Kitabı oku: «The Importance of Being Kennedy»
LAURIE GRAHAM
THE IMPORTANCE OF
BEING KENNEDY
To Jeremy Magorian,
Venice's own Mrs Thrale
Table of Contents
Prelude
Chapter 1 - Accidentally, Through The Keyhole
Chapter 2 - The Right Kind Of Family
Chapter 3 - The Trouble With Blood Fitzwilliam
Chapter 4 - A Perfect Little Doll
Chapter 5 - A Washer And A Dryer And Separate Beds
Chapter 6 - Two-Toilet Irish
Chapter 7 - Three Categories Of Feeble-Mindedness
Chapter 8 - Learning The Ways Of The Enemy
Chapter 9 - Another Little Blessing
Chapter 10 - Kennedys Everywhere, Like A Rash
Chapter 11 - The Sacred Duties Of A Wife
Chapter 12 - No Crybabies, No Losers
Chapter 13 - An Anniversary Trip For One
Chapter 14 - Something In The Blood
Chapter 15 - The Queen Of Bronxville, The Queen Of England And Walter Stallybrass
Chapter 16 - The Fox Supervises The Henhouse And Mr Chamberlain Goes To Munich
Chapter 17 - Other People's Babies
Chapter 18 - Our Pope
Chapter 19 - The Season At The End Of The World
Chapter 20 - Keeping Going With A Cheery Smile
Chapter 21 - Future Prospects Unknown
Chapter 22 - Everything By The Book
Chapter 23 - An Insult Of A Cake
Chapter 24 - A Broken Doll
Chapter 25 - Girl On A Bicycle
Chapter 26 - A Trainee Duchess
Chapter 27 - The Beginning Of The End
Chapter 28 - A Real Winner, With A Bit Of Grooming
Chapter 29 - A Kennedy Poodle
Chapter 30 - Perpetual Light
Chapter 31 - The Latest Thing For Diseases Of The Mind
Chapter 32 - The Official Black Sheep
Chapter 33 - The Irish Card
Chapter 34 - Mr Congressman Kennedy
Chapter 35 - A Day Of Tears
Also by Laurie Graham
Copyright
About the Publisher
PRELUDE
I happened to be in London in January 1970 when I got a call from my office to say my Aunt Nora had died. We were just finishing up the photo shoot for a big piece on platform shoes for Sassy! magazine so I was able to get away to Derbyshire in time for her funeral. Darling Aunt Nora, who'd started life three to a bed in Ballynagore, had a duke and a duchess at her Requiem Mass. If Aunt Ursie had lived to hear that she'd have popped her corset bones.
I didn't really start getting to know Aunt Nora till she ferreted me out in Saks Formal Wear in 1947 and stood me lunch. She had a nifty figure and beautiful skin for a woman in her fifties. She was wearing a tweed suit, I remember, petrol blue, fully lined, with a great corded buttonhole detail. Old-fashioned but very classy.
She said, ‘It's one of the perks of working for a lady who keeps up with trends. When the rest of the world won't be seen dead in a garment it can always be passed along to the help.’
We hit it off right away. She'd been a hazy, absent relation when I was a kid. She did visit, but too rarely for me to know her.
‘Your Aunt Nora is with the Kennedys,’ Mom used to say, and as we had another aunt who was a nun in Africa I also pictured Aunt Nora in a grass skirt and the Kennedys as some kind of ferocious tribe. In a sense I suppose I wasn't so very wrong.
Aunt Nora was a blast. I relished the letters that came each year with her Christmas card, her annual report on life as a gardener's wife on the great Chatsworth estate of the Duke of Devonshire. ‘Another twelve months of 'tater peelings,’ as she called it.
She outlived four of the nine Kennedy babies she'd raised. When Jack was killed in 1963 she wrote me that she had not watched the funeral. She said, Stallybrass was glued to the telly all afternoon but I walked to Hassop and prayed the rosary till it was over. I don't care for the telly myself. They tell you the same thing over and over. Walter loves his cowboy shows and I'll sit with him for company, but I turn my chair round the other way and get on with my knitting. Anyway, Jack's dying didn't shock me the way it shocked the rest of the world. I kept the death watch over Jack Kennedy more times than the sands are numbered and I could have swung for him once or twice too, little devil that he was. But my heart does go out to Mrs Kennedy. This is surely too much even for that tough little nut to endure.
Bobby Kennedy's death and old Joe Kennedy's, she hardly mentioned. Her own health was failing by then, though I didn't realize it. As her beloved Walter put it, ‘Nora were never one to skryke about her aches and pains.’ I asked him if she'd believed there was a gypsy curse on the Kennedys. There had been a lot of stories about that, after Jack and Bobby's deaths.
‘Nay, lad,’ he said. ‘In fact it got on her pippin when folk brought that up. Nora always reckoned old man Kennedy didn't need any gypsy curse to bring him calamities. He brought them on himself, the way he thought he could buy the world, the way he pushed them lads into the spotlight. Pride goeth before a fall, that were her opinion.’
I said, ‘I wish Aunt Nora had written about her Kennedy years. She must have had some stories.’
He said, ‘But she did write about them. That first cottage we had at Edinsor, she sat at the kitchen table and wrote everything down in exercise books. She called it her “Memoirs,” said she were only doing it to stop herself going round the bend with nothing to look at only sheep and trees. She liked the city best, you know, Nora? She liked busyness. She only endured all this beautiful countryside for me, God bless her. Should you like to see her writings some time? If my memory serves, they're in the back of her tallboy.’ So Aunt Nora's notebooks, with multiplication tables printed on the back cover and that old-lady smell of mothballs and dried lavender, came into my possession. This is her story.
Ramon N. Mulcahy, New York, 1972
ACCIDENTALLY, THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
Herself came to the house at Smith Square. It was April 1948. She was meant to be going directly to Paris for gown fittings but then she announced she was coming to London first, to visit with Kick. Landed on us with all her bags and baggage as if it was the Ritz we were running. Now I've seen Mrs Kennedy walk away when her own child lay sick in bed, turn her back on him sooner than delay a shopping trip, so we knew she wasn't coming for the pleasure of it. There was trouble on the agenda.
