Laurie Graham - The Importance of Being Kennedy

No one we knew in Brookline got sick, but the Ericksons' gardener reckoned there was a four-week wait for funerals in Boston, there were so many bodies to bury, and after it was over I heard that Marimichael Donnelly had been one of them, ironing sheets in the afternoon and dead by midnight. Three little ones left without a mammy. To think she left Ballynagore to finish up like that. She was strong as an ox, Marimichael, but that was the thing about the influenza. It carried off the strong and didn't touch the babies and the old folks.

Before Rosie was born Mrs Kennedy decided she needed an extra nurserymaid. She hired Fidelma Clery. Flame-red hair and terrible, crooked little teeth. I was glad of the help. Young Jack caught every cough and cold that was going, and Joseph Patrick had the very devil in him, always climbing into trouble and tormenting Jack and taking his toys.

‘Why is he still a baby?’ he used to ask. ‘When will he be big enough to fight me?’

His Honour was the one who encouraged fighting, play-boxing with him, showing him how to put up his little dukes.

Mrs K gave Fidelma the gospel on nursery routines to read, but I know she never opened it. Fidelma was a bit hazy when it came to reading. Every time she told the story of the Gingerbread Man it ended different. But she had enough common sense to get by and the first time Joseph Patrick gave her any trouble she picked him up, hollering and kicking, and carried him to his room like a roll of linoleum.

The weekly nurse came a few days before the baby was due and Mrs K started her pains right on time, same as she did everything else. Everything was going along nicely and I quite thought we'd be cleared away by teatime with the baby safe in her crib, but when it came time to send for the doctor he couldn't be reached. He'd been called away to somebody with complications, and you couldn't send for any other doctor. They were all run off their feet with influenza cases

I said, ‘It hardly matters. It's her third child. She knows what to do.’

The nurse said, ‘That's not the point. I can't let her have it. If the doctor isn't here when it's born he won't get his fee and then I'll be for it.’

It seemed to me you couldn't do much to stop a baby if it was ready to come, but she was the nurse and I was only there to help. So we tied Mrs K's knees together with a scarf and the nurse instructed her that whatever she did she mustn't bear down when she got one of her urges. She was a model patient. I never heard her cry out once. And that's how we kept Rose Marie from being born until Dr Good arrived, bounding up the stairs with his ether mask.

I loved all my Kennedy babies for their different funny little ways but Rosie was the real beauty among them. She'd a mop of black hair and big green eyes and she was so contented. She'd lie in her crib for hours smiling at the world and playing with any little toy you gave her. Not like Jack, always crying. Not like Joe, always looking for trouble.

If I'd been Mrs K I'd have been up in the nursery gazing at Rosie all day long. She was like a perfect little doll and Herself loves dolls. Sure she has a whole room full of them at Hyannis, all in their glass cases. But she didn't trouble us much in the nursery. She preferred to be down at her bureau, clipping out articles on how children should be raised and making lists of things that had to be seen to. Timetables, charts for their weight, charts for their teeth.

Joseph Patrick was forever asking why did I live with them.

‘Don't you have a mother and a daddy?’ he used to say. ‘This is my house. But when I go to school I guess you can still stay here. You can look after Rosie.’

I wasn't sure I would be staying because me and Jimmy Swords were sort of engaged. Frankie Mulcahy was back from Pennsylvania and Margaret wanted us to name the day as soon as Jimmy came home from Flanders. A double wedding at Most Holy Redeemer and then to Mazzucca for ice-cream sundaes. She had it all planned. But Jimmy didn't come back in a marrying frame of mind.

He said, ‘Why bother? Bringing more kids into the world. Cannon fodder for another war. Factory fodder for the bosses. It's all shite.’

He'd got in with a lot of socialists in his battalion, putting the world to rights while they were waiting to be sent up the line to fight the Boche.

I said, ‘I thought we'd won this war so there won't ever be another one. And what'd happen if everybody had your attitude? There'd be no more babies. Nobody to look after you when you're in your bath chair.’

He said, ‘I'm not going to be in a bath chair. I'll put a bullet in my brain sooner. And I'm not getting married. It's nothing personal, Nora. You can keep the ring.’

Silly beggar. He'd never given me a ring.

I did wonder, had he met someone else, somebody prettier. One of those French mam'zelles. Mammy always said it was a good thing I had my health and strength because my face would never make my fortune. I wasn't exactly heartbroken over Jimmy but I did stop looking in the mirror for a while. Looking in the mirror could make a girl lose heart.

Ursie said, ‘Never mind. You're better off staying single. You've a nice little job and a roof over your head and that's more than Margaret will ever have. Frankie Mulcahy isn't fit to mind a canary, never mind a wife and family. There'll be a baby every year and never enough money to pay the electric. You'll see. She'll be broken down and worn out. So don't break your heart over Jimmy Swords. You've had a lucky escape.’

Margaret didn't have a baby every year though. Nothing happened on that front for a long time. And as for Jimmy, I don't know that Ursie was right. He was a good man. It was just that the war had chewed him up and spat him out, bitter and twisted. When Ursie said these things you always had to keep in mind that she was probably a disappointed woman, on the quiet. She worshipped her Mr Jauncey and yet all he ever did was say, ‘Take a letter, Miss Brennan.’

Poor Ursie and her little two-cup teapot.

Rosie sat up at six months, same as Jack did, but she wasn't interested in walking or talking. She was happy just to sit and watch the world go by. Mrs K said we were to stimulate her more, talk to her, and pull her up onto her feet to give her the idea of walking.

Fidelma said, ‘There's not a thing wrong with her. She only seems quiet because you're used to the boys racketing about. If you ask me we should be thankful. She never gives us a minute's trouble.’

Mrs K said, ‘I didn't ask you, Fidelma. And I want particular attention paid to Rose Marie's activities. We can't have her falling behind.’

Well, Rosie got up and walked when she was good and ready, and she talked too. She just didn't put herself out. If you threw her a ball she'd pick it up and look at it, but it never occurred to her to throw it back. And when Mr K came up to the nursery he didn't seem to know what to do with her. The boys would clamber all over him begging to be tickled to death. Rosie would just sit smiling at him, holding back.

Later on Mrs K made quite a project of Rosie, tutoring her for hours on end to try and get her up to the mark with her reading and writing, but in those early days Joseph Patrick was her big project.

‘He's the foundation stone,’ she said. ‘If the oldest child is brought along correctly, the others will follow suit.’

Everything she did was in aid of Joseph Patrick growing up the brightest scholar and a champion sportsman and a Light of Christ altar boy. She took him to the Franklin Park Zoo one afternoon to set the scene and tell him about the poor Christian martyrs, but when he came home all he did was keep springing out at Jack and Rosie, playing at killer lions. Well, he was only four.

She kept up with all the new books that were brought out too, and fetched them from the lending library to read to them, but when I was left to read them a story they always wanted their old favourite, about Billy Whiskers the Goat. It had been given them by their Aunt Loretta Kennedy and they loved that book, but Herself thought it was a dreadful story for children. She said it encouraged naughtiness instead of obedience and she threw it in the trash can. Fidelma slipped out the back and rescued it. It had a wee bit of bacon grease on the cover but we kept it for a special secret treat when Mother was out shopping.