The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  “Let’s go out,” she said to her brothers. “Get a little fresh air, maybe toss a ball around in the park.”

  Bobby was all for it, but Teddy complained about his throat again. He was angling to get his tonsils out just so he could eat his weight in ice cream. So Teddy stayed with Luella while Kick and Bobby brought their pigskin football with them to Hyde Park.

  Kensington Street was jammed with shoppers spending untold sums of money on all the things they had feared they wouldn’t be able to afford if wartime austerity had hit. Street vendors sold toys and balloons. Children ran and skipped and played tag, and it seemed that many people—usually so reserved in England—stopped to speak to one another, to shake hands and laugh and talk. Bobby spent some of his own pocket money on a honey cake, and Kick bought an apple, and they breathed in the crisp fall air even as they passed signs reading “Gas attack! How to put on your gas mask,” with greenish illustrations of parents and children hidden behind their masks, like actors in some gruesome Saturday matinee. The Kennedys’ own masks were ready and waiting in a closet; their father had seen to that. Bobby peeled off one such poster and balled it up. “No need for those now,” he said.

  In the park, they passed air-raid trenches ringed by enormous piles of brown earth. No one was digging deeper that day, but the trenches were patrolled by armed guards in military uniforms carrying long firearms. They were a blight on Kick’s mood. Why were the trenches being protected? Why not let children climb the mounds of dirt, or throw pennies for wishes into the pits? Or fill them back up again? She wished they would just disappear and someone would plant more of that luscious English lawn on top. No one would even remember them come next spring.

  Out of sight of the trenches and other signs of war, Kick and Bobby threw their American football back and forth. They were joined by some other boys about Bobby’s age who asked why their rugby ball was so large, and Bobby laughed and explained the sport to which their ball belonged. Then some other boys and even a few intrepid girls joined in, and soon a game had begun, a kind of rugby-football hybrid they invented as they went along. It felt good to exert herself, to get dirty and a little scuffed on the knees and elbows. For a moment, Kick almost felt transported to Hyannis Port, to summer, to a time before she knew rugby, knew England, before she’d fallen in love with London and had to fear losing it.

  CHAPTER 10

  When she learned from Father O’Flaherty that England and France were putting limits on the growing number of refugees, she immediately went to her father. In his office, she found him drinking tea with a confusion of newspapers covering his desk.

  “Hello, darling. What a fine day this is!” he exclaimed jubilantly, still on a high from Chamberlain’s coup with Hitler.

  “It is, Daddy. Everyone is so happy and relieved.” How could she bring this up now? “I’ve just come from St. Mary’s,” she began.

  “How is Father O’Flaherty?” Joe asked, his tone expansive.

  “He’s . . . concerned. Since Munich, he’s gotten even more requests from people hoping to get out.”

  “We’ll do everything we can. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said, wishing she could sound happier about it. But the priest’s pessimism haunted her.

  Meanwhile, the boys in her set were not at all happy with what had transpired on the continent. They thought it was further evidence of Chamberlain’s weakness. Debo, no doubt to protect herself from being reminded of Unity, made the boys promise not to talk more about war until there was a good reason—they agreed, but Kick had a feeling that even this treaty of peace among friends wouldn’t hold. And while the tenor of conversations in society had become more pessimistic, the fall season afforded generous distractions. “We must all remain calm. Carrying on in the face of adversity is a great English strength,” Dukie Wookie had said at one luncheon raising funds for a new hospital wing. Kick preferred that sentiment to Bertrand’s drunken one at the 400: “You know us, too proud to know when we’re whipped.”

