Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (27 page)

Briefly, there was some talk of Kick’s going to Paris to help establish the Red Cross’s Allied Services organization. The duchess, much as she and the duke thrived on having Kick with them, encouraged her to go over to the newly liberated city for a week to ten days. Moucher reasoned that the work would help distract Kick from morbid reflections upon her husband’s death. But when it turned out that the Red Cross would require a commitment on her part to remain for at least a month, Kick said it would be impossible. She told Jack that even when she was with people she liked and knew well, before long “I just start thinking and it’s no good. I’m much better down here just with the family.” Strangers, no matter how solicitous, were beyond her just then. Nor had she been at all pleased by the outpouring of public sympathy for Billy’s widow. Kick bristled at what she sardonically described as “the pathetic little articles about poor Lady Hartington” that she kept seeing in the pages of the British press.

For the time being, she seemed happiest poring over letters from people who had known Billy, and listening to the testimony of friends, family members, military colleagues, and the like, who might have something new and interesting to tell her about him. For the fact increasingly presented itself that, though he had been her husband, she was now living among individuals who in certain respects had known him far better than she.

During their prolonged separation, when she had been in the U.S. and he in Britain, Kick had depended on various London correspondents to report to her on aspects of Billy’s life. What country house weekend had he attended? With whom had he been seen? And now again, in quest of information to which she would otherwise have had no access, she read and reread the letters that poured in about him. She was especially drawn to the testimony of those who had recently observed her husband in action in France and Belgium. The warrior and leader whose exploits they admiringly chronicled seemed somehow so very different from the “Billy” whom Kick had known. On both sides there had been a great deal of “playacting” in Kick’s relations with Billy since her return from the U.S. in 1943. Billy had welcomed the opportunity to recapture with Kick something of the innocence that he had otherwise forever lost in Flanders. But there was no trace of any such innocence in the accounts of Major the Marquess of Hartington’s war service that came to her now in such welcome abundance. Kick was treated to detailed descriptions of his coolly stepping in to replace Mark Howard when the latter fell in the course of Operation Epsom; of his adroit leadership during Operation Bluecoat; and of the valor during the Battle of Heppen that had cost him his life. By degrees, the widow began to understand that the identity of her young husband had been, and remained, something of a mystery to her. Hence the compulsive reading of the letters and the questioning of his fellow Guardsmen about the man Billy had at last become. The question consumed her: Who had Billy been when he died?

Compton Place, during these weeks, was filled not just with grief, but also with uncertainty about the future. Kick was hardly alone in her perplexity as to what tomorrow might hold. Billy’s parents and sisters, and of course Debo as well, were dealing with uncertainty of a different kind. All were frantic about the danger to Andrew so long as he remained in Italy. For Debo and the girls, the anxiety was of a strictly personal sort. For the duke and duchess, and in particular for the former, the acute concern also had to do with the fate of the Devonshire dukedom. It was now certain that, as she had failed to produce a son of her own, Kick would soon find herself displaced. When Eddy Devonshire died, the title and all that went with it would go to Andrew—if, that is, Andrew managed to survive the war. Some people familiar with Andrew’s service record with the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards considered that it was well nigh a miracle he had not been killed already.

Known affectionately to the soldiers under his command as “the Mad Lord,” Captain Lord Andrew Cavendish had made it his firm policy to, whenever possible, risk his own life rather than the lives of his men. Andrew’s brigade commander, Archer Clive, likened him in this respect to “a mother hen,” so zealous had Andrew been about the safety and well-being of his men. The soldiers of Andrew’s company were absolutely devoted to him as a consequence, and his superiors were much impressed with him both as a leader and as a man. Indeed, by this time he had already participated in the siege that would result in his being promoted to major and earn him the Military Cross—and, though no one yet suspected it, his family least of all, leave him traumatized for life.

