‘Poor Honor,’ Doris said.
They began walking again, and reached the swimming pool.Brigid made no move to change, just dropped her towel on the little wrought-iron table.Behind them, a bird sang urgently into the still morning.Perhaps it knew the gathering heat would soon defeat it, Doris thought.
‘Yes.But I do not know what to do for her.I have tried, you know.’Brigid looked earnestly at her.‘I really have.Patsy too.But we do not know what to say and she will not talk to us; behaves as though we’re still in the schoolroom and too young to be told.I’m glad you’re back.’
‘I’m glad too.’
Kick came into sight, running towards them from the house, already changed into her bathing suit, a white towelling robe draped over it.‘Sometimes I look at Honor and I think – that’s what Chips wants for me,’ Brigid blurted out, just before Kick came into earshot.‘A husband who hardly knows me and hardly considers me.A marriage just like his.And then sometimes I think he would be happy to replace my sister with me, should she really leave him.And that’s why he doesn’t push harder for Fritzi or Billy Cavendish.’
Doris was too shocked to respond.She stood and said nothing, and then it was too late.
‘I’ll race you,’ Kick called, reaching them and throwing off her robe.From the far end, she executed a perfect dive and swam the length of the pool underwater, surfacing to call, ‘Come on, Biddy!Hurry up!’In all that sparkling water, she was, Doris thought, as though made of water too; just as quick and shining and supple.She sat and watched the girls swim and splash, remembering the elastic bounce of youth and how quickly misery could be swapped for joy.She saw Fritzi arrive and tell them it was time to leave, that Chips was impatient.He waved to her, and asked how she did, but he didn’t blush, or linger, or try to find an excuse to sit with her.Doris smiled to herself.
She had known he would be here, of course she had, but nothowhe would be here; the friendship with Brigid and Kick that made him an actual person, out of uniform and suddenly real.How naive he seemed when no longer yoked to the ugly Nazi pageantry of cross and badge.Last night, when the three of them had come back from their walk, cheeks pink, brimming with mischief and something else – something that had overtaken them out there in the evening air – she had known instantly that her plans must change.
She had learned – long learned – to have many plans, all mutable, so that she might always be in motion towards a goal that shifted frequently, as circumstances shifted.Always the same goal, but aimed at by different routes.She had learned to abandon one plan and follow another, even while she looked to do nothing much at all.To make use of circumstances as she found them and to keep her net wide open.And so, after the tennis tournament in which they had played so well side by side, when Albert had tried to kiss her, rain streaming down his face, she had let him.Later, when she twigged that there was, or might be, some glimmer of friendship between Brigid and Fritzi, she had been glad to have another plan already part begun that she might switch her efforts to.
She had seen immediately that this – Brigid and Fritzi – was a scheme of Chips’, which made her suspicious that it could be any good.And yet, she had also seen an affection in the way Brigid and Fritzi looked at one another, that might be nothing and might be something if only they were left alone.How funny that the person most likely to destroy Chips’ plans was Chips himself.
Either way, she decided, she would do nothing.She would not build upon that early admiration for her that Fritzi had shown in Berlin.She would be cool and distant and avoid any kind of intimate conversation.It was exactly what she’d been told not to do – make her own plans.How lucky there was Albert!A plan begun without any great foresight.Rather, she thought with a smile, like coming across a safety pin and picking it up and putting it in a pocket, in case, only to find sometime later that a tear required it.How pleased one felt then, to put a hand in and discover that casually collected thing.Except it wasn’t casual, not exactly, but rather the knowledge born of experience – anything might prove useful; turn nothing away.Let things found by chance be gathered by design.She didn’t yet know what she expected, or even hoped, of Albert.Only that he was more than he said, and at such a time, that was enough.Perhaps he was simply a crook and had a bad past to hide.Perhaps he was in love with the wrong person, or had once been close to a dubious politician.But perhaps it was more?If he was here with Fritzi then it might well be more.Whatever it was, Doris intended to find out.
She sighed, and stretched in the morning sun and yawned.
She was tired, she knew it.Tired from having to be so constantly in motion, always planning and watching; tired too from the need to be charming and seductive, to flatter men and find out what they knew without ever asking.Well, it wouldn’t be for much longer.
Chapter Forty-Two
Honor
Honor waited until she heard the cars depart before getting up.She had listened to the voices – Chips’, as always, loudest – in the corridor outside her room and later in the hallway below, and tried to decipher who was going and who staying.She heard Rose Kennedy’s quiet tones and assumed if Rose was going the ambassador was too.Brigid and Kick were clearly of the party – Brigid barged in, hair still wet, to ask if she might borrow a sunhat, her own was lost – and Maureen, just as clearly, was not.Elizabeth, she felt she need not even ask.Duff?She hoped, if Maureen wasn’t going, that he was.The idea of a day alone with the two of them, if they were anything like the mood of the evening before, was too much.
And Doris?There, she felt as certain as she had of Elizabeth; Doris would not be going.She dressed quickly, unwilling to wait for her maid; unwilling to waste a minute of a day that stretched before her with such glorious freedom.It would be hours before they returned.She had heard Chips talk of a picnic.
She checked her reflection in the long looking-glass.How drained she looked.Dark shadows under her eyes that did not – as they did with Doris – make her look fragile or interesting.Honor just looked exhausted.Defeated.She sucked in her stomach and stood sideways.She was getting stout.
She looked out the window.At the far end, beside the pool house, she made out a figure in a broad-brimmed hat sitting at the little table.It was a woman, but the hat was angled in such a way that Honor couldn’t see her face.The woman poured herself a cup of coffee from a silver pot that caught the sun and sent it winking cheerily on.The way she lifted the coffee cup to her lips and drank told Honor it wasn’t Maureen or Elizabeth.
Quickly, she finished pinning back her hair and pulled on a pair of sunglasses.The idea of a morning, even an hour, alone with Doris in the swirling shade of the old elm beside the pool house was delightful.It was the certain knowledge that Chips was away, could not come upon them or send for her or intrude.Knowing she would not hear the sound of his voice, catch sight of him in his pale flannels crossing a path or catch a breath of his cologne on the breeze, was as galvanising as the sound of the huntsman’s horn used to be in the days when she got up early on winter mornings.She felt a busy stirring of excitement.
‘Tell Andrews I will take breakfast outside,’ she said to her maid when she came with tea.‘Ask him to bring a fresh pot of coffee.And you may take the morning off.Miss Ponsonby can look after herself, if she gets up.’
Doris, she thought as she drew close, still looked tired.But she turned her face to Honor and gave her a dazzling smile.‘Come and sit this side,’ she said, moving her chair up.‘The shade is better.’
‘More coffee is on the way,’ Honor said, sitting down.
‘And there I was, wondering if there was any way this day could be more perfect.’
‘I thought you might need another cup,’ Honor said.
‘Did you?’Doris opened her eyes wide.‘Why on earth?’
‘Don’t tease, darling.Now tell, what were youdoing, out in the early morning with the dew still wet on the ground?’
‘I could tell you what I told Chips, and Brigid, and Rose, and all the others who have asked,’ Doris said slyly.‘An early-morning walk, on a beautiful day.’
‘But you won’t,’ Honor said, settling back in her chair.She took one of the freshly baked biscuits Andrews had brought with the coffee.
‘If you must know, I was coming back.’