Walter had to have the car at the aerodrome by eight o'clock. Too early for Kick to get herself out of bed and go with him.
I said, ‘I'd have thought you'd make the effort. Go and meet her, get off on the right foot.’
‘No fear,’ she said. ‘Talk about being trapped in a confined space. It could feel like a very long drive.’
I was worried Mrs K would start quizzing Walter about what had been going on, if she had him to herself. I said, ‘Just act dumb.’
‘Nora,’ he said, ‘I don't need to act. When you've been driving gentry for thirty-five years dumb comes natural.’
It was about eleven when they arrived. She looked as smart as a brass button, as usual. You'd never have guessed she'd been on an airplane all night. She walked right past me in the hallway, unsnapped the fox head on her stole, handed it to Delia and made straight for the drawing room still wearing her little hat, one of those round chocolate-box affairs with a bit of net veiling that came down over her brow.
‘Kaaaaathleeen,’ she started. ‘We are going to have a very serious talk.’
I don't care how many elocution lessons she's taken, she still has a voice on her that would clip a thorn bush. And it was something to see how that girl crumbled the minute she saw her mammy. She was like a naughty child who knew she'd be getting the strap.
It was all about Blood Fitzwilliam. It had finally dawned on Mrs K that Kick wasn't as worried as she might have been about her money being cut off, so she'd come in person to threaten her with the everlasting fires of hell. The lovebirds were in the country when the cablegram came, seeing his horses put through their paces on Newmarket Heath, but Kick came hurrying back to town as soon as she heard her mammy was coming. She knew she was in hot water.
She said, ‘Mother can have my room. The guest room's too small for her. Give my room an extra spit and polish. I want everything to be perfect.’
I said, ‘Then you'd better get yourself round to Farm Street and see Father D'Arcy because the first thing she'll want to know is, have you been to confession? What bedroom we put her in will be the least of it.’
She gave me one of her monkey faces. And that room of hers needed more than spit and polish. I've done my best with those children over the years but there's not a one of them ever learned to hang up a jacket.
I said, ‘What will we do about dinners? Will you have company in while she's here?’
She said, ‘If you mean Blood, no. He's going to make himself scarce. Maybe I'll invite Sissy though. Mother thinks Sissy sets the perfect example. Or maybe we should have tray suppers and I'll read aloud from Lives of the Saints. I just want to stop her ranting till Daddy's met Blood. He'll talk her round. I think Blood and Daddy'll really get on.’
I didn't. No more than a pair of turkey cocks could be left in the same pen. Mr K liked people he could order around and so did Lord Fitzwilliam. And as for anybody talking Herself round, the very idea was nonsense. There was only ever going to be one thing that would satisfy her, and that was for Kick to go home and marry a nice Catholic boy, if one could be found who'd overlook her history. I knew Kick would put up a fight but I was sure her mammy would win the day and that'd be the end of that. Blood Fitzwilliam would be given his marching orders, Smith Square would be let go and so would we.
Well, then it started. All you could hear was Mrs K's voice.
‘Look at me when I'm talking to you, Kathleen.’
‘Perfect purity and self-control, that's what you were taught at Sacred Heart.’
‘After everything that's been done for you, Kathleen Kennedy. Every advantage in life you've been given.’
The few bits I didn't manage to hear accidentally through the keyhole I could guess. Promises of hellfire and damnation. The threat of being cut off, not just from her daddy's deep pockets. From the holy sacraments as well. As long as her mammy was calling her ‘Kathleen’ I knew there had been no progress. They'd had no lunch, not even a glass of soda taken in, and it got well past the time when Mrs K usually takes her afternoon rest. Then things fell quiet. Herself came out from the drawing room and told Delia she was going upstairs to nap and wasn't to be disturbed till five o'clock. Kick was asleep in an armchair when I went in, curled up in her stocking feet with a little sodden hanky balled up on her lap. Round One had gone to Mother.
Then it was my turn.
Delia said, ‘She's rung for a glass of milk, Nora, to be taken up by you, most particular. Thank God. She frightens the bejaysus out of me.’
There she lay, waiting for me, in those old pink napping pyjamas she's had for a hundred years and frownies stuck all over her forehead, to smooth out any lines the morning's shenanigans had brought on. She was a sight. You wouldn't have known her for that bandbox little body that had walked in from the limousine.
‘Nora, dear heart,’ she said. Patted the bed for me to sit down like we were old pals. ‘What a to-do. Now, I need you to help me.’
So it was ‘Nora dear heart’, for the time being. But I've been long enough around Mrs K to know you can be a ‘dear heart’ one minute and on the bus with your valise and no references the next.
She said, ‘This is a very grave situation. Kathleen still talks of marrying this person. Did you know? Has she talked to you about her plans?’
I said, ‘As far as I know Lord Fitzwilliam didn't get his divorce yet.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that's something. I wonder how it's being arranged? I wonder whether the wife could be persuaded to keep him? What do we know about her? Would she be interested in money?’
I said, ‘I believe she has money.’
She said, ‘I'm sure she could use more. It isn't just the marriage, though that must be prevented at all costs. But talk can be very damaging too. I'm normally very attentive to these things, but I'm so far away, and then I was busy with Jack's campaign. It's difficult to manage these things from the other side of the world. You might have said something, Nora. You might have dropped me a little note. You've been treated very generously over the years. Allowed back on the payroll after an act of great disloyalty. I'd have thought at the very least you'd have had Kathleen's well-being at heart.’
I said, ‘I thought Jack would have told you. He heard all about it when he was here last summer. I don't see how it was my place.’
‘Jack's in office now,’ she said. ‘He's far too busy, though I'm sure he would have mentioned it if his health had been better. He came back from London with a tired liver. I had to find him a doctor and then get him back on his feet. It's all been such a worry. And now this. If I'd known when she arrived at Palm Beach what she'd come to tell us, I'd have had Archie Spellman down to speak with her immediately. She wouldn't have dared defy a cardinal.’
