It got to the middle of March and I still hadn’t had my usual little homemade Christmas card from Rosie, but I didn’t think anything of it. We hardly marked it ourselves that year. Pilchards on toast, that was Christmas dinner.
Then, just after Easter, I got a letter from Kick. Jack had been accepted by the Navy and was off to midshipman school on Lake Michigan and he’d asked her to let me know. Daddy put an end to Jack’s pash for Inge, she wrote.
He said she’s most probably a Fifth Columnist and it had to stop because when the war’s over Joe’ll be running for Congress and we can’t have his chances ruined by any skeletons in the family closet. Also, the d-i-v-o-r-c-e thing would break Mother’s heart.
The Bronxville house had been closed up and Herself had taken a suite at the Plaza Hotel, so I guessed Fidelma was out of a job, though Kick didn’t mention her. Teddy and Jean were shuttling between Palm Beach and Hyannis, Pattie was off to college in Philadelphia, Euny was in California for her health and her studies, and Kick was still writing her newspaper pieces, quite the career girl.
Mother keeps calling the Editor with ideas for articles, she wrote.
I wish he’d give her my spot. I’d much rather be in London doing something exciting. Also she called Joe’s commanding officer because Joe got a demerit for having a messy bunk or something and Mother told them they shouldn’t be so petty when a boy had volunteered to put his life on the line. Word got round and now all the other guys are joking about it. Joe is SO ticked off with Mother.
Washington is really depressing. The only men around are old timers or wounded or 4Fs so there’s not much dancing to be had.
Darlingest Nora, I have something to tell you. Rosie isn’t so hot. You mustn’t worry about her because the Sisters are taking the very best care of her, but she had a little operation back in the fall and it didn’t go quite as well as expected. I didn’t write you before because I hoped she’d start feeling better but I don’t think it’s very likely now. Dr. Freeman said the best thing would be for her to have complete rest and not see places that might upset her, like Hyannis, so she’s gone to a nursing home in Beacon, on the Hudson. It’s called Craig House and Mary Moore says she’s settled in just fine so you’re not to worry about her.
Miss you a million. Jack and Joe send kisses.
P.S. Nancy Tenney got married. He’s a navy aviator like Joe. At this rate I’ll be the only one left on the shelf.
I wrote to Rosie at Craig House, Beacon, but nothing ever came back and it wasn’t till I heard from Fidelma that I really knew what had happened.
They’ve runed our darling girl, she wrote, and broken my heart.
Mr. K was looking into opyrations you know for people with over-exited brains. I told him and told him all Rosie wanted was a natural life. Sure when it comes down to it she was only longing for the same trills the old billygoat expects for himself. I don’t know how far things went. She did go missing a couple of times and somebody may have given her strong drink but there was still no call to do what they did and Mister and Mrs. Moore agree with me.
The doctor said he had plenty of satysfed customers. Ladies who had low spirits or given to tantroms. Mr. K got sent testymonals. But it was still wrong what they did.
It was done at the Goerge Washington. Just a wee cut they said to take away the troublesome part of her mind. It’s called lowbotummy. Kick came with us to the hospital, and Mrs. Moore. Herself was up to Poland Springs taking the waters.
Rosie went to it like the lamm she was. Smiled and waved as they weeled her out to the opyrating room. They shaved away a lock of her hair but that was easy covered by a headscarf when they’d done, and she’d to wear a sunshade, because her eyes were a bit bruised but that wasn’t the sum of it. She was runed. They said she wouldn’t feel a thing and afterwards she’d just be nice and carm, and stop her night time wanderings and all that talk about boys and squezing but that wasn’t the way she was at all. She couldn’t speak. I don’t think she knew who any of us was not even when her Daddy came in. He was shaken to see her. Serve him right.
But then he said it was likely just the carming pill they’d given her before the opyration and she’d be all right later. He told Mrs. Moore to bring her to the Sisters at Craig House for a holliday.
