Page 91 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
Chapter Forty-Five
Brigid
‘Iknew this outing was a mistake,’ Brigid muttered to Kick after they had wandered around for an hour or so, peering at a series of tumbled-down walls that meandered in and out of each other in a way that looked purposeful, if one could be bothered to decipher the purpose.There was a wind up there on the downs.She wished she’d brought a cardigan.
‘It’s kind of interesting, no?’
‘No.’
Kick looked at the place in front of her where a series of stone steps had been cut into the ground.‘This looks like it was a swimming pool.It’s very like the one at Kelvedon.Same size, same shape.I wonder did a lot of Roman versions of us play around in it?’
‘Who cares if they did?’Brigid wandered off.The day, she thought, had been deathly.The way Kick’s mother enthused about the ruins – apparently they were part of an old bathhouse or something – made her want to scream.Rose asked a million questions and put forward a million theories: ‘This must be where they …’ Even Chips began to flag.As for the ambassador, he took a quick and cursory look, pronounced it ‘very interesting’, then went to sit in the motorcar with the newspaper and a writing pad, saying he must work.Brigid could see him now, chewing the end of his fountain pen.
Standing there in the brisk force of the wind, she realised how tightly Kelvedon was squashed into its sheltered hollow.Like being in a closed fist, she thought, wrapped tight and hot inside something that yielded to a push but did not willingly open.She stretched her arms out on either side, leaning into the wind that seemed as though it would bear her up.She revelled in the space, the expanse of land around her that travelled on in rolls of springy turf, to the horizon.Was it really only a few days since they arrived?It felt as though they had all been cooped up in that house for far longer, boiling and suffocating together.
‘You look like you’re about to float away,’ Fritzi said, coming to stand beside her.
‘Don’t you feel like you could just let go, and the wind would hold you up?’
‘It wouldn’t.’
She sighed.‘I know it wouldn’t, I said don’t youfeellike it would.Go on, lean back, into it.Put your arms out and let it take over.’He did as she said, cautiously – ‘Arms further out!’she instructed – then smiled.
‘I see what you mean.Like the old feather beds in my grandfather’sschloss.They were stuffed so full, it was like flying.I used to imagine I was on the back of an enormous goose, soaring above the Swabian mountains.’
Brigid burst out laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You.On a giant goose.’
He smiled at her.‘I imagined that I could see everything below, not just theschlosswith all its turrets and flags flying, but the villages with their little houses, the fields, the farmers, their beasts.Women churning butter, brewing beer, even sewing tiny pieces of fabric together to make quilts.’
‘You know, that’s the first thing I’ve heard you say that isn’t entirely practical,’ Brigid said thoughtfully.‘Just as I had given up believing there was anything romantic to you at all.’
‘It’s not that I am unromantic,’ he protested.‘It is that this is not a time for romance.’
‘I don’t know,’ Brigid said lazily.‘Others seem to think it is.Kick, and maybe Billy.’She looked sideways at Fritzi, but he didn’t seem interested in whatever she was hinting at.‘The threat of war, of change, talk of young men enlisting.I mean, I know it’s horrid, but surely there is something a little romantic about it?’
‘Not for me,’ he said.‘For me, it is only alarming.’
‘Why?You start these things, and then you don’t finish them.’Severely.‘What exactly is so alarming for you?More than for others?Most young men are silly about war.’
‘I feel I am a tethered goat – made to stand and be seen that I may bring the lions prowling around me,’ he said bitterly.‘And they in turn may be seen and be shot.Or seen and approached, I am not even sure which.’
‘Who are the lions?’Brigid asked, trying to follow his thoughts, which – just like the giant goose – were so unlike his usual practicalities.
‘I don’t know that either.Only, I know that my family are part of it, and that they think less of me than they do of themselves.’
‘They throw you out, like bait, to see who will be drawn?’
‘Exactly.’
She felt suddenly sorry for him.His English was no longer faultless.If anything, he struggled to express himself, and where he struggled, there was the hint, now, of an accent.Instead of the polished young man, he seemed confused.Unhappy.Human.
‘You could say no,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t.’