There was a lot I could have said. I didn't like Lord Fitzwilliam, ‘Blood’ as his pals called him, and I was certain Kick could have done better for herself, but I know there's no reasoning with the love-struck. It was my opinion that if we left well alone it might not come to a marrying. For one thing he didn't seem in any great hurry to get his divorce. In fact there were quite a number of people who said he wasn't serious about getting one. Why would he go to the expense of lawyers when his wife didn't seem to care who he saw or what he did? And they'd houses enough never to have to see one another. Obby Fitzwilliam was known to be a very devil for the drink but she had money, and a drunken old bird in the hand might be worth a lot more to him than a Kennedy cut off without a cent. I thought if he dragged his heels Kick might tire of waiting for him, or that someone else would come along and catch her eye. Sure, half of London was in love with her. But I didn't tell Herself any of that. I didn't approve of what Kick was doing but that didn't mean I had to do Mrs K's dirty work for her.
I said, ‘I'd just like to see her happy. She's had enough sadness for such a youngster.’
Mrs K said, ‘We've all had sadness. And if it's happiness she wants she won't find it by breaking every rule she was raised by. Associating with a married man. That's not a path to happiness. And he's a Protestant. A married Protestant! I can hardly think of anything worse. It's her duty to set a good example, Nora, particularly now Jack's in Congress. We're all in the public eye, just as we were when we were Ambassador. What if Catholic girls start saying, ‘Look at Kathleen Kennedy. She does as she pleases, so we'll do the same.’
I said, ‘If she's here in London I don't see how girls in America will even know what she's doing. If they're interested in anybody it'll surely be Euny and Pat and Jean. And I don't see how it affects Jack. A congressman isn't like a monsignor, and just as well. Jack's no saint himself.’
‘Jack doesn't need to be a saint,’ she said. ‘Boys are different. They have to be men of the world to get ahead. But women set the moral tone.’
I said, ‘Well, Kick's twenty-eight years old and a widow and a Ladyship, so I can hardly presume to catechise her now.’
‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘That's precisely what you can do. It's never too late. You disappoint me greatly, Nora.’
Then she closed her eyes, which is always her way of saying the conversation is over. That neat little foldaway face.
Four days we had of it. Threats and lectures and tears, and all the time I knew Kick was clinging to one silly thing her daddy had said on the telephone. That if it could be shown Blood Fitzwilliam had never been baptised, then his marriage to Lady Obby wouldn't count and he'd be free to take instruction and marry Kick in a proper Catholic church. It was all moonshine of course. The Fitzwilliams weren't the kind of family that would have overlooked baptising their son and heir, but it was typical of Mr Kennedy to dream up something like that, ducking and diving under the regulations until he found a wee hole to slip through.
I'll say this for him, though. He just wanted his girl to be happy. He knew nothing she did was likely to harm Jack's prospects, nor Bobby's, nor Teddy's. He'd see to that. The boys were his affair and whatever happened, whatever trouble they got into or talk there might be about the family, he'd keep things on track for them.
Kick cried and begged, but when it really came down to it she didn't care what her mammy did. She absolutely would not promise to give up Fitzwilliam. So Mrs Kennedy had Delia pack her bags for the onward journey to Paris and the car was ordered to take her to the aerodrome. It was an ugly leave-taking.
She said, ‘I won't stay another night in this house. You've fallen into bad company, Kathleen, and I rue the day we ever brought you to England. The Mothers at Sacred Heart laid out your path but you've deviated from it, and so deliberately too. No one can ever excuse you; no one can say you weren't taught right from wrong. Well, if you really refuse to acknowledge your errors I shall see to it you at least don't ruin your sisters with your carrying-on. They'll have nothing more to do with you. Don't telephone because they won't accept your calls and don't send letters because I shall have them burned. There's nothing more to be said until you're ready to repent.’
I was just standing there like an article of furniture, holding that horrible wrap with the fox head dangling over my arm. It seemed to me I didn't have a lot left to lose.
I said, ‘I never heard such a cruel thing. A girl needs her family, and the bigger the muddle she's in, the more she needs them, and sure weren't you the one always taught them to put family before everything else?’
‘Nora Brennan,’ she said, ‘you should have been let go years ago. I wouldn't have kept you on, married in a town hall. Well, now we see what an influence you've been. Now we see it clear. I'll pray for your soul, Kathleen. I can't do more. Until you mend your ways I will not see you. You'll be dead to me.’
She said it flat, with that darling girl standing right there. How does it sit with her now, I wonder, seeing the way things turned out? How many times has she wished she could take back those terrible words? Anyone might say a thing in anger, then wish it unsaid, but Rose Kennedy isn't anyone. I've been around her long enough to know. For a woman who's a Gold Star mother she has a heart as hard as the hob of hell.
THE RIGHT KIND OF FAMILY
I came to work for the Kennedys in the spring of 1917. I'd been five years in America by then, come over to be with my two sisters. Marimichael Donnelly from across the lane was on the same sailing as me. They waked us two nights together before we left, with whiskey drummed up from somewhere by the Donnelly boys, telling us what a grand future the both of us had and then weeping and clinging on to us to keep us at home. We'd neither of us been out of Westmeath before. I'd never appreciated that sky and water could stretch so far, and I know they say the world's like an apple and doesn't have an edge a ship can tumble over, but I've never understood how they know. I was braced for the end all the way, till I saw the roofs of East Boston.
Marimichael had a sister who'd gone ahead too. That was how we did it in those days. The oldest one went, then she'd send the fare for the next and so on, till everyone was settled. It was the only thing to do. The factories were starting up around Tullamore so the demand for hand-knitting was dropping off and there was no other way to make a living.
We were six in our family, one boy and five girls, except Nellie was in the graveyard, dead with the measles and only four years old. Ursie's the oldest. She left for Boston in 1909. Took a correspondence course in bookkeeping and taught herself the Pitman shorthand and she was off. She got work in the office of Holkum, Holkum and Jauncey, and to hear her she ended up practically running the place.
Ursie always had ideas. Writing paper without lines was one of her things, not that there was a lot of letter writing went on in our house, but she said lined paper was common, and she used to have a fit if ever Mammy put the milk can on the table instead of the china pitcher. After she got to America and started earning she'd send us marvellous things, not only money. Caramels and hatpins and silk stockings, and a beautiful handbag for Mammy one Christmas, real leather from Jordan Marsh, with a big, gilt snap. Dear God, we had everyone from Ballynagore come in to view that handbag. We should have charged to see it.
