Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (15 page)

To make matters worse for young Joe, Jack soon turned his attention to outdistancing him in another, even more critical area. Jack began to speak, however lightheartedly, to his sister and their circle of close friends in Washington of the possibility that he might seek the presidency one day. At times, these antic discussions resembled a party game that Betty Coxe affectionately dubbed “Jack’s Future.” Among the Kennedys, it was young Joe, not the second son, who had long been assumed to be destined for political preeminence. For Kick, who from the time she was a child had championed Jack in the face of formidable opposition and seemingly impossible odds, his ascendency both in the family and in the world was as gratifying as it was thrilling.

Kick also seemed pleased—at least initially—when a female colleague of hers at the paper, Inga Arvad, quickly came to share the electric intensity of her excitement about Jack. A statuesque blond Danish beauty then living apart from her second husband, Arvad was a highly valued contributor to the
Times Herald
. She wrote a popular interview column known as “Did You Happen to See…?” that spotlighted newcomers to the Washington scene. Early in her career, she had been a European beauty queen, a film actress, and a reporter for a major newspaper in Copenhagen. She had traveled to prewar Germany, where she interviewed Hitler, who, pronouncing her a perfect specimen of Nordic beauty, invited her to join him in his private box at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Subsequently, she had attended the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York City, where Arthur Krock offered to find her a job in Washington. As he would later do to help launch Kick, he sent Inga to Cissy Patterson, publisher of the
Times Herald.
On the basis of Inga’s experience in Europe, Mrs. Patterson immediately signed her on as a staff writer.

Inga became fast friends with Kick when the latter arrived at the paper. On the eve of Jack’s move to Washington, Kick touted him to Inga, who soon had a chance to judge that her coworker had not been exaggerating: “He had the charm that makes the birds come out of their trees,” Inga later wrote of her first meeting with Kick’s brother. “He looked like her twin, the same mop of hair, the same blue eyes, natural, engaging, ambitious, warm and when he walked into a room you knew he was there, not pushing, not domineering, but exuding animal magnetism.” Or, as Inga confided at the time to her other chum at the
Times Herald,
John White, “I have gooey eyes for him.”

With a nod to the European tradition of the older female who undertakes to educate a young lover, Inga declared that Jack, four years her junior, still had a lot to learn and that she was pleased to be the one to teach him. The pedagogical dimension of her relationship with Jack was not limited to matters of sex, however. Inga also discussed politics and history with him, read and critiqued his writings, and in a tone that Betty Coxe described as “motherly” advised him shrewdly with regard to his virtues and limitations were he indeed to pursue a career in politics. Half in earnest half in jest, Jack told Inga that if he ever did seek high office he would want her to be his campaign manager. Meanwhile, in her column on November 27, 1941, she enthusiastically introduced Jack Kennedy to
Times Herald
readers as “a boy with a future.” Inga wrote that at twenty-four years of age Jack had already produced a “much praised book” and that “elder men like to hear his views which are sound and astonishingly objective for so young a man.”

By the time those words appeared in print, Inga and Jack had enlisted Kick and John White to help them carry on what was after all an extramarital affair on Inga’s part. Her Hungarian-born husband, Paul Fejos, then living in New York, was known to be explosively jealous. By design, Kick and John would conspicuously appear with Inga and Jack at the start of an evening, as though they planned to make a sprightly quartet. Before long, however, Kick and her companion would discreetly leave the lovers alone for a time, then rejoin them at evening’s end for all the world to observe. The arrangement naturally put a good deal of additional pressure on Kick, who was by no means as eager to take instruction from her self-appointed sex tutor as Jack was from his. When she and John White peeled off from the lovers, he sometimes brought her to “the cave,” as he called the grungy, book-filled basement apartment he occupied in the house on Dumbarton Avenue in Georgetown owned by his sister Patsy Field. He would read to Kick from his pantheon of authors, argue with her peremptorily, act as if he knew what was best for her better than she did herself, and otherwise vainly endeavor to maneuver her into bed.

