Page 19 of An Invitation to the Kennedys

‘But I don’t care,’ he continued.‘Let ’em say what they like.I know what war is.If I can prevent it, why, I’ll take all they can throw at me.And if preventing it means taking tea with Channon, followed by dinner with Lady Cunard, then drinks with von Ribbentrop, I’ll do it.I’ll talk to anyone who’ll talk to me.’

‘You’re like the girl at the party everyone wants to dance with,’ she said with a gurgle of laughter.She preferred that to the idea that he was ‘yellow’.

‘You could say that.Although from what I hear, that girl is you.’

‘Sometimes,’ she said modestly.Then, curious, ‘So what really is the difference between Churchill and Chamberlain?’She heard the names mentioned so often, but hadn’t got them straight in her head.

‘They are the two sides of this coin,’ the ambassador explained.‘Churchill wants ultimatums, shows of strength.Chamberlain is a diplomat, a man of compromise and peace.Right now, there are more who favour Chamberlain’s way, but Churchill is gaining ground.’

‘Churchill bad, Chamberlain good, I’ll keep that in mind.’

‘Keep distance in mind,’ he said.‘Don’t be drawn in.Don’t give your opinions or agree too heartily with others.Be friendly, but don’t be friends.’

‘Distance.Got it,’ Kick said.But she spoke absently, already thinking about dinner with Diana Mitford.What would she wear?

Chapter Eleven

Berlin

Doris

The Tiergarten encounter was still on Doris’ mind days later when she woke, again, to the sound of Hannah’s bow scraping.And through that day while shopping in the Kaisergalerie and later when she went to pay a call on the daughter of a prominent newspaper editor, a girl her own age who wanted to improve her English, and who talked, Doris thought, about nothing except tennis.Even as she politely corrected Ilse – ‘I think, notI am thinking’ – she considered what it was she did in Berlin, and how useful it might still be.She had no way of knowing, she realised.

She had heard nothing since the encounter, but that wasn’t unusual.She knew to wait.To go about her life until such time as they told her more.Or indeed, didn’t tell her more.Sometimes, the approaches led to nothing.A half-idea begun and then abandoned without consulting her.That was the way of it.She decided nothing, only played her small part in what others decided.

She thought so much about it that she entirely forgot her promise to teach Hannah, and it was several days before she remembered.Or rather, before Hannah reminded her when they again met in the lift.‘You said you’d show me a trick,’ she said bluntly.‘For holding the bow.’

‘Hannah!’her mother said.

‘No, she’s perfectly correct,’ Doris reassured her.‘I did say that, and then I forgot.But I will, as soon as ever you’ll let me.’

‘Now?’Hannah said.

‘Come for tea, tomorrow afternoon?’Beatrice said with a smile.

The next afternoon, Beatrice greeted her at the door.‘Hannah is brushing her hair,’ she said.‘She wants to make a good impression.’

‘Of course,’ Doris said.

‘Whatever is to be done, Hannah will try to do it as best she can,’ Beatrice said, rolling her eyes a little.‘She is so very serious in everything.’

‘Your only daughter?’Doris asked.

‘Yes, an only child.She’s probably too much with my husband and me.It makes her older than her years.’

‘Your husband is at work?’

‘Yes.’Beatrice hesitated a moment.‘He is out.’

It was, Doris thought, a correction rather than an addition.She shook her head slightly.She really must try to stop parsing every word that was said to her, cutting and slicing sentences this way and that to see if there were more meanings, other meanings, than what they seemed.Hannah arrived, in a white frock that was too tight, hair loose around her shoulders.

The apartment was smaller than hers and had no views onto Leipziger Strasse, but only onto the rather narrow street that ran off it.But it was pleasantly furnished with a great many books and paintings, mostly views of Berlin streets, corners of the city’s many parks.

‘You paint?’she asked.

‘My husband,’ Beatrice said.‘In his spare time.’

‘Papa is an artist,’ Hannah said proudly.