The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  Elizabeth was quick to say, “Oh, I’d like nothing more than to travel. And New York sounds just absolutely grand.”

  “Someday we’ll go,” Kick assured her, and it felt as natural as assuring Pat of something, which she took to be a good sign.

  As she changed for dinner in the same dark wood-paneled room where she’d stayed before the war, the weekend of the Goodwood races, an unexpected knock on the door gave her heart a lurch. It couldn’t be Billy, could it?

  She opened the door nervously, and saw Debo standing in the hall. The two girls embraced.

  “What a wonderful surprise!” Kick said.

  “I couldn’t let you have dinner here for the first time unprotected,” said Debo.

  “It’s all gone well so far,” said Kick, feeling slightly defensive. She could take care of herself. But still, she was thrilled to see her friend and glad to have another familiar face at dinner.

  “I’m sure it has,” said Debo. “And if I’m being totally honest, I needed a bit of a break from cooking and nappy changing myself.”

  “Did you bring Emma?”

  Debo nodded. “And she is blissfully asleep in the nursery, so I can enjoy myself.”

  “Excellent,” said Kick, offering her old friend her arm and setting off through the gallery hallway, hung with portraits of departed Cavendishes and paintings of the local landscapes that testified to the fact that the trees and lawns were the same now as they had been in the eighteenth century. In the well-lit library, gin and tonics were served on a silver tray by a footman, only the second she’d seen in England since arriving. The first had been at Cliveden, when she’d visited Nancy for a day. “Can’t let the war make us heathens,” Nancy had said, though in truth even the Astors were operating with a much-reduced staff, with so many young men preparing for the promised invasion of France.

  Kick had to admit that it felt like the most precious form of flattery that Billy’s family would welcome her in this manner. She knew from Debo that they dined like this only on special occasions these days. And even though she wasn’t the only guest—his parents had used her visit as an excuse to have over their old friends Lord and Lady Graham and their daughter Mildred, who was Anne’s age—Kick was honored to be the reason for the small fete.

  This was the first she’d seen of the duke all day. His long form was folded on the large sofa, one leg over the other, his dinner jacket as rumpled as ever. His mustache looked neatly trimmed, and his gray hair wet. “I heard he had an excellent day fishing,” Debo whispered to Kick, “which always puts him in a better mood.”

  “Shall I go over and talk to him?” asked Kick. She didn’t want to interrupt, as he seemed deep in conversation with Lord Graham.

  “I’d wait till he comes to you,” advised Debo.

  It took a while. Kick sipped her cocktail slowly so she didn’t get too tipsy on her empty stomach, though it was tempting. Billy was also in a good mood, all smiles and laughs, with a casual hand on her back much of the time. Apparently their couplehood was no longer a secret, and Kick was relieved to know she wasn’t hiding anything anymore. Just before it was time to go into the dining room, the duke approached Kick as she stood chatting with Billy and Debo.

  “Debo,” he said, with a nod at his daughter-in-law. “Glad you could join us tonight.”

  “You know me,” said Debo, in an easy manner Kick envied, “any excuse for a fine dinner and a bit of sunlight. I’m taking Emma to the beach tomorrow.”

  “I wish I could join you,” said Kick, thinking of the train back to London she’d be on instead.

  “And, Kick, it’s good to see you as well,” said the duke, as if he’d seen her just the other week. She found it comforting, if a bit surprising, that both Billy’s parents were now addressing her by her nickname. She, of course, still had to address them as Duke and Duchess. Even Debo did. “I must admit, I hope your presence inspires Billy here to take more of an interest in his campaign. You Kennedys seem to have politics in your blood.”

  Kick grinned at Billy, who smiled sheepishly back at her. He clearly took his father’s comment as something of a reprimand, and Kick remembered what Billy had told her about the differences he had with his father about the seat in West Derbyshire. She didn’t think Billy would mind her taking his father’s side under the present circumstances, so she replied, “I’m happy to do everything I can to help.”

