Page 90 of An Invitation to the Kennedys

‘As you are useful?’She gave her a shrewd look.

‘Yes.’

‘I think not.But thank you for asking.And for thinking I might be of some use.Most people see me as rather ridiculous.’

‘You’re not that.’

‘No.But I do feel rather obliged to behave that way.’

‘Why?’

‘People expect it of me.’She left then, taking off the silver shoes and walking barefoot back to the house.

‘I suppose she will raid my wardrobe now, and Molly will be unable to stop her.You know, you are different, Doris.I can see it, but I don’t know what it is, exactly.’Honor looked consideringly at her.‘It isn’t the way you look.Or even the way you behave, so much.It is a feeling … Oh, I explain so badly … But I feel that you are less yielding, like clay that has hardened overnight.’

‘Something of that is probably true,’ Doris said.

‘There are things you haven’t told me, aren’t there?’

‘Yes.I couldn’t even if I wanted to.’

‘You are not allowed?’

‘No.Or rather, yes, but it’s not that.I don’t know how to put them into words.’

‘Try.’Honor took her hand in both hers.Her hands were dry and cool.

‘Very well.I will try.I don’t have the habit of saying things anymore.’

‘Take all the time you need.We have hours.’

Doris sat in silence, trying to find a place to begin.She cast back through memories that were only half in place, because she had never allowed herself to fully absorb them, trying, now, to single them out, to squash the instinct she had learned to deny them.Because, she realised, if she didn’t speak them to someone, they would swamp her.There was too much that she had pushed away.

‘At first, it was such fun,’ she began.‘The daring, the intrigue.Boring too, often, of course, but always with the feeling that something might happen, and knowing that what I was doing was, in its way, useful.And I knew no one, except the people I was sent to know.Mostly men, mostly officers.My mother’s family are all here now, thank goodness.But then, I made new friends that I didn’t intend.The family in the flat beside mine; a mother, father and daughter.Hannah.She played the violin.Terribly.’A tiny smile.

Honor smiled back.‘Go on.’

And Doris told her.About Hannah, her violin.Beatrice, her plea for help.Doris’ failure.

‘I couldn’t ask for the help they needed, even though I knew the very people who could have helped them.Because to do that would have been to risk everything I did there.Everything I had been sent to do.That’s when I realised the terrible truth of the position I was in, and I hated it.In order to help many, I couldn’t help the few who were in front of me.I did nothing.Except listen.I listened every day to Hannah, scraping away, trying so very hard.’She gave a weak and shaky smile.‘The sound of that violin to me was as though she were the greatest soloist in the world.Because it meant that she was still there.Until she wasn’t.’

‘But you did try to help,’ Honor said.

‘Yes, but too late.They were gone before I could do anything.Just as I had decided that I didn’t care anymore, that I would help them whatever it took, they were gone.’

‘Do you know where?’Honor asked when it seemed that Doris could say nothing more.

‘No.I never found out.They left everything behind.Their furniture, Hannah’s violin.I took it from the back of the lorry and I have it still.After that, nothing was quite the same.’

‘But you stayed?’

‘Of course.To do what I went there to do.That can’t change.’

‘But you are changed?’

‘I think I must be.’

Doris waited for Honor to tell her to be careful.She didn’t.‘How lonely you must be,’ she said.