The Importance of Being Kennedy (17 page)

There had been a lot of talk about being prepared for whatever Jerry threw at us, plans for this, plans for that, but it was a different matter when it really came to it. There was no rest from the raids, day after day, and whatever was being tried to stop them, it didn’t appear to be working. The barrage would go up, but the bombers still got through.

And down at the Women’s Voluntary we didn’t always know what we were doing. We made it up as we went along. We were sent out with a soup kitchen one morning, over to Millwall, where whole streets had been flattened, but when we got there they already had a soup kitchen, organized by one of the vicars. What they really needed were baby napkins and blankets, and a bath chair or two for the old folk who’d been bombed out of their houses and were too frail to walk.

People were nice enough to us. They seemed glad to see friendly faces even if we hadn’t turned up with what they needed, and ladies like Lally Baxendale cheered them up.

“Not to werry,” she’d say. “The impossible marely takes a little longer.”

The local pols were a different matter. Their names were mud. All that huffing and puffing and promises they’d made, but when it came to it, there weren’t shelters fit to be used nor provision made for the homeless.

Hilda Oddy used to say, “Never mind Hitler. If it carries on like this there’ll be a bloody revolution. Some of those councilors could find themselves strung up.”

But the pols fought back, of course. Some of them put it about that it was only the working people who were getting bombed. That the toffs had their houses marked with special paint on the roofs so they wouldn’t get hit. That they were just waiting for the Jerry bombs to get rid of the lower classes and the Socialist troublemakers, then they could carry on as before, only
under new management. King Ribbentrop and Queen Wally Windsor.

Anybody talked like that around me, I told them. We had raids on the West End too, and casualties, but there are always the ones who’ll never allow the facts spoil their argument. Walter was shaken, some of the stories I came home with. The thieving and the lying and the profiteering. Just because we were fighting a war didn’t mean everyone was behaving as if they were out of the
Boy’s Own
comic. But Hope and Walter had been raised to believe a councilor knew better than a constituent, same as a Duke knew better than a gardener, and only God, the King and Winston Churchill knew better than the Duke of Devonshire.

Sometimes I think Walter wondered what he’d taken on with me, but once the Blitz got serious neither of us had a lot of time for wondering about anything. He was out on ARP patrol every night, and if I wasn’t working I’d be in the scullery with Hope, helping her with the mending, half dead on my feet.

Hope wasn’t quite the termagant she’d have liked you to think. She’d scowl at her sewing basket, scowl at the milk jug, but it didn’t signify anything. It was just the hang of her face, and anyway she mellowed with me when she saw I hadn’t ruined Walter or tried to step into her size sevens. We grew to be quite companionable.

Breakfast was about the only time me and Walter had together. A pot of tea and a slice of bread and pork dripping, and then he’d walk me partway to work, hand in hand as far as Westminster Bridge, like Darby and Joan. We were crossing the Mall one morning early, drizzling rain and the sky still dark, when we heard the sound of hooves, and blow me down if a zebra didn’t come trotting through Admiralty Arch, heading up towards Buckingham Palace. We’d heard on the wireless the Regent’s Park zoo had taken a hit that night.

I said, “We’d better herd him back.”

“No,” he said, “it’s none of our business. That’s a job for the zoo people.”

I said, “But how will they know he’s here? If they’ve been bombed out there could be lions and tigers and all sorts on the loose. They won’t be worrying about one harmless little zebra. We should at least shoo him back to Trafalgar Square. See if we can find a policeman.”

“Nay, Nora,” he said, “you must stay away from it. It’s a wild animal.”

It was a dear little thing, shaking its head, swishing its tail.

I said, “It’s only like a horse with a striped cover. I thought you knew about horses.”

He said, “I do and this is nothing like a horse. It’s from tropical climes for one thing. It could be full of disease. Now steer clear of it, I beg of you. Leave it to the zebra people. It’s their job.”

That was the difference between us. Apart from the army, all he’d ever known was the Devonshires, and in those big houses everybody has their place and keeps to it. The pastry cook doesn’t make gravy and a button can’t be stitched on till the sewing woman’s been sent for. Well, if I’d kept to my place I’d still be in Ballynagore being lorded over by Edmond and the Clavin widow. Surplus to requirement was my place there, sleeping on the pullout in the kitchen. But you learn different ways in America. You learn to make your own place and use your head. Me and Walter have had more than a few words on that topic over the years.

And I’ve often wondered what became of that little zebra. I hope he didn’t end up as horse steaks. When people are on short rations there’s no telling what they might do.

Me and Hope saw in 1941 sheltering under the kitchen table with a bottle of Wincarnis Tonic Wine. The All Clear had sounded but we’d made ourselves comfortable and neither of us could be bothered to move.

She kept saying, “It’ll be different this year. Walter says there’ll be a big push and it’ll all be over by summer.”

