The Importance of Being Kennedy (28 page)

I’d had a bad dream myself. I was in a room with hundreds of babies, all Kennedys, but I didn’t know any of their names and they all had the same little face. I was searching and searching through them for Rosie, only I could never find her.

Kick said, “Maybe I should talk to Daddy. Maybe I should write or go see him. What do you think?”

I could see what was coming.

I said, “I don’t think it makes any difference what you do. You’re not going to get your Mammy’s blessing, and if she won’t give hers, your Daddy won’t give you his. And as for trailing back to America, you know I can’t do it again. If that’s the way it’s going to be, me and Walter’ll have to give you our notice.”

Out came the pet lip.

She said, “Don’t say that. Walter can come to America too.”

I said, “Walter doesn’t want to come to America, and neither do I. Take Delia Olvanie. Sure she’d jump at it.”

And she did. I got no more work out of Delia till her bags were packed.

“Palm Beach, Florida,” she said. “That’s where we’re going for Christmas. They say it’s nothing but millionaires and mansions.”

I said, “But you can leave your mink in storage. All you’ll be doing is shaking the sand out of Lady Kathleen’s clothes and going to bed hungry. There’s not an ounce of comfort to be had in a Kennedy house.”

She said, “You’re just jealous.”

“Oh I am,” I said to her. “Just what I want. Living out of trunks again. Getting yapped at by Mrs. K. You’re welcome, Delia Olvanie. And I’ll give you a word of warning. If Lady Kathleen lets slip a word about Lord Fitzwilliam the balloon will go up. They’ll have her bundled off to St. Gertrude’s or somewhere, kept under lock and key till she repents, and then we’ll all be out of a job. So you watch out. Any letters come for her, any telephone calls, don’t go shouting it from the rooftops.”

As it turned out there weren’t likely to be any letters nor calls, because Blood Fitzwilliam went off to Equatorial Africa to shoot elephants. Kick took along Lord Billy’s sister, Lady Elizabeth, and
they had a quiet Christmas down at Palm Beach. She waited till their very last day there to bring up Fitzwilliam’s name. I had it blow by blow from Delia.

She said, “Mr. K hardly said a word. But Mrs. K said if she marries any divorced man she’ll see her cut off without a penny. And her sisters were yelling at her too, especially that Euny, about leaving the church. They sent a monsignor chasing after us when we got to New York, but Lady Kathleen wouldn’t see him. She told me she’s never, never going back to America, Nora. It’s a terrible shame. I thought it was grand place. Then when we got on the boat she was trying to get through to Lord Fitzwilliam, but she never got him. Every day she tried. She was in a right old state, but I don’t see how anybody could make a telephone call from the middle of the ocean. There’s not wires long enough. So anyway, now I don’t know what’s going to happen. We could all be out on the street if Mr. Kennedy stops her money.”

Kick was subdued.

She said, “I knew there’d be a fuss but it was much worse than I expected. Mother’s really on the warpath. Euny’s not speaking to me. Bobby’s not speaking to me. Jack’s keeping his distance. My only hope now is Daddy.”

There was a time when her Daddy could have fixed anything for her, and Herself would just go lie down, wear her frownies for an hour, then put on a smile and learn to live with it. But it seemed it wasn’t like that anymore. Since Joseph Patrick was killed, it seemed that Mrs. K had started trying on the pants.

They came before it was light, ringing and ringing on the doorbell. Walter went down. Two constables were on the front step. They said a plane had crashed in France and papers had been found belonging to a Lady Hartington. Walter had shown them into the drawing room by the time I came down. It was only the older one did any talking, but I suppose they always send two.

He said, “Is Lady Hartington away from home?”

I said, “She went yesterday. To France.”

He said, “Was she traveling alone?”

Walter said, “We wouldn’t know.”

“Well,” he said, “a passport was found. That’s all I can tell you at present.”

