Page 46 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
Dinner, Honor reflected as she finished her morning tea, had been frightful.Ambassador Kennedy on one side, Duff on the other, both more interested in the person to the other side of them than in her.When the ambassador had turned his attention to her, it was to ask questions – so many of them, so detailed: how her parents occupied their time, who they read and admired, the size of Elveden, how many employed there – that she had felt as though she were back at the London School of Economics, before one of her professors.Then he had wanted to know what lessons Paul was doing, what musical instruments he learned, did he keep a pony in town?‘He is not yet three,’ she protested, but her answer didn’t please him.None of her answers did.And the more he asked, the more she took refuge in the kind of vagueness she had learned from her cousin Oonagh – a veiled obliqueness that was charming in Oonagh, accompanied by those large blue eyes and perfect-shaped face, and rather less so in herself, she suspected, so that she felt it had been a test, and she had failed.
Afterwards, she had excused herself as early as she could, but even so she felt tired.Even after coming to bed, she had lain awake for hours, as she so often did these nights.Ears attuned to every sound, heart set racing by any sudden thud – a door closing, loud footsteps on the stairs, a window thrown open in a nearby room.The house had its own sounds, and she was not used to them.
Here there were the unexpected sounds of nature, too, rather than the steady hum of traffic outside their London home.A fox screaming had set her bolt upright in bed, eyes wide, until she realised what it was – a vixen, she had decided, calling for her cubs; it was too late in the year for a mating call.
Only after the sounds had all died down, when she had heard dawn stirring outside and seen the sun straining through the dark like milk through muslin, only then did she sleep.
This was the first night she had spent at the house since they had bought it, when they had almost camped, she and Chips, companionably together in one bedroom, because everywhere was so uncomfortable.Then, Chips had talked and talked of his plans for modernisation, improvements he must make, ways to make the place splendid and comfortable.‘It will be a paradise,’ he had said, arms sweeping wide.‘An oasis, an escape from the demands of society and the House and London.’
But it wasn’t an escape, she thought now; he had brought society, the House, London, with him.
Back then, Honor had listened to him, or, at least, half-listened to him in a way that was indulgent.Now, when he spoke, the effort of not allowing herself to hear him was so great that it sapped her energy for other things.More than anything, she wanted not to hear him.
Now, she lay in her bath, knowing that next door Molly was waiting, having laid out her clothes for the day, to brush her hair.But she couldn’t seem to hurry.She stared out the window above the wash-hand basin at the blue of the sky.Another hot day.Reaching to the bottom of the window were the branches of a chestnut tree, splayed leaves stretching up towards the glass.Their edges were trimmed crisp and brown by the weeks of sunshine, and they moved hardly at all, she saw.Another day with almost no wind.Lucky it wasn’t a sailing party.That made her remember Rose Kennedy, and her strange exultation in the physical achievements of her children.Such a tiny woman, Honor thought, to be mother to so many.
She allowed herself to imagine it.Or try to, anyway: Paul at the head of a procession of little ones, his brothers and sisters.What would they all be like?Would they be like Paul, only younger, and girls as well as a boy?She thought about him in the nursery yesterday when she had gone to say hullo after they arrived.He had kissed her politely, answered her questions – ‘Did you have a good journey down?’‘Has Nanny given you your tea?’– solemnly.‘Yes; we saw a hare’; ‘Yes; we had toast and crumpets’, lisping slightly on his S’s still, so that Honor had wondered was almost-three too old for that, and should she talk to the tutor about exercises to correct it?They had run out of things to say, as they so easily did, and Honor had found herself wishing that Chips was with them.It was, she thought now, squeezing water from a sponge onto her arm and watching it trickle back into the tub, the only place she missed Chips.In her interactions with her son.With Chips, Paul was lively, talkative.Somehow, he and his father knew one another, in a way that she and her son did not.They understood one another, even through the net of nanny, nursemaid, tutor, nursery hours – all the ways in which Paul had been separated from her, almost since the very moment of his birth, when Nanny had said, ‘I will take him, Madame.You need your rest.’
Honor, not understanding that this was to be the way, had agreed, thinking it was only for a short time – an hour, a day – while she recovered the strength she needed to care for him.
But it had not been an hour or a day.It had been a pattern.One that set hard so quickly that she could find no way around it.She had lost sight of the child she had given birth to, whom she had known so completely in the moment of his birth but who had become a stranger to her.A small, not terribly polite stranger.