She must have had some courage to go off like that, not knowing a living soul in America. When they were handing out gumption I reckon Ursie got Edmond's share. He's hardly been further than the foot of the stairs.
Margaret went out to join Ursie in 1910 and I cried myself sick. Ursie wasn't the kind of sister you missed, except like an aching tooth after it's been pulled, but Margaret had always been my pal. We'd shared a bed, even. When Mammy and Deirdre went to wave her off on the bus I couldn't bear to go with them. I was convinced I'd never see her again. She kept saying, ‘You will too. I'll send for you and then you'll send for Deirdre.’
But Deirdre could never have gone to America. She had a sweet nature and the voice of an angel but she was the kind of girl that would easily be taken advantage of. She used to get confused enough in Tullamore market so she'd have been lost in a minute in Boston. Anyway, Father Hughes said a girl like Deirdre would likely be blessed with a vocation, so we all prayed for that and our prayers were answered. She went to the Maryknoll Sisters, and then to Africa to teach little black children about our Risen Lord, which left just me at home and Mammy and my brother Edmond.
Ursie kept writing that I should still think of going to America. Mother won't stand in your way, she wrote. She didn't call her ‘Mammy’ any more, since she worked for Holkum, Holkum and Jauncey. She'll be a lot happier knowing you're making something of yourself. She has Edmond to take care of her.
Edmond was supposed to be the head of the house. Dada had the Irish disease and after we lost Nellie he just turned his face to the wall and died.
Mammy used to say, ‘Edmond's a thinker. He doesn't rush into things. And did you ever see such a fine head of hair on a man?’
Well, that part was true. I believe it acted like a goose-feather comforter. It kept his noddle so warm and cosy his brain fell asleep.
I don't know whether I would have gone and left Mammy in his care, but anyway, as things turned out it was Mammy who left us. She'd a growth under her left bosom that had eaten her away inside and she'd been too shy to say anything until it was too late.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I've had a good life. I've had my span.’
But she'd only had forty-seven years and she could have had more if she hadn't been such a muggins about taking off her vest in front of the doctor. She died in the autumn of 1911 and before the year was out Edmond took off his thinking cap and announced he was marrying the Clavin widow from Horseleap and bringing her to our home. So my mind was made up for me. I couldn't have stayed in the house with that woman. She'd a face would turn fresh milk. Margaret sent me the fare and I was on my way.
Marimichael went into a cotton mill when we got to Boston, same as her sister, and Margaret could have got me a start at the grocer's where she worked, but Ursie had bigger ideas.
She said, ‘You've a brain in your head, Nora. Use it. Nursing would be suitable. The uniforms are very attractive.’
But I liked the idea of going into service, somewhere where I'd have my own room.
I said, ‘If I'm going to wipe BTMs and mop up dribble I'd as soon do it for a nice sweet little baby as somebody who smells of sickness or some grouchy old feller. I'll go for a nurserymaid.’
‘Just be sure it's the right kind of family,’ she said. ‘A doctor, or a lawyer, like Mr Jauncey. Cultured, professional people. There are people who have money to run a full staff but no breeding. You don't want to end up with a family like that.’
I got a start with the Griffin family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to look after Loveday who was three and the baby who was on the way, Arthur. Ursie seemed to think they were good enough for me, even if they were a bit modern. Dr Griffin was a scientist at the university but he thought nothing of pushing the bassinet out on a weekend. There was only me, a housemaid, a woman who came in on Mondays to do the laundry and a man who helped with the garden. Mrs Griffin did all the cooking and I had every Sunday off and one night a week. I used to meet Margaret at a soda fountain and she'd give out to me about Ursie while we watched the boys go by. That's where we met Jimmy Swords and Frankie Mulcahy.
It's a funny thing about boys. They go around in pairs and if one of them is good-looking the other's sure to be a poor specimen. That was Frankie. He always looked like he'd lost a dollar and found a cent, but Margaret fell for him, and Jimmy was keen on me. The only problem with Jimmy and Frankie was they worked as fish porters. They were always washed and shaved and dressed in a nice clean collar and tie when we saw them, but there was still that smell. You can never get rid of it. Jimmy seemed steady though. We never quarrelled, and the Griffins liked him because he used to bring oysters for them or a lobster, when he came to walk me out.
I had my nursery and my own room up under the roof and I had my beau. I was very suited, but then Dr Griffin said he was moving to a different university, in California, and I had to decide whether to go with them. Ursie thought I should.
She said, ‘You've made a good start, Nora, now build on it. The Griffins think highly of you and you mustn't flit from position to position. It doesn't inspire confidence.’
But Jimmy didn't want me to go.
He said, ‘I'm putting money by. Stay in Boston and we'll get married. Next year.’
So the Griffins went off to California and I applied for a new position, in Beals Street, Brookline. The Kennedy family. They had a little one just walking, Joseph Patrick, and another one on the way.
I had to go to the house to be interviewed and inspected by Mrs Kennedy. She's only a year or two older than me and people say she has the secret of eternal youth. To look at us now you'd think I could give her a few years, but that first day I met her she seemed quite the little matron. First thing she told me was how she had to be most particular about the help she employed, because of her position.
She said, ‘My husband is president of a bank.’
The house was nothing to shout about and neither was the money they were offering.
She said, ‘And I expect you recognise me.’
But I didn't know her from Atty Hayes's donkey. She laughed.
She said, ‘You're a newcomer. If you were Boston-born you'd know my face from the dailies. I'm Mayor Fitzgerald's daughter.’
Well, you couldn't be in Boston five minutes without hearing of him, so that satisfied her. She rattled on, perched at her bureau like a neat little bird, telling me all about her travels and the big names she'd met. She even had tea brought in, and I still didn't know if I had the job or not.
‘I was my father's right-hand woman,’ she said. ‘My mother didn't have the nerves for public life so I went everywhere with him. But now of course I'm too busy running my own home. Mr Kennedy works very long hours in business.’
And that was the truth. I was there three weeks before I properly met him. He'd get home late and leave again early. He was a tall carrot-top of a man with a tombstone smile and ice-blue eyes. He came up to the nursery one Saturday morning and started throwing Joseph Patrick up in the air to make him squeal.