On July 27, 1944, Andrew’s company had been in the midst of an arduous ten-week march to Florence, a journey that had been made the more difficult by steep hills and nearly daily combat. On this particular day, Andrew had directed Sergeant John King to remain in the trench south of Strada while Andrew went over the ridge, some hundred yards in the distance, to personally reconnoiter for enemy troops. Andrew assumed that it was he himself he was exposing to danger by this order, not Sergeant King. But when he returned shortly thereafter, he discovered that Sergeant King had been blown to bits in the heavy shell fire that had begun during Andrew’s absence.

The shelling, meanwhile, had thrown his weary troops into much confusion, several of the Guardsmen having been wounded almost all at once. He rallied his men and kept them going through thirty-six hours of continuous shelling, in punishing heat without food or water, until the company was at last relieved. Major Lord Andrew Cavendish was awarded the Military Cross for his leadership in the course of the ordeal. But that high honor meant little to him, for, like Jack Kennedy after the PT-109 episode, Andrew, racked with survivor’s guilt, focused not on his magnificent accomplishment, but rather on his failure. He had told Sergeant King to remain in the trench, and as far as Andrew was concerned he was therefore responsible for the man’s death. That Andrew had gone on, that same day, to save other men’s lives struck him almost as beside the point. The memory of his role in Sergeant King’s death would, in his phrase, forever “nag away” at him.

In September of 1944, Andrew and his company had just participated in the successful capture of Montecatini Alto, a village in the hills overlooking the famous Montecatini spa, when he learned of his brother’s death. Debo worried that the news about Billy would cause Andrew to go “right under.” She told Lady Redesdale that she feared writing to him, not knowing “what to say or how to say it.” Debo was acutely aware of how sensitive Andrew was, and she suspected that his always fraught relationship with his brother would almost certainly complicate his reaction now.

Andrew’s September 22, 1944, letter to Debo therefore came as an immense relief. It was warm, reassuring, and full of solicitude for her and her situation at home. Andrew would later say that he had not immediately dwelled on the prospect of inheriting the dukedom, especially since for all he knew, Kick might be pregnant. In his letter to Debo, however, he did speak of the changes that suddenly confronted them, and of his confidence that somehow she would make it all work for him. “Darling, I suppose our life is going to be very different to what we had planned. But I know that whatever life has in store, with you beside me life has no fears.” To his wife, Andrew’s reference to the Military Cross with which he had recently been decorated as “most undeserved” seemed at the time to reflect the becoming modesty that had long been among his most salient characteristics. In retrospect, however, Debo would have occasion to wonder whether the remark might not also have been a hint of the terrible troubles that were to come when Andrew—“a changed man”—returned to civilian life.

The duke’s new heir had yet to come home when, late in 1944, Anne Hunloke, Eddy Devonshire’s sister, proposed the idea of taking Kick to live with her in a borrowed flat in London’s Westminster Gardens, where a number of Conservative politicians, including Lord Cranborne, James Stuart, and Duncan Sandys, maintained residences. Kick, when she felt ready, would be able to return to work at the Red Cross. The duke and duchess were themselves often in London in conjunction with their duties as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies and director of hospitality for the Dominion soldiers, respectively. As a consequence, Billy’s parents would continue to spend a good deal of time with Kick during the week, then take her back with them to Eastbourne on weekends. Kick agreed to see if the arrangement might work.

First, however, Kick went off to Shropshire to spend five days as the only “civilian” in a community of twenty Scared Heart nuns in an Elizabethan house in the Lake District known as Levens Hall. She devoted her sojourn there to consciously seeking a way to come to terms with Billy’s death, but it soon became evident that her efforts were in vain. “Now it has been four months,” Kick wrote to her parents and siblings from the convent, “and although one fits back into an everyday existence it still somehow doesn’t seem right. Rather like an awful dream.” It galled her when fellow Catholics persisted in the claim that she had never really been married to Billy and that her union with him had been sinful. On her return to Compton Place, where she was to pack her things in anticipation of moving to London, it was Kick herself who brought up the fraught subject of the Catholic Church’s ongoing disapproval of her registry office marriage. In conversation with the duchess’s seventy-five-year-old uncle, Lord Hugh Cecil, known as Linky, who had come for a visit, Kick noted that in the eyes of her church she and Billy had been “living in sin.” The pale, stoop-shouldered old man replied, “But so many of one’s friends are nowadays.” Distressed that the Anglican uncle seemed to concur with the Catholics that she and Billy had sinned, she was quick to retaliate. She repeated a story she had heard at Levens Hall to the effect that King Edward VII when he was on his deathbed had converted to Catholicism. To her delight, the assertion, so shocking to Protestant ears, caused Linky Cecil and others present almost to “jump out of their skins.”

