The Importance of Being Kennedy (18 page)
Read The Importance of Being Kennedy Online
Authors: Laurie Graham
she signed off, then
P.S. Sissy and David have a baby boy, Julian. P.P.S. Lem failed his medicals because he has to wear those thick geeky glasses but Dad put in a word and got him into the Ambulance Corps. He’s waiting to be posted. P.P.P.S. Give my love to Billy if you see him.
So Lord Billy had become one of Kick’s P.P.P.Ses. And, according to Lady Debo, it was quite on the cards that the next time Lord Billy was home on leave he’d get engaged to Sally Norton. Lady Debo was expecting. She’d fallen for a honeymoon baby, but then it came too soon and she lost it. Loss seemed to be all we heard about in those days. Hope heard on her milk round that Lord and Lady Melhuish had had a telegram. They had two boys in uniform and then we found out it was the young one who was missing. The battleship he was on had been sunk by the Japs. That was December, not long after Pearl Harbor. Rory Melhuish. He was a nice young man. Always gave you a wave and a “Good day” if he saw you in the street.
All we seemed to hear was bad news. The only hope we clung to was that it would make a difference that America was fighting too. That it would soon be over, before too many more fine boys were cut down.
His Grace used to look in at Carlton Gardens from time to time and it was him suggested Walter should try for a position at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. He said there was special war work going on there and they needed experienced gardeners.
Walter wasn’t sure at first. He said, “It doesn’t seem the kind of work a man should be doing. They’ve got Land Army girls for things like that.”
I said, “Perhaps they need somebody who can tell the Land Army girls what to do. And perhaps they won’t even take you. Why don’t you find out? I won’t think any the less of you if you’re wearing gum boots instead of that tin helmet.”
So the Duke placed a telephone call and Walter was on his bicycle and off to Kew like a shot. He seemed to get his old bearing back after that. He held his head higher.
“Top secret,” he said. “We’re engaged in work of national importance, but I’m not at liberty to say what it is.”
And neither me nor Hope got it out of him till after VE day.
They’d been growing things that could be used to make up for the shortages. Milkweed was one, and nettles and all different kinds of herbs, for remedies. The milkweed was useful because you could make rubber from the milk and flying suit padding from the floss inside the pods. The nettles were for a kind of flax. I knew about nettles. Grandma Farley had a nettle tablecloth, better than linen she reckoned. It was the cloth she kept for funerals. Walter said you could make good strong twine from nettles too.
I don’t know how much difference it made to the war effort, but I believe Kew Gardens was the saving of me and Walter. I’d been getting to the point where I thought I wasn’t cut out for marriage. I wasn’t accustomed to having a man watching the clock till I came home, wanting to know where I’d be every minute and who with.
I’d have a busy day, out with a soup kitchen, or cleaning up urchins that had been bombed out, first bath some of them had ever had in their lives. Time would just fly and I liked meeting all those different people. Then I’d come home to find Walter pacing the floor. Before he had his top secret gardening to think about, he didn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t keep to a timetable. You didn’t leave till the job was done, and then you never knew how you’d get home. I had three bicycles purloined. After that, it was Shanks’s pony.
“I just worry you’ll come to harm, Nora,” he’d say. “When you’re late I worry you’re lying under a pile of rubble and nobody knows you’re there.”
I’d say, “Well, if it happens, either I’ll blow my whistle and they’ll find me, or they’ll send what’s left of me home in a carrier bag.”
He’d say, “I suppose that’s what passes for humor in America.” And then we’d have words.
But once he started at Kew he was too busy to fuss about me.
He’d dash home, grab a slice of bread and scrape and go out directly to do his blackout rounds. We got that we hardly even met in bed.
“Stallybrass, reporting for duty,” he’d say if we did both happen to slide between the sheets. “Permission to come alongside?”
He could be an annoying old fusspot, always tidying the spoon drawer and putting my shoes in a row, but he did make me laugh, and as Fidelma Clery always said, it was nice to have a body to warm your feet on. I still don’t know if it’s what the story books call love.
At the start of 1942 I got a new job.
“Nora,” Lady Lally said to me one morning, “you must know how Americans do things. Why don’t you pop along to the Red Cross at Piccadilly and give them a hand. They’re getting complaints about their coffee.”