  After the Nottingham races, a euphoric Billy, having just won his bet on the second-place horse, practically carried Kick into Churchdale Hall, the charming stone house where he’d grown up. Unlike so many of the large estates she’d visited, Billy’s childhood home looked like a house that a person could actually live in, and he made complete sense there. Inside it was lavish with antiques and art, and rows upon rows of the duke’s dusty books. Outside it was ringed by simple gardens with acres of lawn and clusters of climbable trees. With its gables and chimneys, it was a solid and stately place, and felt like the sort of home where a boy could run around, where he could be alone when he wanted or play games of cricket or rugby with packs of school friends when the inspiration struck. Which was exactly what they did with David and Sissy and Andrew and Debo—Andrew dug out some croquet mallets and they played a jokingly competitive round.

  When the sun set, the cold and darkening night chased them into the house. A crackling fire welcomed them into the spacious drawing room, and the six friends sprawled on the floor and couches, warming their fingers and noses.

  “Feels more like November,” Debo said, shivering.

  “Perfect excuse to break into Dad’s whiskey,” said Andrew. “Anyone else?”

  David asked for a short glass, and Andrew poured two from the heavy crystal decanter. They clinked glasses, then Andrew turned to Debo and declared, “Sorry, darling, but I’m afraid our little pact is finished.” Turning to David and Billy he said, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t know who I want to clock first: Tom Mitford or Lord Chamberlain.”

  “Andy,” reprimanded Debo. The day before, they’d all been at Debo’s Oxfordshire house, and her brother Tom had tried sparring with Andrew about Munich. Andrew had valiantly refrained from shouting down Debo’s brother, but everyone could hear him grind his molars to avoid it.

  “Don’t worry, love, it’s nothing to do with you,” Andrew replied. “But before you rose in the morning, Tom was nattering on and on about how envious he is of Unity for being at the center of things.”

  Debo rolled her eyes at Sissy and Kick, who replied with sympathetic expressions. Why ruin the perfect mood of the day?

  But the boys obviously disagreed; they’d held their tongues as long as they could. Billy shook his head in disgust and answered his brother’s question: “I’d knock Chamberlain down first. He’d be worth the bruise on the knuckles.”

  “He’s just stalling, and the worst of it is, he doesn’t even realize it,” agreed David.

  “And we’re the ones who will pay for it,” said Andrew.

  “Yes,” said David grimly.

  “What about ‘this war will be fought from the sky’?” asked Kick, recalling David’s statement from a few weeks before.

  “It will,” David affirmed. “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be casualties on the ground. I must have been in a particularly optimistic mood that night. Even with air bombs, there’ll still be ferocious combat with guns and grenades.”

  “It will be our duty,” said Billy, tapping his fingers restlessly on his leg, then getting up to pour himself a whiskey.

  “You’ll go willingly, then?” asked Andrew.

  Billy drank, then said, “We will have no choice.”

  “The main thing is that the Fascists must be stopped,” said David. “If Hitler thinks he can get away with killing Jews and seizing Czechoslovakia and Austria, what’s to stop him from taking over France? Killing the Catholics? The intellectuals? Hitler’s no friend of gentility, either. He had a hard childhood. Like something out of a Dickens novel. He’s not one of us.”

  If Kick agreed with David before, she fully agreed with him now. Why doesn’t Daddy see it this way?

  “Enough,” said Billy, downing the end of his whiskey. “Time to dress for dinner.”

  Kick was relieved the duke was absent from dinner because he wa
s in London on business. She had hoped Billy’s two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Anne, might be home—in the hopes of making them allies—but they were both away at school. Luckily, the duchess kept the conversation light and apolitical. Immersed in her plans for Chatsworth, she was intrigued by Kick’s knowledge of certain interior design firms and auction houses in London that worked with houses in New York, dealing in the art of Mondrian, Picasso, and Matisse. I’ll have to thank Mother for this, Kick thought to herself, knowing that were it not for Rose, she wouldn’t have had nearly as much to contribute to the dinner conversation. Andrew was also keen on her knowledge of the American-art-collecting scene, asking many questions to which Kick didn’t know the answers, but she tried to offer names of galleries with whom he might correspond. It was the most animated she’d ever seen him.

  “I didn’t realize you were this interested in art,” Kick said to him as the fish course dishes were cleared.

