Page 36 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Why, will I compromise Anglo-American relations?’she drawled.
‘You jolly well might,’ Chips snapped.
‘I think they’re compromised already,’ Duff said, putting his book down, ‘by the mealy-mouthed inclinations of the ambassador himself, and his determination to talk England into retreat.’He glared at Chips, who took a step back.
‘I hope you won’t be argumentative, dear boy,’ Chips said.
‘As it happens, I won’t,’ Duff said shortly.‘In fact, I hope it might be possible to talk sense into the man.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’Chips asked.‘I did wonder, when you can hardly be brought to leave Churchill’s side.Or should I say, let go of his hand?I do hope you’re not going to spoil my party.’
‘Hardly possible,’ Duff said dryly.Maureen’s lips twitched, but she kept her face straight.‘No, I simply want him to meet other English people,’ he emphasised the wordEnglish, ‘and listen to views that aren’t the views of Emerald Cunard or Lady Astor.’
‘Darling, you aren’t going to talk endless politics, are you?’Maureen said, touching the side of Duff’s face with a finger.
‘It’s notpolitics,’ Duff said shortly.‘It’s now the stuff of life.When will any of you realise that?’
‘We do realise,’ Maureen said softly.‘We’ve all been fitted for gas masks and even practised those dreadful air raid drills.But must one think of nothing else every minute of the day?’
‘It will come right,’ Chips said reassuringly.‘Mr Chamberlain goes to Munich in just a few weeks, where he will head off all this unpleasant talk of war.You’ll see, he will arrange everything.There will be no need of these precautions.’
‘It is already not right for Czechoslovakia,’ Duff said, sitting up sharply so that Maureen almost fell from the sun chair.‘Hitler will hardly rest until he has taken the Sudetenland.And even then he will not rest.All of Europe may wake to find his army massing at their borders.’
‘Not here, dear boy, where our borders are protected by the ocean,’ Chips said comfortably.
Duff might have said more – indeed, Maureen knew that the kind of provocation Chips gave could mean long, angry diatribes about ‘wilful blindness’ and ‘cowardice’ – but just then Elizabeth, dressed in a white sundress – presumably Honor’s, that she had belted tightly with a wide black belt – and a floppy sunhat, came towards them.‘There you all are.Isn’t this nice?’The others murmured agreement and Fritzi did his stiff little bow again.Elizabeth, ignoring him, poured herself the rest of the gin fizz and handed the empty jug to Chips.‘Ring for more, darling,’ she said, and settled herself on a chair beside Maureen.‘Now, I was thinking – after dinner tonight we could get up a game of some kind.’
‘Ooh yes!’Brigid said, coming to sit, dripping, on the stone tiles at Elizabeth’s feet.
‘No games,’ Chips said.
Chapter Eighteen
Brigid
Her room was pretty, Brigid decided, with a view out to the walled garden and beyond that tennis courts, and then a broad river than ran past the end of the formal gardens.By leaning far out of the window, sash pulled up as high as it could go, she could see weeping willows drooping gracefully towards the still water and smell the dank, weedy smell of the banks.She thought how cool and quiet it looked and wished she were there, among the mud and wet rushes, not in this house that suddenly made her think of a baker’s oven, all those red bricks laid one over the other in neat hot rows.
Her head ached, and she flopped down on the bed, admiring the brightly coloured cornflowers on the silk canopy around.Really, she thought, Chips was almost a girl, he cared so much for things like fabric, cut, colour, design.But she had to admit, he had a talent for comfort.If Honor had been responsible for the house, it would be drab and spartan in the extreme.She never seemed to feel the cold or understand how important little comforts were.
And if Maureen were in charge, they would all be subjected to endless jokes – some jolly, some cruel, many bawdy.Certainly, she was a better guest than a hostess.Although even then, she did only what she wanted.
‘Will you sing for your supper?’she had asked Brigid earlier, by the pool.‘I shan’t.’She had moved by then, from the lounging chair she had been squeezed into with Duff, to a seat beside the table where Brigid was.Brigid was glad.There had been something …embarrassing, she thought, about the way they had been so close together, Maureen’s leg, bare under her pretty cream-coloured skirt, pressed so hard against Duff’s, and the way she hadn’t seemed to mind that he was positively sweating through his white shirt, like a horse at the end of a long gallop, patches of dark wet soaking through the crisp white.
‘I suppose I shall have to,’ she had said wearily.‘All that chatter and groups of people everywhere and never any time alone.How tiring country stays are.’
‘You sound like Oonagh.Really, you are far more like our side of the family.You know I mean that as a compliment?’
‘I suppose you do,’ Brigid had said, keeping her eyes to herself so that Maureen wouldn’t see the laugh in them.
But Maureen must have heard something in her voice – some tremor of mirth that gave her away – because she said snappily, ‘Not that you are in any need of compliments.Already I would say you have received more than enough.What do you intend to do with them?’
‘Not a thing.What should I do?’She had wished Maureen would stop.Even her mother was nothing like this bad.It gave Brigid a hot, stuffy feeling to be quizzed like this, about who she went about with – worse, might marry – when the whole idea seemed so ridiculous.She could no more imagine being married to one of the pleasant, sometimes foolish, young men who danced with her and asked her to sit out on cool balconies or in darkened gardens than she could imagine going to, say, India or Burma – places Maureen sometimes talked of, where she had been on her honeymoon, and that were as remote as the stars.
‘Good girl.There is nothing to be doneyet.’The way Maureen had stressed the word and looked at Fritzi – trying to throw a stick for Bundi, who showed no interest – had made Brigid feel terribly tired.It was then, she thought, that her headache had begun.‘In a little while, you might decide that you do want to.’
‘I won’t.’
‘How do you know you don’t want to marry him?The handsome prince?’That was Elizabeth, coming to join them.She had sat on the ground, legs long and white stretched out in front of her.
