Laurie Graham - The Importance of Being Kennedy

We were spared seeing the worst of it out in Bronxville, tucked away in our nice leafy garden. There was nobody panhandling on our street, no breadlines. Mrs K's packages still arrived from Paris, with gowns she didn't have any opportunity to wear, and Gabe Nolan still drove Mr K around in the Rolls-Royce. He'd prospered. He didn't have factories or warehouses full of stock. He just moved around quietly, picking up all those worthless bits of paper. Then he waited for their value to climb back and while he was waiting he took up with Mr Roosevelt, the State Governor. When we went up to Hyannis that summer you'd never have known there was anything wrong in the world. The sun seemed to shine every day and even Herself was in a good humour. There were no more visits from Miss Swanson and Constance Bennett's photo went back up on Kick's bedroom wall. Jimmy Roosevelt and his wife came to stay, and a wonderful singer, Mr Morton Downey, moved into a house just around the corner, so some evenings, instead of the cowboy picture shows, they'd have a little musical soirée. The help all sat with the kitchen door open so we could hear him singing in the parlour.

’Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone. All her lovely companions Are faded and gone.

Every day at Hyannis was filled. They all had a tennis lesson in the morning and sailing practice in the afternoon, with special instructors brought in, if there wasn't a regatta for them to race in. There was one called Mitch who came two summers running, big strong shoulders and skin tanned like glove leather. He was pretty sweet on me. He took me out in a sailboat one time and I thought I'd surely die, so after that we just used to go to the dunes after dark. I wonder whatever became of Mitch.

Mr K organised swimming contests for the children too, and running races and games of football, but Mrs K had no part of any of that. She liked to swim, but just gentle paddling about, with Danny Walsh to accompany her. They were a sight to see, walking down to the water's edge together, Herself in a big rubber helmet to save her hair from the salt, and Danny in a woollen swimming costume, legs on him like a grey heron. His job was to bob around close by, in case a big wave swept her off her feet.

Fidelma said, ‘When you answered that advertisement, Danny, I'll bet you never thought the job would mean taking your trousers off.’

He said, ‘Flexibility, Fidelma Clery, that's the answer to survival today. You can't just be a driver. Nor a nurserymaid, so you can wipe that silly smile off your face, Nora Brennan. Think how much more I'm worth to the Kennedys than you are. Driver, swimming companion, projectionist, handyman.’

I didn't care. I still wasn't going into that ocean.

There were all the outdoors activities, but that wasn't all. The older ones were expected to prepare for mealtimes too. Mrs K had a noticeboard nailed up for pieces she clipped out of the newspapers, conversational topics she thought they should know about, so they'd have something to say at the dinner table. It was for the benefit of Joe and Jack mainly, so they could decide what they thought about things and then listen to what their daddy had to say, but Kick and Euny were allowed to join in as well. Not Rosie though. She was excused from conversationalising, and from the sailing lessons.

Mrs K had her up to her room every morning for two hours instead, to try and bring her along with her reading and writing. It was no vacation for Rosie. She'd have liked to sit in the dunes and play with her dollies, I know, but Mrs Kennedy said she'd never improve if she didn't push herself. And when her lessons were over she still didn't get any peace. The others would drag her off to play French cricket and yell at her when she dropped the ball. Eunice was the only one had any patience with her. She'd take her out in her dinghy once in a while and show her how to tack and trim the sails and Rosie would come back with a smile that'd light up a Christmas tree.

‘I've been crewing for Euny,’ she'd say, pleased as punch. ‘She said I did pretty good.’

She was a help with the little ones too. She'd feed Jean for me and push Bobby on the swing. Sometimes he'd get mixed up and call her ‘Mother’. He was a quiet one, Bobby. Always studying the floor, but then he'd up and do something to surprise you. I was sitting on the lawns one time with wee Jean on my lap when he came running up from the strand. He pushed a seashell into my hand, said ‘Love you’ and ran off again, come over all shy. A Scotch bonnet shell. I have it still. And that was the summer he punched Joseph Patrick. Young Joe had taken the book Jack was reading and wouldn't give it back, taunting him with it, so Bobby landed him one with his little fist, and when Joe laughed at him he burst into tears and went and hid.

But he could be a grouch too. Fidelma took to him more than I did. She says he's still the most prayerful of the lot of them, and he did used to screw his eyes up tight when he was saying his rosary at bedtime. You'd have thought that would have endeared him to Herself, being the big churchgoer, but she was starting to feel her wings by the time Bobby came along. And none of them ever got paid the attention Joseph Patrick did.

Things were so sweet between Mr and Mrs K that summer she even had her way over Jack's next school. He'd been intended for Choate, following in young Joe's footsteps, but he was sent to Canterbury instead, a proper Catholic school, right up by Candlewood Lake. He was in and out of the school infirmary all that first term, what with the batterings he took on the football field and his sore throats and stomach aches, so Mr K said we'd all better go to Florida for the Christmas holidays, so Jack could get his strength up. Blue skies and palm trees on Christmas Day. Fidelma swore she'd died and gone to heaven. Ursie reckons Deirdre gets weather like that all the time in Africa.

But Florida didn't do Jack a lot of good. He'd only been back at Canterbury five minutes when he was rushed to the hospital with his appendix, and after his recuperation he never went back. Mr K said he was to have private tutoring at home to make up what he'd missed and then go to Choate in September. He said Mrs K could choose whatever schools she liked for the girls but from now on his boys were going where he decided, to mix with the crème de la crème. That was how Lem Billings ended up part of the family.

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