by Kerri Maher
LETTER JUST ARRIVED WONDERFUL NEWS GET LEAVE JUNE 22 LONGING TO SEE YOU WRITING LOVE BILLY HARTINGTON
She felt doomed. She prayed and prayed—in church, on her knees by her bed at night—asking for guidance and help. Virgin Mother, please hear my prayer. I don’t know what else to do. There must be another way. Show me that way—soon!
She missed Rosemary, and prayed for her, too, that she might be back for Easter, or at least next Christmas. But then Easter came and went and again her parents didn’t mention Rosie. Not even during the church egg hunt, which used to be her sister’s favorite event; she always volunteered to help hide the eggs and found such glee in giving the five-year-olds hints.
Then the men around her began leaving to fight. No more desk posts. The trainings were finishing up. It was time for real combat. Joe Jr. was itching to use his new pilot license to “bomb some Japs,” and Jack, whose back was better, would be leaving soon for Chicago to learn to captain a torpedo boat. Even John enlisted in the navy. The son of an old friend of the family, George Mead, had quite a send-off party at his family’s estate in South Carolina before he departed with his marine unit for the Solomon Islands. Kick went with her roommate Betty, and Jack was there, too. Nancy Astor made a surprise appearance. She’d been in Virginia visiting family, and when she’d heard that some of her “favorite young Americans” would be congregating, she decided to book a first-class ticket and say hello. Nancy was like a mirage, and Kick fell on her in a hysterical hug as if she were a chimerical oasis in a desert. “You’re here! How did you get here? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“You have to leave me some surprises in life, Kick,” Nancy said with a wag of her finger and another embrace. “Anyway, the important questions don’t concern me; they concern you. When are you coming back home, my dear? To London? Anglo-American relations need to be repaired, no matter what the papers say now that we’re so-called allies. There’s too much distrust, and I don’t blame the English for it. Roosevelt took too long to get into the war. There was so much hope after—forgive me, Kick—your father left his post, and it still it took Pearl Harbor to galvanize the country.”
“You won’t hear any disagreements from me,” said Kick, though she did marvel a bit at Nancy’s selective memory—for a long time she, too, had been against war just like Joe Kennedy.
“What England needs is to remember why they loved the Kennedys, and by extension, America. Who better to make that case than you?”
Kick blushed, and felt embarrassed by Nancy’s compliments even though she could have listened to them all day. It had been ages since anyone had flattered her.
“And there is the matter of a certain marquess,” Nancy said, hissing the ss in marquess, “who will make another Bachelor Duke of Devonshire if you don’t hurry back.”
“I’ve tried!” Kick blurted out, all the desperation and disappointment of three years burbling up in her. “I tried to get over as a reporter. When I first came back to America, I looked into training as a nurse, but they weren’t taking American nurses abroad. England isn’t letting anyone in!”
“You’ll have to try harder,” said Nancy firmly. “The Kennedys are nothing if not resourceful. Leave no stone unturned.”
Kick nodded, frowning.
Seeing how distraught her young companion had become, Nancy put her bejeweled arm around Kick’s body and gripped her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out,” she said. “Aunt Nancy has complete confidence in you.”
I wish I still had some in myself.
* * *
Almost as soon as he’d left, George was killed. News of the bullet reached Kick one sweltering August morning as she sat in front of the desk fan Inga had left for her before running off to New York City with a new beau, an obvious rebound from the nearly simultaneous ends of her relationship with Jack and her marriage to Paul Fejos.
“Oh, Kathleen,” her mother said on the other end of the line, “I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I thought you would want to hear the news from family first, before it came over the press wire or something.”
“What is it?” Impossibly, Kick began to perspire more. Was someone hurt? If it was Jack or Joe Jr., my mother would be sobbing—wouldn’t she? Is it someone from England? Billy?!
“It’s George Mead. He’s been killed in action.”
Kick released the breath she’d been holding. “George? Oh no, his poor parents.” Kick recalled their proud faces, toasting their brave son with that lovely, fizzy champagne just a few months before. “Poor George,” she said quietly. It felt like something was clutching her heart in her chest. It wasn’t unlike the feeling she’d had on the beach in France when her mother told her they would be leaving not just their vacation but Europe altogether. When she’d raced back to London to see Billy one last time.
“Are you all right, darling?” Rose asked.
A tear slipped down Kick’s cheek and joined the beads of sweat on her chin.
“I’m sad, Mother. But thank you for calling to tell me.”
“I just know how important it is to get some kinds of news from loved ones. Though of course I know how much you love your work. You know, I once wanted to be a writer.”
“That must be where I get it, then. Any talent I have, I mean.”
“Thank you for saying that.” Rose heaved a sigh on the other end of the line. “I grew up in the wrong era, I suppose.”
“It’s not too late, Mother, you know. You could start writing things for the Catholic papers in Boston.”
“No, no. Your father would never approve.”
