The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  It was time for some answers.

  * * *

  Dukie Wookie had outdone himself in honor of his debutante daughter Sarah Spencer-Churchill, transforming his sizable ballroom into a Garden of Eden with tropical flowers, fountains of a fizzy pink punch, and a superb American jazz band. In the peachy twilight of the first night, Kick and Jack stood among the playful topiary animals in Blenheim’s Italian Garden, sipping glasses of the famed local mineral water, which she needed. She’d already drunk two glasses of champagne too quickly to settle her nerves, and now her legs felt leaden and her head like a hot-air balloon. She had yet to see Billy.

  “Sometimes, here in old Blighty,” mused Jack, “I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine. At this moment, I could be standing in Marie Antoinette’s Versailles.”

  “Except this is England, and the music is Benny Goodman’s,” observed Kick.

  “Details, details,” he said airily. Then, tapping his glass to hers, he strolled toward the ballroom, where a Technicolor rainbow of gowns shifted between pillars of black. Her brother seemed to have recovered from his broken heart. Or he was hiding it well. Impossible to tell. She assumed the consolation of the Duke of Kent’s continental mistress, a Romanian princess with whom Jack had been photographed in Germany, had helped.

  Kick took a few deep breaths and told herself tonight was not the night for a serious discussion with Billy, and this calmed her stomach a bit. Tonight was for dancing the Big Apple and making sure Billy thought as highly of her as possible before she gave him the news. She’d worn her slinkiest fuchsia dress just for this purpose. Tomorrow they’d take a long walk alone and she’d broach it.

  Feeling too cool with a breeze tickling her exposed back, Kick headed inside and found Billy on her way.

  “Are you ignoring your dance card, Miss Kennedy?” Billy said in mock horror.

  She laughed. “You know how I feel about those horrid things.”

  “Undemocratic.”

  “Precisely. The enemy of spontaneity.”

  “Bastards.”

  “Such language!”

  “I’m a soldier now. I can swear with impunity.”

  “Sounds like dangerous logic.”

  He moved close to her, put his hands on her waist, and swayed her gently to the music drifting out of the house. She put her hands on his chest and felt his heart beating, so she put her ear on her fingers to see if she could hear it as well but, alas, no.

  “Soon you’ll see Chatsworth as you’ve seen all these other estates, restored and ready for glamour once more,” he said.

  His birthday party. Holy Mother, why is he saying this now? I can’t very well lie to him.

  “Billy,” she said, her voice uneven as she pushed him slightly away so she could look up into his face. “I have some bad news about the party.”

  Billy didn’t say anything, but looked expectantly at her.

  She’d thought a lot about how to phrase this, and her rehearsed words came out of her mouth maybe too smoothly. “My parents want me to come on our annual family vacation to France. In August.”

  Billy took a step back from her. “I see,” he said.

  Tell me you don’t want me to go. That you couldn’t imagine the weekend without me. That it’s time to defy our parents.

  “I’m just distraught,” she said. “I . . .” She couldn’t very well ask him to declare his feelings, could she? Yet she could see the hurt on his face.

  Say something.

  “Are you saying that your parents are trying to keep us apart?” he asked.

  Answering this question truthfully felt too painful, so she dodged it as best she could. “I assume your parents also want us apart? They hardly speak to me when they see me.” She’d seen them at numerous events in the last few months, and they rarely engaged her in conversation. Occasionally his mother would inquire about Kick’s charitable engagements, which she’d read about in the papers, but it was all rather bland, and his father just said nothing at all.

  “They are . . . avoiding the issue,” Billy admitted. “Waiting, I assume.”

  “For what?” Say it, she pleaded. Say “waiting for me to declare my feelings.” Let’s not wait any more.

  “For you to disappear, presumably, in the same puff of magic in which you arrived,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  “Puff of magic? What are you taking about?” She could feel her pulse chugging in her neck.

