The Importance of Being Kennedy

by Laurie Graham

  “Well,” he said, “I think it’d be neat. Kick can run my press office. Euny can do all the brain work. And I’ll have to find something for St. Bobby. And if you decide to write your memoirs, you know, Jack Kennedy: The Nursery Years, you’ll have to run it past me first. I don’t want the voters knowing everything.”

  Of course, with his Grandpa Fitz’s connections and his Daddy’s dollars to grease a few palms, I knew he was guaranteed to get somewhere in life and he could be quick with a wisecrack. If it came to making speeches to a hall full of smarty-pants, Jack could give them as good as he got. But I still didn’t believe he had the staying power for anything big, and he doesn’t take such a good photograph either, not like Joseph Patrick.

  I said, “And how’s my Rosie?”

  “About the same,” he said, “I guess.”

  I said, “Don’t you visit with her?”

  He said, “Mary Moore goes. And Euny went a couple of times, I think. There’s not a lot of point though, Nora. That’s the thing with a mental handicap. It’s not like a head cold. It’s not going to get better.”

  I said, “Is that what she’s got now? A mental handicap?”

  Kick said, “She always was slow.”

  Jack said, “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s a lot of it out there. Mother and Euny are going to do something with it, start a charitable foundation or something. It’ll be a real talking point.”

  I could just see it. Rosie getting dragged out of her nursing home for one of Mrs. Kennedy’s show-and-tells.

  I said, “You must leave the poor girl in peace, Jack. Haven’t your Mammy and Daddy done enough harm?”

  He said, “Dad and Mother did everything for the best and I’m not going to discuss it anymore. It’s family business.”

  He went off to do his “observing,” traveling around the country, asking people which way they were going to vote and why. “Labour” was the answer to that, because people didn’t need poor old Winnie Churchill anymore now he’d won the war for them. Clement Attlee promised them free doctors and jobs for all. Walter said Labour would have got in if they’d promised to paint the sky green. He was heartbroken for Mr. Churchill and he wrote and told him so.

  “That’s human nature for you,” he kept saying. “No gratitude. No sense. All they want is novelty. And what’s going to happen if you make doctors’ visits free? I’ll tell you. Folk’ll get ill all the time.”

  Jack hadn’t been in England long when he had another bout of his fevers. They told him it was the malaria come back and he was liable to get attacks at any time. They gave him some pills, but these made him feel sick all the time, and then his skin turned yellow. Mr. K sent him a cablegram, told him to get back to the States and see a proper American doctor. Said he’d send Eddie Moore to bring him back if necessary.

  I went to the clinic to see him.

  He said, “I have to go home, Nora, and I want Kick to come with me. Can you persuade her?”

  She said, “Why would I do that? Mother’s not even speaking to me.”

  Jack said time would heal all. He said Mr. K wanted the whole family involved when they started campaigning. Mr. K believed the voters would love to see how the Kennedys worked together, a bunch of good-looking youngsters and their glamorous Mammy as well, with their pictures all over the dailies. Mr. K said they’d be the talk of America, just like they had been when we came to London. But Kick wasn’t convinced.

  She said, “I don’t know, Nora. I’d like to help Jack, but I’m sure Mother doesn’t want me there. And the thing is, London feels like home now.”

  I couldn’t advise her. I knew Mrs. K would nag her to a shadow if she got her back in her clutches. But Kick loved her Daddy more than anything. She always wanted to please him and she’d never allow that he had any faults.

  She said, “You know Daddy really didn’t mind about the church thing and Billy. He just hates to see Mother upset. And he says he’d find me something useful to do if I go back. He’d probably buy me a newspaper or something so I can write great things about Jack.”

  But she didn’t go back. She got it into her head that she wanted to make a home in England, and it suited me. It bought me a bit of time. Walter had been up to Chatsworth already, to take a look over the gardens and inspect the damage to his camellia beds. All I heard day and night was how there’d be a nice little cottage waiting for us on the estate. I’d known all along it would come to it.

  I said, “But what will I do? There’s nothing for me up there.”

  He said, “How about being there in a nice clean pinny when I come in for my tea? Isn’t that what wives do?”

