The Importance of Being Kennedy (22 page)

Every night he’d say, “The war’s not over yet, Nora. It don’t feel right to be sitting idle.”

Then they started hauling away the barrage and filling in the trenches in Hyde Park and we were busy again at the Rainbow Corner, but not so much with new boys. Mainly we were taking care of GIs just back from fighting in France. Things were turning our way, they said. Hitler was on the ropes and it could only be a matter of time. The Pacific was where they all expected to be sent next.

We should have been over the moon, knowing it was nearly over, and yet a lot of us felt like flat beer. Hilda Oddy kept saying, “It’s been the best time of my life. What am I going to do when it’s over, go back to selling Woodbines?”

And then there were a lot of people who’d have reckoning up
to do. Girls left with little babies, gotten while they were living for the moment. Men coming home and finding another man’s hat hanging on the peg. Hasty marriages with boys who’d looked good in uniform. I even wondered about me and Walter, not that I didn’t love him, but I’d had a grand war, all things considered, and he’d already started talking about “when we go back to Chatsworth.”

Well, there was nothing for me at Chatsworth.

President Roosevelt died in April. I couldn’t believe it when we heard it on the wireless. Only sixty-three and we’d seen pictures of him when he went to Yalta with Mr. Churchill. He’d looked all right then. But Kick said her Daddy wasn’t in the least surprised. He’d tried for years to get him to stop smoking, and anyway, according to Mr. K, the war had worn him to a shadow. So poor Mr. Roosevelt didn’t live to see peace and Mr. Truman took over.

The last day of April they put the lights back up on Big Ben and Adolf Hitler ate his last bucket of swill at the Kew Garden Piggery. It was perfect timing. He was ready for eating by Victory Night. We had a great big juicy chop each and a baked apple and then we walked down the Mall to see the King and Queen waving from the balcony at Buckingham Palace. There were bonfires lit in Green Park and firecrackers set off. Kick was there too, with Cynthia Brough, though we didn’t know it. I got separated from Walter and Hope in the crowd. There were people dancing all the way up the Mall, total strangers taking you by the arm and
swinging you round. I kissed all sorts that night, I was so relieved to think it was over and there’d be no more bombs. But of course it wasn’t really over. There were still the Japs to deal with.

Kick came to Carlton Gardens just after VE-night, put her head round the scullery door. We’d just cleared up from tea.

“Surprise visitor,” she said.

And there behind her stood Jack, all skin and bone but cheeky as ever with his kisses. He was wearing civvies.

“The Navy let me go,” he said. “They’ve got enough old crocks without keeping me on the muster list.”

He’d come to England to watch what happened in the elections and report back to Mr. Kennedy. “Observing the postwar scene,” he called it.

“I’m Dad’s eyes and ears over here,” he said. “He’s grooming me for office, Nora. I’ll be running for Congress in due course. Grandpa Kennedy’s old district.”

I said, “Then you’d better start polishing your shoes. And learn how to spell.”

Kick said, “Congressmen don’t need to know how to spell. They have secretaries. And after congressman he’s going to be a senator and then president.”

She was looking better than I’d seen her since Lord Billy died. Any Kennedy always looks happier when they’ve got another Kennedy on their arm.

I said, “Jack Kennedy for President! They’ll fly a man to the moon more likely.”

He said, “Hear that, Kick? Scratch Nora from the guest list. There’ll be no White House invitations for her.”

I said, “I’ve been to the White House, thank you very much. And I’m sure you’ll do very well at whatever you go in for, but I wouldn’t wish the president’s job on a dog. Not when you see how it killed poor Mr. Roosevelt.”

“Well,” he said, “I think it’d be neat. Kick can run my press office. Euny can do all the brain work. And I’ll have to find something for St. Bobby. And if you decide to write your memoirs, you know,
Jack Kennedy: The Nursery Years
, you’ll have to run it past me first. I don’t want the voters knowing everything.”

Of course, with his Grandpa Fitz’s connections and his Daddy’s dollars to grease a few palms, I knew he was guaranteed to get somewhere in life and he could be quick with a wisecrack. If it came to making speeches to a hall full of smarty-pants, Jack could give them as good as he got. But I still didn’t believe he had the staying power for anything big, and he doesn’t take such a good photograph either, not like Joseph Patrick.

I said, “And how’s my Rosie?”

“About the same,” he said, “I guess.”

I said, “Don’t you visit with her?”

He said, “Mary Moore goes. And Euny went a couple of times, I think. There’s not a lot of point though, Nora. That’s the thing with a mental handicap. It’s not like a head cold. It’s not going to get better.”

