The Importance of Being Kennedy

by Laurie Graham

  “Just as I thought,” she said. “He’s better already. I expect he’d been eating too much rich food. Or it could have been bad water. I’d have cut short Vienna and come hurrying back for nothing.”

  I said, “It didn’t seem like nothing. The first two weeks we thought we might lose him.”

  “What nonsense,” she said. “Jack’s suffered from these little setbacks all his life but he always overcomes them. You of all people should know that.”

  Well, so I did, but even though his blood got back to normal he was still full of aches and pains. His back hurt, his knees hurt, and he stayed thin as a lath no matter how much ice cream he ate.

  I said, “If you were mine I’d send you to the knackers.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I reckon they just better shoot me.”

  Euny was no great specimen either, though she at least didn’t have the knee trouble. If she couldn’t have played tennis she’d have made life miserable for all of us. With her it was stomach trouble and nerves. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t put on any flesh. Mrs. K thought she had the makings of a perfect figure, but we called her “the greyhound.” She was a fast study though. She did so well in school Mr. K said it was a pity she was a girl because she looked like she’d make a smarter president than Jack or Bobby.

  Euny couldn’t compete with Joseph Patrick though. He was still the star attraction, back from London, looking so debonair in a drape-cut suit and his tie in a Windsor knot. Mr. K treated him man-to-man from then on. He even put up with his smoking, though he’d implored all the children not to take up such a silly, wasteful habit. And for his part Joe put up with his Daddy slavering over the girls he brought home. There was a beautiful redhead, all legs. Danny Walsh nearly broke a blood vessel watching her climb on a bicycle. Then there was a blonde called Mitzi, when the redhead fell out of favor. Herself said Mitzi wasn’t a proper name. As a matter of fact, she found something wrong with every last one of them. If she has her way, those boys will all stay bachelors.

  When Mrs. K was a girl and she’d had her year overseas at the Sacred Heart, she’d come home a gold medal Child of Mary, but none of that had rubbed off on Kick. All we heard from her when she came back was a list of the beaux she’d met, brothers of her new friends mainly, all very proper, but still, she was boy-crazy. And Rosie was just as bad. That was the first summer we had any trouble with her and it was all because Joe and Jack both brought girls home and Kick was getting letters every day, but Rosie didn’t have a beau.

  She’d been getting along just dandy living with the O’Keefes. She’d joined the Girl Scouts and learned how to pitch a tent and fry sausages over a campfire. And she concentrated better, so if you sent her to fetch something she didn’t always forget what she’d gone for. But she was betwixt and between. Not a child anymore but not really a woman either. She loved to watch the Laugh-O-Grams with Teddy and play dollies’ tea parties with Jean, but she was eighteen years old and when there was a dance on in Osterville she expected to be treated like a grown-up.

  Joe and Jack and Lem Billings were under instructions to dance with her and keep an eye on her at all times, but of course she didn’t want to be supervised. She wanted to dance with any boy who asked her and go outside for a soda if she was invited. We had a scene or two over that.

  She’d say, “I want to dance with real boys. Why can’t I? Kick does.”

  And Lem used to say, “Real boys? Gee Rosie, thanks for the compliment.”

  Sometimes she’d laugh and tell him his feet were too big. Sometimes she’d boil over. She’d start screaming and stamping, and when that happened Fidelma was the only one who could do anything with her. Mrs. K would just turn on her heel and go for a walk along the strand, and Fidelma would take Rosie to her bedroom and stay with her, sing to her, till she calmed down and fell asleep. And when she woke up the storm would have passed. She’d be her usual smiling self, as if nothing had happened, and Mrs. K would never mention it.

  In the summer of 1936 we suddenly had three extra heads to count. Mrs. Kennedy’s sister Agnes had a seizure of the brain and died, so her children were brought to Hyannis, three young Gargan cousins, with their world turned upside down.

  Mrs. K said, “Fit them in where you think best, Nora dear. And we’ll look through the boxes in the attic. There may be some of Jean’s old things that would do for the girls.”

