Kick

by Paula Byrne

  Lady Astor had dropped in to see Kick at Hans Crescent, amusing her as ever, and remarking pithily, ‘You don’t work in a Red Cross Club, you work in a lunatic asylum.’ To a ‘big tough top sergeant’, she said, ‘You don’t need to be entertained. I should give you a lecture on temperance.’ She scoured the Club looking for boys from Virginia: ‘Lord Astor just looked amazed, and I don’t really blame him as the place looked like a mad house.’4 Nancy, who still regarded Kick as a surrogate daughter, was kind underneath the sarcasm, telling her, ‘I just wanted them to know that there are lots of people concerning themselves about you over here.’ She kept up the invitations, insisting that Kick should appear at a ball ‘in the cause of Anglo-American unity which at this point is anything but good’.5 GIs were flooding into Britain at this time, in preparation for the opening of the Second Front. To many British people, ground down by years of air raids and rationing, the flashy Americans seemed ‘overpaid, oversexed and over here’.

  Brother Joe, newly stationed in England as a United States naval aviator, also arrived at Hans Crescent, bringing a food package from home of ham, beef, eggs, brownies, cookies, candy, oranges, lemons and apples. Then there was Rose Kennedy’s London friend Marie Bruce. She would be a major player in the Billy and Kick drama that would soon unfold.

  Joe Sr wrote to Tony Rosslyn about his fears that Kick was overdoing it. Lord Halifax had told him that Kick was ‘the busiest person in England . . . available on the telephone at all hours of the night and day at Hans Crescent’. Joe, anxious parent as ever, told Rosslyn that he wished he would say to Kick, ‘as I’ve said to Jack – that he doesn’t have to win this war all by himself any more than she has to entertain the entire American Army or be the focal point for British-American relations, just do a little, that’s enough’.6 Joe couldn’t or wouldn’t see that she was overcompensating because of her father’s damaged reputation in England. He told Tony that they missed her ‘like the devil’ but that she seemed to be happy: ‘whatever she wants is all right with me’. Despite his own pessimism about the war and its outcome, he recognized that he hadn’t influenced his daughter in this respect: ‘She has been the steadiest battler that there is for England.’7

  For all her difficulties with the management, she was popular with the GIs at Hans Crescent, playing golf with a mixed group to ‘improve Anglo-American relations’. She bumped into one of Jack’s ex-girlfriends, Stella ‘Baby’ Cárcano, daughter of the Argentine Ambassador: ‘She’s awfully sweet and very attractive but not the girl for Jack.’ Baby hated the countryside, and as Kick remarked, ‘It doesn’t make for popularity over here not to like the country.’8

  Kick missed all her ‘wee brothers and sisters’ and begged them to keep writing letters: ‘I love their letters and read parts of them to the gang here. They all get a terrific kick out of them.’ She was tickled to find that she was accused of having an English accent, ‘but the boys keep me from going too “limey”’.9

  She had a ‘fantastic’ time being an extra in a very popular film called English without Tears, which involved ‘dancing about with various other representatives of the United Nations’. She loved the work, with directors, electricians and stars ‘all screaming “darling” at each other’. She was taken to watch Laurence Olivier and David Niven, who were also making films for the war effort. When she finally saw the rushes, she found that she was covered by ‘an enormous toy hanging from the Xmas tree right in my face . . . for all the rice in China, I wouldn’t be a film star.’

  Despite her popularity, Kick now excited jealousy among the other girls. The British girls, deprived of cosmetics and clothes, envied her the beautiful dresses and the make-up she had, most of which Joe had sent her on the black market. Some of the former debutantes who now found themselves working in factories, as army drivers or in other demanding uniformed roles felt resentment that she ‘didn’t have to do anything except for the odd stint at a canteen’.10 The care packages sent over by Rose and Joe also aroused envy among her Red Cross colleagues. On one occasion, Rose dispatched a ‘glorious chest full of little goodies’ including golf balls, foodstuffs and a turquoise wool dress.11 In the end, Kick asked her mother to stop sending her lovely clothes from America. She wanted to rely on clothing coupons like the other girls.