In three months’ time, Kick’s relationship with this eccentric, at once exasperating and endearing older man who had fallen infernally in love with her had developed its own distinctive rhythms and routines. Notable among them was a fast-paced, combative style of conversation that self-consciously echoed the Hollywood screwball film comedies that she and John, playing hooky from the paper, often slipped off to see together of a workday afternoon.

For all of the insults (“big bag of wind,” “ignorant, thick headed Mick,” and many others) that they were forever hurling at each other, their friendship at this point was filled with, quite simply, fun and enjoyment. However much being called upon to serve as beards for Jack’s affair with a married woman complicated their own relationship, Kick and John also found it to be a great game that was exceedingly amusing. And however persistently Kick countered John’s arguments for a greater degree of physical intimacy, even she seemed to enjoy at least playacting at being a couple in the fullest sense of the word when they double-dated with her brother and Inga.

But the hilarity of Washington life as Kick had come to savor it in the waning months of 1941 was about to draw to a rather abrupt end.

On Sunday, December 7, Kick joined John White and Patsy Field for lunch at a local restaurant. In the course of the meal, a radio blasted the news of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. White later acknowledged that as a newspaperman he really ought to have rushed to the office immediately. Kick as well would have been expected to go in to assist her boss, who was already at his desk frantically phoning a football stadium where he knew many of his circulation men to be spending the afternoon. Frank Waldrop requested that an announcement be made on the arena’s public address system directing all
Times Herald
employees to report to work immediately. But there was no such announcement in the restaurant, where Waldrop’s secretary on the one hand and his premier feature writer on the other kept up the bantering tone of the conversation that had preceded word of the attack.

They had been discussing what John intended to do were there to be a war. John had declared, as she had often heard him do, that he did not believe a man should fight. In truth, this was far from what he thought. The claim that he was a pacifist was merely his way of returning the ball over the net, of initiating a debate by affecting a bohemian attitude with which Kick was certain to disagree. Now, revisiting the theme in light of Pearl Harbor, Kick again asked about his plans. Again, he suggested for argument’s sake that he would refuse to serve. Though Patsy was eager to talk in a more serious vein, John and Kick persisted in laughing and disputing as they took their time finishing lunch.

No thanks to John and Kick, the
Times Herald
was the first paper in town, possibly in the nation, to hit the streets with comprehensive news of the attack. Waldrop’s triumph did nothing to improve the publication’s reputation, which plummeted in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; and three days after that Japan’s ally, Germany, declared war on the U.S. In such a climate, the
Times Herald
’s long-held fervent opposition to American intervention, coupled with a controversial editorial decision, three days before Pearl Harbor, to publish secret U.S. war plans, caused not a few Washingtonians to regard the paper very suspiciously indeed.

Given the leaked war plans, some figures in the Roosevelt administration viewed the people at the
Times Herald
as traitors who bore personal responsibility for Pearl Harbor. The paper’s publisher, in turn, privately voiced suspicion that Roosevelt might actually have “arranged” for the attack to take place in an effort to force the country into war. At length, Cissy Patterson came to believe that the President had at least known in advance about the Japanese assault. Frank Waldrop would long take a similar view.

Amidst all the fear and finger-pointing, a rumor suddenly circulated at the
Times Herald
that there might even be a Nazi spy planted among them. The evidence was a news photograph in the paper’s morgue showing Inga Arvad with Hitler in his box at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. On December 12, Kick informed Inga of what was being said about her. Inga complained about the rumor that she was a spy to Cissy Patterson, who found herself in a most difficult position.

Inga insisted that she had been at Hitler’s side in her capacity as a freelance journalist; and her employers at the
Times Herald
were inclined to believe her. Still, Mrs. Patterson understood that at a moment when her paper was regarded in some Washington quarters as virtually a fascist organ, the Nazi rumors about one of its staff members were not likely to be helpful. The publisher urged Inga to tell her story in full to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the interests both of clearing herself and of removing this additional taint from the paper.

Inga did as suggested, but the result of her long interview with an FBI agent proved to be far from what she or her employer had been hoping for. Instead of exonerating her, Inga’s testimony prompted the bureau to launch an intensive monitoring operation focused on the espionage suspect’s daily existence. Federal agents watched the front door of her residence and tapped her phone. Initially, the agents remained clueless about the identity of the tousle-haired young man known, in the words of one official report, “only as Jack,” who was Inga’s regular bedmate. When at length Jack’s full name and status did emerge, his superiors in Naval Intelligence and his father were soon united in their consternation.