As if Winston Churchill kept Walter Stallybrass informed of his plans. Hope was missing her Derbyshire hills and her kitchens and her big pantries full of meat and eggs and fruit put up in bottles. Every night she dreamed about food. Rationing wasn’t such a hardship if you’d worked for Rose Kennedy, but Hope’s belly was rumbling all the time.

“I dreamed I was making a pork pie last night,” she’d say. “It was a beauty. Six pounds of boned shoulder, six trotters to make the jelly. That’s the first thing I’m going to do after we’ve beaten Hitler. Make a big pork pie.”

It was a good thing we didn’t know then how long we’d have to wait for that pie.

The firebombs had started right after Christmas and we didn’t get much respite till May. People in the East End thought they were the only ones to suffer, but we had our share. Jermyn Street, the Admiralty, and then there was the terrible night the Café de Paris was hit, the Caff, as Kick and her pals called it. It was their favorite place to go dancing, and Jack and Joe’s too, when they were in town. If Mr. K hadn’t stood firm about them all going home we might have had three of them to bury, which doesn’t bear thinking of. We’ve had tragedy enough, as things have turned out.

I was out in Poplar with a mobile canteen, serving tea and sandwiches after a dive bomber attack, and I heard an old boy saying that the people caught in the Caff had had it coming to them.

I said, “Oh yes? And how do you make that out?”

“Toffs’ kids,” he said. “Parasites.”

I said, “They were just youngsters in uniform, taking their sweethearts dancing. Nobody deserves what happened to them.”

“Glugging champagne while the workingman suffers,” he said. “Well, now they’ve had a waking-up.”

Nasty old beggar. I’d have spat in his sandwich if I’d had prior notice. Hilda Oddy’s brother had been on fire watch in Shaftesbury Avenue the night the Caff was hit and he told her that by the time he got to Leicester Square to see if he could help there were people going through handbags and taking jewelry off the corpses. They say war brings out the best in people, but the bombing of the Caff didn’t. When I was out with the Women’s Voluntary there were things said I wouldn’t have credited if I hadn’t heard them with my own ears. How we’d be better off if Hitler
won. How British kiddies were starving while we were feeding foreigners and refugees who were likely to turn round and stab us in the back. Well, I never saw any kiddies that were starving. There were plenty of them needed their heads disinfected and their necks scrubbed, but a peck of dirt never killed anyone. The worst I heard though was about the Jews.

Wherever you went you’d meet someone who knew for a fact there was no room in the air-raid shelters because the spaces had all been taken by Jews. How they never left when the All Clear was sounded, just stayed down there like troglodytes, saving their places and keeping normal Christian people out of a place of safety. Then the next minute somebody else would say, “It’s all right for the yids. They’ve all gone. Taken their money bags and scarpered to somewhere that’s not getting bombed.”

So far as I know I never met a Jewish person. There weren’t any in Ballynagore and Mr. Kennedy wouldn’t have them in the house, but I’m sure they can’t be as bad as they’re painted. Actually, Joe Kennedy doesn’t like anybody very much, except his own flesh and blood. He thinks everybody’s out to snub him or rob him blind.

Lord Andrew was in barracks at Regent’s Park, waiting to ship out, so it was decided he and Miss Debo would get married while they had the chance. The marrying was at St. Bartholomew’s and then at her people’s house in Rutland Gate, even though they had bomb damage. Their Graces dropped by at Carlton Gardens after the wedding breakfast to tell Walter they’d managed to get a few camellias from Chatsworth and to bring Hope a slice of the cake. No frosting, because you couldn’t get the sugar, not enough sultanas or candied peel, and made with beer instead of brandy. Altogether an insult of a cake, according to Hope.

She said, “When Lady Elizabeth gets married and Lady Anne,
I’ll
supervise the cake.”

She was sent down to Compton Place to cook for Lord Andrew and Lady Debo while they had a few days’ honeymoon, and that trip was an eye-opener to her, getting out of our little corner of London, seeing troops on the move and Jerry bombers flying right over her head. When she got back from Eastbourne she couldn’t settle.

She said, “I think I should like to do some war work too. It don’t seem right, sitting here darning socks.”

I said, “Come with me to the Women’s Voluntary. We have grand times. You never know what you’ll be doing from one day to the next.”

But Walter said, “Nay, Hope, you’re already doing war work, running this house. Feeding the military’s important work. You stick to what you know.”

I said, “We can’t all stick to what we know, Walter. If we did that there’d be no munitions made, for one thing. There’d be no buses running. We’re crying out for girls like Hope.”

“Girl!” he said. “She’s no girl. She’s fifty ruddy five. What’s she going to do, drive a tank?”

He hated the way the war turned everything topsy-turvy. He’s a man who likes regularity. He likes to know who’s who and what’s what, which is why the army should have taken him. They’d never have got any talking back from Walter Stallybrass.

Hope said, “You only don’t want me to volunteer in case I have to stop out late and your tea’s not on the table.”

He said, “Don’t talk so wet, woman. I don’t need anybody to put my tea on the table. Any fool can brew a pot of tea and slice a bit of bread.”