  Kick was also admonished for taking too many personal telephone calls. She seemed to be permanently on the telephone, gossiping with friends. The real issue, though, was the sheer number of her male admirers. William Douglas-Home, Tony Rosslyn, Richard Wood over in America, and, above all, Billy Cavendish were in love with her. Some of the English girls were insanely jealous. As one of them said, ‘She was after Billy. He had a nice big fat title and estate coming and all that. That was not a nice thing to say, but it was well known and so terribly obvious.’12

  Little did they know the pressure that Kick was under because of her religious faith. She and Billy continued to discuss ways around their religious differences. That August, she met for the first time Father Martin D’Arcy, the Jesuit priest from Mayfair’s Farm Street Church. He would become an important figure in the ensuing months. After a weekend spent at Cliveden, she wrote to her parents, ‘Billy came down from Yorkshire and had to sleep on the floor. I wish his father could have seen him. It really is funny how much worried and how much talking is being done, by all those old Cecil and Devonshire spooks.’13 Kick was anxious to go to mass on Sunday but was told that it was miles away. Undeterred, she ‘hopped on a bike and was there in twenty-five minutes’.

  Joe Jr was now down at the Coastal Command base in Cornwall in the far south-west of England, but they chatted on the telephone. During this time, Kick grew closer to Joe. She had always hero-worshipped him, but now she truly became more a friend and an equal. He had flown with the VB-110 squadron across the Atlantic, carrying a crate of eggs from Virginia as a present for his sister.

  Taking on the fatherly role, he would phone Kick and lecture her. ‘You talk to me like I was a member of the crew,’ she would complain. During his leave he came to London, and visited the Hans Crescent Club. He listened to the jukebox and played card games with the other officers, and he was frustrated by Kick’s bridge skills: ‘Everyone makes mistakes, Kick, but you make too darn many . . . Gee, Kick, aren’t you ever going to learn?’14

  They went off to the 400 Club together and then the next night to the Savoy as guests of William Randolph Hearst Jr, who was working as a war correspondent. One of the other guests was the beautiful, black-haired Pat Wilson, who was already on her second marriage, but whose husband was fighting in Libya. Pat was struck by the handsome young American GI with the dazzling smile. She and Joe Jr began an affair. Once again, Kick was living through a brother’s adulterous relationship at close quarters. Once again, there was one rule for the Kennedy boys and another for the girls.

  Private turmoil did nothing to dent her public image. In August 1943, a photograph appeared in the Daily Mail of Kick riding her bicycle dressed in her Red Cross uniform: ‘MISS KATHLEEN KENNEDY, daughter of Mr Joseph Kennedy, former American Ambassador to Great Britain, has arrived in London to work for the American Red Cross. The picture shows Kathleen with her bicycle, which she uses to work in London.’ She became known as ‘the girl on the bicycle’, a symbol of America helping the British to win the war.

  38

  Parties and Prayers

  My British Buddy, we’re as different as can be,

  He thinks he’s winning the war and I think it’s me . . .

  But we’re in there pitching

  Till we get to Germany.

  When the job is done

  And the war is won

  We’ll be clasping hands across the sea.

  Irving Berlin

  Irving Berlin was playing his latest song, ‘My British Buddy’, on the piano, guests ‘swarmed in’, all the girls were dressed in their finery. It was, according to Kick Kennedy, ‘the first party London had had for the young for two years’. She was throwing it for
her brother Joe and his friends in the home of her mother’s London friend, Marie Bruce: ‘Joe Jr. arrived with his entire squadron who were feeling no pain.’1 It was just like old times.

  Kick had been putting on her dress when Irving Berlin happened to telephone Marie Bruce. Kick insisted that he should come. She was expecting her guests to be rather overwhelmed by her coup of having Berlin performing at her party, but, as she discovered, ‘People don’t pay much attention to celebrities over here and when he walked in he might have been Joe Snooks for all the glances he got.’2 She put him next to the Duchess of Devonshire, Billy’s mother, ‘hoping she’d strike up a lively conversation’. The guests gathered around the piano and sang along with Irving Berlin till past one in the morning. He closed with an old favourite, ‘Over There’.