  “Excellent,” he said. Then, “I believe it’s time for dinner.”

  Kick let out a long, slow breath as she followed everyone into the dining room, where she was relieved to be sitting between Debo and Billy, on the opposite end of the table from the duke. Still, she thought, they’d made a promising start during the cocktails. She began to relax and enjoy herself.

  The next morning, as she relished a breakfast tray in bed and tried not to think about the fact that in four hours she’d be serving coffee at the Hans Crescent, there was another knock on her door. It sounded too firm to be Debo. Feeling playful, she didn’t bother getting up and called in a singsong voice, “Come in!”

  Billy, already in his uniform, for he, too, was heading back to work that day, quickly stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. With a pleased smile, he crossed the room to sit on the edge of her bed. “I like seeing you here like this.”

  “I like being here like this,” she replied.

  “I thought things went well last night, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. Five years before, he’d been so reticent to discuss things like meetings with his parents, and now he brought them up on his own. She liked this more take-charge Billy.

  “My father actually said, ‘That girl would charm a snake out of its skin.’”

  Kick shivered. “And that’s a compliment?”

  “From my father? Yes,” he said with a chuckle. “He has a sideways way of saying everything. He once told Andrew that Debo was like salmon to a bear.”

  “Coming from an angler, that sounds rather like a more straightforward compliment.”

  “Trust me, Kick, if you were willing to convert to the Church of England this afternoon, they’d welcome you with open arms.”

  Had he really just said that? So casually? Boiling blood pumped through her veins. “I suppose that’s where the snake part of his compliment came from,” she said. Surely after four years of pining, Billy wasn’t going to ask her to convert.

  “Kick, don’t be angry,” he said, putting a hand on her knee, which was more than concealed beneath layers of fine cotton blankets.

  “It’s who I am, Billy.”

  “I know,” he reassured her. Then he drew in a breath and said, “I’m sorry I brought it up that way.”

  “You mean the subject of those four hundred years of history?” It was all coming back to her, like she was standing at Blenheim again. Running away to Spain and France, then sitting through the horrific train ride back to London. Reading the miserable letters that had really ended things and led to his engagement to someone else.

  “Kick, you came back,” he said. “You must be willing to make some compromise.”

  It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment that he might have been making some of the same assumptions about her that she’d been making about him. After all, she had been the one to get on the boat. How stupid and naive she felt. John White’s last chastising letter came back to her, and her stomach churned.

  “Are you willing to make compromises?” she asked.

  “I’m not asking you to convert, am I?”

  “No, you cloaked that request in your father’s wish.”

  “I already apologized for that.” Billy looked away for a moment, thinking. “This isn’t the note I want you to leave on, darling.”

  “Me, either,” she said. “But with everything that’s already happened between us, it’s hard for me not to want to ask what it is you expect
from me, before . . . we go further with this.” Oh, Father O’Flaherty, I hope you’re looking down on us now. Please, guide his answer!

  “I will never ask you to convert. I know your faith means too much to you. If you were to change your mind about that, I’d be overjoyed, but I also admire your loyalty to your family and church. As you said once, it makes you you. The you I love deeply.”

  He hadn’t said those words since she’d returned. He must have known the power they’d have to soften her. “I love you, too,” she whispered, putting her hand on his and giving it a small squeeze.

  Billy laughed. “It’s absurd! If you were Protestant, I’d have proposed the moment you stepped into the May Fair. But because you’re Catholic, and both of us have important families whom we love, and should love, we have to torture ourselves before the real fun can begin.”

  “It is rather medieval, isn’t it?” Though her words were calm and even, her mind was a mess—he’d sort of proposed. He did want to marry her.

  “Except that in the Middle Ages, we wouldn’t have this problem because Henry wouldn’t have broken with the pope yet,” he pointed out.

  “Well that’s one thing that would have been good about the Middle Ages,” she said, and they both laughed.

  Kick rocked herself up so that she was kneeling on the bed, and kissed Billy on the lips. “I want the real fun to begin.”

