Page 48 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Not a bit,’ Kick insisted.‘It’s perfect.’
‘You always say that,’ Billy said affectionately.‘Even that day at Goodwood when it rained in a steady drip for hour after hour.’
‘Just perfect,’ Kick said with a grin.‘Now, let’s swim.You can change in the pavilion.’
‘I wondered what it was,’ Hugo said.‘Thought it might be a museum.’By which Kick knew he thought it excessive, silly, even vulgar.That he was mocking it while pretending not to.The knowledge made her feel suddenly protective of Chips.
‘It’s very useful,’ she said firmly.
They changed – Debo into a pink-and-white bathing suit of such extraordinary modesty that Kick laughed out loud.‘Don’t,’ Debo said, face screwed up in mock-pain, ‘it’s too awful.But Farve insists.I may be the same age as you and Brigid but that counts for nothing with him.And if it’s that or not be allowed go anywhere, then, well, it’s that …’
‘You look darling,’ Kick assured her.‘You always do.’
They didn’t swim so much as splash about, she thought, throwing water at each other and floating lazily in the shallow end, watched by the simpering terracotta ladies in their flouncy petticoats.She swam lengths and Billy kept pace with her for a few, then dropped away, saying, ‘You are far more energetic than I.’He pulled himself out of the water and went to lie on a reclining chair, water dripping off his bare chest and legs and down the sides of the chair onto the warm grey stone, where it quickly dried.Kick did another couple of lengths, speeding up and down, turning gracefully in one fluid movement at either end, then climbed out and went to the chair beside him.
She stretched out, admiring the pearly polish on her toes and ruefully lamenting the freckles that dotted her calves.But she realised she was conscious of her bare legs and arms in a way she never had been when swimming or sailing with the boys back home – Jack and Joe’s friends who came to Hyannis Port for the summers.Invariably, these young men arrived half in love with whichever brother was their friend – especially Jack’s friends all adored him – and left almost more in love with Kick.She tried not to mind that their highest expression of praise was ‘You’re like a female version of Jack …’
She had gone out with one or two, but never paid them much attention.Never been conscious of them beyond that they were friendly, easy-going, sporty, like her brothers.Certainly not the way she now was conscious of Billy beside her.
He was pale, with a smattering of cinnamon-coloured freckles on his shoulders.Thinner than her brothers, but wiry and stronger-looking than she had expected.His height and the slight stoop all Englishmen seemed to affect had made him seem weedier.Stripped of his beautifully tailored suits and shirts, he was muscled, with the arms and shoulders of a horseman.She remembered hearing that he had rowed for Cambridge and thought she could see that in the flat stomach and lean legs.Then she looked up and caught his eye and realised that he had seen her staring at him, and blushed horribly, turning quickly away.The only consolation, she thought as she picked up a copy of theTatler, was that he had blushed too.
The blushing was new, the self-consciousness, and so too was the pang she felt when Brigid came and sat on the edge of his chair in her bathing suit – a neat blue number that showed off her elegant legs.‘What have you been doing at the Blounts?’she asked Billy.‘Fun party?’
‘Some shooting,’ he said, shifting up to make space for her.‘Snipe mostly.A great deal of badminton, some strenuous walking.It’s a larger party, rather older.The Mosleys were arriving as we left this morning.Less jolly than this, I should think.’
‘Hard to tell what this is just yet,’ Brigid said.‘We’ve just arrived.Yesterday.’She yawned.‘But I should think we’ll be alright, isn’t that so, Kick?’
Kick nodded, unsure what to add.Still bent over her magazine, she observed Brigid and Billy as they chattered, about people they knew – a girl called June who was staying with the Blounts, a party they had both been to in London before coming away – and tried to understand what might be between them, even while she pretended to read theTatler.She found herself trying to understand the angle of Brigid’s body and what was meant by the way it was turned towards Billy’s; the tone of his voice as he said, ‘I say, don’t you worry that you will burn?You’re awfully white,’ and she hated herself for doing it.Brigid had said there was nothing between them.Billy was just being friendly.So why was she cutting and splitting and analysing, when she had never done anything like that before?
Maureen arrived, trailing a rose pink silk peignoir and a broad hat with a rose silk scarf tied around it, Pugsy wheezing along beside her.She looked impossibly sophisticated, and Kick wondered how she managed to be so much more herself than the other women.Like a diamond, dense, compacted, rather hard, but sparkling.She largely ignored them, beyond saying, ‘Oh, hullo, Billy,’ in tones of surprise, then sat in the shade with a copy ofThe Timesand a tall glass of what looked like lemonade but probably wasn’t.She lit a cigarette and the smell of the smoke blanketing the hot air made Kick feel sick.
