‘You’re more a tribe than a family,’ Debo Mitford had said the first time she had seen them all together.That was in the weeks after they had met at Queen Charlotte’s ball; Kick had stood in a long line of debutantes, dressed in white like a flock of geese, as they stepped forward one by one and curtsied to a giant cake.How Kick had wished she had Eunice with her, that they might laugh together at the absurdity.All around her, girls were solemn and pious.And then, ‘Charmed,Your Majesty,’ she heard the girl in front of her murmur, as she swept low and graceful towards the floor.Kick had snorted with laughter, and the girl, turning to cede her place, had winked at her.Debo.They had been friends ever since.
‘It’s because we are so many,’ Kick had said.
‘It’s not just that,’ Debo had mused.‘You’re like us.You have your own language and ways of behaving, and you seem terrifying to outsiders but you aren’t.Not really.Except –’ with a laugh ‘– your mother.She is terrifying.’
‘You do remember that I have met your father?’Kick had said.
Debo had laughed again and said, ‘Yes but Farve is a poppet really, underneath all the shouting.Your mother, underneath all the quietness, is steel.’
Kick checked her watch.Still too early.She got up anyway, pulling on a cardigan although it was already warming to what looked like another bright day.She went to the window, pulling herself up onto the high seat where she could look down at Prince’s Gate below.A man with a cart and a shabby pony was walking slowly past.In the back of his cart were piled heaps of clothes.Kick could make out old suit jackets, the arms pulled inside out, and flowery dresses of the sort women of her mother’s age wore.Not her mother.Rose would never wear something so dowdy.Even for gardening and quiet afternoons at home, she was always crisply dressed in exactly the right outfit.That was a gift she had.
Behind the pony-and-cart came the knife grinder on his bicycle, with his grinding stone strapped to the front where he would work it with the same pedals that he used for cycling.From the house three doors down, a nursemaid came down the front steps with a pram.Must be a difficult baby, Kick decided with the wisdom of an elder sister.It wasn’t at all the right time for a walk.The English, she had discovered, were like her mother.They had a right time and a wrong time for everything.Anything that happened outside those times, well, there had to be a reason.
Teddy came in then, tapping once at the door and pushing it open.He was dressed, but wore his fawn-coloured dressing gown loosely belted over his clothes and his feet were bare.‘Will you come with us to the zoo today?’he said, putting up his arms for Kick to lift him onto the window seat.
‘Sure.What are you doing at the zoo?’Kick settled him in beside her, an arm around his shoulders.
‘There’s a new petting zoo and we’re cutting the ribbon.Mother says we may stay and play with the animals.They say there’s going to be a baby elephant, and lambs.Bobby’s coming too but I’m the one cutting the ribbon,’ he said proudly.‘Even though I’m only ten and he’s thirteen.’
‘Wouldn’t miss it, kid,’ Kick said.
‘We’re going to sail our boats on the pond in the park after breakfast.Will you come to that too?’
‘Can’t.And shouldn’t you be preparing a speech or something?’
‘No speeches.They promised.Only ribbons.’His hair stuck up in tufts and Kick smoothed it down with one hand.They looked down at the street below, busier now.The milk float had pulled up, empties rattling loudly in their wire crates.The milkman jumped down and began stacking bottles of milk against the black area railings at the top of the steps that led down to the basement.
‘He’s supposed to go round the back,’ Teddy said.‘He never does.’
Another knock at the door, even more ghostly a tap than Teddy’s.The maid, with tea.
‘At last,’ Kick said, jumping down and holding out her arms for Teddy to jump into them.
‘Your mother says you’re to go to her study when you’re dressed,’ the maid said.
‘Can I go?’Teddy asked.
‘She didn’t say for you to,’ the maid said.Kick could see she was awkward.If Rose hadn’t sent for Teddy, it meant she didn’t want to see Teddy.But the maid didn’t know how to say that.
‘You go down and have breakfast, Ted,’ she said.‘Cook said there’d be kippers.Come and see Mother after you sail your boat.’
She looked out the window again.The street below had emptied except for the nursemaid with the high pram now on her way back from the park.Kick opened the window a crack and heard the sound of crying.The nursemaid jiggled the pram, rather too hard, and the baby cried all the more.Kick was tempted to run down and show her how Kikoo always did it, but as she watched, she saw her father step out the polished front door of Number Fourteen and start briskly down the steps.She rapped on the glass and called out.He looked up and, seeing her, waved, then set off down the street towards Westminster, as he did every morning.She tried to be there when he left each day, to see him off.At that hour, Rose was at her writing desk, and the small moment of farewell was a way for Kick to feel there was still the link between her and the ambassador that she had felt on theQueen Maryand before her mother arrived.
‘I’m off to keep the peace,’ he would say jauntily.‘Like a traffic light on “red” for stop.’But in the evenings, when he came home, he was far less jaunty.‘There are more of the warmongers than I expected,’ he had admitted to her the day before.‘And they are madder than I hoped.But still not so mad that they would go to war without American help, and so I will stop them.’
‘Of course you will,’ she’d assured him.‘It’s the right thing, and so you will.’
It was the right thing, she thought now, watching him disappear around the corner.How could anyone not see that?
Chapter Eight
Maureen
The sound of Duff’s feet on the stairs woke Maureen.No one, she thought, trod with such brisk firmness as her husband.She sat up quickly.She had fallen asleep on a sofa in the drawing room – a long time ago, judging by the gloom of the room.It was nearly evening.Beside her, Pugsy was asleep too, snuffling gently, head sunk on his paws.‘In here,’ she called, in case Duff should carry on upstairs to his rooms.And then again, louder, for fear he hadn’t heard her, ‘In here.’
The feet stopped and Duff’s head appeared around the door.‘Why so dark?’
‘I was busy writing letters.I hadn’t realised how late it was,’ she said, hiding a yawn.Thank goodness the lamp on the small corner desk was lit.The pool of yellow light was enough, just, to have been writing by.She didn’t want Duff to know she had spent the afternoon alone and asleep.