He said, ‘I'm Joe Kennedy. You have everything you need? Anything you need, tell Mrs Kennedy. Money's no object. And make sure this boy of mine eats his greens. I have big plans for him.’
Mrs K gave me a book to read the day I arrived, on how a nursery should be run. Everything was to be done by the clock. When the new baby came she was going to nurse it, but between feeds there was to be no picking it up or rocking the cradle. If it cried, it cried. And little Joseph Patrick wasn't to be played with, except for half an hour of nursery rhymes and physical training in the afternoon. He'd to learn to entertain himself with toys, and the only time he was allowed to snuggle on my lap was for his bedtime story.
She said, ‘Too much petting makes a child fussy and it's a very hard habit to break.’
‘Yes, Mrs Kennedy,’ I said. And I did try to follow her rules but it didn't seem a natural way to raise a child. Well, she didn't have to know everything that went on in my nursery. I had my routines and she had hers. She'd walk to St Aidan's every morning to early Mass, and then she'd do the marketing and write letters till lunchtime. Always a chicken sandwich and a glass of milk. In the afternoon she'd take a nap, and then have her hair done or go to the dressmaker's and once a week Mayor Fitzgerald would come to tea. The way Mrs K talked him up, ‘His Honour this, His Honour that,’ it was like expecting the President himself. It was such a let-down the first time I saw him. He was just a crafty-looking old knacker riding round in a limousine car, but Mrs K thought the sun shone out of her daddy's fundament.
Sometimes on a Friday night Mr K would have some people in for bridge, business gentlemen and their wives, but otherwise she didn't see a soul. Her mammy never visited, nor her sisters, and the neighbours on Beals Street kept to themselves.
The Ericksons' maid said, ‘She thinks she's the cat's pyjamas, your missis, but nobody round here's impressed.’
We knew war was coming. It seemed to have nothing to do with us back in 1914, but we could feel it just around the corner by the start of 1917. Mrs K said it was a terrible unsettled time to be bringing a new baby into the world but at least Mr Kennedy wouldn't have to go away to fight. She said he was too old, but he wasn't. He was twenty-nine, same as Jimmy Swords.
Jimmy and Frankie Mulcahy both volunteered. There were a lot of the Irish who wouldn't, not wanting to take sides with the English, not even against that terrible Kaiser, but Jimmy said, ‘I'm an American now and Americans are going to fight so I'm with them.’
Not Mr Kennedy though. All of a sudden he got a management position at the Schwab shipyard in Quincy, reserved occupation, and when they drafted him anyway he went to a tribunal to appeal and he won. Mrs K said they'd made an error when they tried to draft him because he was engaged in vital war work, but that was only because Mayor Fitzgerald had pulled strings to get him in at the shipyard. Whichever way you cut it, Joe Kennedy was a draft-dodger. But that's water under the bridge. God knows, we've had another war since then and what he got away with in 1917 he's paid for in buckets since.
Jimmy went off to a training camp, but the doctors failed Frankie because of his chest and he was sent to a uniform factory in Pennsylvania, as a machinist. Margaret thought we should have married them before they went, but Jimmy never offered it and I had my mind on my nursery. Mrs Kennedy was very near her time.
A weekly nurse was hired and Mr K moved into the guest room so we could get the big bedroom ready. All the little trinket boxes and hairbrushes had to be cleared off the dressing table, and the rugs lifted and the floor washed down with carbolic acid and boiling water, for reasons of hygiene, the nurse said. It made you wonder how the human race ever got to be such a thriving concern.
Mrs K came along to the nursery still in her bathrobe that morning. She said she'd had a few pains in the night but she hadn't wanted to say anything till Mr K had gone off to business.
‘This is woman's work,’ she said. ‘Now we'll get on with it. We'll have this baby delivered and everything tidied away by the time he comes home.’
I took Joseph Patrick to the park and played with him on the teeter-totter and by the time he'd had his soup and laid down for his nap the doctor had been sent for.
I'd never seen a baby born. When Mrs Griffin had baby Arthur she went to the nursing home so they could give her the twilight sleep and then she had two weeks of lying-in before she brought him home. I knew the facts of life and I'd seen plenty of sows dropping their piglets but it was hard to relate that to Mrs Kennedy. I'd heard it said that women screamed and cursed and that there was blood and worse, but she'd hardly a hair out of place. She just lay there with the ether inhaler over her face and Dr Good fetched the forceps out of his bag and fairly dragged the poor mite into the world. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Though, as I recall, he was hardly ever called John. He was Jack right from the start.
The nurse told Mrs K she had another boy but she was too doped for it to register or even to hold him, so he was given to me to put in the crib. And it was a grand thing, to cradle him in my arms and see his surprised little face and his tiny fingers weaving in the air, to wonder what life had in store for him. I was the first to hold the next three Kennedy babies and every time it gave me that nice, funny feeling, like someone slipped a piece of velvet inside my tummy.
But by the time Mr Kennedy came home from business, Herself was wide awake, washed and powdered and sitting up in a new satin bed jacket. Then His Honour the Mayor turned up, with Mrs Fitzgerald, who I'd never seen before, and a bouquet of carnations. They came to the nursery to take a look at Jack but they didn't seem very interested in him. He'd been given Fitzgerald for one of his names so I'd have expected them to be thrilled.
His Honour said, ‘He'll do, for a spare. Now let me see my best boy.’
And I had to go contrary to all Mrs Kennedy's instructions and wake Joseph Patrick from his bed, to be petted and made overexcited by his grandpa.
‘See this fine feller?’ he said. ‘This fine feller is going to be President of the United States.’
It's a funny thing, there was never any love lost between Mayor Fitzgerald and Mr Kennedy but that's one thing they always agreed on. Joseph Patrick was going to be President.
THE TROUBLE WITH BLOOD FITZWILLIAM
But I was saying about 1948. The minute her mammy was on her way to the aerodrome Kick got the shine back in her eyes.
She said, ‘That was pretty gruesome. Daddy'll fix everything. He can probably get us a special dispensation from Rome.’
I said, ‘The Holy Father won't change the rules, not even for a Kennedy.’
She said, ‘This Holy Father might. He's practically part of the family.’
Part of the family my eye. He paid a call once, that's all, long ago, when we were in Bronxville, and that was only because Mr Roosevelt couldn't think what else to do with a visiting cardinal all afternoon, only send him to Mrs Kennedy for a cup of tea.