Andrews appeared at the head of a group of footmen with sun umbrellas, which they placed at intervals, carrying chairs into the shade and drawing small tables towards them.‘Crumblies approaching,’ Brigid said with a laugh, getting up from Billy’s chair.Kick forced herself not to watch the way she patted Billy’s bare arm as she went to greet his parents.She clearly knew them well.
While Brigid chattered and Debo answered questions put by Billy’s father – ‘Have you been having fun?’‘Shall you swim again?’– Kick was able to get a good look at the duke and duchess.He was tall and thin and looked a lot like Billy – the same angularity, the same apologetic stoop.He wore a shirt with a collar so frayed that she, who hated sewing, itched to take a needle to it, and a pair of trousers worn almost completely through at the knees.The duchess – ‘Moucher’ was apparently what everyone called her – had a face that was lined and careworn and kind.She looked clever and thoughtful, Kick thought, and terribly harassed, as though in her mind was a constant turning-over of duties and responsibilities.Was that what the mistress of a place like Chatsworth, like Lismore Castle – places Kick had never seen but which she had read about – looked like?she wondered.
She had only been a duchess for five months, since the duke’s father died – Kick knew all about it because of Debo – and already Moucher looked like a horse that has been boxed into a stall too small.As though forever worrying about roof slates and rising damp.Neither of them looked anything – anything at all – as she had imagined a duke and duchess to look.She wondered what her mother made of them.Especially the duke, with his tattered collar and Turkish cigarettes.The thought caused her to bite the inside of her lower lip, to stop herself laughing aloud.She could have explained to Rose that nothing could be more English than this – the biggest landowner in the country, one of them anyway, dressed as though he were a rag-and-bone man.But she knew her mother wouldn’t get it.Wouldn’t want to get it.It would be another chance for her to warn Kick not to get too involved: ‘We don’t live here, Kathleen; for all that we are here now, this is not our life.It is your father’s job.’How many times already had Rose said this, or a variation on it?Kick had stopped listening, because she had begun to understand that, in fact, England didn’t feel to her as it felt to Rose – like a transitory place, somewhere quaint to pause and amuse oneself for a while.It felt, more and more, as though the strange instant familiarity she had discovered when theQueen Maryberthed at Southampton and she stepped ashore meant something serious.That, she knew, meant trouble too.Her parents still talked of ‘home’ meaning Bronxville, and of ‘after’ as something to look forward to.
Honor came out next, followed by Elizabeth, then Chips in close conversation with Rose about lunch.She heard the words ‘potato salad …’ and watched Chips frown with the effort of decision.
‘I might walk to the village this afternoon,’ Elizabeth said to no one in particular.‘See the world beyond the four walls.’
‘There’s nothing there,’ Chips said impatiently.‘A village hall, a church.’He shrugged.‘And it’s further than you think.If you want an excursion, at least let me plan something.There are Roman remains worth a visit.I can arrange it.’
‘But what if I don’t want you to arrange it?’Elizabeth asked.‘What if I want a tiny bit of a break from your arranging?’
‘How longareyou staying?’Chips asked.‘I don’t think you were ever terribly clear about that.’
‘Oh jolly good, Chips,’ Elizabeth said warmly, so that Brigid laughed.Chips shot her a nasty look and she turned the rest of the laugh into a cough.
‘We thought we’d walk to the river later,’ Brigid said hurriedly.‘Billy wanted to see it.’Kick couldn’t remember Billy saying anything of the sort, but he nodded now, and immediately Chips began to explain the best way to go – ‘Past the stables, but be careful when you reach the banks, they are less robust than they look.You don’t want a wetting.’
The duchess looked alarmed and he reassured her that the water was low and slow-moving.‘Hasn’t rained in weeks.The first big downpour will churn it, but for now it’s more of a trickle.’
Fritzi didn’t seem to know where he belonged, with the older or younger, and Kick felt sorry for him.‘Come and sit here,’ she said.‘We can be strangers together.’He smiled at her with, she thought, something of relief and sat in the chair she had indicated.Almost immediately he began to pay her compliments – how well she swam, how smooth and fast were her turns – that were tedious and laboured so that she regretted the kind impulse that had called to him.She remembered her father, ‘I want you to listen to what he has to say…’ But it seemed he had nothing to say.
‘No need to talk,’ she said firmly after a while.‘It’s nice to just sit here and hear the birds and the trees.’
‘It is,’ Fritzi agreed immediately.He closed his eyes, which had the effect of making Kick realise how tired he looked, dark purple circles and the pallor of late nights.But his silence left her free to listen to Billy, who was telling Hugo something about a car race he’d watched.His voice, she decided, might even be what she liked best about him.It was low and seemed to come from deeper in his chest than other people’s voices.He spoke slowly, as if half-inclined not to speak at all.And yet, there was nothing half-intentioned about what he said.So unlike Fritzi and his vague, almost rehearsed compliments.