  I said, “How should I know? I’ve only ever been a war wife.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “Nearly six years, Nora, and all I’ve seen of you is the back of you running out the door to your Women’s Voluntary. It’s time to settle down, pet. Make a proper home.”

  I said, “I’m fifty-one, Walter, and I’ve worked all my life. I can’t sit idle.”

  He said, “You won’t sit idle. There’ll be the cooking and the cleaning and the mending. We’ll have a little garden, grow our own potatoes and a few greens. And knitting. You like knitting. And then when Lord Andrew comes home I expect him and Her Ladyship will go in for more family. And Lady Anne’ll get married and Lady Elizabeth. There’ll always be nursery maids needed, if you must keep your hand in.”

  He knew perfectly well there wouldn’t be a place for me. When families like the Devonshires have babies they bring their old nurses out of mothballs, and even if something was found for me, I couldn’t have knuckled down, taking orders from another woman. I was accustomed to running things without interference. There were times with the Kennedys when we didn’t see Herself for weeks on end. That was the kind of work that suited me.

  Still, the time was coming when we had to decide. The ATS girls were gone. All we had were a few Canadian officers waiting for orders to the Pacific. Then the week before VJ-day Kick turned up with an offer. She’d taken a lease on a little house on Smith Square and Their Graces had suggested she take me and Walter as housekeeper and driver.

  I’d have jumped at it. But that’s one of the things about being married. You’re supposed to jump together, and Walter wasn’t at all smitten with the idea of staying in London. The more he thought about Derbyshire, the grimier London looked.

  “See what I mean?” he’d say if there was a smell of traffic fumes or he found smut on his shirt. “You wouldn’t get that in the country.”

  I didn’t need anybody to tell me about country life. I lived eighteen years at Ballynagore. Shoes always muddy. Walking miles to catch a bus. And the same bored old faces week after week. If you put a new ribbon on your Sunday bonnet it’d get written up in the Tullamore Reminder.

  I’d say, “You wouldn’t get anything in the country.”

  And then Hope would chip in. The Vincent boy had come back from his war work, so her days on the milk cart were finished. She was ready to pack up her rolling pin and go north and she expected us to go with her.

  “Chatsworth’s not just country,” she’d say. “Chatsworth’s the finest house in England. Seventeen staircases, Nora. Thirty bathtubs. And I’ve had the highest people in the land eating my damson tarts.”

  I said, “And if we stay in London we’ll have the best of both worlds. Walter’ll be driving for Lady Kick, so he’ll still go up to Chatsworth once in a while, and Compton Place. If they keep all those houses on. That’s the other thing. Times are changing. We had a lot of girls at the Women’s Voluntary that used to be in service and there’s hardly a one of them going back to it. The big houses won’t be the same, Hope. Dozens of people bowing and scraping, waiting, cap in hand, for a bit of a cottage or an attic over the stables. That’s finished.”

  “Not for Stallybrasses it isn’t,” she said. “And how about if things go haywire down here? What if Her Ladyship changes her mind and goes home? All her people over there. The
n you’ll be out on the street.”

  Walter didn’t say anything and neither did I. Two days I left it, though I did go to Farm Street and pray to St. Anthony. I don’t know if he intercedes when there’s a Protestant involved, but I don’t suppose a prayer is ever really wasted. And in the end he said, “All right. I’ll give it a try. As long as we can get out to Richmond Park on a Sunday. I shall go off my chump if I don’t see a bit of green.”

  Walter loved the deer park. He knew the names of all the birds.

  I said, “Have you told Hope?”

  “No,” he said. “I’d best put my tin helmet on before I do.”

  Hope said there’d be Stallybrasses turning in their graves if they knew he was staying in London when he could be back at Chatsworth.

  “You’ll be nothing but an odd-job man,” she kept saying. “You’ll be running errands, fetching her packages from Harvey Nichols. And you’ll have no garden.”