Kick wasn’t the only Lady Hartington, of course. When Lord Billy died the title passed on to Lady Debo, but she was already accounted for. Kick was the one flying in airplanes with another woman’s husband.

I said, “Was it an American passport?”

“Couldn’t say, madam,” he said.

Her Grace came on the telephone from Chatsworth to say they’d had a visit from the police too and she very much feared another tragedy had occurred. They’d told her the plane had crashed into a mountain in very bad weather.

I told Delia to keep the curtains closed. Then I went to Kick’s room, to smell her scent, and see if the place felt any different. It didn’t. I sat on her bed and I thought, She can’t be dead. Joe died and then Lord Billy, so we’ve had our tragedies. It’s somebody else’s turn now.

I don’t know how long Walter had been standing in the doorway watching me.

He said, “You’ll be wanting to go to church.”

I said, “I can’t. I shall have to be here.”

“What for?” he said.

I said, “Well, there might be further information.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, “you go. Take Delia and some of them candles. Light one for me too. I’ll be here if there’s any news. It’ll be the family they tell first though.”

Mr. Kennedy was in Paris on business. He was expecting to see Kick on her way back from her jaunt, to meet Lord Fitzwilliam and see if anything could be done about them marrying. It was the American newspaper people who tracked him down to his hotel and Joey Timilty who had to break the news to him. They said the place where the plane had crashed was the back of beyond, so they’d have to bring the bodies down off the mountain on oxcarts. All that day we kept hoping there’d been some mistake but then Mr. K went down there on the train and saw them in their coffins. After that there was no denying it, but as me and Delia were walking back from the cathedral we saw Lord Balderston drive by in a fancy-looking motor with no roof and the first thing I thought was, I must tell Kick.

They brought her body back to Croydon and Walter drove me to the aerodrome to meet her.

I said, “She was the closest I ever came to having a wean of my own. Her and Rosie. And now one way or another they’re both gone.”

“Aye,” he said, “I know. I grew very fond of her myself.”

Mr. K had come with her, and after they carried the casket off the plane, he didn’t seem to know what to do next. All the spark had gone out of him, and no wonder. You don’t expect to bury your children.

I said, “There’s a bed for you at Smith Square.”

But he had Joey Timilty with him and he said a hotel would be better.

Mr. K said, “I don’t know why I brought her here. I should have had the funeral in Paris. I could have done.”

He was like a sleepwalker.

I said, “What does Mrs. Kennedy want?”

He said, “She’s in Hyannis. She’ll be going to Mass. She’ll leave it up to me what to do.”

Kick lay at the American Embassy that night. I’d have liked to sit with her, but Mr. K said it was a father’s place to do it. And so it was. Just so long as somebody waked her I didn’t mind who. Then Lord Billy’s mother stepped in about the funeral. She said, “Bring her to Derbyshire. Let her be buried in the family plot. She was Billy’s widow, after all.”

There was a Requiem Mass said for her at Farm Street. It was packed to the doors with her friends, even the ones she’d neglected since Fitzwilliam came on the scene, and all the Devonshires came too. But her Daddy was the only Kennedy there. I suppose they were lighting candles for her in Hyannis, but not a one of them crossed the ocean to see her laid to rest. Not even Jack, who loved her so. Not even her own mother.

Then we went to St. Pancras station, still a good crowd of us, and caught the train to Bakewell. Me and Walter rode with the casket in the guard’s van. There were two bicycles in there with us, and a basket full of racing pigeons. The hearse went directly to Edinsor and she was buried in the churchyard there in the plot that had been intended for Lord Billy someday. Little Kathleen Kennedy laid to rest among the Dukes of Devonshire. I saw her into the world and I saw her out of it. Mr. K looked such a poor old man all of a sudden. When it was over he came looking for me.

He said, “Nora, there are things at Smith Square, some furniture Billy’s folks loaned her, and jewelry? Have it all sent back, would you?”