  “Kick, we’re going to war,” he said regretfully, taking her hands in his. “I feel it in my bones. I know we all joke about it, because, well, that’s what we do. And when England goes to war, it seems likely that you and your countrymen will go home. Especially since your father is dead set against war. He won’t want you in harm’s way.”

  “But I don’t have to go,” she said. “I could stay. Joe Jr. went to Spain without Daddy’s permission.” Her heart was hammering a hole in her chest, her throat, her brain. Please, please, give me a reason to stay.

  Billy looked at her, the corners of his mouth downturned. “I know what you want me to say, Kick. And I can say part of it, which is that I love you. I love your wit and your passion and your boldness. I love how you lean on me when we dance, and I love that you hate dance cards because they are the enemy of spontaneity. I love your tiny hands, because they belie the size of your character,” he said mournfully, looking down at their four hands folded together between their bodies. Kick’s heart wanted to break through her chest and fly away with delight at his words, but she knew the other part, the part he’d implied he couldn’t or shouldn’t say, was still coming.

  She decided it was worth the risk to interrupt, so she put two fingers to his lips and said, “Before you go on, I want to tell you that I return your feelings. In my soul, I love you. I love your loyalty and your humor. I love that you read poetry, and that you prefer your gardener’s ale to the French wines served at parties like this one. I love your height, how safe I feel when I’m with you. I love you, Billy Hartington.”

  Instead of kissing her, he squeezed her hands and took another step back.

  “But,” he said.

  He didn’t immediately go on, so she rushed in, “Billy, I feel certain we can figure the rest of it out.”

  “The rest of it? Are four hundred years of history so easy to sort out? When a major war is about to break out?”

  “We don’t have to bring our churches together, Billy. We have to bring us together. You and me. We won’t be the first couple that’s managed it.”

  “Have I mentioned that I also love your optimism?” His smile was sad, though.

  “But you don’t share it,” she said.

  “When I’m dead on a field in Italy, you’ll be glad you didn’t defy your church and family for a man who was only going to die.”

  She withdrew her hands from his and balled them into fists. “Don’t tell me how I would feel.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and she could tell he meant it. But sorry for what, exactly? For loving her, or for his cowardice?

  “When were you planning to tell me all this?” she demanded.

  “I’d hoped . . . I’d hoped we would have more time.”

  “Time for what? For you to ruin my reputation?” Anger had flared in her chest, and she couldn’t contain it.

  “Kick, if there wasn’t going to be a war . . .”

  “Don’t bring the war into this. This is about religion and heritage, your birthright.”

  “Partly,” he agreed. “But for me, it is also about the war. I didn’t understand it myself until I put on the uniform.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you, then,” she said. She curtsied, then stood as tall as her frame would allow and turned her back to him to face the looming facade of Blenheim, lit up for revelry but looking to Kick’s eyes like a house on fire. Before she could change her mi
nd, or Billy could say more, she walked forward with every intention of losing herself in the decadent flame.

  * * *

  When Joe Jr. proposed she visit Spain with him and Hugh Fraser to, in his words, “get off this blasted little island,” Kick immediately accepted his invitation and thanked God for the opportunity to run away. How ironic that she should want to leave as quickly as possible when just days before she’d been looking for any reason to stay. As soon as she set foot in Barcelona, she was grateful for the profound differences between Spain and England, for the possibility that this Catholic country decimated by civil war might rescue her from her memories of opulence in Billy’s Protestant homeland.

  From an elderly peddler in a northern village, who smelled of garlic and urine and had only three teeth, Kick bought herself a new wooden rosary, and she carried it with her everywhere in her purse so that it would be handy when she entered a chapel, some of which were still being pieced back together. She said countless Our Fathers and Hail Marys as trickles of sweat rolled down her thighs and lower back, for the midsummer heat in Spain was relentless. She prayed ardently and deeply, asking God for forgiveness and mercy and deliverance from Billy’s insistent grip on her heart.