  “It’s always been a hobby of mine,” said Andrew.

  “He’s being modest,” said Debo, carefully touching her napkin to her mouth without smudging her red lipstick. “He’s also a talented artist himself.”

  “He used to amuse us at school,” said David, “by drawing excellent caricatures of teachers.”

  “And some of the other boys he didn’t favor,” added Billy, with a joking, older-brotherly scold.

  “I remember a lovely basket of fruit you once painted,” said Sissy. “Where is it now?”

  “I gave it to Mother for her birthday,” Andrew said coldly.

  “Yes,” the duchess replied, taking a sip of her wine with a mournful expression that reminded Kick of the look her mother sometimes got when regarding Rosemary. It was the first sign of any real sadness in Billy’s family life, and she felt her heart and stomach clench a bit at recognizing it. “I wanted to hang it in the library beside the Turner, but your father thought it was better suited to my room. Where, I might add, I enjoy seeing it every day.”

  “Our father is known around here as Mr. Bell,” said Billy, and everyone laughed at the absurdity of the Duke of Devonshire as art critic Clive Bell of the notorious Bloomsbury Group. Andrew’s laugh was muted, though, and Kick guessed that the only reason he’d laughed at all was in thanks to his brother for smothering the memory of his father’s slight with humor. They reminded her of Jack and Joe Jr. in that moment—partners, secret keepers, and protectors.

  Later, Kick and Billy lounged against large red pillows on the floor in front of a fire, alone at last since his mother had retired to bed, David and Sissy were in the library, and Debo and Andrew were who knew where. She wanted to talk about some of her observations from dinner, to feel closer to him that way, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without sounding like a nosy American. So she tried to bring up Andrew in as light a way as possible. “I had no idea the Cavendish brothers were so artistic,” she observed. “Andrew with his painting, and you as Wilfred Owen—wasn’t that was Bertrand called you?”

  Billy laughed. “I’d make a rotten poet. I’m a much better reader—and I do admire the Great War poets, like Owen and Sassoon. And my brother, talented though he is, has sworn off painting.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “We have other duties,” said Billy matter-of-factly.

  “‘Duty’ seems to be the word of the evening. And no one’s especially happy about it,” Kick said.

  “Duty’s not often compatible with fun. But that doesn’t mean we don’t willingly do it.”

  “That’s very honorable, I suppose.”

  “Suppose?”

  “It’s just that . . .” Kick wasn’t sure how to put it, and her shoulders tensed as she considered how honest she ought to be. “It’s nice when the call to duty aligns with one’s own ideals and hopes,” she said, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how unrealistic they were for anyone like Billy. Or for anyone like her, for that matter, remembering how torn she’d felt with her mother in France.

  “Are we talking about war now? Or more personal duties?”

  “Both. But I know it might not be possible,” she said with a frown, wishing she knew how to say more, how to get him to say more.

  They were quiet for a few moments, and then he said, “How can I put a smile back on that beautiful face of yours?”

  Since words had failed, what she really wanted was a kiss, but she couldn’t very well ask for that, so she rested her head on his shoulder. After a minute, Billy stood and led her by the hand to the stairwell. “Take a step,” he whispered, and when she did, they stood face-to-face. “Now we’re the same height,” he said in her favorite low, secret tone.

  The dark silence of the stairwell emboldened her. She slid her arms around his shoulders and felt his arms wrap around her waist so entirely that his fingers touched the sides of her belly, and when he slid his tongue gently over her lower lip, she opened her mouth in a breath of surprised bliss. It felt so delicious, she actually heard herself think, I don’t care if I go to hell for this.

  That thought, more than the kiss itself, made her pull back and draw in a breath.

  “Everything all right?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she whispered back. “But it’s time for bed.”

  He kissed her again. It was long and tender but he kept his lips closed, and she was sorry she’d stopped him.