Kick said What’ll we do Daddy if it doesn’t wear off?
He said Hellfire and damnation it will wear off. And if it doesn’t well we gave it our best. At least she won’t be going around queering things for Joe’s future.
Well then he had to go tell Herself what had happened and I prayed she’d kill him when she got up to the nursing home and saw the dammidge. But she didn’t go to the nursing home and so far as I know she still hasn’t. The only visitors Rosies had are me and Mrs. Moore and the pill didn’t wear off. They meddled where they shouldn’t have and now she’s like a poor broken doll.
Herself said the Ambassydor only tried what had been hily recommended and no-one was to blame if it didn’t work on Rosie. She said every family has its cross to bear and Rosie was theirs and she said there was to be no talk, particly not in front of Teddy and Jean. There doesn’t need to be talk. They know she’s not coming home. Teddy cried himself sick when she didn’t come for Christmas. So that’s how things stand. And then I was let go because they can’t keep Bronxville going when help is so hard to get.
I purely hate them Nora the both of them. They couldn’t make a winner of Rosie and they couldn’t just leave her be. I’m glad to be out of there.
I’m back up to New York, learning riviting at the Brooklyn shipyard. Still looking for a husband. Make a novena for poor Rosie.
Rosie was kept at Craig House till last year, then Mr. K decided to move her out west, to a convent in Wisconsin where there’s space for her to have her own little house and a Sister to live in with her. And now they’ve started putting it about that she was mentally deficient from the start and was bound to have to be put away sooner or later. Well, that’s not my recollection, nor Fidelma’s. I still have her little letters, and that picture of her, dressed up in her silver thread gown and her ostrich feathers, off to curtsey to the King and Queen of England. I know what I know.
Kick never mentioned Rosie again in her letters though she was a good little correspondent and kept me up-to-date on the rest of them. Jean and Teddy were forever moving school depending on whether it was the season for Palm Beach or Hyannis or New York. Bobby was getting ready to go to Harvard, Pat was at Rosemont, and Euny was out at Stanford in California with Herself tagging along, attending the classes, going to the teas and socials and having a dandy time, according to Kick. Dandy for Mrs. K maybe. It’s no wonder Euny’s such a nervous wreck. When you’re twenty-one years old, you don’t want your Mammy perched on your shoulder all the time, bragging how her waistline’s no different after nine babies, blowing her trumpet about the weekends she spent at Windsor Castle. All that time on her hands, she could have been doing war work, using that Kennedy name for something useful, not crowding in on the children.
Jack finished his training and was posted an ensign, out to the Pacific, and Joseph Patrick still hadn’t gotten his wings. Jack had overtaken him. Young Joe wouldn’t have liked that. He was based at Norfolk, Virginia, so Kick saw quite a bit of him when he got time off.
Must close, she wrote one time. I’m having dinner with the future President.
Every letter I had from her she complained her Daddy wouldn’t allow her to come to London and help win the war, but early in ’43 she finally wore him down with her begging. The American Red Cross was recruiting girls to come to Europe and Mr. K said if the Red Cross could use her he wouldn’t stand in her way. Of course Joe Kennedy being Joe Kennedy, he couldn’t keep from pulling strings. He didn’t want her posted to any old job in any old dump. He fixed up for her to get a posting to London.
Clear the decks, she wrote. I’ve done my basic training, had my shots and I’m on my way.
I quite thought she might turn up at the Ra
inbow Corner. There was plenty to do, taking care of all those American boys, in a strange country for the first time. I was the one they applied to if they had something needed mending, but you weren’t just a seamstress at the Red Cross. You had to be a mother to them too. “Aunt Nora” they called me. They’d show me pictures of their folks, tell me about their sweethearts, read me their Dear John letters sometimes. We were there to give them a home away from home and serve it with a smile. You couldn’t stop to think what might happen to them once they saw action.
