got out. That to remove it would be more dangerous than to leave it where it is.’
‘The iron has entered her soul,’ Brigid quoted. ‘Except that, being Unity, it’s her brain, not her soul … Chips is helping to get her out, although she cannot be moved yet. Says Hitler is being frightfully decent and visiting her.’
Kick made a face. ‘How is Chips?’
‘He’ll be here any minute so you can see for yourself. You’ll notice a change.’ Brigid laughed. ‘All of a sudden he’s terribly patriotic, but also still insisting that Hitler is badly advised and will soon come to his senses.’
‘And Honor?’