Page 18 of An Invitation to the Kennedys

But Rose gave a tight smile.‘It’s not for fun, Kathleen dear.It’s serious.All of this is serious.Now, take a hat when you go out.You really must keep the sun from your face.English girls are never so freckled.’

Dismissed, Kick telephoned to Debo.‘I wish I wasn’t going,’ she said, ‘but once Mother has made up her mind, well, it isn’t at all possible to change it.This is what comes of playing hostess all those weeks before she arrived; somehow I’m now part of the package, like Pa has two wives with him.’

Debo laughed.‘How absurd you are.But you’ll enjoy it.Honor is terribly dull, but Brigid is a dear.’

‘Maybe.But why now?’Kick wailed.‘Just when it feels like …’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, like something interesting might be about to happen …’

‘Something interesting…’ Debo mocked.‘You may as well say his name, darling; you aren’t at all good at hiding it.Well, maybe something can be worked out.’

‘What kind of something?’

‘I don’t know yet.But come for dinner at Diana’s tomorrow?Nothing terribly formal, just a tiny supper with friends?She particularly told me to say “Please be a darling and don’t say no because it will be simply too dreary without you to cheer us all up”.’

‘In that case how could I possibly say no?’Kick said with a laugh.

Her father put his head around the door then.‘Walk me to my appointment?’

Kick said goodbye and ran to get a hat before he could change his mind, or her mother could interfere.

They walked briskly through Hyde Park where the trees were thick with summer leaves that rustled, green and important, in the breeze.‘How are you finding it?’he asked.

‘Oh, I love it,’ she assured him.

‘You do, don’t you?’He considered her.‘And what do you make of them?’He waved his hand to take in the park, the crescent of houses behind them, the people walking sedately by.

‘Well,’ she said, then paused.‘I think they might not be exactly what I thought.’

‘In what way?’

‘I thought at first that no one was ever serious,’ she explained.‘Everything, always, a joke.But now I’m not so sure.Or at least, if it is a joke, it’s not just a joke.’

‘Insincerity,’ he agreed.‘Damned irritating.’

‘I don’t think it’s exactly insincerity,’ she tried to explain.‘Just that they go about things differently.’

‘I hear you coming in at all hours,’ he said then.

‘Mother knows,’ she said quickly.And Rose did.At least, she knew Kick was out.Just not where.Or how late she came home.Rose wouldn’t approve of nightclubs, not at all.And so Kick didn’t tell her.We went on, she would say, vaguely, when Rose asked.It was a phrase she’d picked up from Debo.A useful one.‘Someone always sees me home,’ she assured him.‘David or Hugh, any of those fellows.’Not Billy.Not yet.

‘And what do these young men say about the situation with Germany?’he asked, direct as always.

‘Last night Hugh Fraser said that at least if they were called up they wouldn’t have to sit through any more of Lady Furness’ terrible dinners …’

‘Idiotic pup!’her father said angrily.

‘I don’t think he meant it …’

But the ambassador wasn’t listening.‘They all told me that England was a spent force,’ he said, poking hard at the ground with his sturdy ivory-topped cane.‘If anything, it seems worse than that.’

‘Is that what you meant when you said they were madder than you’d hoped?’

‘Yes.There’s a disregard for consequences … They’d sleepwalk into trouble, led by that old war horse Churchill, if it wasn’t for Chamberlain.Well, they’ll get no help from me.No, sir.And without America, even Churchill’s enthusiasm is dampened.’He spoke with satisfaction.‘Oh I know what they say about me,’ he continued.‘That darned Randolph, Churchill’s idiot son –’ he put on a sneering English accent ‘– “I thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joe Kennedy …”’

Kick flinched.She hadn’t heard that one, although she had begun to hear whispers that her father didn’t have ‘enough stomach for a fight’.