‘No,’ Brigid agreed.‘Mamma says I have no need of a proper maid yet.And so I must share you with the stairs and the dusting.’
‘Don’t make me choose,’ Minnie said.‘Now, get on with you.I will come and do your hair in a bit.You can look out your own clothes.’
Arriving at Number Five Belgrave Square that afternoon, Brigid gave her coat to Andrews and started across the vast hall.Her heels clipped smartly on the marble tiles and as always she had to stifle a laugh at the opulence around her.The hall reached up and around, disappearing into the dim, echoey depths of the house.Everywhere was warm brown marble, softly shining wood and polished mirrors in gilt frames, so that she caught glimpses of her reflection trying to draw her on, this way and that, among the many urns and objects.
‘It’s as if he has created a zoo for things,’ Patsy had whispered to her, the first time they came to the house, nearly two years ago.
‘Perhaps they will mate with one another,’ Brigid had whispered back, causing Patsy to snigger.
She waited now, looking at the paintings that stared down upon her from gilt frames; some simpering, some stern.Ladies and gentlemen of other times, brought together by Chips as witness to his triumph.Somewhere, she knew, there was a Boucher, a voluptuous nude, that had caused her father consternation when Honor had shyly asked for money to buy it.‘Six thousand pounds,’ her father had said, scandalised.‘For a painting of someone else’s dead relative.What can he possibly want with such a thing?’
Chips came bustling into the hallway then to greet her, kissing her on both cheeks in a way that she found excessive and taking both her hands in his.‘Let me look at you.Exquisite, as ever.’His eyes ran over her as though they poured something hot and wet across her face, and Brigid felt – as Chips often made her feel – like she was something for sale in a window that had caught his eye.
‘I hear you were at the Café de Paris last night,’ he almost whispered as he leaned in.‘Oh, don’t worry, I won’t tell.’He twinkled at her.‘I believe you were in very jolly company.Young Billy Cavendish.Hugh Fraser.’
‘Tell if you like,’ Brigid said.‘I mean, there is nothing to tell.’She shrugged.‘We danced.Then we danced some more.Hugh ran me home.Everyone was perfectly pleasant and proper and terribly dull.And that’s it, all there, in a nutshell.Nothing to tell.Nothing tonottell.’If she had hoped to irritate Chips, she failed.
‘You say “pleasant and proper” as though they are bad things.’He twinkled at her, all approval and conspiracy, until Brigid laughed and said, ‘Where is my sister?’
‘Upstairs.Come.’
In the first-floor drawing room, Honor sat beside the fire with a book.She looked, Brigid thought, tired and heavy but her face brightened when she saw Brigid.
‘Darling!How lovely.I have a postcard here for you, from Doris.Came this morning.’She handed Brigid a card.On the front was a cartoon of a jolly-looking pig wearing a top hat and tails.On the back, Doris had written ‘Darling Biddy – you don’t mind that I still call you that, do you?– I saw this dear fellow and thought, is he not fine?And yet a pig still, beneath it all.’
Brigid laughed.She knew well that Doris was teasing her.She must have seen some of the society pages that went on about ‘Lady Brigid Guinness, splendid in tulle, with a tiara of emeralds on her head, attends Lady Astor’s ball’ and was gently mocking her, reminding her that she was still her same self beneath all the fuss.Long ago, when Brigid was still in the schoolroom, they had both agreed that pigs were ‘quite the cleverest animals, though horses are the dearest’.
‘Did she write to you too?’she asked Honor, tucking the card away in the pocket of her cardigan.
‘She did.’Honor made a face.‘It’s never enough.But better than nothing.’Then, ‘I’ll ring for tea.Chips, you needn’t stay.’Secretly, Brigid hoped he would.She didn’t trust Chips – not at all – but the truth was, he was better company than her sister.
‘But I do need.We have other guests.’Chips wagged his finger at Honor in a way that could only have been annoying, Brigid thought.Sure enough, a look of irritation flashed across Honor’s face.She wore no lipstick, Brigid saw, and whatever powder she had applied earlier had settled into the deepening crease between her eyebrows and the grooves on either side of her mouth so that her face seemed clogged and weary.
‘Chips, I thought we agreed not …’
‘It’s only Fritzi,’ he said.‘Company for Lady Brigid.You remember him, Brigid; you danced with him at your coming-out ball?’
‘I danced with everyone at my coming-out ball,’ Brigid replied.
‘Why does she need company?’Honor interjected.‘I am company for her.’
‘I have asked Ambassador Kennedy to join us too,’ Chips said smoothly.‘He is still quite newly arrived from America, and given my position in parliament—’
‘Secretary to an under-secretary,’ Honor said scathingly.
Chips ignored her.‘—I must make an effort.After all, it is vital he meet the right sort of English person.’
‘And what sort might that be?’
‘The sort who will steer him away from belligerents like Churchill.Who will show him the side of the angels, led by Chamberlain, those dedicated to finding common ground with Germany, which I believe is exactly what he wants.I have asked Emerald too,’ he added.
‘He must meet “the right sort of English person”,’ Honor said, ‘and so you bring him together with two Americans – oh, you may be lapsed, and Emerald may be married to Lord Cunard, but you and she are still Americans – and a Prussian.’She started to laugh.‘Chips, you are the limit.’Her laughter was thin wire, Brigid thought, but he smiled benignly at her.
‘If you say so, my dear.But we understand the ambassador’s mission more clearly than most.The importance of it.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is simple.’He looked triumphant.‘Roosevelt must be persuaded to follow his heart and keep America out of international affairs.And Ambassador Kennedy is the key to that.If we can let him see there is no appetite here for a fight with Germany, that on the contrary, we are a country keen to stay friends, to foster better understanding with the Reich, then all the dreadful talk of war will disperse, simply melt away.’He fluttered his fingertips at her.‘And we can allget onwith things again.’