London was filling up with American military. You heard their voices everywhere. When I walked in to the Rainbow Corner and saw all those bright smiling American boys it made me realize how much I missed my Kennedys. I hadn’t seen any of them in two years. The young ones probably hardly remembered me, and I might not even know them anymore. Teddy especially. There’s a big difference between a boy of eight and a boy of ten. Rainbow Corner brought something else home to me too. How worn out we all were in London. The Americans were fresh and ready for anything, but we’d already had two years of it and that’s a long time to be braced for disaster. They reckoned General Monty had the Germans beaten in Egypt, but we didn’t feel like we’d beaten anybody. There was greenery springing up on the bomb sites, Mother Nature moving back in. That made you realize how long things had dragged on. And when I heard some of the GIs talking about what they intended doing after the war it dawned on me I’d stopped imagining any “after the war.” I couldn’t imagine how it was ever going to end.
It got to the middle of March and I still hadn’t had my usual little homemade Christmas card from Rosie, but I didn’t think anything of it. We hardly marked it ourselves that year. Pilchards on toast, that was Christmas dinner.
Then, just after Easter, I got a letter from Kick. Jack had been accepted by the Navy and was off to midshipman school on Lake Michigan and he’d asked her to let me know.
Daddy put an end to Jack’s pash for Inge,
she wrote.
He said she’s most probably a Fifth Columnist and it had to stop because when the war’s over Joe’ll be running for Congress and we can’t have his chances ruined by any skeletons in the family closet. Also, the d-i-v-o-r-c-e thing would break Mother’s heart.
The Bronxville house had been closed up and Herself had taken a suite at the Plaza Hotel, so I guessed Fidelma was out of a job, though Kick didn’t mention her. Teddy and Jean were shuttling between Palm Beach and Hyannis, Pattie was off to college in Philadelphia, Euny was in California for her health and her studies, and Kick was still writing her newspaper pieces, quite the career girl.
Mother keeps calling the Editor with ideas for articles,
she wrote.
I wish he’d give her my spot. I’d much rather be in London doing something exciting. Also she called Joe’s commanding officer because Joe got a demerit for having a messy bunk or something and Mother told them they shouldn’t be so petty when a boy had volunteered to put his life on the line. Word got round and now all the other guys are joking about it. Joe is SO ticked off with Mother.
Washington is really depressing. The only men around are old timers or wounded or 4Fs so there’s not much dancing to be had.
Darlingest Nora, I have something to tell you. Rosie isn’t so hot. You mustn’t worry about her because the Sisters are taking the very best care of her, but she had a little operation back in the fall and it didn’t go quite as well as expected. I didn’t write you before because I hoped she’d start feeling better but I don’t think it’s very likely now. Dr. Freeman said the best thing would be for her to have complete rest and not see places that might upset her, like Hyannis, so she’s gone to a nursing home in Beacon, on the Hudson. It’s called Craig House and Mary Moore says she’s settled in just fine so you’re not to worry about her.
Miss you a million. Jack and Joe send kisses.
P.S. Nancy Tenney got married. He’s a navy aviator like Joe. At this rate I’ll be the only one left on the shelf.
I wrote to Rosie at Craig House, Beacon, but nothing ever came back and it wasn’t till I heard from Fidelma that I really knew what had happened.
They’ve runed our darling girl,
she wrote,
and broken my heart.
Mr. K was looking into opyrations you know for people with over-exited brains. I told him and told him all Rosie wanted was a natural life. Sure when it comes down to it she was only longing for the same trills the old billygoat expects for himself. I don’t know how far things went. She did go missing a couple of times and somebody may have given her strong drink but there was still no call
to do what they did and Mister and Mrs. Moore agree with me.
The doctor said he had plenty of satysfed customers. Ladies who had low spirits or given to tantroms. Mr. K got sent testymonals. But it was still wrong what they did.
It was done at the Goerge Washington. Just a wee cut they said to take away the troublesome part of her mind. It’s called lowbotummy. Kick came with us to the hospital, and Mrs. Moore. Herself was up to Poland Springs taking the waters.
Rosie went to it like the lamm she was. Smiled and waved as they weeled her out to the opyrating room. They shaved away a lock of her hair but that was easy covered by a headscarf when they’d done, and she’d to wear a sunshade, because her eyes were a bit bruised but that wasn’t the sum of it. She was runed. They said she wouldn’t feel a thing and afterwards she’d just be nice and carm, and stop her night time wanderings and all that talk about boys and squezing but that wasn’t the way she was at all. She couldn’t speak. I don’t think she knew who any of us was not even when her Daddy came in. He was shaken to see her. Serve him right.
But then he said it was likely just the carming pill they’d given her before the opyration and she’d be all right later. He told Mrs. Moore to bring her to the Sisters at Craig House for a holliday.