I said, “Is that what she’s got now? A mental handicap?”

Kick said, “She always was slow.”

Jack said, “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s a lot of it out there. Mother and Euny are going to do something with it, start a charitable foundation or something. It’ll be a real talking point.”

I could just see it. Rosie getting dragged out of her nursing home for one of Mrs. Kennedy’s show-and-tells.

I said, “You must leave the poor girl in peace, Jack. Haven’t your Mammy and Daddy done enough harm?”

He said, “Dad and Mother did everything for the best and I’m not going to discuss it anymore. It’s family business.”

He went off to do his “observing,” traveling around the country, asking people which way they were going to vote and why.
“Labour” was the answer to that, because people didn’t need poor old Winnie Churchill anymore now he’d won the war for them. Clement Attlee promised them free doctors and jobs for all. Walter said Labour would have got in if they’d promised to paint the sky green. He was heartbroken for Mr. Churchill and he wrote and told him so.

“That’s human nature for you,” he kept saying. “No gratitude. No sense. All they want is novelty. And what’s going to happen if you make doctors’ visits free? I’ll tell you. Folk’ll get ill all the time.”

Jack hadn’t been in England long when he had another bout of his fevers. They told him it was the malaria come back and he was liable to get attacks at any time. They gave him some pills, but these made him feel sick all the time, and then his skin turned yellow. Mr. K sent him a cablegram, told him to get back to the States and see a proper American doctor. Said he’d send Eddie Moore to bring him back if necessary.

I went to the clinic to see him.

He said, “I have to go home, Nora, and I want Kick to come with me. Can you persuade her?”

She said, “Why would I do that? Mother’s not even speaking to me.”

Jack said time would heal all. He said Mr. K wanted the whole family involved when they started campaigning. Mr. K believed the voters would love to see how the Kennedys worked together, a bunch of good-looking youngsters and their glamorous Mammy as well, with their pictures all over the dailies. Mr. K said they’d be the talk of America, just like they had been when we came to London. But Kick wasn’t convinced.

She said, “I don’t know, Nora. I’d like to help Jack, but I’m sure Mother doesn’t want me there. And the thing is, London feels like home now.”

I couldn’t advise her. I knew Mrs. K would nag her to a shadow if she got her back in her clutches. But Kick loved her Daddy more than anything. She always wanted to please him and she’d never allow that he had any faults.

She said, “You know Daddy really didn’t mind about the church thing and Billy. He just hates to see Mother upset. And he says he’d find me something useful to do if I go back. He’d probably buy me a newspaper or something so I can write great things about Jack.”

But she didn’t go back. She got it into her head that she wanted to make a home in England, and it suited me. It bought me a bit of time. Walter had been up to Chatsworth already, to take a look over the gardens and inspect the damage to his camellia beds. All I heard day and night was how there’d be a nice little cottage waiting for us on the estate. I’d known all along it would come to it.

I said, “But what will I do? There’s nothing for me up there.”

He said, “How about being there in a nice clean pinny when I come in for my tea? Isn’t that what wives do?”

I said, “How should I know? I’ve only ever been a war wife.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “Nearly six years, Nora, and all I’ve seen of you is the back of you running out the door to your Women’s Voluntary. It’s time to settle down, pet. Make a proper home.”

I said, “I’m fifty-one, Walter, and I’ve worked all my life. I can’t sit idle.”

He said, “You won’t sit idle. There’ll be the cooking and the cleaning and the mending. We’ll have a little garden, grow our own potatoes and a few greens. And knitting. You like knitting. And then when Lord Andrew comes home I expect him and Her Ladyship will go in for more family. And Lady Anne’ll get married and Lady Elizabeth. There’ll always be nursery maids needed, if you must keep your hand in.”

He knew perfectly well there wouldn’t be a place for me. When families like the Devonshires have babies they bring their old nurses out of mothballs, and even if something was found for me, I couldn’t have knuckled down, taking orders from another woman. I was accustomed to running things without interference. There were times with the Kennedys when we didn’t see Herself for weeks on end. That was the kind of work that suited me.

Still, the time was coming when we had to decide. The ATS girls were gone. All we had were a few Canadian officers waiting for orders to the Pacific. Then the week before VJ-day Kick turned up with an offer. She’d taken a lease on a little house on Smith Square and Their Graces had suggested she take me and Walter as housekeeper and driver.

I’d have jumped at it. But that’s one of the things about being married. You’re supposed to jump together, and Walter wasn’t at all smitten with the idea of staying in London. The more he thought about Derbyshire, the grimier London looked.

