Laurie Graham - The Importance of Being Kennedy

Euny kept saying, ‘You're lucky. I wish I could go away to school.’

But all Rosie wanted was to stay home and help me look after baby Jean.

‘I'll try more hard,’ she said. Well, she managed one term at the school but she came home for Christmas such a wreck even Mrs K hadn't the heart to send her back. She said there were other places that might be more suitable and God knows we worked our way through a long, long list of them before we were done. I could never see why it was such a crime for Rosie to be slow. Apart from Euny they were none of them great scholars and Mr Congressman Jack still can't spell for taffy.

Joseph Patrick went off to Choate School in Connecticut that October. He was raring to get there, although Herself would have liked to see him go to a good Catholic school. She was worried he wouldn't be allowed to go to Mass.

Mr K said, ‘Of course he'll be allowed. I'll make sure of it. The main thing is I want my boy in a school where there's no funny business. You can spend a pile of money and end up with a sissy, but they guarantee there's none of that at Choate.’

It was a top school. The kind top families had sent their boys to for generations. I wondered if they wouldn't look down their noses at a Kennedy, especially if Mr K started throwing his money around and turning up in his gold limousine, but the thing about young Joe was, he was one of those people who expected everybody to like him, and if they didn't he just chose not to notice. And he went right along with whatever his daddy said he must do. Like the first term when he wanted to take horse-riding lessons but it would have meant he couldn't go out for the football team and Mr Kennedy put it to him, the football was more important.

He said, ‘Think of it this way. You can make useful friends playing in a team, and be good enough to win your football letter when you get to Harvard. Horse-riding you can do any old time.’

And when it was explained to him that way he didn't argue. He knew everything he did was part of a plan. First Catholic President of the United States. He'd been hearing it since the day he was born.

Mr K had come home from California in time to drive Joseph Patrick to his new school, and he wasn't going back.

Gabe Nolan said, ‘He's had enough of the Jewboys. He's branching out again. And do you know who his new best pal is? The Governor's boy. Jimmy Roosevelt. They've got a few little deals on the go.’

Mr Franklin Roosevelt was the new Governor of New York.

So we went from never seeing Mr K to having him home every night, and the children loved it. Herself was hardly there because if she wasn't in Paris buying gowns she was sightseeing in New Mexico or off to Maine to take the waters, and I can't say she was greatly missed. She was away the week the markets crashed, visiting with the Fitzgeralds in Boston.

I was bringing the children home from school, pushing Jean in her bassinet. Kick and Euny and wee Pat who'd just started in the first grade. Fidelma was at home with Bobby because he had the croup and I remember telling her I'd seen three limousines turn up driveways, bringing their gentlemen home in the middle of the working day. Very unusual. Then Mr K came in and went directly to his study. He didn't come up to the nursery and he didn't eat dinner that night. All he had was a glass of warm milk. I could hear his great booming voice on the telephone until very late.

It was in all the dailies the next morning, of course, how stocks had fallen and people had been ruined. I didn't understand it then and I still don't. If you've money in the bank, how can it turn worthless overnight? But Danny Walsh took it upon himself to explain it to us. According to him it wasn't actual dollar bills that had gone west, it was other pieces of paper, promises to pay, and notes about who owned what, complicated arrangements that were how men like Joe Kennedy made their fortunes. And lost them.

Danny said, ‘We'll all be let go. Your Man'll be shining shoes by Christmas.’

But as was often the case, Danny Walsh was wrong. There were a lot of ruined men in the neighbourhood but Mr Kennedy wasn't one of them. He'd gotten out of whatever it was had dragged them all under and put his money in safer places.

Fidelma asked him straight. She said, ‘Are we all right, Mr K? Only if you'll be cutting back I'd like to know sooner than later.’

He laughed. He said, ‘Do you think we can't afford you? No, you're still in a job. Stick with Joe Kennedy, see? A blind man could have seen this crash coming. The only ones who lost are the fools who held out for the top dollar.’

But they weren't the only ones who lost. Everybody who depended on them was hurt too. Businesses closed, people were laid off. A lot of the houses in Bronxville and Riverdale were put up for sale, and when they didn't sell they were just closed and shuttered and left empty. You didn't see so many limousines any more. Children were taken out of school, just disappeared without any goodbyes. Sometimes it felt as if we were the only survivors. And Danny Walsh changed his tune.

‘Mr Kennedy's nobody's fool,’ he kept saying. ‘I knew we'd be all right. He'd have sold his own mother if the market was right. Provided we keep on the right side of Herself we've all got jobs for life here.’

A driver, maybe, but nurserymaids lose their usefulness after a few years. I didn't think I'd be with them for much longer. Sometimes, on the way from school, Kick would say, ‘I wonder if there'll be a new baby in the nursery when we get home today?’ Even when she knew her mammy was away to Virginia for a little holiday she'd still say it.

But there wasn't. Not that year, nor the next.

Fidelma said, ‘No, but I reckon we're still pretty safe, Brennan. Now that Herself is gallivanting all the time she needs us more than ever. We've a good few years till Jean's all growed up and there could be a new bunch of them on the way by then. The next generation. They'll keep us in the attic till we're needed for the grandbabies, like they used to do at the big houses back home, remember?’

It was a happy thought. All my Kennedys coming of age, getting married and having ten babies apiece.

I said, ‘Well, bags I get Kick's babies, or Rosie's, if she's allowed any. I'll leave the boys to you.’

I could imagine how it'd be with the boys. They'd all get their wives chosen for them. Little replicas of Herself.

I said, ‘Eight of them. Just think of it. Even if they only have two or three apiece, that's still an awful lot of Kennedys. They'll be everywhere, like a rash.’

Fidelma laughed. ‘Kennedytown,’ she said. ‘The old man'll buy a whole street of houses and even the dogs'll have ginger fur and big white teeth. See if I'm not right.’

They say there were terrible sights to be seen in the city after the stock market tumbled. Businesses boarded up, men in good suits hanging their heads and waiting in line for a bowl of soup. Ursie said it was the same in Boston. Middleton's closed down for one thing, because nobody could settle their accounts, which put Margaret out of work with two young mouths to fill and Frankie Mulcahy's chest not all it should have been.

I send her what I can spare , Ursie wrote, and I hope you'll do the same. Thank goodness you and I had the sense to tie our fortunes to men like Mr Jauncey and Mr Kennedy. Mr Jauncey is as busy as ever with so many liquidations, and we seem to read more and more about your Mr Kennedy. These are the people who will ensure America survives and comes back stronger than ever.

It was true it would have to be some kind of calamity for lawyers not to do well out of it, so Ursie had no worries. But it tickled me to think of Joe Kennedy as a lifeguard, helping to keep America afloat and pull her safe to shore. He watched out for his own, plain and simple, and if your name wasn't Kennedy, he'd have the lifebelt off you before you knew it and sell it to the highest bidder.