Laurie Graham - The Importance of Being Kennedy

After the armistice, Mr K had gone back to his own business. Import and export, according to Mrs Kennedy, and finance. He was always up early. He'd do his morning exercises and then look in on the nursery on his way down to breakfast, showered and suited and ready for the off. Sometimes we'd only see him on Monday morning and then he'd be gone all week, busy with meetings in the city.

Herself used to say, ‘I sleep so lightly. My husband doesn't like to come in late and disturb the whole house. When you're in business, you see, you have to be prepared to put in long hours.’

Fidelma reckoned it was showgirls he was busy with, though at the time he didn't seem the type to me. He didn't smoke and he never took drink.

She'd say, ‘Sure, the clean-living ones are the worst. There's one thing none of them can go without and I don't think Your Man gets much of that at home, do you? Only when she's ready to get knocked up again. Do you think she puts him on her schedule? Joe's yearly treat? No wonder he works late.’

She liked him back then. We all did. He was fair and friendly and you could see the children were the light of his life.

Whatever it was that kept him in town so much, he was certainly making money. Anything that took Mrs K's fancy she could have. We were the first house on Beals Street to get an electric carpet beater, and a phonograph. I don't know that Mrs K got much joy from it though. She reckoned she was the musical one in her family and Mr Kennedy bought her a grand piano but you hardly ever saw her sit and pick out a tune. Fidelma was the one who sang to the babies. Mrs K never had friends around for tea or went visiting with the neighbours. If she saw them in the street, a crisp ‘Good day’ was all she ever gave them. I suppose she knew they looked down their noses at her. Brookline people didn't like flashiness. When they saw a big new icebox being carried up the steps, they thought it was a sign you had more money than sense.

The only company she had was Father Creagh from St Aidan's, and Mr and Mrs Moore who sometimes came for bridge on a weekend. They were an older couple. Eddie Moore worked for Mr K. He was his right-hand man, and a sort of friend too. If Mr K trusted anyone to know about his business affairs it was Eddie Moore. And Mrs Moore was a kind, motherly sort, quite happy to chat to Herself about the baby's new tooth. But really they were his friends, not hers.

Fidelma said to Mrs K once, ‘You know, Mrs Erickson gives tea parties and the nursemaids are all invited too, with the babies, so the children can mix and have company. Shouldn't you like to do that, Mrs Kennedy?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I would not. My children have each other for company and I'm far too busy for tea parties.’

But the busyness was all created out of nothing. She set herself a schedule the same as she did for the babies. She had a time for reading the newspapers, clipping out stories, and underlining things with her fountain pen. ‘Conversational topics’ she called them. Then she had a regular time for doing her exercises, to get her waistline back in trim if she'd just had a baby, or just a brisk walk to post her letters, if she was expecting again and not allowed any bending and stretching.

She wrote a lot of letters, though I don't know who to, and she read French literature too, to improve her mind. And there was her hour in the nursery every day, bending my ear. She loved to talk about when she'd been her daddy's First Lady, the places she'd been, the people she'd met.

‘Did I ever tell you about the time His Honour and I had luncheon with President Taft?’ she'd say. ‘The President said I was the prettiest face he'd seen since he entered the White House. He had me sit right next to him.’

And if she heard Fidelma humming a waltz, ‘Oh Fidelma, dear heart,’ she'd say, ‘you quite take me back to Vienna. Did I ever tell you about my trip to Europe with His Honour? We were treated like royalty. Receptions, balls. I had so many beaux. I could have married a count or a lord. I could have had my pick.’

Well, those days were over. She'd taken her pick and she had a model house and a nursery full of bonny babies to show for it, but I don't know how much pleasure it brought her. She never sat by the fire with a little one on her lap, just to enjoy the lisping and the softness of them.

Fidelma used to say, ‘She's a sad creature. I could feel sorry for her if only I didn't.’

By the time Rosie had her first birthday Herself was expecting again, due in February, but then just after Christmas something happened.

Mr K was gone ten days straight, not even home for Sunday dinner he had so much business to attend to and Herself was getting more and more quarrelsome, coming up to the nursery, wanting everything in the hot press refolded, picking over the layette and finding fault. Then two suitcases appeared in the downstairs hall and His Honour's car came to fetch her.

She said, ‘I'm going to visit with my family. The babies will have to stay here though. My sister's very sick so we mustn't take any risks.’

And off she went. Mrs Moore came round that evening and every other evening, checking that we hadn't burned the place to the ground.

I said, ‘When will she be back?’

She said, ‘Mrs Kennedy's gone for a little vacation but you can call me at any hour. My husband is in contact with Mr Kennedy.’

Fidelma said, ‘This is some family. He's left her, and now she's left us. Let's go down and see what's in the liquor cabinet.’

The Ericksons' cook said it was the talk of the neighbourhood that Mr K was probably in jail or on the run from somebody he'd scalped, but Fidelma was likely nearer the mark. She said, ‘There'll be a chorus girl at the bottom of this. And can you blame the man? Herself and her Rolodex, they'd take the shine off anybody's day.’

Whether there was a girl in the picture that time I never knew but he'd certainly been in Florida and come back with a spring in his step and two sets of tropical whites to be taken to the dry-cleaner.

‘Palm Beach is quite a place,’ he said. ‘The weather's perfect and if you stand in the lobby of the Royal Poinciana sooner or later anybody who's anybody'll walk by.’

He didn't seem fazed to have come home to an empty house.

He said Mrs K was taking a well-earned rest and would soon be back, but the days went by and there was no sign of her. The weekly nurse arrived to get things ready for the birth and we had everything she needed except the mother-to-be. Mr K was all smiles and sunshine with us, but I heard him on the telephone, giving out to His Honour.

‘Did you put her up to this?’ he said. ‘You must be encouraging her, Fitz. She's not an effing child any more. She has responsibilities. She has three children here keep asking for her.’

Which wasn't true at all. They never asked for her.

He said, ‘Now you listen to me. Tell her she has to come home right now. Whatever it is she wants, she can have. More help. A new car. She can go on trips. I don't effing care, just send her home before there's any more talk. Tell her Jack's not well.’

Jack was hot and cranky, wanted to sleep all the time but couldn't settle. When Herself turned up in the Mayor's limousine, brought home like the Queen of Sheba, he wouldn't even get off the daybed to give her a kiss. Then the rash came in and he got hotter yet so that even the sponge baths didn't help. It was the scarlet fever. Dr Good said the best thing, as there was a new baby due any minute, was for him to be nursed at the hospital. Fidelma was sent to sit with him, although I know he cried for me. It brought back to me the time when our Nellie had the measles, tossing and turning on her cot, with a blanket nailed across the window because the least bit of light hurt her eyes. We'd all had the measles. It didn't occur to us Nellie wouldn't get over it. Ursie and Dada were sitting with her when she slipped away. Me and Deirdre were out on the back step playing five-stones and we heard Dada start keening.