And then he walked away, him and Joey Timilty, looking for a car to take them back to the rail station. It was His Grace who paid the priest.

The facts are getting rearranged already. Lady Astor’s going round saying it wasn’t an accident at all but a plot, with the Pope behind it. She thinks Mrs. K wrote to the Holy Father, and the Holy Father had the airplane tampered with, to stop Kick marrying Fitzwilliam and going to Hell. Well, I’ve thought for the longest time that Lady Astor has a screw loose.

Then one of the newspapers said that Lady Hartington had been on her way to Paris to see her father, even though it was plain as a pikestaff that the plane was flying
away
from Paris. Another paper said she was a family friend of Lord Fitzwilliam and he’d offered her a lift seeing as he was on his way to inspect his horses in the south of France. Nobody appears to have noticed that he didn’t have any horses in the south of France. Walter reckons Mr. Kennedy will have gotten his newspaper friends to tidy up the facts, to spare the feelings of the family. To save Jack and the other boys from any scandal and messiness, seeing as how they’re
all going to be president of the United States. I don’t know why he’d go to the trouble. Those boys can create messiness enough of their own. A little story about Kick isn’t going to make them or break them. Anyway, there are people enough who know what really happened.

The first thing was Fitzwilliam was late. He was always very slipshod about time and she’d been ready more than an hour, fidgeting around, watching out the window for his car. Then he telephoned to say his motor wouldn’t start, so Walter would have to drive them to Croydon. His Lordship arrived in a hackney cab and off they bundled. She looked radiant, I must say. Like a bride going away. She was in her new blue suit and her pearls. No hat.

Walter came home tight-lipped. All the way to the aerodrome Lord Fitzwilliam had kept telling him to step on the gas.

He said, “More than thirty years I’ve been driving and never a mishap. Telling me my business. I said to him, ‘My job is to get Her Ladyship safe to her destination.’ You should have heard him then. Barrack-room language. Lady Kathleen were embarrassed, I could tell. Lord Billy must be turning in his grave to see her walking out with a man like that.”

When they got to the aerodrome the pilot said as they were so late there’d have to be a change of plan. There were storms forecast for the afternoon, so he said he’d only take them as far as Paris until the weather improved, but Fitzwilliam wouldn’t listen.

Walter heard him say, “You’re chartered to take us to Cannes and you’ll bloody well take us to Cannes.”

And the pilot said, “If you’d been here for a timely departure, sir, the weather wouldn’t have been a problem.”

It’s haunting Walter, I can tell. He keeps saying, “Perhaps if I’d gone a bit faster and got them there sooner.”

But he has nothing to blame himself for. Minnie Stubbs came to the Mass at Farm Street and she told me exactly what hap
pened. When they got to Paris they were meant to be meeting Minnie and her husband and some friends of Lord Fitzwilliam, to go to a restaurant. The pilot said if they insisted on flying on to Cannes they must do it immediately and hope to beat the weather, but Fitzwilliam wouldn’t hear of it. He said he’d gone to great trouble to get a table so the pilot would just have to wait. So they had their luncheon and Minnie rode back with them in a taxi to wave them off from the airfield. She said the pilot was fit to be tied. He said they were more than four hours behind schedule and they’d be flying straight into storms, so they were going nowhere. He told them they’d all have to stay the night in Paris and carry on next morning.

Minnie said it was something to see how Fitzwilliam got his way. He told the pilot there’d be a nice bonus in it for him. Told him he’d come highly recommended as a pilot who could fly through anything and that neither he nor Kick would be bothered by a bumpy ride. He persuaded him, though that pilot should never have agreed to it. It’s the kind of stunt Joseph Patrick would have pulled. Fitzwilliam had that side to him. He wouldn’t be bested. He thought the bad things that happened to ordinary people couldn’t happen to him. Maybe that’s why Kick fell for him. He had a touch of the Kennedys about him.