  Kick let her brother lead her around and show her his Spain, a place of stark contrasts where children played soccer in little more than slippers on patches of brown grass or dust while men and women lugged rocks and carted away rubble to repair their villages; where older devout Catholics prayed dutifully every morning though they ate dinner as late as eleven o’clock and the young people promenaded on plazas till midnight or later; where ancient synagogues had been transformed into mosques and churches, in a style of architecture Kick had never seen before, decorated by mosaics composed of millions of shards of colorful glass and pottery, as gorgeous as any stained glass window she’d ever seen.

  In Madrid, after the fierce sun had set and the cooler evening air had rolled in, Joe Jr., Kick, and Hugh met with Joe’s friends Mateo and Pedro, and Pedro’s fiancée Gabrielle. A light wind played with the hem of Kick’s cotton dress as two old men strummed guitars and sang by a fountain with no water in it. Their little group walked at a leisurely pace with the locals, and Kick listened while the others talked about the changes in the city since the war had ended. The three Spaniards were her brother’s age, and so a few years older than Kick, but their paths in life had been dramatically altered by the war. Though they were from well-off families who prized education and made sure their children learned English, Mateo and Pedro had put off college to fight, and Pedro walked with a deep limp. They spoke freely of their lost friends, of how Mateo’s sister Leona grieved for her dead fiancé every day, praying for hours and lighting countless candles on a shrine in her bedroom that their parents had to extinguish when she either left the house or fell into a stupor, for fear of setting the house on fire. “And we are among the lucky ones,” Mateo said.

  After an hour of walking, Hugh admitted to feeling hungry, but since no restaurant was open as early as nine at night, they found a bar with four round tables that was just opening a few blocks off the Plaza Mayor. They sat and ordered two bottles of cava and a few plates of tortas and olives. “But no more,” counseled Pedro. “You must save your appetites for later.”

  Gabrielle turned her attention to Kick and asked if she was enjoying Spain so far. She had long black hair done in a thick braid down her back, and the most remarkable eyelashes Kick had seen on any woman. Her rolling, husky accent was robust and amorous, and Kick felt young and ugly next to her.

  “Spain is beautiful,” Kick replied, aware as she said the words that they were thoroughly inadequate. “It’s also sad,” she tried again. “We’ve seen so much ruined by the war. But what remains is just beautiful. And the care people take in putting it all back together again is also beautiful.”

  Gabrielle nodded. “You should have seen it five years ago, before Franco.” She spat out the name of her country’s new ruler, as if it were a piece of grizzled meat. “I was probably your age,” she added.

  “Did you know Pedro then?”

  Gabrielle nodded. “I wanted to become engaged when the war started. I begged him to marry me and make me pregnant so that if he died, I would at least have his baby.”

  Kick was shocked by the intimacy of this disclosure. Was it the difference in their cultures that made this other woman so bold, or was it the war? Looking at Spain, Kick saw that war had most definitely exposed things, laid them bare.

  “But he said no,” Gabrielle went on, before taking a sip of wine. “And now we will be married in one month.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Kick smiled, but it was hard to be truly excited for her new friend since she didn’t seem elated herself. She was far from a bride-to-be in America, who went about waving her ring finger and gushing about trousseaux and honeymoons.

  Gabrielle nodded and agreed, “It is wonderful, yes. But now it might be difficult for us to have a baby.” She looked past Kick toward the bar behind her, her eyes glazed over. Then she added, “War takes things, things you don’t expect.”

  Kick couldn’t understand what might get in the way of their ability to have children. Sister Kit hadn’t covered that in her Gray’s Anatomy lessons. Maybe it had something do to with his limp. She prayed for the couple the next day in the dark, chilly nave of San Isidro el Real, but her mind kept straying to Billy. Was Gabrielle’s willingness to marry Pedro, knowing their marriage might be childless, so different from Kick’s recent willingness to pledge herself to Billy knowing he didn’t share her faith? Had she really been willing to do such a thing?

