‘Yes.’Kick settled herself more comfortably.‘We’re to be there for three and Their Majesties arrive at four.Debo says white or cream, and lace or applique, not silk.Oh, and gloves!She says it’s a scrum, and the shaking hands is endless.Without gloves, your hands will be filthy.It all sounds boring as anything.’But she spoke affectionately.So much of what had struck her at first as stuffy, or silly, in England – the excessive formalities and implacable bits of tradition – she was now indulgent of, even secretly thrilled by.She had begun to delight in knowing what was expected.Even though she still broke the rules, more and more she did it because she could, and not because she didn’t know what the rules were.When she stayed sitting at a dinner table with the men rather than getting up to leave with her hostess, she knew very well what was expected of her.And she also knew that her not leaving would be greeted by a laugh.London society had decided she was to be indulged and petted rather than despised.There was something in the knowledge that she clung to: a freedom, a way to be both inside and out.But more than that.If London society was a game – and clearly it was a game, with very complicated rules – then she planned to win, same as she would win any game.This was a way to do that.To beat all those English girls on their own turf, so that by the time she went home to America, she would know that she had started as the underdog and come out ahead.And, she thought wryly, it was protection too.It meant that if she really did do something terrible – ask the king a direct question or put on lipstick in public – well, they would forgive her.
‘I’ll need you to watch Rosemary,’ Rose said.‘She is invited, and therefore must come, but I don’t want her out of our sight.’Kick sighed.It was harder now to keep Rosemary from wandering if she took a mind to.She was stubborn and resisted the way their mother tried more and more to box her in.
‘Of course,’ she said.Because even more, she disliked the knowledge that her mother would use Rosie’s unruliness as an excuse to leave her out.
*
The garden party was even more boring than Debo had hinted.
‘Like Fourth of July celebrations but without the fireworks,’ Kick said, looking around at the crowds.‘Or a race meeting without a race.Why do they all come?’
‘To see who else is here,’ Debo said.
‘Really?That’s it?’
‘What else?’Debo opened her lace parasol and held it above her head.‘Can’t we find some shade?It’s simply too hot.’
‘Any bit of shade I can see is full of old people,’ Kick said with a laugh.‘That’s where they’re congregating, like horses in a field.’Her own parents were sitting defiantly in the open at a round table set up almost in the centre of the vast lawn.Rose, face half-hidden under a smart broad-brimmed hat, was slim and elegant in cream.Her father, distinguished in tails.Around them were some of the people Kick had learned were part of what was called the Cliveden Set – Lady Astor, Lord Halifax, others she didn’t yet know – whose views her father approved of.But Kick was starting to understand that for all the British were so polite to each other, and invited these people to their balls and houses, they didn’t all think like that; like Lady Astor, like her father.Not about Germany.Or anything, really.But then, that’s what old people did, she thought.Disagreed with each other and tried to pretend that it mattered what someone said or another thought.Presumably because they had nothing better to do.No more fun to have.
This lot certainly didn’t seem to be having much fun, she thought, looking at them huddled together, heads pushed forward into the centre of the table, presumably that they might better hear each other.Only her mother sat back, angled away from the table, watching what went on around her.She would, Kick knew, turn their way any moment.She checked that Rosemary was still beside her, still neat and pretty.
‘I’m going to get more lemonade,’ Debo said.‘Will you stay or come?’
‘I’ll stay,’ Kick said.‘I can’t bring myself to push through that crowd again.My heels sink into the ground and I feel like I’m hobbling.Rosie and I can sit on the grass.’They sat on their lace shawls and Rosie chatted about the dresses she liked.Kick was conscious of the disapproving looks from people standing around them, but it was too hot to care.The weather lay over everything like a damp blanket, as though to make sure nothing caught fire, she thought with a laugh.
She was in the middle of the laugh when Debo came back, with a couple of glasses and a tall young man with a high forehead and a thin smile who carried a jug of lemonade.‘Billy Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington,’ Debo said.‘Billy, Kathleen Kennedy, but we call her Kick.’
