Page 69 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Race meetings and sports days and village fetes?’He raised an eyebrow ironically.
‘Yes, and even that not very much anymore.There isn’t much appetite for these kinds of accounts in England now.Not since gas masks were sent out.’
‘I’ve heard there is plenty of appetite in some quarters,’ he said shrewdly.‘Mosley is a fan.’
So he’d heard that too.
‘I write what I’m asked to write,’ Doris said.She didn’t say by whom, and he didn’t ask.
‘And if there is no longer such an appetite for simple stories, what will you write about?’he continued.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Perhaps you will not return?Perhaps you are back home to stay?’
‘No, I will return.’
‘Strange.’His blue eyes, the blue of Prussian army uniforms, rested thoughtfully on her.
‘Hardly.’She shrugged.‘It’s my home.For now.The truth is,’ she smiled at him, ‘I do not work soveryhard, and that is something that suits me very well.’
‘Honor tells me you have a great many friends.That you go everywhere and know everyone?’
‘I do,’ she twinkled.‘Am I not lucky?Mostly it is thanks to Chips, who has himself a great many friends in Berlin and has been most generous in his introductions.’
‘Oh, I am sure you have your own charm to thank for it,’ he said with heavy gallantry.All the same, she thought, he looked more carefully at her than ever, and she couldn’t determine if that was because her dress, a graceful print of blue and white flowers, was exceptionally becoming, or something else.‘And you and the prince are old friends?’
‘Hardly.’She smiled politely.‘We have met, that’s all.’She remembered the evening more clearly even than she had admitted.How desperately young Prince Friedrich had seemed, in his grey-blue uniform with the silver eagle over his heart, wings spread aggressively over that ugly, twisted cross the Nazis wore.How the correctness of his posture had disguised his apprehension, but only until you looked properly at him.Then, the fear he had buttoned tightly inside with his tunic was so obvious.And small wonder, she had thought.The deal his father had made with the Nazis – the shine of the Hohenzollern family in exchange for the power of the National Socialists – was a fragile, even dangerous one.Greed might motivate both parties, but glamour was never a match for ruthlessness.
But also how, every time she turned around, there he was, close to her, always with an offer of a cigarette, a drink, a lift.How, when he drove her home through a city where day was stirring, the sky around them opening into a brief wash of pale pink and lilac, then almost immediately closed over to a dull grey, she could see that he wanted to kiss her, but didn’t dare, and how she had thanked him warmly, then got out of the car quickly, before he could work up the courage.
‘You’ve met,’ the ambassador repeated thoughtfully.And again those shrewd blue eyes rested on her.‘What do you make of him?I’d like to be able to report back to Roosevelt, where do Germany’s princes stand in all of this?’
‘Certainly they do not stand united, that I can tell you.Every great family has their own desire and determination.Butourprince … I wonder does he stand, so much aslean… I think he is in the centre of a group who all have different ideas about where he should be.’
‘You speak in riddles.’He was annoyed.‘All you English do.’
‘I’m half-German.’
‘Then speak with that half.’
‘Fine.If that’s what you want.’She looked amused.‘It’s not what anyone else wants … So, there are people who would use Friedrich, a Hohenzollern prince, for their own ends.’
‘Who are they?What ends?’
‘How unlike a diplomat you are,’ she mused.‘Positivelyabrupt.’
‘So I’ve been told.’He gave her a rare smile.‘Those fellows must think they have double the lifespan of the rest of us, the pace they move at.Now, go on.’
‘It varies.Many people.Many ends.Fritzi could be many things: a tame royal for Hitler to dangle on the end of a string or a rallying point for dissent.’
‘Why does everyone think he’ll do what they want?’
‘Because they want to think it.And because they have no reason to think he won’t.So far, he has shown himself very pliable.’
‘So far?’
‘Yes.Now, I wonder …’