Soon, Kick informed John White that their regular foursomes with Jack and Inga might have to be discontinued. She explained that her father, who had initially approved of the idea of an older, worldly instructress for Jack, was no longer prepared to accept Inga’s presence in his son’s life. Old Joe, Kick reported ominously, was “getting ready to drag up the big guns.” And so he seemed to do following the January 12, 1942, publication in Walter Winchell’s syndicated column of a reference to Jack’s affair: “One of ex-Ambassador Kennedy’s eligible sons is the target of a Washington gal columnist’s affections.” Reporting that the woman had already spoken to a lawyer about a divorce from her husband, Winchell concluded: “Pa Kennedy no like.” The next day, Jack received word that he was to be transferred immediately to the Charleston Navy Yard in South Carolina—or, as he bitterly referred to his new assignment many miles from Inga, “Siberia.” Prior to leaving town, he bequeathed to Kick his much nicer apartment, at Dorchester House on Sixteenth Street, which she arranged to share with Betty Coxe, who was then enrolled in a foreign service course at Washington’s Walker School.

Hardly had Kick and Betty moved in than visitors were greeted by a prominent display of Kick’s personal photographs, which were arrayed on a large table in the living room—framed pictures of Billy and other of the aristocrats who had courted and feted her in Britain just before the war. The display reflected the fact that Jack’s departure from Washington was not the only critical event to have taken place in Kick’s life just then. Some two and a half months had passed since Jack arrived in town shortly after Kick had learned of Billy’s engagement. Now, suddenly, she had had unexpected news from Cliveden.

Nancy Astor wrote to report that Billy had broken off with Sally Norton. Though Lady Astor provided few details, according to Billy’s sister Anne their mother had been a prime mover in the breakup. Also, in the aftermath of Debo and Andrew’s message imploring Kick to come back and “save” Billy, Debo had given birth two and a half months prematurely to a son who had lived for but a few hours. The couple’s ineffable sadness over the loss, and the manner in which Andrew had striven to comfort the woman he loved, seemed to affect Billy profoundly, reminding him as it did that it was Kick he truly cared for, and wanted to be with when life’s worst misfortunes struck. At Christmastime 1941, he decided that he could not go forward with his present marital plans.

Nancy Astor, of course, was eager that Kick come at once. For a moment, it almost seemed as if in her great haste to reunite Kick and Billy, she had overlooked the inconvenient matter of America’s recent entry into the war. Kick, by this time, was better acquainted with the obstacles. “I long to come over,” she told Lady Astor, “but it looks quite impossible.” She added that if Dinah Brand went over in the spring she would “definitely” (Kick packed a good deal of personality into that adverb) accompany her. Quite how she would manage to bring off the trip remained as yet unclear. But for the moment, one thing was evident: Whatever Kick’s hurt and anger had been the previous October, all was instantly forgiven with regard to Billy.

Soon, he as well wrote to her of the sundered engagement. Confident that Britain, having stood alone since 1939, had amply disproven the opinions so often expressed by Jack and old Joe, Billy prompted Kick to ask her brother whether he still believed that the British were “decadent.” Kick fired off this playful challenge in a February 13, 1942, letter to Charleston; and before long the old jousting dynamic that the trio had been known to exhibit before the war—between her beloved on the one side and her brother on the other, with Kick in between—had been pleasantly reestablished.

Where did this altered dynamic leave John White? Not in an optimal position, to be sure. Though no doubt all-consuming to him, his earnest efforts to advance his relationship with Kick had become again but a minor subplot to what was for her once more the thrilling main action. Since hearing from Nancy Astor, Kick had again been living essentially ad interim, focused on returning to Billy by the spring of that year. She believed she might have found a way when, in early February 1942, as her twenty-second birthday drew near, she was finally promoted to the staff writing post that she had regarded as her ticket to London when she first went to work at the
Times Herald.
By Kick’s calculations, her new job as the paper’s film critic made her eligible for the journalistic credentials she needed to go over.