On the eve of the big move to her new flat, Kick, in a letter to the Kennedys, insisted that she was feeling much better overall. When she reached London, however, she found it difficult at first to go out in public. Even a mundane trip to the store was capable of inciting the widow’s emotions and sensitivities. “I don’t like to go into shops,” Kick told Jean Lloyd, who saw her frequently during this period, “because I feel people are looking at me, wondering how I’m taking it.” Kick as yet had no concrete plan for the future, and she could not really say why she had decided to remain in London for now even though her parents, especially her father, saw no reason why she resisted coming home at once. But where exactly was home? Kick confided to Jean that she was no longer sure of quite where she belonged.

Kick resumed work at the Red Cross, though this time in a less demanding capacity, supervising the entertainment programs at the nurses’ club. After the glittering future that had seemed to open up before her when she married Billy, sharing a flat with a roommate and working at a job felt like a throwback to the life she had once had in Washington.

The duchess encouraged her to continue to make appearances and give speeches in Derbyshire as the representative of Billy and his family. Moucher maintained that because the people there persisted in their great admiration for Billy, they would be very eager indeed to see and hear his widow. Accordingly, on March 8, Kick went to Derbyshire to speak at the Women’s Institute. Introduced by the mayor, she delighted the audience with her remarks on the theme “The American Housewife in Wartime.” By the end of Kick’s presentation, which emphasized all that women are capable of, listeners were calling out, “Give the English country housewife the recognition she deserves! More freedom for women!” Coming as it did in a locale whose mayor privately acknowledged, “We have always considered our women chattel,” the audience’s passionate response was very pleasing to Kick. Moreover, it amused her to consider what her traditionally minded late husband would have thought had he heard her urge female audience members on “to bigger and better things.”

But Kick’s success that day was also a cause for sober reflection on her part. The proceedings inevitably reminded her of her comparable triumph at the Bakewell Fair, at a time when, unlike at present, so much had seemed possible for her personally. In August of 1944, enthusiastic reports on her performance from both the duke’s longtime political agent and his mother the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire had led Eddy Devonshire to exult that if Billy proved incapable of winning back the traditional family seat in Parliament, Kick could be counted on to “win it for him.” Five months later, Kick clearly retained the ability—but with Andrew set to be duke someday, what at this point was all that ability of hers for? What “bigger and better things,” if any, were there in store for Kick?

The duke and duchess, meanwhile, had commissioned the painter Oswald Birley, noted for his royal portraits, to produce a portrait of Billy. Kick took an interest in the gestation of the artwork, which was based largely on photographs of her late husband. The contours of Billy’s face, the delicacy of his fingers and hands, the personality exuded by his characteristic half smile—all these Birley was confident he could glean from the photographic evidence. What he despaired of capturing, however, were the precise tones of the young man’s skin. He therefore recruited Billy’s seventeen-year-old-sister, Anne, who patiently sat for the artist. When Kick visited Birley’s studio, on March 16, 1945, the sight of the as yet unfinished canvas, which showed Major the Marquess of Hartington locking eyes, as it were, with the spectator, caused his widow to explode once more in tears.

Three days after Kick’s emotions had surged in this manner in the portraitist’s atelier, she learned that Andrew was back from the Italian Front. The news was entirely unexpected, as Andrew had not been due to return with his battalion until later that month at the earliest. Duke Eddy, who had been in Burma to inspect the Colonial troops, had stopped off in Italy on his way home; and at the last minute Harold Macmillan had arranged for Andrew to fly to Britain with his father.