  “Well, Hope,” he said. “Here’s the thing. If Nora’s not happy I don’t see how I can be. And I shall think of looking after Her Ladyship as doing something for Lord Billy. Do you remember when I come back from Flanders? He were out on the lawns with one of the nursery maids, just starting to toddle. We both thought we’d end our days working for him. I remember driving His Grace to Buxton one time with Lord Billy along for the ride. He couldn’t have been more than four, asking me all about how the engine worked and where I lived and why. I thought I’d live long enough to see him Duke, but there we are. He’s left behind a poor young widow and I’m sure he’d have wanted a Stallybrass to look after her.”

  I said, “Two Stallybrasses, Walter.”

  “Aye,” he said. “Two. There’s just one thing though, Nora. Will Her Ladyship be having all them Kennedys come to visit?”

  I said, “I’m sure the youngsters will come. In time. But I don’t think Herself will be troubling us. I believe she’s given Kick up for lost.”

  He said, “Well, I hope that means the old bootlegger won’t be visiting neither. The thought of driving him around fair makes my skin crawl.”

  Kick took the house unfurnished but she didn’t need to buy a thing. Their Graces gave her everything she needed, some of it sent from the Dower house, some from the big house, and even a piece or two from Compton Place. She rushed around trying things out in different rooms, unpacking half a box then starting on another, till we looked like a fire sale. It reminded me of when we were at Naples Road and she and Rosie used to play with their dolly house out on the veranda.

  Smith Square was a good house for her to start off in. It had just the one cozy little parlor and a dining room, three bedrooms, and then the top floor for me and Walter and a girl called Delia Olvanie. She’d been a housemaid at Lismore and had let it be known she wanted a taste of London life, so Her Grace sent her to Kick. I wasn’t very taken with Delia. She moved too slow, for one thing. She could make sweeping a staircase last half the morning, and if ever she dusted the side table that had Lord Billy’s photo on it, then the waterworks would start and she’d have to sink into an armchair till she’d recovered. The only time you saw her stir herself was when it was her day off. Then she’d be running around, fleet as a whippet, with her hair in curling papers and her toenails painted. And she never locked the bathroom door.

  Well, help like that is no help at all, but Kick would keep her. She said it comforted her to have people around who’d known His Lordship, though I don’t know that Delia Olvanie saw Lord Billy more than half a dozen times in her whole life.

  Life picked up gradually. People drifted back from their war. Kick went to Lady Astor’s for the weekend and saw Ginny Balderston, as used to be Ginny Vigo. Her husband had lost an eye in Palestine but they had a baby on the way. Then she ran into Susie Finch-Johnstone and brought her home to tea. She’d been in North Africa and then in Italy with General Eisenhower.

  She said, “I was with your lot, on the Order of Battle charts. I was one of those girls that pushed the little flags around. It’s been such fun. I’m meant to be going home. Cosmo’s pretty hot to get married, but I think it might be rather a bore after Africa.”

  She’d been engaged to Cosmo Snagge for years, but the wedding never did come off. She went to Australia instead, with one of her pals from the ATS. They’re hoping to grow pineapples. Minnie Stubbs didn’t go home either. She married a French airman she’d nursed down in Devon. Started off emptying his potty. As she said, after that, things could only look up. His people have a bread shop in Paris. Kick said it was a very superior bread shop, but the Stubbses still had a fit when they found out she’d already married him.

  Cynthia Brough was the only one the end of the war didn’t make much difference to. She carried on flying. She joined the Aviation Corps for a while till somebody objected to her taking her dog in the cockpit, so now she’s a flying taxi driver, working for herself. Kick went up with her one time. She had to deliver blood to a hospital on the Isle of Man and then they stopped off for luncheon with Lady Cynthia’s people in Cheshire. Kick came back very impressed.

  She said, “I wish we could be like the Broughs. Cynthia doesn’t get quizzed about where she’s going or who she’s seeing.”

  I said, “Neither do you. You’re a grown woman now with a house of your own.”

  “I guess,” she said. “But there’s still Mother. Do you know what I mean?”