And yet, with Chips, he was not strange.‘Papa!’he would cry, ‘I did it, just like you told me …’ and would spill the story of his triumph – a cricket ball smartly hit, a pony disciplined – confident that his father knew exactly what he meant.
But Chips was not with them, and so after the first questions there were no others and then the tutor had come to say it was time for Paul’s walk.Whereupon the boy had stamped his foot and said, ‘I won’t.’The tutor, clearly embarrassed in front of Honor, had insisted in a jocular kind of way that even Honor could tell was awkward.But Paul only stamped his foot again and insisted, louder, that he wouldn’t.Honor, feeling she was making everything worse by being there, had quickly said, ‘I must get on.Paul, be a good boy now,’ and she had left the nursery.Behind her, the sound of Paul’s screams: ‘I won’t, I tell you, I won’t!’
Should she send for Chips, she had asked herself.He could get Paul to do anything, cajole him into any activity, using the same mix of charm and energy he brought to everything he set his mind to.But no.That would be unfair on the tutor, who must learn to manage these moments for himself.And so she had gone away, blocking her ears with shaking hands until she was out of range.
There in her bath, she imagined nine children, all stamping and screaming.And her, Honor, unable to make herself heard or noticed above the noise.Did any of Rose Kennedy’s children behave like that?She felt they did not.
Honor wondered if they were all as athletic as Kick.Or were there some among the nine for whom the regular competitions and the proofs demanded of their excellence were hard, even humiliating?Who was the daughter, Rosemary, Maureen had seemed to know about, who was not in competition with the others?And why the strange little silence around her name?
‘Madame?’Molly tapped at the bathroom door.‘Can I get you anything?’By which, Honor knew, she meant,You are very late, what are you doing in there?
‘I’ll be out directly.’
She could hear Chips, next door, moving about his dressing room.It had been dawn before she heard him come up.Heard his feet along the corridor, the way he paused at her door so she had almost stopped breathing, then Elizabeth Ponsonby in a loud whisper: ‘I’m not sure which you resemble more, lurking before your wife’s door – a secret lover, or a suspicious husband.Which is it, Chips?’Followed by a snigger.It had been infuriating, but enough to send Chips to his own room, where he shut the door with a bang that was too loud for that hour.
She could hear him now, whistling ‘September in the Rain’, and marvelled at his energy.As soon as dinner had finished, he had begun to plan a tennis tournament – ‘If we play singles, then mixed doubles, we should manage three matches each …’ – ignoring equally Maureen who said, ‘Well, I won’t play,’ and Kick who had said, ‘I’ll play twice.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kick
Kick sat over the end of a slice of toast, breaking the crust into pieces and crumbling them idly, and half-watched her reflection in the many shiny surfaces – the curved domes that covered dishes, the flat trays and slanted sides of teapots that were everywhere she looked; morning sun on polished silver.The toast crusts had traces of marmalade on them and she had just realised her fingertips were sticky, when Chips came in.
‘Eddie Cavendish,’ he said loudly.
Kick looked up in a sudden panic.Here?
‘Just telephoned,’ Chips clarified, looking around at them all.‘They are staying nearby, with the Blounts, and have said they will motor over later for a swim.On such a day, what could be more perfect?’He threw his arms wide and Kick guessed it was not the thought of the weather that thrilled him, but the company.‘Their sons, Billy and Andrew, come with them.A friend of Billy’s called Hugo.And Deborah Mitford.Brigid, you must think of amusing games for the young people.’
Kick felt her face grow hot and plump and knew it must be like fresh-risen bread, damp and swollen.She looked up and found Brigid watching her, eyes dancing as she said, ‘I’m sure we can think of something.’She spoke to Chips, but it was Kick she looked at.Kick didn’t know whether to laugh at her or frown her into discretion.What if her mother saw?She shook her head the slightest bit.
‘I must plan lunch,’ Chips said, all energy.‘We will eat outdoors, I think.’
‘That will be charming,’ said Rose.‘May I help?At Hyannis Port, where we spend our summers, I ask Cook to prepare a great many salads and cold dishes.It is very pleasant to simply eat when we are hungry and nothing spoils.’
‘What a good idea,’ Chips said.Kick got the feeling that he would have thought anything at all a good idea just then.‘Why not come with me and we can talk to Mrs Bath together?’
