Page 7 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
She quickened her pace, shoes tapping smartly on the hot paving stones, but still she felt she was wading through air that was heavy and lifeless.Where was the energy of her first year?When everything she did was made electric by the feeling that she was useful, and that any danger was worth it to be so alive?Now, it was harder to see the value in what she did.Harder to believe that whatever bits she learned and intuited, the scant information she gathered, had any impact on the mushrooming clouds of war.She felt only the danger, no longer the worth.No longer so alive.
And yet, for all the gangs of uniformed youths and the sticky, excitable ambition of the men she met, how she loved this city with its summers that smelt of dusty leaves and car exhaust and the powdered sugar that was sprinkled across fat, roundkrapfen.She loved the wide tree-lined avenues and tall houses that seemed to lean up and back, for a better look at whatever was happening on the street.Loved the way stone was carved and shaped and bent into elegant curls, or placed in large blocks, one upon the other, to create buildings that were monuments; the cafés that were always full, the people who danced in the squares.
She remembered the summer she had spent there with her mother, five years ago now.How they had eaten every pastry her mother remembered from her own childhood, and how she had heard all her mother’s stories again, except now Doris knew what the places she spoke of looked like so that they were suddenly real.Sometimes she heard the same story, but from Tante Hannah, her mother’s sister, so that it was subtly different, a near-image with tiny distortions that made it fizz.She remembered setting off every day from her aunt’s house, returning to it every evening.The solemn cousins and their talk of medical school that had impressed Doris even while she found them a little dull; not gay and quick like her London friends, but serious.
The house was someone else’s now.The cousins had moved to England where they no longer thought of being doctors, but were grateful to work in Doris’ father’s factory, while her aunt tried to take upon herself the duties of housekeeper, despite the fact that Doris’ mother was mortified.
The people she passed now, who walked the streets and drank in cafés, those who had lunched at Horcher’s – did they know what had happened to Doris’ family and all the others like them?Yes.They knew.Enough, anyway.They knew, and approved, because that was one way for them to get what they wanted – a little more than others.By taking it.Or at least by allowing others to take it.And that’s why she was still here.That’s why she met von Arent for lunch and went to parties with people she despised, and laughed and flirted with them.That’s why she put a heavy blanket over the fear, ignored the feeling that what she did was useless and forced herself out, smartly dressed, hair shining and carefully set, every single day.
She reached the Tiergarten and felt the relief that came with shade and grass, even though this was coarse and tufty and more yellow than green.At the Tritonbrunnen fountain she sat on the low stone rim, legs pushed straight out in front of her.The centre of the fountain was a muscular marble youth grappling a large fish that spat water up out of its excessive mouth.The sound, as it splashed back into the basin, was cool.There was no one around and she wondered had the waiter meant no more than he said – ‘The Tritonbrunnen fountain is particularly pleasant.’She laughed, feeling more energetic.Perhaps she had the bad habit of reading too much into everything.Of living constantly as if in a melodrama.She would go home, she decided, by the bakery that sold lemonade in glass bottles stoppered by a marble, and lie on her bed with the shutters pulled across so that her room was cool and dim, and write to Honor.
A man approached led by a small dog on a leash and Doris thought of Mimi, her dachshund, with a pang.How she missed the little darling.And how she missed affection, she realised.A gentle, familiar hand on her arm or her hair; a hand that wanted only her comfort, nothing more.A voice to speak kindly to her.At this hour, Berliners were with their families, in the happy after-lunch slump, and wouldn’t emerge until evening.There was no one here except the solitary, the purposeless.How lonely she was, she thought, looking around the almost-deserted park.Everyone Doris met wanted something from her, as she did from them; no one ever saying it, but always edging forward to try and gain it.
No wonder she had liked talking to Hannah so much, she realised.The little girl’s self-contained solemnity, the gentle curiosity with which she had looked at Doris and the eager way she had thrown herself into the conversation were different to the tone of other interactions.
The dog ran forward, pulling on the lead, so that the man walked more quickly.When it reached the fountain, it put its paws on the fat round rim right beside where Doris sat, straining forward towards the water.She reached a hand to stroke its soft head.The man bent down then, gathered the dog in his arms and leaned forward with it.As the dog drank, the man looked sideways at Doris.
‘A hot day,’ he said politely.He wore a straw boater with a black band and a light grey suit.
‘Very,’ Doris agreed.‘No wonder your little friend is thirsty,’ she added with a laugh.
The man looked around.There was no one close by.‘There’s starting to be trouble about your articles,’ he said, switching to English.
Doris, schooled not to betray surprise at these encounters, looked idly away from him, up towards the blue sky.‘In what way?’
‘They’re rather too good.’
‘I thought the point was that they be good?’She thought of last week’s – an account of a festival in a town on the outskirts of Berlin, her descriptions of girls and boys singing folk songs and running races.She had certainly laid it on thick, she thought.
‘Yes, but not so good.Mosley and his crew of fascists have begun to use them as propaganda.To show what Germany has achieved: prosperity, peace, employment for all.’
She thought of her aunt and cousins.‘Not all.’
‘No.But no one reading your articles would know that.’
‘They’re my cover.We agreed.’She spoke quickly.There was never much time in these exchanges.
‘I know.’The dog had finished drinking and the man began to dab at its muzzle with a handkerchief he took from his top pocket, his face mostly obscured by the movement.‘But in Mosley’s hands there are unexpected consequences.It may be time for you to go back.’
This was her chance, she thought.A chance to leave.To go back to London, to Honor, her family in Dorset, anywhere but here.She felt a surge of relief.It was exactly what she had longed for, only realising how very much now that it was before her.But could she?
‘There’s still work to do,’ she said, looking away from him, down along the straight avenue of linden trees that led back to the busy city streets.
‘There may be new work to do.’He stood up.‘Back home.’
‘Why?’
‘Things change.We need to change.We are anticipating.’He drew the word out.
She always wondered who ‘we’ was.Was she ‘we’, or were others ‘we’ and she was just herself?‘When?’
‘Soon.’
Chapter Six
London
Brigid