  “Extra work for no more money,” Fidelma said, but we hardly noticed we had them. When you’ve had nine, what are three more? And they were lambs compared to the shenanigans the Kennedys got up to, climbing out onto the rooftops, purloining things from the candy store, chasing across neighbors’ gardens like a bunch of hoydens. Joey Gargan was barely two years older than Teddy, so they paired off and Teddy padded around behind him like a day-old chick.

  “What shall we do next, Joey?” he’d say. And whatever Joey suggested, he went along with. To watch them you’d never have thought Joey was the orphan.

  The two wee girls didn’t settle so easily though. They wandered around trying to fathom out where they were and why. They knew Mrs. K was their aunt Rose, but of course she didn’t look like a child’s idea of an aunt. She had no lap to sit on, for one thing. Still, she gave all our children a lecture about treating the Gargan cousins nicely and remembering their recent misfortune. But one morning I heard Jean say, “I’ll play with you, Anne, but only for a little while. I can’t be friends with just anyone, you know. I’m a Kennedy.”

  When Mr. Roosevelt ran for another term we wondered whether Mr. K would be so generous again with his time and money. He didn’t seem any nearer to getting offered a plum job, and, according to Eddie Moore, the President didn’t particularly like Mr. K any more than Mr. K liked the President. But they found each other useful. Like when the Holy Father sent Cardinal Pacelli on a visit to America. The President had him up to Hyde Park, but Mrs. Roosevelt was out of town and nobody could think what to do with him after the luncheon. Mrs. K was roped in, which thrilled her to bits. She said, “Why, he’ll come to Crownlands for tea, of course.”

  Danny Walsh drove her to the station to meet him. I’ll bet Danny’s still getting free drinks on that story. “The Pope, is it? Oh I knew him when he was Cardinal. Had him in my car, as a matter of fact.”

  Mrs. K was in her element. She said, “Nora, those Roosevelts know nothing about Mother Church. They should have consulted with me from the very start. I’d have organized a wonderful program for His Eminence.”

  I was instructed to wait half an hour after their arrival and then bring Jean and Teddy down to the sitting room. There sat His Eminence, gaunt as a death’s head, picking at a slice of Gertie Ambler’s apple Johnny cake. He had beautiful scarlet piping on his cassock. Well, Teddy did no more than take a running jump and land on his knee and Mrs. K never corrected him. That chair the Cardinal sat in was kept roped off ever afterwards, so no ordinary backside should ever sit upon it again, and when the Bronxville house was sold, it was taken up to Hyannis.

  “What a fortunate boy you are, Teddy,” she kept saying. She was like the cat that had had the cream.

  She said, “This is a day you’ll remember all your life. We must write and tell Grandpa Fitzgerald how you met the Holy Father’s very special Cardinal.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And he told me I was a real smart little feller.”

  Mr. K would do anything to keep his children in the front row. He told the President that Bobby had started collecting stamps, and the next thing we knew Bobby got a personal letter with some stamps enclosed from the President’s own collection. And then, after he was reelected, all the children were invited to go to Washington for the Inauguration.

  Herself was away on a shopping trip and Mr. K was in the presidential party, of course, so me and Fidelma got to chaperone them on the train, along with Mrs. Moore. Joe and Jack couldn’t come, because of their classes, but the others were all given leave from school and Rosie was fetched down from Boston
for the occasion. She looked so stylish, with a new beaver trim on her coat and a little felt hat. It’s times like that I’d like to bring up to them when they say she wasn’t safe to be let out. If that was the case, how come she was allowed to go to a reception at the White House and shake hands with the President himself and talk to both the Mrs. Roosevelts? Nobody can ever answer me that.

  15

  The Queen of Bronxville, the Queen of England, and Walter Stallybrass

  Gabe Nolan was the one we depended on to know how things stood between Mr. K and the President. “Very cordial,” he said. “Like clock hands at quarter past three. He came over to the house last week and watched a movie.”

  Then Danny Walsh would give us the version according to Mrs. K, which was that putting on private movie shows for the President was all very well but it didn’t appear to be leading anywhere.

  He said, “She reckons there’s somebody on the inside keeps queering things for Your Man. She’s not happy.”

  That was what I thought. I’d heard her giving out to Mr. K while we were packing to go down to Florida for Christmas.