“Then let any fool do it,” she said. And she put on her navy straw and went out.

He said, “I suppose you put her up to this.”

I said, “No, Walter. Hitler put her up to it.”

She was gone more than an hour. Came back with a quarter pound of premium butter and a smile on her face.

She said, “You’ll all have to do your own breakfasts from now on. I’ve got a milk round for Vincent’s Dairy. It’ll free up that boy with the clubfoot. He wants to go to Hatfield, to the airplane factory.”

Walter said she should have asked Her Grace’s permission first.

He said, “This is still a Devonshire house.”

She said, “Her Grace has a husband and two boys in uniform, so I’ll not be bothering her when I know what her answer will be.”

He said she’d never get up in time for a milk round, but she did. She had to be at Appletree Yard by four to load up the pony and trap and she was finished by ten, so it was no great inconvenience to anyone who was billeted with us. Then he said it was all very well during the summer months but she wouldn’t stick at it when the weather turned cold. But she did. It made a new woman of her. And she came home with all the gossip. Who was closing up their house. Who’d got rabbits or eggs to trade. Who’d received a telegram.

The middle weekend of May we had a bad time of it. It was full moon, so we were quite expecting a big raid, but it still shook us when it came. Parliament was hit and Westminster Abbey, the Strand, Russell Square, Waterloo. I had to walk to Vauxhall Bridge before I could get across the river to work, and when I got there, the depot and the yard where we parked our trucks were lying under a mountain of rubble.

A few of the regulars were there already, milling around, wondering what to do. Then Lady Lally arrived. She stood up on a milk crate and told everybody to gather round. She said we mustn’t let a little setback stop us when all over London there was
work to be done. She said her sister, Lady Billie, had a depot near King’s Cross station and the best thing to do was go and offer our services to her. Then she requisitioned a ragman’s horse and cart and drove us all the way to Pentonville Road. We had such a laugh, seeing people’s faces as we passed by, jogging along with a big dented soup kettle and Lady Lally in her felt hat, sitting up on the box, cracking the reins.

There was plenty needed doing at Lady Billie’s depot and I drew a nice number. They sent me to a school hall to help with mothers who’d been bombed out with their babies and toddlers. They all got a hot dinner and clean nappies for the babies and milk bottles. We even played some games with the little ones, oranges and lemons, the farmer’s in his den, to give the mammies a rest. I had such a grand day. It didn’t feel like war work, jiggling babies in my arms again. Not like poor Hilda. They sent her to the morgue, to give people sweet tea and a cigarette after they’d been in searching for their loved ones.

She said, “I don’t know what was worse, Nora, when they found somebody or when they didn’t. Because there’ll be some that’ll never be found.”

She reckoned she cried all the way home that night.

It was late when I got back from Pentonville Road, and Walter was fretting. He’d heard the Waterloo depot had been flattened and he didn’t want to go out on his blackout rounds until he knew I was safe. That was the night we really started having words. It must have seemed to him I was having a better war than he was. When people saw you in your WVS green they were respectful. They thanked you for what you were doing. But the ARP people came in for a lot of lip. They say an Englishman’s home is his castle, and round St. James’s they didn’t take kindly to being told to get off the streets and take cover, or being prosecuted because they had holes in their blinds.

It was a shame the army wouldn’t take Walter. He was a patriotic soul and still in his prime, apart from his bad lung. A man doesn’t feel right, I’m sure, when the whole world’s in uniform and all he’s got is a tin helmet and an armband. Even Joseph Patrick had volunteered, who’d always listened to what his Daddy said about America minding its own business and staying out of other people’s wars.

Darling Nora,
he wrote me,

I couldn’t believe Rosie had hit His Honor on purpose. He was an oily old devil and there had been times I could have clocked him myself, but Rosie loved her Grandpa. I could only think he’d gotten in the way of her arm when she was in a paddy so he’d only himself to blame. Sure, when the other pols were flinging mud up in Boston he was quite the expert at ducking out of the way.

The next I heard Rosie had gone away to a school near Washington, to teach kindergarten. I had a darling note from her.
The Sisters are all right,
she wrote.

Washington sounded like a good move. She’d be spared Herself ’s nagging and Mayor Fitzgerald’s teasing, and she’d be handy for visiting with Kick and Jack. Kick had got herself a little job, writing pieces for one of Mr. Kennedy’s newspaper friends, and Jack had taken that desk job in the Naval Reserve. I was glad he’d been man enough to do it. I knew he’d have had Joe needling him but Jack can’t help being sickly. It’s not everyone can be a hotshot aviator.

Kick wrote me that she and Jack had rented a little apartment together, with just one spare room for Rosie to visit at
weekends and no help except a weekly domestic. I could imagine what the place would be like after five minutes. They all leave a trail wherever they go, and Jack and Kick had to be the messiest of them all.

Greetings from your Washington correspondent!
she wrote.