‘I need you to come with me to Kelvedon.’
‘Why do you need us to come with you to Kelvedon?’Maureen asked loudly, for Duff’s benefit.She saw him stop stirring, a silver cocktail stick in his hand.
‘Chips insists that we go, because the house is finally ready, and he has invited that young German prince he’s so fond of, who will be desperately dull.Brigid, who comes with us, is cross about it, and so Chips – no doubt thinking he was doing something terribly clever – has asked a heap of Americans also.The new ambassador, his no-doubt monstrous wife – did I tell you they haveninechildren?Roman Catholics of course; what can you expect?– and their daughter, for no better reason than that she is the same age as poor Biddy.You can’t imagine how I dread it all.So you see, you must come.’
‘The American ambassador, his wife and daughter, some German prince – aren’t they all done away with now?– and your little sister Brigid?’she recited for Duff.‘Not exactly the most irresistible, now, is it?’
‘Please, darling, you owe me.’
‘How do I owe you?’But she watched Duff, who stood still for a moment, then nodded his head several times at her.‘Never mind, you can tell me later.You’ll invent something, I have no doubt.And don’t forget I made you Sheridan’s godmother.But very well, we’ll come.And now you owe me double.’
‘Anything!I promise!’
When she had hung up, Maureen sank back against the sofa and held a hand up for the glass Duff brought over to her.‘I’m surprised you agreed.’
‘I want to know what Chips is up to with the American ambassador.’
‘Must he be up to something?’
‘He usually is.We need the Americans on our side because we need their money and their weapons, but Kennedy is a born appeaser, just like Chamberlain and Chips.My hope is if I can talk to him, point out how shortsighted they are, I can change his mind.Kelvedon might be a chance to do that.’
‘Such a bore,’ Maureen sighed.But really, the truth was, she was pleased.In London, there were so many claims on Duff’s time.There was the House, his duties as under-secretary of state for the colonies, the time he spent with Mr Churchill – ‘trying to ready ourselves for what is inevitable, so that we are not caught entirely napping when war is declared’ – his club, his many friends.Marjorie.
At Kelvedon, there would be nothing, except whatever shooting Chips arranged, and given how little he cared for blood sports or physical exertion, not much of that.The young people – Brigid, the Kennedy girl – would be of no interest to Duff, and surely there was a limit to how much Chips and an ambassador – even American – could monopolise him.No, he would be all hers.Nearly all hers.
Suddenly, she recalled the ambassador’s wife.She ran through the possibility of threat, imagining a chic, cosmopolitan sort of woman, someone with well-informed views and an air of discreet elegance.Maureen pursed her lips.Then remembered – this was the mother of nine.Some kind of an Irish Catholic.Immediately, the image of a svelte, mysterious, well-groomed sophisticate was replaced by a broad, red-cheeked lady with clothes bought to cover and hide rather than flatter.
Maureen smirked.No, this would be the perfect escape.She would have Duff beside her, with her.She knew he would never have agreed to a holiday – not with such trouble in Czechoslovakia; how sick she was of hearing that spikey-sounding word – except to Clandeboye, his estate in the north of Ireland, where Caroline and Perdita were.But Maureen had no intention of that; too draughty, too damp, too full of his mother, Lady Brenda.Such a happy accident after all, this visit to Kelvedon.
She must tell Honor to put them in the same room, she thought.And she must order some new underwear.She smiled.‘Come and sit beside me.’She patted the sofa.Duff first refilled his drink, then sat.
‘We could bring Sheridan?’he said, leaning back.‘Though a pity not to have the girls.’
‘The girls?’she said quickly.‘They would never get here on time.And besides they are in a routine with the governess.So important.As for Sheridan, too unfair on the little mite to be moved around.’She didn’t intend on sharing her husband with anyone, not even their son.‘And simply dreadful for Nanny.Besides, little Paul is a brute.I wouldn’t have Sheridan in any nursery with that child.Do you know what he did the other day?’And she launched into a story about Paul – urged by Chips to speak in French, stamping his foot and shouting, ‘I am not agarçon’ – that was intended to distract Duff, but also to show him how unsuitable it would be to expose Sheridan, the new Earl of Ava, to such company.‘It’s no wonder Honor never had another, if Paul is such a monster,’ she finished.
‘Hush, Maureen.’Duff put an arm around her shoulders and leaned his head towards hers so that their foreheads almost touched.‘You don’t know why there are no more.It is not right to speak of it.’He was so large and solid that she felt tiny, fragile, beside him.It was so rare that she felt those things.Only with Duff.Everyone else, she overpowered.Almost too easily.Men or women, it made little difference.Only Duff was able to make her feel that she was delicate, gossamer, beside the dense heft of him.
She buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in the smell that was entirely his.That mix of hair oil with its trace of clove, shaving foam, the French cigarettes he smoked, something that spoke of the damp, peaty air of Clandeboye and that never seemed to leave him no matter how long he spent in London.Her stomach lurched.
‘Come upstairs with me?’she said huskily, into his neck.‘We have hours before we need to dress for dinner.’
‘You go.I’ll follow you.’At the doorway, she looked back.Duff had got up and was at the drinks tray.As she watched, he reached for the decanter of brandy at the back.She must tell Manning not to bring brandy with the cocktails.
Chapter Nine
Kick
In the little upstairs study, Kick found her mother at her writing desk, as she had known she would.The desk was placed against the window looking out onto Prince’s Gate Gardens at the back of the house – a scrappy patch of grass and trees, nothing like the grandeur of Hyde Park to the front.‘Nothing distracting about that view,’ Rose had said when she first decided this was to be her study.Kick, who had known exactly that she would choose it – and why – had nudged Eunice.Both had been careful not to laugh.
Beside Rose, there was a stack of envelopes addressed in her neat, spidery hand.Thank-yous, invitations, letters of congratulation, of commendation, letters to the boys.And her scrapbook.As Kick watched, Rose finished cutting something from a newspaper, dabbed the back with glue from the little pot that had its own special place on the desk, and pasted it onto a page.Underneath the cutting she wrote something – the date, no doubt, a line perhaps with her recollections of the event.
‘Why?’Kick had asked once, when she was much younger, watching her mother fill in an index card following a visit by the doctor to Bobby.‘Laryngitis,’ her mother wrote, ‘salt water gargle.’
‘Lives need to be ordered,’ Rose had replied.‘There are many of you, and if I don’t keep careful track, you will run wild.I believe you will all go on to do great things, just as your father has, and my job is to keep account of that.’She never did specify what these ‘great things’ were to be.At least not for the girls.For the boys – they all knew Joe Jnr was to one day be president of the United States of America.In private, Kick and Jack called him ‘Pres’, in the same way they now called their father ‘Ambassador’ – it was a joke, or half a joke; the same as saying Jack would one day walk on the moon, except that when their father talked of such things he wasn’t joking.
‘There you are, Kathleen,’ Rose said now, not looking up.Only her mother called her that.Kick sat in the armchair set beside the window.The morning sun that came slanting in the corner fell onto her lap.She felt she could almost have petted it.She pulled her feet up onto the chair and tucked them in beside her.At that, Rose did look up.Quickly, Kick put her feet down again, crossing them neatly at the ankles.
‘The Buckingham Palace Garden Party tomorrow?’Her mother said.