Kick said What’ll we do Daddy if it doesn’t wear off?
He said Hellfire and damnation it will wear off. And if it doesn’t well we gave it our best. At least she won’t be going around queering things for Joe’s future.
Well then he had to go tell Herself what had hap
pened and I prayed she’d kill him when she got up to the nursing home and saw the dammidge. But she didn’t go to the nursing home and so far as I know she still hasn’t. The only visitors Rosies had are me and Mrs. Moore and the pill didn’t wear off. They meddled where they shouldn’t have and now she’s like a poor broken doll.
Herself said the Ambassydor only tried what had been hily recommended and no-one was to blame if it didn’t work on Rosie. She said every family has its cross to bear and Rosie was theirs and she said there was to be no talk, particly not in front of Teddy and Jean. There doesn’t need to be talk. They know she’s not coming home. Teddy cried himself sick when she didn’t come for Christmas. So that’s how things stand. And then I was let go because they can’t keep Bronxville going when help is so hard to get.
I purely hate them Nora the both of them. They couldn’t make a winner of Rosie and they couldn’t just leave her be. I’m glad to be out of there.
I’m back up to New York, learning riviting at the Brooklyn shipyard. Still looking for a husband. Make a novena for poor Rosie.
Rosie was kept at Craig House till last year, then Mr. K decided to move her out west, to a convent in Wisconsin where there’s space for her to have her own little house and a Sister to live in with her. And now they’ve started putting it about that she was mentally deficient from the start and was bound to have to be put away sooner or later. Well, that’s not my recollection, nor Fidelma’s. I still have her little letters, and that picture of her, dressed up in her silver thread gown and her ostrich feathers, off to curtsey to the King and Queen of England. I know what I know.
Kick never mentioned Rosie again in her letters though she was a good little correspondent and kept me up-to-date on the rest of them. Jean and Teddy were forever moving school depending on whether it was the season for Palm Beach or Hyannis or New York. Bobby was getting ready to go to Harvard, Pat was at Rosemont, and Euny was out at Stanford in California with Herself tagging along, attending the classes, going to the teas and socials and having a dandy time, according to Kick. Dandy for Mrs. K maybe. It’s no wonder Euny’s such a nervous wreck. When you’re twenty-one years old, you don’t want your Mammy perched on your shoulder all the time, bragging how her waistline’s no different after nine babies, blowing her trumpet about the weekends she spent at Windsor Castle. All that time on her hands, she could have been doing war work, using that Kennedy name for something useful, not crowding in on the children.
Jack finished his training and was posted an ensign, out to the Pacific, and Joseph Patrick still hadn’t gotten his wings. Jack had overtaken him. Young Joe wouldn’t have liked that. He was based at Norfolk, Virginia, so Kick saw quite a bit of him when he got time off.
Must close
, she wrote one time.
I’m having dinner with the future President.
Every letter I had from her she complained her Daddy wouldn’t allow her to come to London and help win the war, but early in ’43 she finally wore him down with her begging. The American Red Cross was recruiting girls to come to Europe and Mr. K said if the Red Cross could use her he wouldn’t stand in her way. Of course Joe Kennedy being Joe Kennedy, he couldn’t keep from pulling strings. He didn’t want her posted to any old job in any old dump. He fixed up for her to get a posting to London.
Clear the decks
, she wrote.
I’ve done my basic training, had my shots and I’m on my way.
I quite thought she might turn up at the Rainbow Corner. There was plenty to do, taking care of all those American boys, in a strange country for the first time. I was the one they applied to if they had something needed mending, but you weren’t just a seamstress at the Red Cross. You had to be a mother to them too. “Aunt Nora” they called me. They’d show me pictures of their folks, tell me about their sweethearts, read me their Dear John letters sometimes. We were there to give them a home away from home and serve it with a smile. You couldn’t stop to think what might happen to them once they saw action.
It would have been grand to have a girl like Kick around. We were mainly older women working there and the boys would have loved to see a pretty young face, but Mr. K didn’t want her hobnobbing with the ranks. He made sure a job was found for her at the Officers’ Club in Knightsbridge, so she was back on her old stamping ground, just along the road from Prince’s Gate.
Her first Sunday in town she came round to Carlton Gardens to see us, dressed in her glad rags, ready to go dancing with Tony Erskine. She looked grand. Her face had lost some of its puppy fat and she was wearing her hair softer. She’d rinsed it in vinegar to bring out the color and give it a nice shine. Still that same old ragamuffin grin though.