Page 33 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘What is it?’Maureen asked, in genuine curiosity.‘The Channon coat of arms?’She started to laugh.
‘Don’t tease, Maureen.Chips is very pleased with it.’
‘Look.’Elizabeth was awake.‘There’s a tiny disembodied arm coming out the top, clutching, what is that … mistletoe?I suppose that would make sense, given Chips’ reputation …’ Then, catching sight of Honor’s face, ‘Sorry, darling.Too much?’
‘Too much.’
The gates were opened by a small boy in a checked cap, his face burnt and freckled by the sun.On each side of the road stood a shiny new lodge, the two joined by an archway overhead.‘It’s like driving through a wedding cake,’ Brigid said, looking around at the glossy white plaster of the lodges and up at the castellated arch above them.
They continued in silence up the straight tree-lined avenue until they came within sight of the house at the far end of a long, manicured lawn.No trace here of the blistering sun that had parched the fields and turned London streets fetid.Everything was green and fresh and soft and new, grass mown in stripes like a calico bedspread.
Maureen started to laugh.‘How very like Chips.’
‘What do you mean?’Honor asked.Half of her wanted to hear Maureen mock Chips as only Maureen could.The other half felt furious that her cousin should think to sneer at the man she had married.
‘After all that – all that looking, all that rejecting, all that talk of somewhere fitting to his place in society – and in the end he settles for something so … suburban.’
‘Hardly!’Honor said.‘Georgian.Late Georgian.’
‘But so very square and red-brick.So neat and tidy andcontained.Nothing like Elveden at all.Quite the pocket squire, isn’t he?’
‘Maureen, if you’re going to be—’
‘I’m not, I promise.I’ll be as good as gold.It’s only that, in comparison with Clandeboye …’
‘Must we endlessly have comparisons with Clandeboye?Not everyone wants to live in a vast tumbling-down barracks of a place, you know.Why, there are entire wings that are scarcely habitable.And I believe you still have never seen the kitchens.’
‘Why would I want to see the kitchens?’Maureen asked, eyes open wide.
Inside, Brigid ran about exclaiming at everything she saw.Honor hadn’t been there since well before the work was complete, and found herself marvelling – again – at the sheer determination of Chips’ vision.The last time she’d seen Kelvedon, there had lingered, still, a distinct memory of nuns and institutional living.Dim light and the acrid smell of fatty oil lamps.A kind of sad communality born of sacrifices to economic efficiency – how best to keep the most people, spending the least money.It had been badly heated so there was a general air of damp and even patches of mildew.Hasty sectioning of grand rooms had meant a warren of smaller ones; even – she shuddered at the recollection – a kind of communal lavatory block where a row of stalls stood side by side, seven or eight of them, each with a corresponding small washstand.
Now, not a trace of these bleak efficiencies remained.Nor any hint of what she had then smelled in the air – boiled cabbage and dashed hopes.Now, the hall was painted a celestial blue with plasterwork picked out in white.A plump sofa upholstered in a deeper blue and white, heaped with silk cushions, stood invitingly in an alcove.On the polished floor were thick Persian rugs, overhead swung a chandelier so fat with carved fruit and flowers that, should it crash to the ground, as seemed possible given its weight, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see actual pulp and flesh and petals mashed into the marble floor.Through the open front door behind them came the smell of fresh-mown grass, joined from somewhere else by that of newly baked bread.
Chips, although he had left later, had taken a different road and made better time.He came now into the hallway, Bundi padding beside him like a golden lion.‘Welcome,’ he cried expansively.‘I have tea ordered for the drawing room, but perhaps you would rather tea in your rooms, then gather by the swimming pool?’
‘I’m going straight to the pool,’ Brigid said.‘No tea for me!’
‘Tea in our rooms,’ Honor said firmly.‘Where have you put Elizabeth?’
‘Well,’ Chips said peevishly, ‘it wasn’t easy, at such short notice, and you know not all the bedrooms are ready, but I have had them prepare the Yellow Room.’
By which Honor knew he was very cross indeed.The Yellow Room – all rooms were named for colours of wildflowers found on the estate, something Chips thought ‘charming, bucolic’, and Honor thought childish – was small and looked out to the stables.Really, it was a room for a child.But then, Elizabeth, as Brigid had said, wasn’t exactly an adult, for all that she had been married and was now separated, and with an unsuitable lover.
‘Maureen, you are in the Fuchsia Room,’ Chips continued.‘Duff is in the Green.’
Maureen’s face twitched irritably.‘Where is my husband now?’she asked.
‘By the swimming pool.’
‘I’ll go straight out.What time do your Americans arrive?’She was careful, Honor saw, to distance herself from these unknown guests.
‘Not ’til this evening.Fritzi too.’
Chips followed Honor to her room – she knew he wanted to complain of Elizabeth, so she leapt in with ‘I have a headache.The drive down … intolerable.In fact, I may need to find an excuse to go back to town early.’That silenced him.He needed her to play hostess.
‘A letter came for you, arrived to Belgrave Square just as we were about to leave.’He fished it out of his pocket.‘From Doris, if I were a betting man.’On the corner of the envelope was a navy stamp with a profile of Adolf Hitler.Doris indeed.The Führer looked better from the side, Honor thought, when you couldn’t see the silly way he parted his hair.
‘Well, what does she say?’Chips asked a moment later.Honor hadn’t noticed he was hovering, so absorbed in Doris’ letter was she.
