The Importance of Being Kennedy

by Laurie Graham

  Walter was on his feet. He said, “That was a big one. I’d best get round to the telephones.”

  Since Lady Melhuish died, His Lordship had left more and more to the men under him, and Walter loved manning the telephones. I don’t believe he’d hardly seen one before the war and he still hasn’t got the hang of talking into them in a normal way. He shouts so loud you might hear him in Bakewell without his even using the telephone. He went round to the ARP and later on he came back with the news that some kind of rocket bomb had hit a street in Chiswick, just across the river from Kew Gardens. He wanted to cycle over there directly, to see if the greenhouses were damaged, but Hope wouldn’t let him.

  She said, “I haven’t gone through five years of war for you to go wobbling down to Chiswick in the blackout and get run over by a bus.”

  He said, “I do not wobble.”

  He did though.

  He said, “What if there’s a frost tonight? What about my plants?”

  Well, there wasn’t going to be a frost. It was as hot as blazes. Sometimes Walter takes too much upon himself. Anyway, he didn’t go, because Hope hid his bicycle pump. Doing Vincent’s milk round had put a bit of spine in her.

  Well, that was the start of the V2s. They said they were worse yet than the doodlebugs, because you didn’t hear them coming until after they’d arrived, but they didn’t frighten me the same. Perhaps it was because they never hit anywhere near us. Perhaps it was because I was tired of being scared. From then on I was just plain worn out and heartsick.

  The news came a week after the Chiswick bombing. It was Saturday night and Hope was alone in the house. Walter was doing his blackout rounds and I was working an evening turn at Rainbow Corner. When I got home I could hardly make sense of what Hope told me. Every time she started she couldn’t get it out for her tears. One of the Duchess’s relations had come from Eaton Square to tell us Lord Billy had been killed. They’d buried him where he fell. In Belgium, she thought.

  Hope didn’t go to bed that night. She sat at the scullery table stitching black armbands, so people would know we’d suffered a loss. I didn’t see the point. I’m sure by 1944 everybody had lost somebody. Walter sat and watched her.

  He said, “Lord Andrew’ll be the next Duke now.”

  Hope said, “Not if Lady Kathleen’s in the family way, he won’t be.”

  He looked at me. He said, “Is she?”

  I said, “How should I know? And even if she was, it’ll be a miracle if she still is, with all these shocks, and flying in airplanes.”

  He said, “Well, let’s say it’ll be Lord Andrew. But then he might cop it too. Then it’ll be Lady Debo’s new little baby. What a thing to happen. They should bring him back though. When all this is over, they should bring him home and bury him at Edensor. That’s where Devonshires should be laid to rest.”

  I went to bed but I didn’t sleep, wondering if Kick knew yet, wondering what would become of her, widowed already and her Mammy still in a sulk over her marrying.

  She was in New York when she heard the news, in Bonwit Teller, buying stockings. A cablegram had come to Mr. Kennedy at his hotel and he’d sent Euny out to the shops, to try and find Kick. She told me all about it when she came down to London after Lord Billy’s memorial service.

  “I knew,” she said. “Euny didn’t actually tell me. She just said I should go see Daddy because he needed to speak with me, but I knew. Poor Daddy. He said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you.’ And it was such a silly thing, the way it happened. I got a letter from one of the platoon commanders. He said the company was moving out on patrol and it was raining, so Billy put on that awful old canvas waterproof over his battledress. I don’t know why he liked that coat. It always smelled of dogs. They lost lots of men that day, but Billy must have been an easy target in that silly coat. He was shot through the heart.”

  She was still a child to me. She sat there in her best black suit, shoes kicked off, fiddling with her lace gloves, rolling them and unrolling them.

  “No hugs, please, Nora,” she said. “I’m trying really hard not to blub any more today.”

  I said, “Not on my account, I hope.”

  “’Course not,” she said, “but I think they were finding the blubbing a bit of a bore back home. Time to move on and all that. You know? It probably didn’t hurt, do you think? The bullet? It would have been over quickly, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Like the lights going out,” I said.