  I did. When Mrs. K was put out, even that big Atlantic Ocean wasn’t wide enough to stop you feeling it. Though I don’t believe she gave much thought to her troubles with Kick the summer of ’46. Jack was running in the primaries, up against nine other candidates, all older and savvier than him, so the whole tribe had gone to Boston to help him with his campaigning and Herself was in her element. They’d taken two hotel suites and His Honor was out with Jack every day, canvassing door to door, standing right behind him when he was on the stump. They reckon Mayor Fitzgerald could remember the names of every one of his voters, and the little favors he’d done them over the years.

  I predicted Jack would take a drubbing, Grandpa Fitzgerald or no. I couldn’t see why anybody would vote for a boy who looked fourteen years old, particularly a Kennedy who’d never done a proper day’s work in his life, but they did. He strolled home ahead of the other nine, and once he’d gotten the nomination it was in the bag. The Eleventh District would never have sent a Republican to Congress.

  October, Kick got a letter from her Daddy. A new altar was being made for St. Francis Xavier church in Hyannis, in memory of Joseph Patrick. It was to be dedicated just after the election and Mr. K expected all of them to be there.

  She said, “You have to come with me, Nora. I can’t face Mother again all on my own.”

  I said, “I can’t go to America. I’ve Walter to consider.”

  She said, “Walter won’t mind. Delia can cook for him.”

  I’d pity the man who had to depend on Delia Olvanie for his sustenance. But it wasn’t that I was thinking of. Walter’d be quite happy to live on bread and dripping. It was just the very idea of me going somewhere and him staying home.

  I said, “I’m your housekeeper, sweetheart. I’m not your nursery maid anymore.”

  She said, “You’ll always be my nursery maid. And Joe would have wanted you to be there. You’ll be able to visit your sisters and that cute nephew, and you’ll see Teddy and Jean and the gang. It’ll be fun. Don’t worry about Walter. He won’t mind, not when I explain how important it is.”

  I watched his face. He said, “When is it, this dedication?”

  November, December. She didn’t know exactly.

  He said, “So how long are we talking about? A week to get there, a week to get back, three weeks all up?”

  She said, “Gosh no, it’s a long way to go just for a few days, and there’ll be lots of people to see. A month or two, I guess. Nora wants to see her folks.”

  He said, “Do you, Nora? You’ve never said.”

  I said, “Walter, I’ve never thought of
going back. But it’d be daft to go all that way and not see them.”

  He said, “And how will we be placed, Your Ladyship, if I don’t agree?”

  She turned to look at him and out jutted that Fitzgerald chin.

  She said, “What do you mean, ‘don’t agree’?”

  He said, “Well, I don’t know as I want my wife gone for months on end. I don’t think any husband would.”

  She said, “I do pay you.”

  For the briefest second it was as though Mrs. Kennedy herself was standing there.

  “Aye,” he said, “you do. Not very much, mind.”

  And he turned on his heel and walked out.

  She said, “Why do people have to be so difficult?”

  Then the doorbell rang. It was Lady Balderston with her car outside, looking for Kick to go shopping with her, so I was left to deal with Stallybrass, with Delia Olvanie pretending to burnish the fire irons and listening to every word we said.

  I said, “You’d never speak like that to Their Graces.”

  He said, “I wouldn’t need to. So what’s happening? Are you going?”

  I said, “I don’t see what else I can do. I am supposed to look after her.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re supposed to look after the house and the house is here. If she wants a traveling maid, let her get one.”

  I said, “That’s not the way it is. I was her lady’s maid when we came down to Compton Place, and to Chatsworth. When you work for the Kennedys you turn your hand to whatever’s needed.”

  He said, “You and your ruddy Kennedys. I knew this would happen. I’ve gave up thirty-five years of good standing and the chance of a cottage, and now you expect to go swanning off.”

  I said, “I don’t expect to do any such thing. Swanning off! You make it sound like a cruise to Monte Carlo. I’d just be paying my respects to Joseph Patrick, see his altar dedicated. You get all misty-eyed about Lord Billy, well, young Joe took his first steps holding my hand. Why would I not want to be there? And I know how Kick’s feeling. Mrs. K’s a holy terror when she’s been crossed. You don’t know what she’s like. She’ll have the other girls all toeing the line. Kick’ll get no support from them. She just needs someone with her who’ll take her part.”