“See what I mean?” he’d say if there was a smell of traffic fumes or he found smut on his shirt. “You wouldn’t get that in the country.”

I didn’t need anybody to tell me about country life. I lived eighteen years at Ballynagore. Shoes always muddy. Walking miles to catch a bus. And the same bored old faces week after week. If you put a new ribbon on your Sunday bonnet it’d get written up in the
Tullamore Reminder
.

I’d say, “You wouldn’t get anything in the country.”

And then Hope would chip in. The Vincent boy had come back from his war work, so her days on the milk cart were finished. She was ready to pack up her rolling pin and go north and she expected us to go with her.

“Chatsworth’s not just country,” she’d say. “Chatsworth’s the finest house in England. Seventeen staircases, Nora. Thirty bath
tubs. And I’ve had the highest people in the land eating my damson tarts.”

I said, “And if we stay in London we’ll have the best of both worlds. Walter’ll be driving for Lady Kick, so he’ll still go up to Chatsworth once in a while, and Compton Place. If they keep all those houses on. That’s the other thing. Times are changing. We had a lot of girls at the Women’s Voluntary that used to be in service and there’s hardly a one of them going back to it. The big houses won’t be the same, Hope. Dozens of people bowing and scraping, waiting, cap in hand, for a bit of a cottage or an attic over the stables. That’s finished.”

“Not for Stallybrasses it isn’t,” she said. “And how about if things go haywire down here? What if Her Ladyship changes her mind and goes home? All her people over there. Then you’ll be out on the street.”

Walter didn’t say anything and neither did I. Two days I left it, though I did go to Farm Street and pray to St. Anthony. I don’t know if he intercedes when there’s a Protestant involved, but I don’t suppose a prayer is ever really wasted. And in the end he said, “All right. I’ll give it a try. As long as we can get out to Richmond Park on a Sunday. I shall go off my chump if I don’t see a bit of green.”

Walter loved the deer park. He knew the names of all the birds.

I said, “Have you told Hope?”

“No,” he said. “I’d best put my tin helmet on before I do.”

Hope said there’d be Stallybrasses turning in their graves if they knew he was staying in London when he could be back at Chatsworth.

“You’ll be nothing but an odd-job man,” she kept saying. “You’ll be running errands, fetching her packages from Harvey Nichols. And you’ll have no garden.”

“Well, Hope,” he said. “Here’s the thing. If Nora’s not happy I don’t see how I can be. And I shall think of looking after Her Ladyship as doing something for Lord Billy. Do you remember when I come back from Flanders? He were out on the lawns with one of the nursery maids, just starting to toddle. We both thought we’d end our days working for him. I remember driving His Grace to Buxton one time with Lord Billy along for the ride. He couldn’t have been more than four, asking me all about how the engine worked and where I lived and why. I thought I’d live long enough to see him Duke, but there we are. He’s left behind a poor young widow and I’m sure he’d have wanted a Stallybrass to look after her.”

I said, “Two Stallybrasses, Walter.”

“Aye,” he said. “Two. There’s just one thing though, Nora. Will Her Ladyship be having all them Kennedys come to visit?”

I said, “I’m sure the youngsters will come. In time. But I don’t think Herself will be troubling us. I believe she’s given Kick up for lost.”

He said, “Well, I hope that means the old bootlegger won’t be visiting neither. The thought of driving him around fair makes my skin crawl.”

Kick took the house unfurnished but she didn’t need to buy a thing. Their Graces gave her everything she needed, some of it sent from the Dower house, some from the big house, and even a piece or two from Compton Place. She rushed around trying things out in different rooms, unpacking half a box then starting on another, till we looked like a fire sale. It reminded me of when we were at Naples Road and she and Rosie used to play with their dolly house out on the veranda.

Smith Square was a good house for her to start off in. It had just the one cozy little parlor and a dining room, three bedrooms, and then the top floor for me and Walter and a girl called Delia
Olvanie. She’d been a housemaid at Lismore and had let it be known she wanted a taste of London life, so Her Grace sent her to Kick. I wasn’t very taken with Delia. She moved too slow, for one thing. She could make sweeping a staircase last half the morning, and if ever she dusted the side table that had Lord Billy’s photo on it, then the waterworks would start and she’d have to sink into an armchair till she’d recovered. The only time you saw her stir herself was when it was her day off. Then she’d be running around, fleet as a whippet, with her hair in curling papers and her toenails painted. And she never locked the bathroom door.

Well, help like that is no help at all, but Kick would keep her. She said it comforted her to have people around who’d known His Lordship, though I don’t know that Delia Olvanie saw Lord Billy more than half a dozen times in her whole life.