  “Another year wasted,” she said. “Call him up. Just tell him what we want.”

  She’d been clipping pieces out of the dailies, about Mr. Bingham who was the ambassador to London. He was very sick, coming home for an operation and not expected to go back to his work for a long time.

  She said, “Tell him you have to see him before the holidays. That job has our name on it. Bob Bingham’s on his way out and if you don’t step forward and claim what Roosevelt owes you, you’re a fool.”

  We were still down at Palm Beach when we got the word. Mr. Kennedy called from Washington to say he was the new American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in London. I thought Mrs. K would die, she was so happy. She called us all together to tell us Mr. K was to be referred to as “Ambassador,” from that moment on. And she still calls him that, when he’s in her good books, though the job was a flash in the pan and it’s a very long time since he was any such thing.

  “Once an ambassador, always an ambassador,” she says.

  The household maids were the first to be given notice.

  Fidelma said, “Here we go. We’ll be on the scrap heap, Brennan, just when things are getting interesting. I tell you what. If they don’t take me with them I’m going to hide fish trimmings in with her ball gowns.”

  Gabe Nolan was convinced Danny would be let go, because the Kennedys would need a driver accustomed to VIPs and high levels of personal security.

  Danny said, “And that’s you is it, you bandy-legged little whippet? What are you going to do, carry a BB gun? Your Man’ll be getting an English driver, Nolan, that knows the rules of the road. And Mrs. K will take me, because I’m more than a driver to her.”

  Fidelma said, “You are, Danny. You’re an arse-wiper. You’ve a job for life, I’m sure.”

  Gabe said, “And what do you mean, ‘knows the rules of the road.’ I’ve drove on the left. I was driving in Ireland when you were still sucking on your Mammy’s tit.”

  Danny said, “The bollix you were. Driving what? A horse and cart?”

  And so they went on. But Danny Walsh came out ahead. He was kept on to drive for Mrs. K, Gertie Ambler was kept on to cook, and me and Fidelma were told we’d both be required.

  Herself said, “The Ambassador and I will have very many social obligations. I expect there’ll be weeks when we hardly see the children.”

  As Fidelma said, “Nothing different there then.”

  Our passage was booked for February and we were all in an uproar, steamer trunks everywhere and Herself running round with so many lists pinned to her skirt and blouse you could hardly see what she was wearing. Seven children to pack for, and all their appointments to be kept before we left. Eyes to be tested, teeth to be checked, hair to be cut, confessions to be heard.

  Then she got stopped in her tracks. It was one of the maids who found her. She was curled up on her daybed, gripping her pillow, she was in so much pain. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her.

  They all said, “You go in to her, Nora. You know how to handle her.”

  “Such a nuisance,” she kept saying. “I have so much to do. But I’ll be perfectly well in a minute.”

  Then she was sick and she was feeling so rotten she didn’t even give instructions how the mess was to be cleaned up.

  I said, “I’ll send for the doctor.”

  “No, no,” she said. “I’ll just have a glass of hot water. It’s sure to pass.”

  But I didn’t like the look of her so I sent for the doctor anyway and just as well. It was her appendix and she was in hospital within the hour. That threw a spanner in the works. Mr. K said he couldn’t delay getting to London, so he’d sail as planned, and maybe take Kick with him, to stand in for Mrs. K in case he needed anyone to throw an urgent tea party. Well, Herself may have been just out from under the surgeon’s knife, but she was in her senses enough to put the kibosh on that little plan. She said it would get the Ambassador’s tour of duty off to completely the wrong start to have an eighteen-year-old girl acting as his hostess, and anyway, no tea parties were to be given until she’d inspected the hollow-ware.

  So our tickets were changed and we sailed in March instead, except for Danny Walsh, who took Mrs. K’s limousine over on the same boat as the Ambassador, and Fidelma, who was on unpaid leave, to get off at Queenstown and to go to Tralee to see her folks. Herself should have recuperated another week or two at least but she was determined to get to London. Even before she was up from her bed she was trying on different hats, deciding which one to wear for the farewell photographs when we went aboard.