  She fell asleep that night saying her rosary and asking God for forgiveness and guidance. What is happening to me? She racked her brain for an answer, but none came.

  * * *

  Before she’d ever laid eyes on William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, heir to the dukedom of Devonshire, she had read in one of her mother’s homework assignments that his family’s estate at Chatsworth was one of the finest stately homes in all England, and had belonged to the Cavendish family since the sixteenth century.

  It showed. Again thanks to Sister Helen’s art and history lessons, Kick could almost see the centuries piled on top of one another, in the shape of the land and on the inside of the house. The enormous rectangular building with its Ionic pilasters and the balustrades that were so prominent on the roof were all English baroque, but she knew the original Tudor house was inside there somewhere. Densely forested hills served as a backdrop if you approached the house from the west, which is exactly what Kick and Billy and Andrew and Debo did the next morning on horseback. According to Billy, by horse was “the only way to see” his ancestral home. “Not only can we see more of the land on horses than on foot,” he’d explained at breakfast, “but it’s the way the estate is designed to be seen. The Bachelor Duke didn’t have a Rolls-Royce.”

  Surrounding the huge, imposing edifice were layers of Elizabethan, baroque, and Victorian gardens that whispered pieces of English history, like Queen Mary’s Bower, where Mary, Queen of Scots, had been allowed to breathe fresh air while she was a prisoner at Chatsworth. Kick tried not to dwell on the fact that Billy’s family estate had held one of the last Catholic aspirants to the English throne. There were plenty of other monuments of bygone days, like the waterfall fountain with its baroque domed Cascade House and the now-dry Emperor Fountain, named for Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. The Bachelor Duke wanted to have the tallest fountain in the world to impress the imperial ruler when he visited, but Nicholas never actually made it to Chatsworth. And the fountain required so much water, no subsequent duke had run it except on special occasions.

  “Pity,” Billy lamented after telling the story. “But have a look at this.”

  Their party rode across the green grass, kept short by the industrious chewing of a roving band of hungry sheep, to the Willow Tree Fountain. Atop a large rock was what appeared to be a bare tree, with branches that arched artfully overhead—until they sprayed Kick and Debo with water!

  Billy and Andrew, who’d been standing farther away, laughed heartily.

  “Is that any way to
treat your lady guests?” huffed Debo. “If you’re not careful, you’ll be the next Bachelor Duke.”

  Hardly, thought Kick, laughing with the boys as she brushed water off her felt coat. She hadn’t gotten that wet, and she’d enjoyed the prank—as well as the thoroughly amused look it had produced on Billy’s face. And anyway, if she let herself get ruffled by every practical joke, she’d never survive her own family—just recently, Bobby had hidden all her right shoes and she’d had to come to dinner barefoot.

  “I don’t think he was a bachelor because of the way he treated the ladies,” said Andrew, egging Debo on.

  “Have my coat,” Billy said, offering Kick his worn brown leather jacket. It felt heavy and warm on her shoulders, and the wool lining smelled of his soap and aftershave.

  “Where to next?” she asked, her spirits high.

  Billy pointed back toward the house. “Lunch.”

  “Well, then. On your mark . . . get set,” Kick said, tightening her grip on her reins. “Go!”

  With a swift kick of her heels into the horse’s taut belly, she was off, the glossy brown animal straining beneath her, the wind pushing her hair off her face. She could hear Billy urging his horse on just behind her, and soon he was beside her, and they were both galloping fast. I could get used to this.

  As the house neared, she pulled the reins and encouraged the horse to a trot. Billy did the same and turned to her with a huge grin. “I had no idea you could ride like that.”

  “One surprise deserves another,” she said.

  His smile was reward enough. He’d enjoyed her little stunt, and for that she felt all the more satisfied with herself.

  Debo and Andrew caught up and they spread out the lunch they’d brought with them on the lawn right in front of the house, then ate ravenously. When they’d all had their fill of cheese sandwiches and apple tarts, Billy said, “Ready for the tour?”