  There was one dramatic incident when the new evening dress worn by one of Billy’s sisters was set on fire by a young Guardsman who had had too much to drink. The seventeen-year-old Lady Elizabeth Cavendish told her mother: ‘Before I was set on fire the boys didn’t pay much attention to me, but afterwards I was very popular.’ Kick told her parents that an American boy put out the fire, leading one of the guests, Angie Laycock, to ask her brave husband, General Laycock, ‘Why didn’t you do something about putting those flames out?’ He replied, ‘I thought it was a fireworks display.’3 Kick found it difficult to enjoy the evening as she was so nervous about everything. Afterwards, she received many thank-you letters saying ‘Why aren’t more parties like that given?’ Joe was proud of his sister. ‘Kick handled herself to perfection as usual and made a terrific hit all around,’ he wrote to his parents. ‘The girls looked very pretty and made quite an impression on the love-wan sailors whom I brought.’4

  Kick was seeing lots of Joe during his leave. They went shopping together and dined with friends. She was not being completely truthful when she told her parents that ‘he has no special girl friend’, since he was still seeing the married Pat Wilson.

  At Thanksgiving, turkey was served to all the GIs. ‘The Britisher hasn’t seen turkey for four years,’ Kick noted drily. She had a new duty at the Red Cross as official guide to the social scene: ‘When a distinguished visitor arrives and wants to be shown about the London Clubs little Kick is going to do it.’5 She was also giving lectures at the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service).

  Kick and Joe made plans to meet up before Christmas. Joe had been ill early in December, but joked that his ‘giant constitution, nurtured from babyhood by coca colas, nut sundaes and Hershey bars’, had helped him on the road to recovery.6 Joe Sr telegraphed Kick: ‘we are all praying you will be with us next Xmas give Joe our love and wish him and all our friends a merry Xmas and a new year that will bring us all peace on earth’.7 Jack managed to get home leave, and Rose wrote movingly about his return in her diary: ‘He is really at home – the boy for whom you prayed so hard – at the mention of whose name your eyes would become dimmed . . . what a joy to see him – to feel his coat & to press his arms . . . to look at his bronze tired face which is thin & drawn.’ She found it almost unbearable that he was so ill and weak that he couldn’t eat the food produced by Margaret the cook. She would prepare all his favourite dishes and he would give them one look and say, ‘just can’t take it yet Margaret’.8

  For all the maternal love revealed here, Rose was not the parent to whom Kick could turn as she faced the greatest challenge of her life. Billy had made up his mind that he was going to propose, and he was determined that this time Kick would not get away from him. They adored one another, but, as he acknowledged, it was a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ situation, families from opposite ends of the religious divide. Neither family would relent on the matter of religion.

  The truth was that Billy Cavendish hailed from perhaps the most anti-Catholic family in England. Their wealth and position had been derived from their opposition to Catholicism, from the time when the 1st Duke fought James II in the seventeenth century. Kick was now fully aware of the extent of Billy’s father’s anti-Catholicism – even his own son Andrew called him ‘a bigoted Protestant’.9

  In January 1944, Billy plucked up his courage and asked for a meeting with his parents. On Sunday the 23rd he told the Duke and Duchess that there was only one thing he wanted to do in his life and that was to marry Kick.10 He told them that he knew that it was impossible, but he knew it would make the whole difference to his life and that he was ready to do anything to bring it about.

  The Duke replied that he could not give consent for his heir to marry a Roman Catholic. Seeing how upset Billy was, he went on to say that there was no one he would rather see Billy marry, and that he would do everything in his power to bring about a solution. He told Billy that he had discussed the situation with Joe Kennedy and would write him a letter if Kick wished. But there were huge barriers, practical ones as well as matters of principle. Billy’s future son could not possibly be a Catholic and a duke of Devonshire. Quite apart from the family tradition, there was the fact that the Devonshires had within their gift at least forty livings (parish benefices) in the Church of England. How could a Roman Catholic be expected to perform the duty of appointing clergy in the Church of England?

