Page 63 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
Doris laughed at that – how could you not, she thought.‘Oh, darling, you are too funny.’
‘I am not being funny.’
‘Of course.So, what then?’
‘Chips found out.Although I didn’t know that until a few days ago.He said nothing at the time.Nothing until it suited him to say something.’
‘How does it suit him?’
‘He hopes to use his forbearance to bargain.’
‘For what?’
‘To persuade me that, having been a bad wife, and he a forgiving husband, now I must make an extra effort to be a good wife.’
‘So he wants to stay married?’
‘Oh very much so.He’s worried.Afraid of what it will cost him if the marriage ends.And so certain that money – the Guinness fortune – was really at the heart of everything.’
‘In what way?’
‘That without all that money, I would not be nearly so enticing a prospect.Not enticing at all, really.’
‘He said that?’Doris paused, brush in mid-air so that the silver back of it was turned towards her.She saw her own face, distorted and faint in its smooth, polished back.Honor’s initials – HC – in looped, spidery writing, were engraved across the reflection.
‘He did.’Honor had stopped twisting her hands.They lay, inert now, in her lap, no longer animated creatures but defeated.‘He said it was a plot, a seduction, to get money from me.’
‘You know that is not true,’ Doris said gently.‘You know that he lies?That you are delightful and a darling in every way.As enticing as ever anyone could be.’
‘Am I?I do not feel it.But then, I do not feel very much, if the truth be told.I do not feel humiliation as keenly as I once would have.I do not feel joy or mirth.I do not even feel the pain of my situation as I should.Mostly, I am indifferent even to that.’
‘What about Paul?’
‘Even Paul … I can see he is a darling child, but somehow, I cannot feel it.Days may go by without me seeing him, and I barely notice.Chips says he has my family’s obstinacy and contrariness.Maybe he does.’She shrugged.‘He’s a stranger.I hardly know him.It’s not that I resent him, it’s that I resent how little I know him.But even resent is too strong a word.Too staunch a word for what I feel.When I look at my life, there aren’t high and low moments.Everything seems to happen in a line that is flat and thin and rather low to the ground.’
‘For how long?’
‘Oh, a long time.Almost since you left.But that’s enough of me.Tell me about you.About what you have been doing.’
‘Well, I will, but that does not mean that we are entirely finished with this.May we talk more, another time?’It was the best she could do right then, Doris decided.Everything Honor had told her made her sad.It was so clearly the truth – as conveyed already by her friend’s face, her form – and yet Doris had expected to hear only a version of it.A version twisted by Honor’s capacity – learned from her mother – to insist that all was well when it was not.‘No reason to cry over milk that is already spilled,’ Lady Iveagh would say briskly, no matter the circumstances.
Honor had learned to say the same, to live the same.And yet here she was, without even any prodding, telling just how unhappy her life had become.Yes, Doris thought decidedly, they would return to this.To Chips.But not now.
So she talked of Berlin.Of her apartment with its wooden floors and high ceilings, the walls dressed in dark wood carved into whorls and knots that shone warm in the lamplight.The high brass bed heaped with cool linen and airy feather bolsters.Of how safe she felt there, tucked into the fourth floor of a building so large it covered a whole block of the city, and how exposed when she walked the streets – as though even the wind were suspicious and might blow rumours of her to the wrong people.
She talked of the high-ranking Nazi officers who bowed low over her hand and praised the ivory glow of her skin, who spoke to her of Goethe and the beauty of Wagner, and slipped notes into her evening bag that implored her to meet them alone, while their wives, in stiff fur and diamonds, stood close by.Of how careful she was to never accept, but never offend.To be always – always!– laughing.Charming, encouraging, affectionate, but also aloof.To be remote when they hoped she would be accessible, and accessible when they assumed she would be remote.Of how easy it was; that men, each time, are just men.How little it mattered what language they spoke or uniform they wore; still they were distracted by the curve of a cheekbone, the flutter of eyelashes, the shining whiteness of bare arms in evening dress.
She talked of the late nights wreathed in thick clouds of cigarette smoke and laughter.Of the way the sharp click of their heels as they drew them together and raised their arms in salute, even now, made her jump a little.Of the quiet mornings and lonely afternoons where she wrote letters home, parsing, always, the words she used and how much she told.She told a little of the anger and vicious pride on the streets, the growing fear of some amidst the triumph of others.But not much.
She did not talk of the other meetings.The ones that did not exactly take place.There were so many things she didn’t talk of.Not yet.The gap between her recent life and Honor’s was too great; could be bridged only gradually if at all.
Honor listened and asked questions; practical ones that Doris answered:What of your mother’s family?; blunt ones that she deflected:Are you safe?And at last, ‘What were you talking to that fellow Albert, Fritzi’s man, so intently about?’
‘I wasn’t talking to him.’
‘What were you doing then?’
‘Kissing him.’