She said, ‘And we had a private audience. He gave me a rosary.’
I said, ‘I know. I was there. And so was Fidelma Clery He gave us all rosaries. He gets them wholesale, I'm sure. But that doesn't mean he hands out dispensations so a man can have two wives.’
She got into such a paddy.
She said, ‘Why doesn't anyone understand? Blood married Obby in one of their churches, so as far as our church is concerned he's never been married. Anyway, the Holy Father can change anything he wants to. Especially if Daddy sends him a big fat cheque for a new altar or something.’
There were cablegrams flying back and forth all that week and then Blood Fitzwilliam turned up, like the bad penny. He was back in town and expecting to take her to lunch. When you're in service you notice that the ones who're too grand to give you a ‘Good day’ are not necessarily the ones with the biggest estates or kings in their family tree. Just a middling rip like Fitzwilliam can be full enough of himself to ignore the help.
As soon as she heard his voice, Kick was ready to grab her pocketbook and go.
I said, ‘Didn't you tell me Lady Ginny was calling for you?’
‘Oh Lord,’ she said. ‘Well, she's late. Just tell her something came up, would you? She'll understand.’
He'd picked up the telephone without so much as a by-your-leave, putting through a call to his club, tapping a cigarette on his silver case. Kick was watching me watching him.
She said, ‘Darling, no smoking in the hall. Nora's got her fierce face on.’
‘Sweetie,’ he said, ‘who pays Nora's wages?’
It was four o'clock when she came home, pink and silly from champagne wine.
She said, ‘Blood's going to take me down to Nice for a vacation, next month. Such bliss. We're going to stay with his friends at their villa, and then by the time we come back Daddy will be in Paris, so we'll be able to stop off and see him. It's all worked out perfectly. We can have a big powwow about asking the Pope and things, without Mother being there to have a fit, and Daddy and Blood can get to know one another.’
I said, ‘Angel girl, will you listen to yourself? All this talk about marrying. Is the man divorced from his lawful wedded wife?’
‘He soon will be,’ she said. ‘He just has to see the lawyers. Then it won't take long. Obby's going to cooperate. You know they haven't had a real marriage for years.’
I said, ‘And what about his child? Where does she fit in to a divorce?’
She said, ‘She'll be fine. I expect we'll live at Coolatin when we're not in London, and she'll be able to come to visit us and keep a pony there and everything. I'm sure she's an absolute sweetheart, and I'll bet she'd love to have some little brothers and sisters. I'm going to have dozens of babies for you to look after, Nora, and we'll all live happily ever after. Blood will charm Mother off her feet, and Pat and Jean'll come over for the hunting. We might even be able to have poor Rosie to stay.’
Ah yes. Poor Rosie. Well, there was a name she knew better than to bring up with her daddy if she wanted to get him on her side. We never mentioned Rosie any more, except below stairs.
A PERFECT LITTLE DOLL
Rose Marie was born in the September of 1918. It was a darker time even than when Jack arrived. We didn't only have the war still dragging on and our men far from home, we had the influenza too, and that was on our very doorstep. We hardly left the house. There was such a scare on that Herself didn't even go to Mass. Cook went out in a gauze mask to do the marketing and the laundrywoman was told not to come, for the duration, because she was in and out of different houses all the time. There was no telling what germs she might carry with her. Mr K slept on an army cot at the shipyard most nights sooner than risk bringing the infection home. Some people said the docks were where it had started.
No one we knew in Brookline got sick, but the Ericksons' gardener reckoned there was a four-week wait for funerals in Boston, there were so many bodies to bury, and after it was over I heard that Marimichael Donnelly had been one of them, ironing sheets in the afternoon and dead by midnight. Three little ones left without a mammy. To think she left Ballynagore to finish up like that. She was strong as an ox, Marimichael, but that was the thing about the influenza. It carried off the strong and didn't touch the babies and the old folks.
Before Rosie was born Mrs Kennedy decided she needed an extra nurserymaid. She hired Fidelma Clery. Flame-red hair and terrible, crooked little teeth. I was glad of the help. Young Jack caught every cough and cold that was going, and Joseph Patrick had the very devil in him, always climbing into trouble and tormenting Jack and taking his toys.
‘Why is he still a baby?’ he used to ask. ‘When will he be big enough to fight me?’
His Honour was the one who encouraged fighting, play-boxing with him, showing him how to put up his little dukes.
Mrs K gave Fidelma the gospel on nursery routines to read, but I know she never opened it. Fidelma was a bit hazy when it came to reading. Every time she told the story of the Gingerbread Man it ended different. But she had enough common sense to get by and the first time Joseph Patrick gave her any trouble she picked him up, hollering and kicking, and carried him to his room like a roll of linoleum.
The weekly nurse came a few days before the baby was due and Mrs K started her pains right on time, same as she did everything else. Everything was going along nicely and I quite thought we'd be cleared away by teatime with the baby safe in her crib, but when it came time to send for the doctor he couldn't be reached. He'd been called away to somebody with complications, and you couldn't send for any other doctor. They were all run off their feet with influenza cases
I said, ‘It hardly matters. It's her third child. She knows what to do.’
The nurse said, ‘That's not the point. I can't let her have it. If the doctor isn't here when it's born he won't get his fee and then I'll be for it.’
It seemed to me you couldn't do much to stop a baby if it was ready to come, but she was the nurse and I was only there to help. So we tied Mrs K's knees together with a scarf and the nurse instructed her that whatever she did she mustn't bear down when she got one of her urges. She was a model patient. I never heard her cry out once. And that's how we kept Rose Marie from being born until Dr Good arrived, bounding up the stairs with his ether mask.
I loved all my Kennedy babies for their different funny little ways but Rosie was the real beauty among them. She'd a mop of black hair and big green eyes and she was so contented. She'd lie in her crib for hours smiling at the world and playing with any little toy you gave her. Not like Jack, always crying. Not like Joe, always looking for trouble.
If I'd been Mrs K I'd have been up in the nursery gazing at Rosie all day long. She was like a perfect little doll and Herself loves dolls. Sure she has a whole room full of them at Hyannis, all in their glass cases. But she didn't trouble us much in the nursery. She preferred to be down at her bureau, clipping out articles on how children should be raised and making lists of things that had to be seen to. Timetables, charts for their weight, charts for their teeth.