  What did I know.

  She said, “I’d just like to know it didn’t hurt.”

  I said, “What will you do? Will you stay on?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I want to be where the war is, not stuck in New York going to fund-raisers. I’m a Devonshire now, Nora. I want to be around people who loved Billy. I want to see Andrew and Debo’s children grow up. Being Duke will fall to Andrew now, you see, because I didn’t get a baby by Billy. I wish I could have done that at least, but I didn’t. Nancy Tenney’s got her little girl. But all I’ve got are memories. Anyway, I can’t face going back to the States again. Do you know what Mother said when we heard Billy had been killed? She said, ‘Bow your head to God’s wisdom, Kathleen. God took Billy to put right the terrible wrong of your marrying.’

  “She said all I have to do now is make an act of contrition, then I can receive the comfort of Communion again, but it’d be a lie, Nora, because I’m not contrite. I’m absolutely not. I’d marry Billy again in a heartbeat.”

  Well, there it was, as clear as day, the kind of mind Mrs. Kennedy had, catechizing and lecturing when her girl was hardly five minutes a widow. I don’t care how many Masses she has said for the departed, she’s not my idea of a good Christian soul.

  The weight had dropped off Kick. She said nothing tasted of anything anymore. Their Graces had been kind to her though. They’d told her she should always find a home with them, although the title of Marchioness would pass to Lady Debo. Kick could still be Lady Hartington, but she’d be the Dowager Marchioness.

  She said, “I guess I’ll carry on at the Red Cross. One thing about a war, there’s always something for a girl to do. I’ll stay at Cynthia’s for a while. If anyone can cheer me up it’s Cynthia. She’s such a stitch. She had to bail out of a plane last week and she swears the only thing that worried her was whether people on the ground would see her bloomers.”

  Kick reckoned Jack looked like death warmed up, what with the shock of Joe and the pain from his back. The Navy had tried to fix him up but he was still in pain, and the fevers had come back. They’d told him it must be malaria, picked up from those tropical waters, but Jack had fevers even when we lived in Bronxville.

  She said, “He probably won’t be sent back into action, but he’s working hard to get fit. Now Joe’s gone he’s the one who’ll run for office.”

  Well, then I’d heard it all. Twenty-seven and a walking wreck.

  I said, “Jack hasn’t the strength to run to the corner of the street.”

  “Oh but Daddy’s organizing it,” she said. “He says the voters’ll love him because he’s young and he won a war medal. And Grandpa Fitz says the injuries could be a real asset, with the women voters. Plus, Jack comes across better than Joe did, kind of funnier, easier-going. Grandpa thinks Jack could be a real winner, with a bit of grooming.”

  They were a scheming pair of devils. Mr. K and Mayor Fitzgerald couldn’t stand the sight of each other, but they were willing to team up to get Jack into politics. They knew they could get more done together than they could on their own and there they were, moving the children around like checkers on a board.

  She said, “So you see, that’s another reason for me to stay here. They won’t want me around besmirching the family record. I told Euny, as soon as the war’s over she’d better find herself a nice Catholic boy so Mother can go to town with a big wedding at St. Patrick’s. Or maybe Bobby’ll go to seminary. That’d do it. A priest in the family would just about make up for the scandal I’ve created.”
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  We were into the fifth year of the war. It was hard to remember what normal life felt like. But then it was announced that we could ease up on the blackout regulations, because the only attacks we were getting were the rocket bombs and they were as liable to come in broad daylight as any other time. I think Mr. Churchill understood how we were all feeling, sick of the cold and the dark and never really getting enough to eat, but Mr. Churchill didn’t have to live with ARP Warden Stallybrass. Walter said we wouldn’t be taking our blinds down until Germany surrendered or His Grace gave the order.

  I said, “His Grace has other things on his mind than our blackout curtains. He just lost a son.”

  “Nora,” he said, “you’ll pardon me, but you don’t understand the ways of a big house. There’s a chain of command and you don’t just take it into your head to move the furniture or change the timetable. You wait to know the pleasure of your betters.”