Maybe George’s death had loosened her tongue, or maybe it was the months away from home, or the influence of her debates with John White, but Kick said, “Mother, you can do things Daddy doesn’t approve of. It would be good for your other daughters to see you being a little more . . . independent. Your sons, too, for that matter.” She knew that independent was the wrong word, because of course her mother did plenty of things without her father, completely on her own. Rebellious would have been a more appropriate word, but it wasn’t one she could quite apply to her mother, even in the form of a wish. Still, Kick had a feeling her mother knew what she’d really meant.
“We all have our roles to play, darling. God has not revealed that to be mine. I’ll be praying for the Meads.”
“So will I,” Kick said. And she did pray, earnestly, though it did little to relieve her sense of imbalance and apprehension about nearly everything swirling in her mind—Billy, John, her parents, Rosemary, the war, England, her friends nearby and far away, the newspaper. What is my role? What part should I play? Her knees became bruised from the pews she knelt upon asking these questions, over and over.
She wrote a maudlin letter to Father O’Flaherty about her predicament, her pining for England and Billy, and now her deep sadness about the death of an old family friend. “Some lives are short,” she wrote, “and I increasingly feel that it’s essential to live the life it’s in one’s soul to live.” She posted it on her way to the airport, where she boarded a plane and flew up to New York City to see John, where he was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, awaiting orders to go abroad. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was going, except that John had become a habit that was impossible to break. She’d missed a few planned visits with him because she was sick or feeling lazy, but that late-summer day she felt lonelier than ever, and so she went.
“I still can’t believe you finally decided to sign up,” she said to him as they lunched in a tiny restaurant in Chinatown that served steaming, fragrant bowls of soup with long white noodles she pulled out with chopsticks.
“Better than waiting for them to draft me,” he said.
“How chivalrous of you,” she said, struck again by the profound difference between him and Billy. And yet, she liked sitting with him in this little noodle shop. John was adventurous. She could imagine running to catch a
train in Bangkok or Buenos Aires with John, but not with Billy.
“I’m nothing if not a gentleman,” said John with a sly laugh.
The rest of the weekend was wonderful, in a fragile, ephemeral way. In the late-summer heat, the air shimmered and swayed up from the city’s sidewalks, and the cumulative noise from the efforts of thousands of burdened feet and blaring taxi horns obliterated any other sound from Kick’s head. She was one hundred percent present for once, not imagining herself somewhere else, with someone else. Even Jones Beach, where they went to cool off, vibrated with life—glistening, coconut-scented oils on the backs and bellies of countless men and women, the smoke and smell of grilled hot dogs, men with guitars strumming melodies, children screeching with delight or crying from exhaustion. When Kick and John found a space just barely large enough for one beach towel, she stripped off the sundress she wore over her most modest bathing costume, a navy one-piece that tied at the nape of her neck and went low on her hips. John dropped his linen shirt on her dress, and the two of them chased each other to the water, dodging inflated balls and buckets full of beer and soda and melted ice as they ran.
The water was warm but still refreshing, and Kick enjoyed splashing around with John and showing off the clean, fine strokes she’d perfected over many summers at Hyannis Port. She laughed when he couldn’t catch up.
“You better work on your open-water swimming in case you get sent west. Wouldn’t want you to drown,” she said.
“Aw, I’m flattered you’re worried about me,” he replied, pulling her close. His feet were anchored in the soft sand, but since she was so much shorter, her feet dangled in the water. She put her hands on his large shoulders and felt the heat from the sun that had penetrated his skin. He was closer to her now than any man had been since Billy, and even Billy she’d never seen or touched without his shirt on. John pulled her body to his, and the movement toward him was so powerful and natural, she didn’t pull away. So she was all the more surprised when he put his other arm under her legs and then playfully threw her with a huge splash, shouting, “Bet you can’t do that!”
Later, sitting cross-legged on their towel, after sating their hunger with hot dogs loaded with relish and mustard and ketchup washed down with a lukewarm Coca-Cola, John leaned over and kissed Kick. Fully, with his lips open. For a second, she closed her eyes and parted her own lips as well, but just as his tongue gently grazed her teeth, she pulled back and froze. “John!” she said, mortified that it sounded more like a whine than a warning.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I love you, Kick.”
“I love you, too,” she said. The words came quickly, because she supposed they were true in a manner of speaking, but also because she knew he would be gone soon. And she didn’t want to spoil the weekend with the argument that would surely ensue if she rebuked him. She didn’t have the strength for that fight.
With a ridiculous smile, he leaned over and kissed her once more, this time on the cheek. Her gamble had worked like a charm. Apparently satisfied with her words, he made do with holding her hand and stealing one more real kiss the rest of the weekend. Before she left for Washington, they stopped in to see Inga in her new apartment, where she lived with her boyfriend Nils Block, who was so much Jack’s opposite in everything from his arrogant demeanor to his black hair that it was painfully obvious she was running from the memory of her former lover. Unsuccessfully. After three gin and tonics, Inga had gotten Kick alone in the tiny, stuffy kitchen, and said, “How’s Jack? I miss him terribly.”
“He’s fine,” Kick said, thinking it best to remain vague. “He’s in Chicago with the navy.”