  She thought she might have been, had he told her that night at Blenheim that he loved her and wanted her with him forever. She’d have done anything that night to keep him. But she certainly would not now. She felt resolve within her, not as a hardening or straightening of her body, but as a kind of clearing, a relaxation of her shoulders and chest and legs.

  Gracias, Madre Maria.

  Thank you for showing me the way.

  CHAPTER 15

  Many letters greeted her when she arrived at the Domaine de Ranguin, the chateau her mother had rented on a hilltop just outside Cannes, the opulence of which blinded her after the rubble of Spain. Set up on a bluff, the house was massive, with green shutters and awnings at each of the many windows that overlooked the Mediterranean. Most of the letters were from correspondents she could predict—Debo, Father O’Flaherty, Jean Ogilvy, Sissy, and even long-suffering Peter Grace—but two were from Billy.

  “I had to snatch them from the butler before Mother saw them!” a tan and relaxed Eunice told her sister triumphantly. “She would have thrown them out, I’m sure. Or at least read them first.”

  “Thank you,” said Kick, though she wasn’t sure if she really was thankful. It was true that, despite everything she’d seen and felt in Spain, part of her had been hoping for something from Billy when she arrived. But another part of her had been hoping he would stay silent and confirm her worst suspicions about him.

  In her white, sun-flooded bedroom, Kick sat at a little desk as lace curtains fluttered in the breeze. She set aside the two letters from Billy and started with the others, which were full of the usual reports and gossip; she was so distracted by the presence of Billy’s letters, she barely comprehended them. By the time she finished the last one, the anticipation of opening Billy’s had practically winded her.

  The sound of the thick, creamy envelope ripping open reverberated in her ears, and she began to read the letter with the earlier postmark.

  Dear Kick,

  I feel I must apologize for our discussion at Blenheim. It’s been an agony knowing I’ve caused you any pain, when you don’t deserve anything other than the purest happiness. And especially when I treasure the memory of every moment we’ve spent together. In fact, I cannot stop bringing them to mind, and dwelling on them, which only brings m
e more distress. If I go on now, I’ll only embarrass myself further. Please know I will ever be your

  Billy

  Kick inhaled again, this time with her eyes open. You should be sorry, she said to the letter. What could he possibly have had to add to that?

  The second letter was postmarked the next day.

  Darling Kick,

  I almost committed a crime yesterday by breaking into the post office, so great was my desire to retrieve that last letter, because it only tried to excuse me and beg your pardon. What I ought to have written, and will endeavour to write now, is that you were correct. We should be able to work out the differences that keep us apart. I love you, and these last days of being without you have shown me that I was a fool for ever thinking I could lead a happy life without you. It’s true that there are four hundred years of history separating us, and I cannot promise that it will be easy for us to find our solution, but I would like to try. Surely if we can overcome these obstacles, the trials of marriage will look like nothing in comparison. All this is possible only if you will forgive my wretched behavior of the other night. You’ll be amused to discover I’ve gone to Westminster Cathedral, whose spires so annoy Father, and lit a candle for you every day since you left. (In my mind, I hear you laugh as you read that line, and I hope I am right.) I’ve been worried about you in Spain, as I’ve heard it’s still not safe there. Even if your answer to me is no, please set my mind at ease by telling me you’ve arrived at the sea in a single piece. Waiting on pins and needles, I am forever your

  Billy

  By the time her eyes got to his name, she was crying and laughing so hard (for she’d started laughing on top of the crying in exactly the place he’d predicted), she also gave herself the hiccups.

  There was a quiet knock on her door, then Rosemary popped her head in. On seeing Kick with a red, wet face, she rushed over to her sister, saying, “Oh no, what’s wrong?”

  “N-n-nothing,” Kick hiccupped, smearing the tears off her face with the back of her hand. A few drops bled into Billy’s letter.