  The Duchess suggested to Billy that she should have a meeting with Kick. On the Tuesday, they had a long talk. Kick wrote that the Duchess was ‘charming, felt rather embarrassed and said the one thing she didn’t want me to think was that they were doing anything to make me give up something that was a part of me’. The Duchess asked Kick if she were prepared to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss matters. In fact, the next day, Kick lunched with Father D’Arcy of Farm Street. Her friend Evelyn Waugh had suggested that she should take advice from the man who had converted him. ‘Blue chin and fine, slippery mind’ was how Waugh described him.11

  D’Arcy was ‘charming’ and told her that he had known of the romance since before the war, but hadn’t realized that it was still going on. He seemed to give a glimmer of hope when he told her that until twenty years ago mixed marriages had been permitted if the girls were raised as Catholics and the boys as Anglicans. Kick told him about her meeting with the Duchess and asked D’Arcy if he thought it a good idea to see the Archbishop of Canterbury. He replied that he felt ‘quite safe’ in sending her. She asked him if he thought that there were loopholes. There might be, but he doubted it. He told Kick that ‘the Devonshires should be proud to get a girl of such strong faith and principles’. Before meeting the Archbishop, Kick decided that she should speak to a local bishop. Kick’s parting words to Father D’Arcy were full of poignancy: ‘I’m sure God would want two people to be happy.’ D’Arcy ‘smiled and said that’s the language of wishing to make it so’. But he had to remind her that marrying Billy would mean ‘living in sin’ in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

  These early months of 1944 were truly the most difficult that Kick, just turning twenty-four, had yet faced. To marry the man she loved and had loved for five years meant renouncing her faith. Few truly knew what renouncing her faith would mean to her. John White’s probing had provoked some doubts about some of the dogma of Catholicism, but it had not shaken her faith. Rose believed that Kick had what she called ‘the gift of faith’.12 She also acknowledged in her memoirs, rather bravely, that her daughter had been ‘thoroughly indoctrinated in her religious beliefs’ from an early age. Writing with the gift of hindsight, in a world in which Catholic doctrine had been reformed by Vatican II, Rose admitted that Kick ‘also knew how much the Church meant to me, to most of her close relatives, and, historically, to her ancestors’. It was Catholicism that had bound her Irish ancestors together: religion had been ‘the main cohesive force, more important than language, custom, any circumstances that had enabled the Irish people to survive, and in some ways to prevail during the course of many centuries of domination by the English’.13 Rose observed moreover that ‘Billy’s ancestors for generations had been occupants of highest offices in the English government of Ireland. As such they had done their
best to suppress any sentiments for independence among or on behalf of the Irish . . . I think it would be fair to say that the Cavendishs and Cecils deeply mistrusted the Irish people.’ She added, ‘To put it mildly, there was little in the family backgrounds to encourage a romance between Billy and Kick’.14 That was indeed an understatement. Rose also made the rather sly point that Billy’s father was a Freemason, ‘under condemnation by the Catholic Church for more than two centuries’.15

  A friend remembered the sight of Kick on her knees ‘for fifteen minutes, lost in prayers’.16 Then, in the morning, she prayed again and then set off for mass. Her faith was perhaps deeper than Billy’s. His was entwined with heritage, status, tradition, but he didn’t feel it viscerally as she did. Rose was wrong about many things but she was right that Kick had the ‘gift of faith’. It was much to give up.

  Kick declared that ‘she would marry Billy in a second’ if there was a way out of the difficulty. She was dismayed that people around her were expressing disbelief that she would even think of rejecting Billy. ‘Imagine an Irish Catholic saying no to becoming one of the richest and most important duchesses in England,’ she wrote. ‘Things like that make me want to show ’em.’

  She was deeply upset at the pain Billy was enduring: ‘Poor Billy is nearly going out of his mind.’ Kick spoke to her brother Joe but felt that he didn’t understand. She spoke endlessly to Marie Bruce and Nancy Astor, her surrogate mother figures: ‘Everyone is trying to talk me into the marriage and I must say it’s all rather difficult . . . I wish mother was here.’17

  Marie Bruce wrote a long, loving letter to Rose to update her on the Billy and Kick situation. She told Rose that Kick had had many boyfriends, both English and American, and that she had advised Kick to court them in her Mayfair home rather than in nightclubs, where the newspapermen buzzed around her looking for stories. Then she got to the point, ‘Well, dear Rose, suppose I better write to you about Billy.’ She told Rose that she liked him very much indeed, that he was a very nice young man and would make Kick very happy.18