  There was a time when Hope would have backed him up. When I first knew them they were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, particularly with anything concerning the Devonshires.

  But she said, “Nay, Walter, I think Nora’s right. If Mr. Churchill says we can do it, I don’t think Their Graces’ll take exception.”

  That’s what a milk round can do for a woman.

  A week or two after Christmas I was in the kitchen at Rainbow Corner, washing coffee cups, when one of the girls said I was being asked for at the information desk. We got a lot of people wandering in, girls especially. They’d go with a GI, then find out they were expecting and turn up looking for him. Half the time they weren’t even sure of his name.

  “I think he was called Mitch,” one poor scrap said to me. “He was from America.”

  But this wasn’t a girl that was asking for me. It was a soldier, wearing service ODs. I didn’t remember his face, but there was something familiar about him, just the way he stood.

  “Aunt Nora?” he said. “Is it you?”

  It was Margaret’s boy, Val. Private Rudolf Valentino Mulcahy, Eighty-fifth Infantry.

  I said, “What are you doing here? You’re never old enough to be drafted.”

  “I am too,” he said. “Volunteered the day of my birthday. I was worried it’d all be over but looks like they saved me a bit of war.”

  It was our Dada he reminded me of, the way he folded his arms and rocked on his heels as he was talking, though where he learned it from I can’t think, because he never knew his Grandada Brennan.

  I said, “I’m surprised your Mammy allowed you. She must be sleepless with worry.”

  “Well,” he said, “she’s still got Ray at home and I doubt the military’ll ever be desperate enough to take him.”

  I said, “Why? Does he have your Daddy’s chest?”

  “No,” he said, “he’s just a regular faggot.”

  “Faggot” was the kind of word Mr. Kennedy was liable to use. Men who never married, and theatrical types. He didn’t like his boys mixing with anybody like that. He seemed to think it was catching.

  I said, “Who calls him a name like that?”

  “Nobody exactly calls him that,” he said. “We don’t need to. It’s in the bag. Ray’s a fag.”

  I said, “Does your Mammy know?”

  He said, “I guess. See, he’s the real helpful type, so Ma don’t mind. A momma’s boy. Good-looking too. He’s got those long eyelashes girls really go for. Kind of a waste if y’ask me.”

  I said, “And what does your aunt Ursie say?”

  He had Dada’s quiet laugh.

  He said, “Aunt Ursie says she knew something bad would come of naming a boy Ramon Novarro. ’Course, army life ain’t exactly peachy if guys find out your name’s Rudolf Valentino. What time do you get off? Can we go get something to eat?”

  I took him home with me to meet my Walter. He was in London for forty-eight hours, on his way couldn’t tell us where but he was with a special unit called the Mountain Infantry. He’d been trained to fight in snow and all sorts at a camp in Colorado. Hope made a Woolton pie in his honor and almond shape, and we were just clearing away when Kick turned up.

  I said, “This is Lady Hartington. Lady Kathleen Kennedy Hartington.”

  He stood there, mouth open, catching flies. “Wow,” he said. “I never met a real live Kennedy before.”

  She said, “I don’t know about ‘live.’ I’m dying of boredom. My housemate’s flying a Spitfire to Scotland and I’m supposed to stay home like a good widder woman, but I’d really love to go dancing. I’m sure Billy wouldn’t mind.”

  So our Val squired her to Frisco’s, took her jitterbugging two nights running, before his division was shipped out.

  He said, “She’s cute. And she must be worth millions.”

  I said, “Well, don’t get any ideas. We’ve had trouble enough already. If the Marquess of Hartington wasn’t good enough for her, Mrs. Kennedy won’t want her walking out with the help’s relations.”

  He said, “I took her dancing is all. And I like older women. But you know how it is, I’m young, I’m getting sent into action, there might be a Jerry bullet has my name on it. I guess it wouldn’t be right to make her any wild promises.”

  I said, “No. And don’t talk like that about bullets.”

  “Hey,” he said, “I don’t believe in all that jinx stuff. I just say my prayers and follow orders.”