  Eyes closed, Billy murmured, “So do I.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” she asked. “We keep our separate religions, and raise the children Catholic. It’s a time-honored compromise in situations like ours. Two of your relations have done it,” she said, referring to David and Sissy, and Derek and Ann. The issue of recusant and New World Catholics no longer seemed to be germane. This was just about her and Billy now.

  He shook his head. “I can’t agree to that,” he said. “I’m going to be the Duke of Devonshire someday, and I want my heir to be Protestant, as has been the tradition for centuries. I’ve thought a great deal about this, Kick. I can’t just turn my back on my own family and its position in England because of the demands of your church. No matter how much I love you.” England. There it was again.

  Kick felt as if she were falling from a great precipice, grasping for a branch to hold on to. She said, the words painful to her, “What if we raised the girls Catholic and the boys Protestant?”

  “What if we have no boys?” he countered.

  “Look at my mother; I’m sure to have a few of both,” she joked.

  “What if they die in another one of these vile wars?”

  She looked down at the bed. How could she make him see her side? There was so much she wanted to say, about the safety and wonder her own church made her feel, the closeness it helped her feel to her difficult family, the traditions she wanted to hand down to her own children. But she couldn’t find the words. She hadn’t been prepared for this conversation, not this morning.

  “Kick,” Billy said, taking her hands in his. Reluctantly, she met his eyes. “I know that England means a great deal to you, as it does to me. I know how you love it here, and that thrills me in my very bones. But we are a Protestant country. The war has made me want to defend England, and everything it stands for, in all that I do. It’s important to me that our church doesn’t answer to a pontiff who rules from another country. I don’t want my children to answer to anyone but their king and their parents.”

  With a roiling sense of inevitability, she understood his position. She even admired him for it. How was it possible she should love him more for forcing her to make this impossible choice?

  “You’re not saying anything,” Billy observed, worry starting to creep into his tone.

  “It’s a lot to think about,” she said quietly.

  “It’s not like you to be so quiet,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you before I’ve had the opportunity to convince you.”

  “Convince me that betraying my family for yours is a good thing?” She couldn’t help it. He had to hear how this felt for her.

  “I do thoroughly understand what I’m asking you to do,” he said, and the mournfulness of his tone made her believe him. “But I would ask you to think about what you’d gain.”

  She looked at him. His face was so hopeful, so handsome. It was the only face she’d ever wanted to dream about. The only one. For the first time in years, she pictured them with their children on the lawn of Chatsworth, the Marquess and Marchioness of Hartington. The children were running, happy, chasing each other around. There was indeed a great deal to gain.

  “I will,” she promised.

  Billy put both hands on her face and gave her a long kiss. “Let’s leave it there for now, shall we? I think we’ve made some progress, and you don’t seem angry anymore.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Mostly.”

  “I’ll take it,” he said, stopping her from saying more with another kiss.

  She wished she could feel soothed by the regular rock and chug of the train as it sped her back to London, her beloved green countryside blurring by, but she felt increasingly tense instead. If she wanted to marry Billy, to be with him fully in all the tempting ways that had occurred to her since that fateful afternoon in Maria Sieber’s bed, if she wanted to stay in England the way she’d allowed herself to dream—as the future Duchess of Devonshire, a position and life she was convinced she would relish and be genuinely good at—she would have to agree to let all her children be baptized in another church. Billy would not be recognized as her husband by her own church, and so in its eyes she wouldn’t be married at all but living in sin.

  At least, that’s the way her parents would see it. She didn’t think Father O’Flaherty would, but he was gone. There was no way for him to convince Mother to see things differently. She’d be losing another daughter.

  Kick felt guilty for even considering this agreement with Billy.

  She grasped at the one thing that might be on her side: time. In the past, Billy had always pointed to the clarifying power of time, and now Kick hoped he was right. She was sure Billy wouldn’t want to marry before the election in February, and in order to run he soon had to leave the Coldstream Guards, which meant that he wouldn’t have to go to the front anytime soon. Surely another answer would present itself. She would pray ardently that it would.

