Page 30 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘You came back here, alone, with my husband?’Surely not even Chips, in their own home, with Elizabeth …?
‘Oh no!You mustn’t worry.’She reached out and patted Honor’s arm.Her fingers, thin and white with their crimson nails, were stained yellow at the tips.
‘I’m not worried,’ Honor said, drawing back her arm.
Elizabeth gave her a mischievous look, then opened her eyes very wide.‘Of course not,’ she agreed.‘In any case, you need not be.There were quite a number of us here.Billy Cavendish, at least one Mitford – although where there’s one, there’s usually more, don’t you find?’she added, nodding wisely.
Honor found herself nodding too, then stopped.Chips had had a party, here in the library, while she slept oblivious upstairs?There was something she didn’t like about the idea.And yet, the truth was that, so big was the house, so great the distances between its rooms – many of which Honor hardly visited – he could have had a dozen parties and she would never have known.There was something a little sinister about that.She shook off the thought and returned to the matter in hand.
‘But why are youstillhere?’
‘I fell asleep.Must have, else I wouldn’t still be here, would I?’As though it were the most logical thing in the world.Beside the sofa Honor noticed for the first time a pair of silver sandals with high spikey heels.They were placed neatly, lined up one beside the other.She wondered had Elizabeth done that, or someone else?
‘Well.Here’s Andrews.’The butler entered with a tray on which stood a silver coffee pot and two china cups.Honor hoped Elizabeth wouldn’t break them.Her hands still shook alarmingly.‘You may have a cup of coffee and then I’m sure you’ll want to be getting on.You must have so much to do.’
‘Not a thing,’ Elizabeth said cheerfully.‘Not ’til lunchtime at least.I say, be a darling, Honor, may I have a bath before I go?You wouldn’t send poor tiny me out in last night’s fug, now would you?’She stared at Honor, an expression that for all its childish defiance held something else too.Something hopeful.
So that Honor said, ‘Very well.I will ask Molly to draw you a bath.’
As she crossed towards the door, she caught sight of one of Elizabeth’s bare feet poking out from under the shawl.The sole was entirely black.She shut the door behind her.‘Where is Mr Channon?’she asked Andrews.
‘Just returned, Madame.He has been shopping.’
Of course he had.More antiques, she supposed.He never would go to Kelvedon empty-handed.‘Ask him to come up to my sitting room.’
When Molly had drawn a bath for Elizabeth, Honor sent her to pack and, while she waited for Chips, began to compose a letter to Doris: ‘You cannot imagine what I found this morning, quite as though some bird had flown in and started a nest in a corner: Elizabeth Ponsonby, rather the worse for wear, fast asleep on the sofa like something from an Aubrey Beardsley sketch – all charcoal smudges and spikey lines …’ She tried to make the telling something amusing, a trivial but curious episode.But it was hard.She felt furious.With Elizabeth, with Chips, obscurely with herself, for being the sort of person a thing like that could happen to.No one, she thought, would ever dare fall asleep on a library sofa in her parents’ house.And if they did, one look at Lady Iveagh’s face in the morning would be enough to send them packing.There would be no cups of coffee and – imagine it!– baths.
‘What is the meaning of it?’she demanded when Chips came in, as soon as the door was safely shut behind him.
‘What was I to do?’He put his hands out in front of him, palms up, fingers spread wide.‘I tried to find her a taxi but it simply wasn’t possible to get her out of the house.’
‘Why could not one of the others have taken her?’
‘They were gone and she was left and there seemed nothing at all to do only cover her and leave her on the sofa where she was already asleep and snoring.In a way that was surprisingly loud.’
‘What about that chap she goes about with, Ford?’
‘They seem to have had some sort of a row earlier in the evening.He stormed off and she said she wouldn’t go with him because he was “simply beastly” when in that kind of humour.Truth is,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure she had anywhere much to go.I rather got the impression she didn’t.Surely you do not think I wanted her here?’
No, Honor knew him better than that.Poor Elizabeth had none of the things Chips looked for.Neither power nor influence; little beauty, certainly not now.Nothing attached to her name except exasperation, indifference and, among those who had known her a decade ago when she was the very brightest of the Bright Young People, a lingering pity.
‘No, I don’t suppose you did.Though why you must go giving late-night parties …’
‘Not aparty,’ he said, ‘just one or two friends.Now, Brigid is downstairs.’
‘And Maureen and Duff will be here any moment.We must be ready to leave.’
By the time she got down, Maureen had arrived and was standing, tapping her foot impatiently and blowing smoke in exaggerated fashion from a cigarette held in a long ivory holder.She was far too smartly dressed for the country, in a cream jacket and skirt that were too hot for the already-sultry day.Pugsy, her bad-tempered Peke was slumped at her feet, defeated by the heat.Beside her on the hall chair Duff sat and readThe Times.Maureen looked up.Duff did not.
‘I thought we would be gone by now,’ Maureen said.Behind her, in one of the smaller rooms, Honor could hear Brigid chattering on the telephone.
‘Andrews has ordered the motorcars,’ Honor said soothingly.The last thing she wanted was a row before they even set off.‘You and I and Brigid and Duff will go together.Chips will follow with Bundi.Those dogs had better not travel together.The servants will come after with the luggage.’
‘I say, where are you going?’It was Elizabeth, leaning over the heavy banister and calling down to them from the first floor.
‘Kelvedon.Essex.And we should have left by now,’ Maureen said.Then, in an audible hiss, ‘What isshedoing here?’to Honor.
‘Essex.What fun,’ Elizabeth said, starting down the stairs.
