Page 95 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Don’t be silly.It’s about Albert.Elizabeth saw him in the village today.’
‘So she did go?She didn’t walk there in those silver shoes?’
‘No.Took the maid’s bicycle.’
‘Goodness, how naughty.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the point.She saw Albert.’
‘Perhaps it’s his day off.’
‘Doris, it’s a Friday.It certainly is not his day off.Anyway, Elizabeth said that he was talking to a chap in a navy car, and when he saw her, he was shocked and moved himself around to avoid being seen by her, only it was too late.’
‘Is she certain it was him?’
‘Yes, she says; positive.She says it was the way he pretended he hadn’t seen her.She says she can always tell.’
‘Yes, I imagine she can.Poor Elizabeth.Well, there may be an entirely innocent explanation.’
‘There may indeed.But also there may not.And I thought you should know.’
‘Yes, I see.I mean, it still doesn’t answer any of my questions, only confirms that I’m right to ask them.I’d better make a telephone call.May I?From somewhere rather quieter than the library?’
‘I’ll ask Andrews to bring the telephone to my room.’
Back in Honor’s room, once the telephone had been brought, Doris said, ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave me alone.I’m sorry.It’s frightfully rude.’
‘That’s perfectly alright, darling.’Then, when she reached the door, ‘Doris, you will be careful, won’t you?Remember, if you know and suspect things about Albert, he may know and suspect things about you.’
‘How clever you always are, dearest Honor.But please, do not by even a whisper suggest such a thing.Will you wait outside the door, in case your husband tries to come in?’
‘It is highly unlikely that he will,’ Honor said.
‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be just like him to come now?’Doris laughed.‘When he is least wanted.’
‘I’ll stand guard.’
Chapter Forty-Seven
Brigid
Back at Kelvedon the house was quiet but with something fractious about it, Brigid thought, as though they had arrived a split second after raised voices and slammed doors, so that there was silence, yes, but the air was disturbed; bunched and agitated.As if all the talk of war and bad things that had fluttered overhead for so long now that she almost couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t there, had landed, like a flock of starlings.Only there were more of them, many more, than anyone expected.
She shook the feeling off.It was still just talk.Probably, she thought, the talk would go on and on, and then one day it would stop, like a toothache, and almost you wouldn’t notice it had stopped until weeks or months had gone by and you were able to look back and go ‘… funny, no one says those sad, grim things anymore …’
She smoothed out her sunhat – Honor’s sunhat – distracting herself with trying to unroll the creases she had made.But it didn’t work, the feeling persisted.When the sound of Paul crying from the nursery upstairs started, it wasn’t, Brigid thought, anewsound, but rather an old sound, paused, then taken up again.
‘Andrews, where is Mrs Channon?’Chips asked, coming into the hall.
‘Down at the stables, sir.’
‘The stables?Why?’
‘She and Miss Coates have taken sugar to the horse, sir.’
‘That beast is a nuisance.Shouldn’t even be there.Very well.I am going to the nursery.’
He was, Brigid reflected, at his most appealing when with his son.His gentle concern for Paul made him more human than at any other time.She’d seen the way Honor looked at Paul, the reluctance with which she took his hand, the formal way she spoke to him.As though he were a stranger, and not a terribly interesting one at that.It bothered Brigid.She knew it bothered their mother too, although Lady Iveagh had never spoken of it.