‘How d’you do?’Billy said.
Terrible teeth, was Kick’s first thought.Was it always to be her first thought in England?But then he sat easily down beside her and Rosemary, folding up his long arms and legs in a pleasantly shabby set of tails, and poured them lemonade from the jug.‘I hear an awful lot about you these days, you know,’ he said to Kick, with a smile that lit up his face and didn’t just twitch at his top lip.
‘Do you?’she asked.‘Nothing too terrible I hope?’It was silly stuff, but he responded gallantly and soon he was chatting away to them – her and Rosemary both – while Debo watched.Around them, people wandered past, many of them stopping to salute Billy, or put a hand on his shoulder as they went by.The disapproving looks were far less, Kick saw, now that Billy sat with them.
When it was time to go he helped them to their feet, one after another, Kick last.He didn’t linger with her hand in his, as Jack or Joe’s friends would have, but ‘I might see you later,’ he said.‘At the Mountbattens’?’
‘Oh, you will,’ Debo assured him.‘Everyone wants a look at Edwina’s new flat.They say it’s the biggest flat in London.Apenthouse, apparently,’ she opened her eyes wide, ‘whatever that could possibly be.’
‘It just means the top floor,’ Kick said with a laugh at Debo’s affectation.‘Nothing to be too worried about.’She laughed again and Billy laughed too.A real laugh, she thought, not a politeEnglishlaugh.And he looked at her for longer than English people usually looked.Right at her, rather than slightly over her shoulder.She wondered had Debo noticed.She needed someone to tell her she was right, not imagining things.
‘Isn’t he wonderful?’she said as they went to find their cars.
But Debo didn’t seem to have noticed.She laughed.‘You still haven’t met many Englishmen, have you?He’s really very ordinary.Simplythousandsjust like him.One day he’ll be Duke of Devonshire, but other than that, I doubt there’s anything at all to single him out.’
That evening, Kick dressed with more than usual care.She would never be the most beautiful girl in London, she knew that it was her way of being ‘jolly fun’ that people – men – liked, but she wanted to look as well as she could.Because Debo was wrong, she decided.There weren’t thousands like Billy.And neither, she thought, did Billy think there were thousands like her.
The Mountbattens’ flat was at the top of a vast new block, with views across all of London.‘It used to be all one house,’ Debo said, ‘Brook House.Edwina’s grandfather bought it.Farve says he was a filthy Hun so he loathed him,’ she continued comfortably.‘He tries to loathe Edwina too, but admits it’s impossible.’
They went up in a spacious lift, mirrored on every side so that their reflections came back to them over and over.Kick watched her own familiar face from so many angles, then Debo’s wide-apart blue eyes and neat mouth.Such a candid face, Kick thought; as unruffled as a child’s.That was part of Debo’s charm – the extraordinary placidity of her features, and the whirling mind behind them.
Debo nudged her.‘The mirrors are so Edwina can see if any of her lovers is about to jump out at her,’ she said.‘You know she is the most scandalous woman in London?’
Kick giggled and was still giggling when the lift opened into a marble hallway and a tall woman in gold silk evening dress, her honey-brown hair dressed in sleek waves, came to greet them.She felt foolish and tried to cover it by being as ‘American’ as she knew how.This was how she phrased it to herself when she was particularly casual and irreverent.‘You must be able to see all the way into the king’s dressing room from here,’ she said.Lady Mountbatten just smiled.
‘Come and have a drink,’ she said vaguely, turning away towards a vast drawing room that was white and gold and filled with flowers.
Debo nudged Kick once again.‘Her husband is the king’s cousin,’ she hissed, half laughing, but half not.‘He is always in that dressing room.’
Kick tried not to feel idiotic.How was she supposed to know?she thought.Why, if they came to America, there would be a million things they didn’t know.