Joseph Patrick was forever asking why did I live with them.
‘Don't you have a mother and a daddy?’ he used to say. ‘This is my house. But when I go to school I guess you can still stay here. You can look after Rosie.’
I wasn't sure I would be staying because me and Jimmy Swords were sort of engaged. Frankie Mulcahy was back from Pennsylvania and Margaret wanted us to name the day as soon as Jimmy came home from Flanders. A double wedding at Most Holy Redeemer and then to Mazzucca for ice-cream sundaes. She had it all planned. But Jimmy didn't come back in a marrying frame of mind.
He said, ‘Why bother? Bringing more kids into the world. Cannon fodder for another war. Factory fodder for the bosses. It's all shite.’
He'd got in with a lot of socialists in his battalion, putting the world to rights while they were waiting to be sent up the line to fight the Boche.
I said, ‘I thought we'd won this war so there won't ever be another one. And what'd happen if everybody had your attitude? There'd be no more babies. Nobody to look after you when you're in your bath chair.’
He said, ‘I'm not going to be in a bath chair. I'll put a bullet in my brain sooner. And I'm not getting married. It's nothing personal, Nora. You can keep the ring.’
Silly beggar. He'd never given me a ring.
I did wonder, had he met someone else, somebody prettier. One of those French mam'zelles. Mammy always said it was a good thing I had my health and strength because my face would never make my fortune. I wasn't exactly heartbroken over Jimmy but I did stop looking in the mirror for a while. Looking in the mirror could make a girl lose heart.
Ursie said, ‘Never mind. You're better off staying single. You've a nice little job and a roof over your head and that's more than Margaret will ever have. Frankie Mulcahy isn't fit to mind a canary, never mind a wife and family. There'll be a baby every year and never enough money to pay the electric. You'll see. She'll be broken down and worn out. So don't break your heart over Jimmy Swords. You've had a lucky escape.’
Margaret didn't have a baby every year though. Nothing happened on that front for a long time. And as for Jimmy, I don't know that Ursie was right. He was a good man. It was just that the war had chewed him up and spat him out, bitter and twisted. When Ursie said these things you always had to keep in mind that she was probably a disappointed woman, on the quiet. She worshipped her Mr Jauncey and yet all he ever did was say, ‘Take a letter, Miss Brennan.’
Poor Ursie and her little two-cup teapot.
Rosie sat up at six months, same as Jack did, but she wasn't interested in walking or talking. She was happy just to sit and watch the world go by. Mrs K said we were to stimulate her more, talk to her, and pull her up onto her feet to give her the idea of walking.
Fidelma said, ‘There's not a thing wrong with her. She only seems quiet because you're used to the boys racketing about. If you ask me we should be thankful. She never gives us a minute's trouble.’
Mrs K said, ‘I didn't ask you, Fidelma. And I want particular attention paid to Rose Marie's activities. We can't have her falling behind.’
Well, Rosie got up and walked when she was good and ready, and she talked too. She just didn't put herself out. If you threw her a ball she'd pick it up and look at it, but it never occurred to her to throw it back. And when Mr K came up to the nursery he didn't seem to know what to do with her. The boys would clamber all over him begging to be tickled to death. Rosie would just sit smiling at him, holding back.
Later on Mrs K made quite a project of Rosie, tutoring her for hours on end to try and get her up to the mark with her reading and writing, but in those early days Joseph Patrick was her big project.
‘He's the foundation stone,’ she said. ‘If the oldest child is brought along correctly, the others will follow suit.’
Everything she did was in aid of Joseph Patrick growing up the brightest scholar and a champion sportsman and a Light of Christ altar boy. She took him to the Franklin Park Zoo one afternoon to set the scene and tell him about the poor Christian martyrs, but when he came home all he did was keep springing out at Jack and Rosie, playing at killer lions. Well, he was only four.
She kept up with all the new books that were brought out too, and fetched them from the lending library to read to them, but when I was left to read them a story they always wanted their old favourite, about Billy Whiskers the Goat. It had been given them by their Aunt Loretta Kennedy and they loved that book, but Herself thought it was a dreadful story for children. She said it encouraged naughtiness instead of obedience and she threw it in the trash can. Fidelma slipped out the back and rescued it. It had a wee bit of bacon grease on the cover but we kept it for a special secret treat when Mother was out shopping.
After the armistice, Mr K had gone back to his own business. Import and export, according to Mrs Kennedy, and finance. He was always up early. He'd do his morning exercises and then look in on the nursery on his way down to breakfast, showered and suited and ready for the off. Sometimes we'd only see him on Monday morning and then he'd be gone all week, busy with meetings in the city.
Herself used to say, ‘I sleep so lightly. My husband doesn't like to come in late and disturb the whole house. When you're in business, you see, you have to be prepared to put in long hours.’
Fidelma reckoned it was showgirls he was busy with, though at the time he didn't seem the type to me. He didn't smoke and he never took drink.
She'd say, ‘Sure, the clean-living ones are the worst. There's one thing none of them can go without and I don't think Your Man gets much of that at home, do you? Only when she's ready to get knocked up again. Do you think she puts him on her schedule? Joe's yearly treat? No wonder he works late.’
She liked him back then. We all did. He was fair and friendly and you could see the children were the light of his life.
Whatever it was that kept him in town so much, he was certainly making money. Anything that took Mrs K's fancy she could have. We were the first house on Beals Street to get an electric carpet beater, and a phonograph. I don't know that Mrs K got much joy from it though. She reckoned she was the musical one in her family and Mr Kennedy bought her a grand piano but you hardly ever saw her sit and pick out a tune. Fidelma was the one who sang to the babies. Mrs K never had friends around for tea or went visiting with the neighbours. If she saw them in the street, a crisp ‘Good day’ was all she ever gave them. I suppose she knew they looked down their noses at her. Brookline people didn't like flashiness. When they saw a big new icebox being carried up the steps, they thought it was a sign you had more money than sense.