  He shipped out in the middle of January, to Italy, Walter surmised. He reckoned units like the Eighty-fifth must be going to clear the mountains of Germans. But a lot of the GIs were talking about the war moving east, to hammer the Japs, and for all we knew they had snow and mountains over there too.

  We went right through from Christmas to April without any air raids. Walter still went to his post every night, but there wasn’t much for them to do except practice bandaging and drink cocoa. He was in very low spirits.

  Every night he’d say, “The war’s not over yet, Nora. It don’t feel right to be sitting idle.”

  Then they started hauling away the barrage and filling in the trenches in Hyde Park and we were busy again at the Rainbow Corner, but not so much with new boys. Mainly we were taking care of GIs just back from fighting in France. Things were turning our way, they said. Hitler was on the ropes and it could only be a matter of time. The Pacific was where they all expected to be sent next.

  We should have been over the moon, knowing it was nearly over, and yet a lot of us felt like flat beer. Hilda Oddy kept saying, “It’s been the best time of my life. What am I going to do when it’s over, go back to selling Woodbines?”

  And then there were a lot of people who’d have reckoning up to do. Girls left with little babies, gotten while they were living for the moment. Men coming home and finding another man’s hat hanging on the peg. Hasty marriages with boys who’d looked good in uniform. I even wondered about me and Walter, not that I didn’t love him, but I’d had a grand war, all things considered, and he’d already started talking about “when we go back to Chatsworth.”

  Well, there was nothing for me at Chatsworth.

  29

  A Kennedy Poodle

  President Roosevelt died in April. I couldn’t believe it when we heard it on the wireless. Only sixty-three and we’d seen pictures of him when he went to Yalta with Mr. Churchill. He’d looked all right then. But Kick said her Daddy wasn’t in the least surprised. He’d tried for years to get him to stop smoking, and anyway, according to Mr. K, the war had worn him to a shadow. So poor Mr. Roosevelt didn’t live to see peace and Mr. Truman took over.

  The last day of April they put the lights back up on Big Ben and Adolf Hitler ate his last bucket of swill at the Kew Garden Piggery. It was perfect timing. He was ready for eating by Victory Night. We had a great big juicy chop each and a baked apple and then we walked down the Mall to see the King and Queen waving from the balcony at Buckingham Palace. There were bonfires lit in Green Park and firecrackers set off. Kick was there too, with Cynthia Brough, though we didn’t know it. I got separate
d from Walter and Hope in the crowd. There were people dancing all the way up the Mall, total strangers taking you by the arm and swinging you round. I kissed all sorts that night, I was so relieved to think it was over and there’d be no more bombs. But of course it wasn’t really over. There were still the Japs to deal with.

  Kick came to Carlton Gardens just after VE-night, put her head round the scullery door. We’d just cleared up from tea.

  “Surprise visitor,” she said.

  And there behind her stood Jack, all skin and bone but cheeky as ever with his kisses. He was wearing civvies.

  “The Navy let me go,” he said. “They’ve got enough old crocks without keeping me on the muster list.”

  He’d come to England to watch what happened in the elections and report back to Mr. Kennedy. “Observing the postwar scene,” he called it.

  “I’m Dad’s eyes and ears over here,” he said. “He’s grooming me for office, Nora. I’ll be running for Congress in due course. Grandpa Kennedy’s old district.”

  I said, “Then you’d better start polishing your shoes. And learn how to spell.”

  Kick said, “Congressmen don’t need to know how to spell. They have secretaries. And after congressman he’s going to be a senator and then president.”

  She was looking better than I’d seen her since Lord Billy died. Any Kennedy always looks happier when they’ve got another Kennedy on their arm.

  I said, “Jack Kennedy for President! They’ll fly a man to the moon more likely.”

  He said, “Hear that, Kick? Scratch Nora from the guest list. There’ll be no White House invitations for her.”

  I said, “I’ve been to the White House, thank you very much. And I’m sure you’ll do very well at whatever you go in for, but I wouldn’t wish the president’s job on a dog. Not when you see how it killed poor Mr. Roosevelt.”