“I still love him,” Inga said in a strangled tone.
Kick put an arm around her friend. “He loves you, too,” she said, amazed at the way that word—love—was falling from her tongue that weekend.
“He loves his duty more,” Inga said, the old bitterness creeping back in.
From the other room, John and Nils laughed the languid laugh of men who’ve drunk too much cold beer on a hot summer afternoon. Inga stiffened and brushed the tears from her cheek with perfectly lacquered fingertips, straightened up, then joined the men and tried to pretend that nothing had ever happened.
* * *
Her first night back at the Dorchester, Kick found herself lying awake at one in the morning, recalling in minute detail every second of her weekend with John, especially the kiss and the proclamation of love.
What was I thinking?
Though she’d said an entire rosary and begged God and the Virgin for peace, her sheets were wet with nervous sweat, and her stomach was perilously close to rejecting the supper of saltines, peanut butter, and milk she’d consumed while standing at the kitchen counter after her late-night return.
She rolled over on her side, exposing her clammy back to the night air, and opened the little drawer of her nightstand, then took out the soft, worn telegram.
WHAT WOULD I SAY SOUNDS GRAND JUST SAY WHEN LOVE BILLY
Please wait. I’ll figure it out. Just, please. Wait.
Recalling the magnetic sensation of John’s body in the salty beach water, the effect it had on her despite everything, she was certain that only physical proximity could mediate the differences between her and Billy. Four hundred years of history could not be addressed in letters. And she didn’t have much time left, especially when he was so keen to fight.
She vowed to make getting back to England her sole purpose in life. She’d allowed herself to be detained and distracted too long. It was time.
WINTER 1941
He and Andrew didn’t talk much. Never had. They were thick as thieves, of course, in cahoots, mates for life and all that, always in opposition to the same foes—their father, school, drudgery. If there was ever a tree to climb or a relation to trick, it was Andrew who led the charge and Billy who calculated the risk. But once his brother finally decided to marry Debo, his allegiances changed. She calculated his risks now, and he—amazingly but gladly—submitted.
For a long time this turn of events made Billy feel lonely and angry. Coming back from France, licking the wounds inflicted by the Huns, it had almost destroyed him to see his little brother so rewarded with beautiful, thoughtful Debo. Kick’s friend. They’d been a tremendous foursome, and Billy hated the fact that Kick’s absence had not diminished them as it had him.
When their first son died almost as soon as he was born, Andrew endured a grief of which Billy wouldn’t have thought his devil-may-care brother capable. He watched as Andrew and Debo cared for each other in handkerchiefs and cups of tea and gentle teasing, totally united in their sorrow and commitment to not letting it undo them entirely.
A month after it happened, Billy was out with Sally in London. Pearl Harbor had been bombed the week before, and Christmas was also upon them. Billy could never escape the memory of the one youthful holiday season he’d spent with Kick and the snow-globe-like perfection of it.
They were at the Ritz, already on their second bottle. He drank much more with Sally than he ever had with Kick. She offered him a cigarette from her varnished fingertips, and he took it though he didn’t really enjoy smoking. It was more a way to keep his hands and mouth occupied.
“How’s Andrew holding up?” Sally asked as she blew a puff of smoke so that it just grazed his right temple, a maneuver that until recently had made him stiff with desire from head to toe. She was a beautiful girl, after all. And she meant well. They’d had some real fun together these last months.
But he looked at her next to him that night, in her black evening dress and blond locks and the velvety skin that had given him feverish dreams just a few months before, and he realized that he couldn’t see the two of them surviving what Andrew and Debo appeared to be surviving.
“He seems to be coming out of the fog,” Billy replied.
“Good.” Sally nodded. “That has to be the first step.”<
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Toward what, Billy still couldn’t see. But he intended to find out.
PART 4
SUMMER 1943
CHAPTER 26
“Sissy!” Kick cried, flinging herself into her friend’s arms as soon as she opened the door of the Edwardian town house where she lived with David and their two children.
“Kick? Could that really be you?” Sissy said, blinking and staring at her American friend as if she were a ghost or some other conjured apparition.
“It is! I’m here with the Red Cross!” Kick gestured to her knee-length brown uniform, then to the supplies sitting in a haphazard heap on the pavement behind her. It had all been so organized when she boarded the Queen Mary in New York that obscenely hot morning a week before—now the tin helmet, the canteen and first aid kit, the mackintosh and woolen uniforms, the gas mask, and so many other indicators of her changed circumstances were all bundled together as best she could bundle them for the tube ride from St. Pancras station.
“Goodness! Well, come in already,” said Sissy, calling for their one servant to come and help with Kick’s luggage.
“The children are napping,” Sissy explained as she set about making a pot of tea in her large, subterranean kitchen. Kick marveled at her friend’s efficiency in boiling the water in a kettle on the enormous iron stove, steeping the tea in the incongruously dainty china teapot, and carrying it with two cups, milk, and sugar on a tray out the back steps to the little garden. Four years ago, someone like Sissy never would have performed these tasks herself.
“Can I help?” Kick asked.