  When she wrote her next wave of letters home, she knew she had to mention Billy because her parents were likely to hear something from their other friends, or worse, from the gossip pages. But the last thing she wanted was their weighing in on the situation. So she tried to downplay it and reassure her mother that she was too good a Catholic to do anything that would imperil her soul. Even to Jack, she wrote of Billy, “Of course I know he would never give in about the religion and he knows I never would. It’s all rather difficult as he is very, very fond of me and as long as I am about, he’ll never marry. However much he loves me, I can easily understand his position.”

  In fact, she understood perfectly. She only wished she didn’t understand so well.

  CHAPTER 29

  Joe Jr. arrived in London in the last week of September with rotten eggs and a box full of suckers, gum, and Mars bars, wanting nothing more than to get into the fight to prove he was as much a hero as his skinny little brother, who had once again been thrust into the spotlight. In the last few weeks, Jack had managed to save most of his crew after a Japanese torpedo hit their boat in the Pacific, using his prodigious and now-famous swimming skills to tow one of the injured men to shore in spite of his bad back. As if that weren’t enough, he’d floated an SOS note into the ocean on a coconut, of all things, which against all odds made it to an Australian regiment, who did indeed rescue them. It had been all over the news, and Kick had become a hero by extension at the Hans Crescent. Once she knew her brother was all right, she couldn’t help but laugh uproariously at the details. “A coconut?” she’d said to Du
kie Wookie at the 400. “Even George Bernard Shaw couldn’t have imagined something like that and made it believable!”

  “If I didn’t love him so much, I’d want to kill him,” Joe Jr. said to Kick over a pint of ale at the Hans Crescent. Kick was fit to burst with happiness that afternoon, what with her brother in town, a date with Billy scheduled for the weekend, and Nancy Astor picking through the club’s bar looking for boys from Virginia to cheer up, as she did periodically. Also, it was her favorite season in England—drizzly and cool one day, brilliantly blue and cold the next. She loved pedaling her bike through the streets with a scarf around her neck and yellow leaves falling on her head. Also, things felt back on promising and sturdy footing with Billy, who came to London every chance he got. Once, they’d met in Derbyshire and strolled the grounds of Chatsworth, and he’d lamented naughtily that with the girls’ school in session at the house, there was really no way to accomplish the swimming sans vêtements he’d once alluded to before the war.

  “Maybe you should just let Jack be president,” Kick teased Joe Jr., “and you enjoy a nice louche life instead. I’ll set you up in a castle.”

  “Lismore Castle?” Joe asked, referring to the Cavendish estate in Ireland.

  “You never know,” sang Kick.

  After a short visit, Joe had to go with his squadron to Cornwall, where his planes would be helping the Royal Air Force patrol the coast. “It’s coward’s work,” he’d told his sister before he left, “but I’m gonna parlay it into something real.” Then he blew out of town as suddenly as he’d blown in, and life went on in the new usual way for Kick: a steady rotation of work, dinners, and after-hours dancing. At the end of the summer, she’d gotten into trouble with Scroggins for having too many friends over to the club and taking too many calls from her “damn suitors,” and generally having too much of a social life outside the club. But she’d dropped hints to a few key friends that her boss was giving her difficulties, and two of the best had come to her rescue. Admiral Stark had told Scroggins in front of an entire room full of gin-rummy-playing captains and lieutenants that “Kick Kennedy, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s sister no less, is a national treasure, and d’you know how lucky you are to have her?” to a mortifying but also gratifying round of hooting applause led by Tim, of all people. And Lady Astor had written Scroggins about Anglo-American relations, “which are suffering terribly now, yes in part because of Kick’s own father, but she seeks nothing but to remedy that. I advise you to let her steer her own course, for it will bring nothing but acclaim to your club and harmony to our allied men in uniform.”