It would have been grand to have a girl like Kick around. We were mainly older women working there and the boys would have loved to see a pretty young face, but Mr. K didn’t want her hobnobbing with the ranks. He made sure a job was found for her at the Officers’ Club in Knightsbridge, so she was back on her old stamping ground, just along the road from Prince’s Gate.
Her first Sunday in town she came round to Carlton Gardens to see us, dressed in her glad rags, ready to go dancing with Tony Erskine. She looked grand. Her face had lost some of its puppy fat and she was wearing her hair softer. She’d rinsed it in vinegar to bring out the color and give it a nice shine. Still that same old ragamuffin grin though.
She came knocking at the tradesman’s door.
“Hey, Nora,” she said, “how’s married life?”
She sat at the scullery table, back under a Devonshire roof, and Hope made a pot of tea.
I said, “I can’t believe you’re here. I never thought your Mammy and Daddy would let you come.”
“Well,” she said, “Mother’s kind of busy, working on Euny and Pat, seeing as how she failed to turn me into a swan, and Daddy’s easier to get around these days. He’s tired, you know? He’s really kind of low in spirits. Joe says it’s because of the way Roosevelt’s treated him.”
I said, “And he likely has Rosie on his conscience too.”
She didn’t like that. She said, “But that wasn’t Daddy’s fault. He went into it with lots of different doctors and he got a top, top man to do the procedure. It should have turned out fine. And he did it for the best, before she got into trouble. You don’t know what she was like after she came home from England.”
I said, “What was she like?”
She colored up. “Not in front of Walter,” she whispered. So Walter remembered he had boots to polish.
“Well,” she said, “she just ran wild. She was boy crazy. The Sisters said at night they daren’t let her out of their sight. She wanted to go out dancing.”
I said, “Then why didn’t your Mammy fix her up with a dancing partner, like she did when you were here? She was all right as long as she had London Jack to give her a twirl.”
She said, “But it wasn’t just dancing she wanted. It was, you know, the other thing. I think she may have done it, Nora. The thing we mustn’t do till we’re married. She seemed to know an awful lot about it all of a sudden.”
Hope sat there, turning a sock heel and wheezing like an old geyser.
She said, “Nowt new about that. Sexual intercourse. They all do it, married or not. Specially now we might all wake up dead tomorrow.”
Kick looked at her. She said, “Kennedys don’t. We’re Sacred Heart girls.”
I said, “But why did they tamper with her brain? They must have known it could go wrong.”
“Oh no,” she said. “The man Daddy got to do it had operated on loads and loads of people. It was just bad luck, what happened to Rosie. Really, really bad luck. But you know what? I don’t think she remembers anything about it. I don’t think she remembers anything about anything.”
And then her eyes filled up. “I really miss her,” she said. “She was such a klutz. But nice. It’s like she died. Only she didn’t.”
Oh then we had a good old weep together. Crying was something else Kennedys didn’t do, but she knew she was all right with her old Nora. It was a good job Stallybrass had left the room. He can’t be doing with waterworks and we both ended up with noses as red as her dance gown. Even Hope joined in and she never even knew Rosie.
She said, “The thing is, she might have gone with a man and gotten a baby. Then what would we have done?”
I said, “It would just have been another little Kennedy. Fidelma would have loved it.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But Mother wouldn’t. It could have been a baby from any old unsuitable type. Rosie would have gone with anyone.”
I said, “And how did your Mammy take it, about the operation?”
“Went for lots of walks at first,” she said. “You know how she does. Went to Mass and then for long, stomping walks, on her own. But then she decided to go to California and keep Euny company in college. She reads all the books and goes to the lectures and everything. She’s quite the perfect student, except she doesn’t have to take the tests.”
I said, “And what does Euny think about that?”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t think she’s wildly happy at Stanford anyway. She doesn’t seem to have any new friends, and she looks terrible. She just gets thinner and thinner.”
There never was an ounce of fat on that one. Euny could eat like a cart horse and the grass still wouldn’t know where she was treading.