The only company she had was Father Creagh from St Aidan's, and Mr and Mrs Moore who sometimes came for bridge on a weekend. They were an older couple. Eddie Moore worked for Mr K. He was his right-hand man, and a sort of friend too. If Mr K trusted anyone to know about his business affairs it was Eddie Moore. And Mrs Moore was a kind, motherly sort, quite happy to chat to Herself about the baby's new tooth. But really they were his friends, not hers.
Fidelma said to Mrs K once, ‘You know, Mrs Erickson gives tea parties and the nursemaids are all invited too, with the babies, so the children can mix and have company. Shouldn't you like to do that, Mrs Kennedy?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I would not. My children have each other for company and I'm far too busy for tea parties.’
But the busyness was all created out of nothing. She set herself a schedule the same as she did for the babies. She had a time for reading the newspapers, clipping out stories, and underlining things with her fountain pen. ‘Conversational topics’ she called them. Then she had a regular time for doing her exercises, to get her waistline back in trim if she'd just had a baby, or just a brisk walk to post her letters, if she was expecting again and not allowed any bending and stretching.
She wrote a lot of letters, though I don't know who to, and she read French literature too, to improve her mind. And there was her hour in the nursery every day, bending my ear. She loved to talk about when she'd been her daddy's First Lady, the places she'd been, the people she'd met.
‘Did I ever tell you about the time His Honour and I had luncheon with President Taft?’ she'd say. ‘The President said I was the prettiest face he'd seen since he entered the White House. He had me sit right next to him.’
And if she heard Fidelma humming a waltz, ‘Oh Fidelma, dear heart,’ she'd say, ‘you quite take me back to Vienna. Did I ever tell you about my trip to Europe with His Honour? We were treated like royalty. Receptions, balls. I had so many beaux. I could have married a count or a lord. I could have had my pick.’
Well, those days were over. She'd taken her pick and she had a model house and a nursery full of bonny babies to show for it, but I don't know how much pleasure it brought her. She never sat by the fire with a little one on her lap, just to enjoy the lisping and the softness of them.
Fidelma used to say, ‘She's a sad creature. I could feel sorry for her if only I didn't.’
By the time Rosie had her first birthday Herself was expecting again, due in February, but then just after Christmas something happened.
Mr K was gone ten days straight, not even home for Sunday dinner he had so much business to attend to and Herself was getting more and more quarrelsome, coming up to the nursery, wanting everything in the hot press refolded, picking over the layette and finding fault. Then two suitcases appeared in the downstairs hall and His Honour's car came to fetch her.
She said, ‘I'm going to visit with my family. The babies will have to stay here though. My sister's very sick so we mustn't take any risks.’
And off she went. Mrs Moore came round that evening and every other evening, checking that we hadn't burned the place to the ground.
I said, ‘When will she be back?’
She said, ‘Mrs Kennedy's gone for a little vacation but you can call me at any hour. My husband is in contact with Mr Kennedy.’
Fidelma said, ‘This is some family. He's left her, and now she's left us. Let's go down and see what's in the liquor cabinet.’
The Ericksons' cook said it was the talk of the neighbourhood that Mr K was probably in jail or on the run from somebody he'd scalped, but Fidelma was likely nearer the mark. She said, ‘There'll be a chorus girl at the bottom of this. And can you blame the man? Herself and her Rolodex, they'd take the shine off anybody's day.’
Whether there was a girl in the picture that time I never knew but he'd certainly been in Florida and come back with a spring in his step and two sets of tropical whites to be taken to the dry-cleaner.
‘Palm Beach is quite a place,’ he said. ‘The weather's perfect and if you stand in the lobby of the Royal Poinciana sooner or later anybody who's anybody'll walk by.’
He didn't seem fazed to have come home to an empty house.
He said Mrs K was taking a well-earned rest and would soon be back, but the days went by and there was no sign of her. The weekly nurse arrived to get things ready for the birth and we had everything she needed except the mother-to-be. Mr K was all smiles and sunshine with us, but I heard him on the telephone, giving out to His Honour.
‘Did you put her up to this?’ he said. ‘You must be encouraging her, Fitz. She's not an effing child any more. She has responsibilities. She has three children here keep asking for her.’
Which wasn't true at all. They never asked for her.
He said, ‘Now you listen to me. Tell her she has to come home right now. Whatever it is she wants, she can have. More help. A new car. She can go on trips. I don't effing care, just send her home before there's any more talk. Tell her Jack's not well.’
Jack was hot and cranky, wanted to sleep all the time but couldn't settle. When Herself turned up in the Mayor's limousine, brought home like the Queen of Sheba, he wouldn't even get off the daybed to give her a kiss. Then the rash came in and he got hotter yet so that even the sponge baths didn't help. It was the scarlet fever. Dr Good said the best thing, as there was a new baby due any minute, was for him to be nursed at the hospital. Fidelma was sent to sit with him, although I know he cried for me. It brought back to me the time when our Nellie had the measles, tossing and turning on her cot, with a blanket nailed across the window because the least bit of light hurt her eyes. We'd all had the measles. It didn't occur to us Nellie wouldn't get over it. Ursie and Dada were sitting with her when she slipped away. Me and Deirdre were out on the back step playing five-stones and we heard Dada start keening.
Deirdre said, ‘I think the angel came for Nellie.’ And she just carried on playing. Mrs Donnelly crossed the road later on, to help wash Nellie and make her tidy, and we waked her the whole night before they put the lid on her box. God, I willed her and willed her till I thought I'd bust to open her eyes and stop playacting. It was just Mr Donnelly and one of his boys who helped Dada carry her up to the graveyard. I suppose she weighed no more than a wren.
Kathleen Agnes was born on February 20, 1920. She had blue eyes and the Kennedy ginger hair, and she was born with no difficulties at all, which was just as well because everybody's mind was on poor wee Jack. Mr K got up even earlier in the morning, so he could get through with his business and then take a turn at Jack's bedside to relieve Fidelma. He was very good like that, for a man.
He said, ‘Damn it, Nora. The little feller just lies there and there's not a thing I can do to help him. It's more than I can stand. I'm used to being able to fix things for my family.’
I said, ‘I'm sure it comforts him to see your face. And you can always say a prayer for him. God's help is nearer than the door.’
‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘Well, praying is more Mrs Kennedy's department.’
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