  “All the dailies will be there,” she said. “And you children must all prepare something to say. They’re sure to ask you how you feel about going to live in London, so each of you think of something bright and interesting, and practice saying it. No mumbling. You must smile and speak up.”

  We were taking Teddy, Jean, Bobby, Pat, and Kick. Joe and Jack were to come over in the college vacations, and Euny was to follow on at the end of the spring semester, with Rosie chaperoning her and Fidelma hooking up with them again when they docked at Cork. And that’s another thing. When they say Rosie was always backward and incapable, I’d like to remind them, in 1938 she wasn’t considered incapable. She was allowed to cross the Atlantic Ocean with nobody for company but a sixteen-year-old sister. In 1938 she was capable of going to curtseying lessons and passing with flying colors and being presented to Their Royal Majesties at Buckingham Palace. But how people can change their tune.

  We might have been film stars, the send-off we got in New York. Ursie clipped a whole pile of photographs and sent them to Edmond and Deirdre. I’m not rightly sure where Nyasaland is, but it’s funny to think of me and my Kennedys pinned to a wall somewhere in the middle of the jungle. Mrs. K was in her element, yammering away to the reporters.

  She said “I’m no stranger to London, of course. As Mayor Fitzgerald’s daughter, I traveled extensively and I received much of my education in Europe. As a matter of fact it feels more like going to my second home than a voyage into the unknown. And of course I’m greatly looking forward to working alongside the Ambassador.”

  We’d been told Prince’s Gate was a very good address, with views onto a carriage drive and a big green park. We’d been told we’d even have our own ballroom.

  She said, “The timing couldn’t be more perfect. The girls will be able to make their debut in great style. I was twenty before I had my coming-out, you know. I’d been too busy with my studies to have it sooner. Most girls had their parties at hotels, but mine was held at home. It was more appropriate for the Mayor’s daughter. We had dinner and a ball and the house was filled, just filled with carnations and sweet peas. And the next morning my picture was on the front of every newspaper in town. It was the most important debut of the year. But things will be even better for Rosie and Kick. The Ambassador’s daughters.”
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  We docked at Plymouth and Mr. K met us with even more cameras and reporters than had seen us off in New York.

  Somebody shouted out, “You all look the same. Which one’s the mother?” She loved that, waving and smiling and posing for more pictures.

  Somebody else asked how Mrs. K could look so young and slim when she’d had nine children. Mr. K said, “We had the stork deliver them from Barney’s.”

  We went in convoy to London. It took all day and when we got to Prince’s Gate there wasn’t even hot water for baths. Nor towels fit for anything but cleaning rags, nor a mirror you could see your face in. We had twenty bedrooms and ten bathrooms and a gas range that wouldn’t light and then, when it did, it took your eyebrows off. Gertie said either it went or she did, so there was no dinner cooked that night. We had sandwiches and lemonade and Teddy and Jean rode up and down in the elevator till well past ten o’clock, driving the butler and the maids demented.

  Mrs. K came in to me after I’d got the young ones to bed. She looked exhausted.

  I said, “You never got your nap today.”

  “No,” she said, “and it takes a great deal of energy to put on a good show. But never mind. We did it. And now we really have our work cut out. Tomorrow, dear heart, as soon as the Ambassador has gone to his office, we’ll make a start. There are things that need to be repaired, things that have to be replaced. I have to hope we’re not called upon to receive anyone important just yet. The residence of the United States Ambassador and not two matching glasses in the house. Can you imagine?”

  I’d never known her to take any great interest in furnishings. She’d spend on hats and gowns and then have rugs darned and sheets turned sides to middle till there was nothing left to turn. But Prince’s Gate was different. She seemed to think the whole world was watching to see what kind of figure the Kennedys cut in London. She bought a Royal Worcester dinner service and new table linens. She had paintings brought round from the embassy in Grosvenor Square to cover the grubby patches on the walls, and two water geysers replaced before we were all gassed in our beds. She had carte blanche. Mr. K never minded her spending. For days she had me follow her round the house writing down what needed to be done and I thought how small she looked in those big, grand rooms. It was one thing to be the Queen of Bronxville, but Prince’s Gate was something else, even if it did have a cracked toilet bowl.