I got a card in the post, from Herself, a Mass card for Kick, with a prayer for a soul in purgatory. What a thing! I threw it on the fire. Kick was a good girl, that’s all I know and hardly more than a child. She loved her family and she said her prayers every day, and if that devil Fitzwilliam hadn’t addled her head she’d be here still.

Walter said I shouldn’t take what Mrs. K does so much to heart.

He said, “She doesn’t tick like thee and me. You know she doesn’t. From what I’ve heard she’s had a rum life altogether, and
enough sadness lately to turn a person’s mind. That’s what it’ll be. Her mind’s gone. You’ll have to make allowances. Now I’m not a betting man and I’m not a pew-kisser neither, but if I had to choose between you and Rose Kennedy to say prayers for me, my money’d be on you, Nora Stallybrass. And another thing, I don’t know much about womenfolk, but I reckon you had more joy of that girl than her own mother ever did.”

Well, I don’t know about that, though she did bring me joy. They say there’s nothing in the world like a mother’s love.

I take camellias for her, when they’re in flower, and Their Graces used to lay a holly garland at Christmas, but I don’t know if that’ll be kept up now we’ve a new Duke and Duchess. So many changes they never expected to see at Chatsworth. First Lord Billy mowed down in his prime, and then last year his father. He was out sawing firewood down at Compton Place and dropped like a stone, only fifty-five. So now Lord Andrew and Lady Debo have had to step up to the plate and Kick has a new neighbor in Edinsor graveyard. I hope His Grace doesn’t find her too noisy. The day she married Lord Billy I remember the old Duchess saying, “Cavendishes rarely speak and Kennedys apparently never stop. I wonder what their children will be like.”

It’s been three years since Kick died and Herself still hasn’t visited. Mr. K hasn’t been back either. So far Jack’s the only one who’s paid his respects. When it came time for the headstone to be raised Her Grace wrote and asked them what inscription they’d like, but they say she never got a reply. Perhaps it was too
much for them to bear. Hard enough to bury one child, let alone three.

Kick’s the only one laid under the earth, of course. Joseph Patrick went out like a shooting star. He’s everywhere and nowhere, you might say. But Rosie’s as good as buried. They’ve moved her from Craig House to St. Coletta’s in Jefferson, Wisconsin. She has her own chalet bungalow, with a Sister to watch over her and one of those television machines for company, but it’s a long, long way from the family. It’s too far for Fidelma to ride up on an afternoon and bring her a magazine and a box of candy. If Kick and Lord Billy had only lived, she could have come here. She could have helped with the babies and gone for nice walks around the estate. She’d have been as right as ninepence.

Mrs. K appears to be thriving though. Lady Debo clipped me a photograph from a magazine when Bobby married the Skakel girl. It looked like a big fancy affair, and Herself was in a hat the size of a cartwheel, all eyes and teeth for the cameras.

Well, she never was one to sit around and mope. “Pray for the dead, work for the living” is her motto, and she’ll never have an idle moment, the way they have Bobby and Teddy lined up for high office behind Jack. Out on the stump she’ll be, shaking hands and banging the drum for her boys. That’s more up her alley than visiting graves. Anyway, I’m here to do that.

Hope still grumbles.

“That’s the Cavendish section,” she says. “They had no business putting an outsider in there. No offense, but they should have put her up the other end or took her home.”

Walter says, “Nay, Hope. She is home. Her people live in hotel rooms. Nora’ll tell you. And she’s only in the spot Lord Billy should have had so she’s not putting anybody out.”

When you have charge of a nursery you grow eyes in the back of your head and ears that can hear a bat squeak. You know where
they all are and what mischief they’re up to before they’ve hardly thought of it themselves. That’s why I like the Easter Morn blooms best, or the Ave Marias. They’re pale, like coconut ice, easy to pick out from a distance. So even from here I can see where she lies. Every time I take the pig bucket down for Stalin, I say to her, “I see you, Kick Kennedy. Your old Nora’s got her eye on you.”