Page 70 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Wonder what?’
‘If he isn’t finding a little steel within himself.Or without.’She laughed.
‘More riddles?’
‘Oh, quite an easy one this time.’She looked to where Fritzi sat, alone, watching the door Brigid and Kick had gone out of.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Maureen
It was an hour almost before the girls, and Elizabeth, reappeared in the drawing room.The tea things had been cleared and Chips had made the first round of cocktails.Smoke drifted from cigarettes, and in the background, the gramophone played something melancholy.Maureen wondered was Chips afraid that anything jazzier would offend the ambassador.
The room was quiet, those in it had drifted into small knots together and spoke quietly – or stayed silent.She had tried to go and sit beside Duff, but he had got up and moved away, to a chair beside the fire that stood alone so there was no way she could join him without having to stand awkwardly, at the mercy of whether he spoke to her or not.She couldn’t bear that.Not in front of everyone.
Did she regret how cutting she had been during the tennis tournament?A little, yes.The humiliation of his rejection that morning had stung, so that she had wanted him to feel as hurt as she had.She knew he was sensitive about his drinking, his weight, the high colour that had come to dominate his face so that he looked, now, far older than she did.She had used these things precisely because she knew they wounded.But as soon as she saw that she had succeeded, she had felt his hurt as though it were her own, and been sorry.
But how to go back?She shuffled the cards and dealt another hand of Patience.None of her hands were coming out, which was a surprise, because usually Maureen found it no more difficult to make the cards do what she wanted than she did to make people do what she wanted.She sipped the drink Chips had made for her.Too strong, like all Chips’ drinks.
She looked over at Duff again.Anyone could see the anger in his face – it was right there, in the lowered brow and the set of his jaw – but she saw, buried beneath that, the upset too, the humiliation.She watched Rose cross to him and ask him something, the soothing way she listened to the answer, flattery in every receptive line of her body.
Maureen thought how much more she felt the sorrows of her husband than those of her children.When the crying of her babies had made her feel on edge and uncomfortable, she had simply called for Nanny to take the crying child away.No wonder she had seen so little of Caroline, she thought now.Mostly, she had heard her, wailing night after night in the nursery at Clandeboye.Until she had requested that the nursery be moved to a floor above so that they might be spared her plaintive cries.
But Duff’s moods were her moods.When he was happy, it infected Maureen with gaiety; when he was tired or gloomy, she too was cast down.And when he was unhappy – even though it were she who had made him so – she could not shake that misery from herself.He looked up and she tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her and turned back to Rose.She looked down at the cards on the table in front of her.They were knotted and snarled.Again she had failed to bring it about.
She walked over to where Duff sat, conscious that she was watched – by Honor, sympathetically, and by Rose, beside him, with an expression that was difficult to read.‘Darling,’ she leaned down by his ear, ‘are you sure it is not too hot?I can have Chips ring for someone to move the chair further from the fire.After all, it may be dark but it is still summer.’
‘I can do that myself,’ he snapped, keeping his voice low.‘Do you think I am so infirm that I cannot move a chair?Or is it just that I am too crocked, too much of a sot, to play a decent game of tennis?’His voice was gravel.
She recoiled as though he had slapped her.Standing straight, she met Rose’s gaze by chance.To her surprise, there was a look of sympathy in the older woman’s eyes.For a moment, standing there beside her angry husband, Maureen didn’t know what to do.She felt marooned, unsure whether to step one way or the other – where to go?She didn’t even have a cigarette in her hand, she thought.Or anything to cover her confusion.Rose’s look of sympathy had unnerved her.She who hated to be pitied.
‘Here you all are still.’It was Brigid, returned with Kick, and Elizabeth who made straight for the drinks.‘I say,’ Brigid turned to Chips, ‘is there something being done in those empty rooms at the end of our hallway?’
‘What kind of something?’
‘A workman of some kind?Servants?I heard a noise, almost like someone crying, but when I went to look, I couldn’t see anyone.The room was mighty cold, however.Far colder than my room which is only next door but one.Perhaps a window has been left open?’
‘Not that an open window would make much difference on a day like today,’ Elizabeth said, looking around at them all.‘It may be wet and dark, but hardly cold.That fire is really just for show.’She looked disapprovingly at the grate, then raised her glass to catch the light of the flames against the cut crystal.
‘Since when have you been such an authority on weather?’Chips said irritably.
‘Notweather,’ Elizabeth said.‘I couldn’t give a tinker’s curse for weather’ – Maureen saw Rose draw her thin eyebrows together in disapproval – ‘but I am an authority on strangegoings-on, even you will admit.’She giggled.‘And that noise – I heard it too – was strange.Perhaps a housemaid has a headache, or has received bad news, and is crying alone in an empty room?’
‘Poor thing,’ Honor said vaguely.
‘That is certainly not happening,’ Chips interrupted.‘The household is entirely accounted for.I would know if it were not.’
‘Well then, a phantom or poltergeist,’ said Brigid enthusiastically.
‘Surely no one actually believes in such things?’the ambassador asked.
‘Duff’s mother does.’Maureen joined the conversation.‘She is a firm believer in the spirit world.She sees fairies everywhere.Hears them.Does what they tell her to.’
‘And what do they tell her to do?’Elizabeth asked.‘Is it offerings of sweetmeats and little drops of wine in acorn cups?’She laughed.
‘At Sheridan’s christening just a month ago, the fairies told Lady Brenda he was a changeling, and she tried to dash his brains out.’
‘Goodness!’That was Rose, but the shock was in everyone’s face.