I said, “And have you seen any of your old crowd yet?”
She said, “Well, I’m going to the Florida Club tonight with Tony Erskine, except he’s now Earl Rosslyn if you please. But if you mean have I seen Billy, no. He’s in Herefordshire at the moment. Or is it Hampshire? In camp, anyway. But I’ve seen Sissy. She’s got another tiny, tiny baby, such a sweetie, and I saw Ginny Vigo, now Lady Balderston of course. I wish I could be in the ATS. I love those furry coats they get to wear. And we’ll probably see Caro Leinster and Harry Bagnell tonight. They’re engaged, you know? Imagine! And I’m going to try and visit Debo. It must be the absolute worst thing, not knowing when she’ll see Andrew. Not even knowing where he is.”
Lady Debo was expecting again, due any day.
Kick had sailed with a big contingent of new Red Cross girls. Most of them had been sent out on the road with mobile canteens for the GIs, trucks rigged up to serve doughnuts and real American java, but not Kick. Her job was to show the officers around London and keep them entertained, fix them up with tickets for a show or find them a card school or a nice English family to have them round for tea. As war work went it was a nice little number. She was living in, at Hans Crescent, so the late nights didn’t matter. She seemed to get plenty of time off and she hadn’t been back in London a month before Billy Hartington was squiring her again and all the competition fell by the wayside.
His battalion was stationed in Hampshire, awaiting orders, and he came up to town to see Kick every minute he could. Sally Norton was history and so were all Kick’s beaux. She fell like a ton of bricks. Walter reckoned it was the captain’s pips that did it. Hope thought it was visiting Lady Debo and seeing her sweet little Devonshire baby that put ideas in her head. I don’t know. They dropped by Carlton Gardens one night, on their way to the Embassy Club, Lord Billy and Kick, Lord and Lady Balderston, Minnie Stubbs, Cynthia Brough. They all had their war stories, but to me they were no more than infants. They looked like children who’d been playing in the dressing-up box.
Walter said, “There’ll be ructions, you know, if Their Graces find out this romance has started up again. Can you not have a word with her?”
I said, “I’ve nothing to say that she’s not heard before. And it hardly seems right, laying down the law to them when they’re both old enough to be in uniform. They’ll have to work it out for themselves.”
I did speak to her though.
I said, “There’ll be tears, young lady. Your Mammy didn’t approve of Lord Billy for one simple reason, and nothing’s changed.”
“I know,” she said, “but other things have changed. People are different since the war. Daddy is. He’s not so definite about everything. And if we can get Daddy on our side, he’ll talk Mother round.”
> I said, “So you’re serious about each other.”
“Pretty much,” she said. “Billy’s going to talk to his folks. See how things could be worked out.”
I said, “You mean so you can be married?”
“I guess,” she said. “We’re both of age.”
She sat at the scullery table, chewing her nails as usual.
I said, “You may be of age, but I’ve still a mind to paint your fingertips with mustard.”
She said, “Sissy and David got married and that was dead easy. They’re raising their babies Catholic. I mean, as long as they’re something I don’t see it matters what.”
Hope said, “In our house it matters what. Devonshires are Church of England. Always were, always will be.”
Kick said, “All right. Then we’ll just have to have Church of England babies.”
I said, “And your Mammy will cut you dead if you do.”
“Well,” she said, “I figure if I just keep saying my prayers everything will turn out dandy.”
I’m sure she did too. It didn’t matter how grown up my Kennedys grew, they still got down on their knees every night and prayed their rosary.
25
Girl on a Bicycle
We didn’t hear the news about Jack until weeks after it had happened. His patrol boat had been sunk with two of his crew lost and the rest had ended up stranded on a desert island. They were there for days, sitting under palm trees, watching for a passing boat and writing messages on coconut shells, just like in the comics. There was a little piece about it in the Daily Mail.
The Importance of Being Kennedy Page 21