‘But I haven’t said I will go to the opera with you,’ she said.
No sign that he thought her rude crossed his smooth face.Instead, he smiled, showing such even white teeth that Brigid thought suddenly of Peter Pan, who had the perfect pearly teeth of childhood always.And how strange that was in a grown man.
‘No,’ he agreed.‘But I hope very much you will.’
Before she could respond, Chips cut in.‘Brigid, you are coming to Kelvedon for some days soon, is that not so?’
‘Yes,’ she said gratefully.‘The great unveiling.Chips has not allowed any of us to see this new home, even though he bought it nearly a year ago,’ she explained to Fritzi.
‘It wasn’t fit to be seen,’ Chips said.‘A party of nuns had had the place.First as a school, then an asylum of some kind.’He shuddered.
‘Only a man of your vision could have seen past that,’ Emerald said reassuringly.
‘Thank you.’He leaned forward and pressed her hand warmly.Honor looked up from her book, from one to the other, and smirked a little.‘I have had Gerald Wellesley – who will be Duke of Wellington,’ he explained to Ambassador Kennedy, ‘working on the place and finally, it is ready.We go down as a family party in a week or so.Fritzi, why not do us the honour of coming too?’
Fritzi bowed again and said, ‘I would be delighted,’ so quickly that Brigid knew immediately he had been asked already.Had already agreed, and that this was only pantomime for her benefit.
‘I must go,’ she said, standing.‘Mamma expects me back.’
‘I doubt it,’ Honor said, head bending once more to her book.‘She is at the Women’s Institute all afternoon.Destitute widows.Or is it orphans?’
‘Both.And nevertheless, I must go,’ Brigid said, furious that Honor should have contradicted her.She said only the briefest of goodbyes and ran down the stairs calling, ‘Andrews, my coat,’ as she went.
‘Wait, Brigid!’Chips caught her in the hallway.
‘Why did you do that?’She rounded on him.‘Invite him.I do not want him there at all.He is like a man made out of cardboard.Like the footmen in Cinderella, except they are made of mice.Or is it rats?’She was getting confused and incoherent in her anger.It always happened to her.Just when she most needed to be calm and aloof, she became flustered and tied herself in knots.
‘You’re cross,’ Chips said.‘I understand.I see it in your face.The way you stick your lower lip out – adorable!’And he reached a hand out and placed it against her cheek.His hand was smooth and cool and rested lightly, for just a moment.But the gesture was possessive.And something else that she didn’t understand.His hand may have been cool but his eyes were hot.‘I will make it up to you,’ he promised.‘I will ask your cousin Maureen—’
Brigid rolled her eyes.‘Hardly a real cousin.Years older.Honor’s cousin, if you will; not mine.’
‘Well, for Honor then, I will ask Maureen and Duff.Even though he is not at all sound on Germany.And for you, Kathleen Kennedy, so that you shall have a friend of your own.’
‘You can’t arrange us as you see fit, Chips,’ she said in irritation.‘We are not flowers in a vase.And I am not a child.You do not need to find friends for me.’
‘Of course you are not,’ he said.‘Not a child at all.’
Chapter Seven
Kick
It was the hour before anyone else was awake that Kick liked best.The hour when the house her father had found for them, Number Fourteen Prince’s Gate, was only the slightest bit stirring.If she listened carefully, she could hear the servants, so silent in that way of English servants, moving discreetly about, but nothing more.Even her mother, Rose, wasn’t up yet.
Kick was always first awake, it seemed.She’d always been like that, since she was a child, but now, since coming to London, more so than ever.It was as if there wasn’t time to do all the things she wanted to, because the things were so many.There was riding in Rotten Row, watching Teddy and Bobby sail their boats on the fountain, lunch at the Ritz, shopping at Harrods or any of the small boutiques that lay around that monumental department store, afternoon tea at home or at Fortum & Mason.
Most of all there were her new friends, these English girls, and boys, who couldn’t seem to get enough of her.Debo Mitford, who came to Prince’s Gate to listen to jazz on Kick’s gramophone, marvelling that she had the latest records.Hugh Fraser, David Ormsby-Gore, both young-seeming and bashful but awfully nice and always asking her out, driving her home, taking her about.
Almost from the moment they had arrived in England three months ago, the telephone at Prince’s Gate had rung and rung, and each time it was for her.‘Will you come for tea?For tennis?For a Friday-to-Monday in the country?’
And Kick had said yes to everything, so that by the time her mother arrived, weeks later, she had settled in such a way that even her mother was impressed.Not that Rose said so, but Kick could see it.
Those three weeks that Kick had been ahead of her had been wonderful.Straight off theQueen Mary, she had found the English to be so friendly, their press so interested in everything she had to say.Kick had felt instantly among friends – indeed, had spoken to the newsmen and photographers as if theywerefriends.She had been straight and open and funny and had not thought too much about being careful with her words.And everything she said was reported with enthusiasm and affection so that all of England seemed determined to see only the best in her, and her father laughed in approval and she could not seem to ‘put a foot wrong’.Then she began to understand, a bit, what he had meant when he told her to be ‘American’, not English.
When Rose arrived, Kick had assumed that she would be shuffled to the background again.But Rose had taken in the situation with her usual speed, noting the array of invitations on the chimneypiece, stiff pieces of white card with gold lettering.Her first action had been to order new clothes for Kick.Lots of them.Dresses, ball gowns, skirts, blouses, shoes, even new riding jackets.
Kick had always made friends easily.At the Sacred Heart Convent in Connecticut, she had been one of the popular girls.She also had what her mother called ‘the gift of knowing what to say’.Which Kick didn’t exactly understand, because she just said what she wanted to say without thinking too much about it.But it ‘came out right’, according to Rose.
She stretched and yawned.She wished her mother would let her get up and go downstairs this early.But Rose wouldn’t: ‘You’ll annoy the servants.’Not that she’d have allowed her lie in bed either, Kick thought with a grin.There was a ‘right’ time to be up, same as there was a ‘right’ way for everything – how to stand, how to run, how to play tennis, how to dance, how to take part in the heated debates about law and politics and society that happened when they were all around the table at dinner together.A ‘right’ way, that was a Kennedy way.
