The Kennedy Debutante

by Kerri Maher

  “Grab that tin of biscuits,” Sissy said, nodding at a metal McVitie’s box on the disorderly kitchen table, where baby bottles, spilled milk, and crusts of bread lay all about.

  Outside, the late-June sun shone down on them from a clear blue sky. Sissy’s roses and hollyhocks were in full bloom, and hungry bumblebees buzzed from one pink blossom to another.

  “So!” Sissy said as she poured tea into their cups. “Am I the first to know of your return?”

  “You are indeed,” said Kick. Sissy was of course one of her dearest friends, but this had also been a strategic choice. Debo was away in the north to be close to Andrew while he trained with his regiment, and Kick needed to be in London while she waited for her assignment from the Red Cross. Also, she was eager to be in the company of her one good friend in London who was also Catholic, who’d successfully navigated the problems Kick assumed—hoped—she’d soon be facing with Billy.

  “I’m honored,” said Sissy. “David’s away, I’m afraid. Flight training in Hatfield. But I’m sure I can convince him to come visit. I’ll tell him I have the most lovely surprise waiting for him.”

  “I hope I’m a lovely surprise. I know the Kennedy name isn’t the most popular in England these days.”

  “Everyone knows you’re not your father, Kick. I wouldn’t worry,” Sissy said with a wave of her hand. “And I know at least one other Englishman who will be thrilled to hear of your return.”

  Kick blushed. “I hope so,” she said. “I thought I’d get over here a year ago with the press, and I wrote him about it right away, but then both of us were so let down when it didn’t work out. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up again until I was actually standing here. At last.”

  “Yes,” said Sissy, “I heard something about that disappointment. But at least it didn’t drive Billy back to Sally. You were wise this time.” Then, clapping her hands with excitement, she changed the subject. “Now, tell me all about this work you’ve come over to do! As the mother of two young children without the sort of help mothers had in the old days, I have to live vicariously through my young single friends. Will you be one of the girls making donuts on those lorries that go around to the American bases?”

  Kick laughed, and explained that no, thankfully, she would not be a Clubmobiler. “I don’t think I could manage being out on the road all day like that.” Instead, she would be a Red Cross girl at one of the clubs, “hopefully in London,” she said with both sets of middle and index fingers crossed. “I’ll still be making donuts and coffee, I’m sure, and also dancing and playing gin rummy, and reading letters from home, and that sort of thing. Keeping morale up, and generally making the boys feel like the girls from home appreciate all the sacrifices they’re making to be here, in harm’s way.” She didn’t add that while she’d convinced Page Huidekoper to sign the waiver swearing that Kick wasn’t signing up with the Red Cross in order to reunite with a loved one, she had certainly made her preference to be stationed in London known on the other forms. She didn’t feel she could press the point without arousing suspicion, but she was on pins and needles waiting and hoping.

  She’d even dropped the hint to her father before she left that it would be useful for the family if she were stationed in London. At lunch in Washington before she left for training in Virginia, he’d told her, “I’m proud that you’re doing this, you know. Even though I ruined my own future to keep you kids out of war, now that it’s here, I feel it’s our duty to do what we can. I’m very glad you’re going to support American troops, though of course I know you’ll be spending just as much time with your old friends.”

  “I want to bring everyone together, Daddy. You taught me that that’s possible. And I want people to think well of the Kennedys again.”

  Joe smiled fleetingly. “If anyone can do that, it’s you, Kick.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” she said, then added, “But of course, I can’t really do that from some backwater in the country. Which is why I’m so hoping to be in London.”

  “I’m sure it will work out,” he said, and her heart fluttered at this assurance. “But your mother will be heartbroken you’re leaving.”

  She had avoided speaking with her mother about any of her plans, not wanting to argue. “You’ll break it to her gently, won’t you?” Kick asked her father in as sweet a tone as she could muster, knowing in the churning floor of her stomach that she was using her father’s affection for her, and his remorse about Rosemary, to her advantage. But she’d made herself the promise, and once she was close to her goal of getting back to London, and Billy, she was going to play every card she had.

  * * *

  Her other English friends proved as excited about her return as Sissy, and Kick collected their expressions of ecstatic surprise like a child picking up shells on a beach. She only wished she could have seen Billy’s face when he read the telegram she sent from Boofie and Fiona Gore’s charming brick house in Kings Langley, just outside London in Hertfordshire, where she spent a lazy afternoon with Sissy and the children.

  GUESS WHERE I AM BOOFIE AND FIONA SEND THEIR LOVE KICK

  His reply hours later was almost as good as seeing his face.

  OVERJOYED AND IN SHOCK WILL GET LEAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE LOVE BILLY

  In her first days back, while she continued waiting on the Red Cross, and on news of Billy’s leave, she spent as much time catching up with friends as possible. Debo was in Yorkshire with her newborn Emma, but promised to get down to London as soon as she could, and so Kick passed some lovely hours with Jane and Sissy and Fiona Gore during the day, then adding Bertrand, David, and Boofie in the evening. Bertrand’s greeting, “I see you had the good sense to ignore my advice when it came down to it,” almost made her weep with relief. Instead, she laughed so hard inside his tight embrace, the tears that came to her eyes seemed an extension of her happiness.

  She took long walks to soak up as much of London as her pores could absorb, and was surprised to find her city much as it had been four years before. The wreckage and rubble photographed for the papers after the Blitz had been cleared away in the last two years. The West End was virtually untouched anyway, and most of what she saw looked the same except for the fact that everything closed earlier and there was a blackout every night. St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey and Brompton Oratory all looked nearly as they had before the bombs fell, though the neighborhood around St. Paul’s had been decimated, and so the church looked eerily alone with the wreckage carted away and no new buildings yet to replace the old; some stood partially opened like wounds. But everyone in town walked through the empty space, past the gaping structures, with such a sense of purpose and calm, it was impossible not to follow their lead. If the locals weren’t going to let such sights get to them, neither was she. St. Mary’s church, too, was still standing, but it didn’t pull Kick in as strongly as it had without her favorite priest presiding over it. She wrote to Father O’Flaherty of how much she missed him, and how much she hoped God might bring them together soon.

  Taxis were still difficult to come by, but the fear that had haunted the city in 1939 had gone. There had been so many air-raid drills, no one paid attention to them anymore. Kick reveled in this jaded English nonchalance. The one thing everyone allowed themselves to lament was the cruel fate of dessert because of the limited butter and sugar, and she made a note to herself to ask for candy from home. Though alcohol was harder to come by and a bottle of champagne was precious because so little was getting out of France or making it across the channel, there was plenty of local ale and spirits to be had, and no one was sober after eleven p.m. when the pubs closed. She even had steak for dinner at the Gargoyle Club after an honest-to-goodness cocktail at the Savoy, where she encountered her first round of anti-Kennedyism in the form of Aneurin Bevan, MP for Wales, who told her that her father was a reactionary Catholic, typical of the American State Department. But when Kick asked him to name ev
en one more typical reactionary, he couldn’t.

  Her first night back at the 400 on July 5, she was almost glad Billy wasn’t there with her because she might actually have expired from the rapture, or at the very least made an emotional fool of herself in front of him. Free from the rules and prohibitions imposed by her parents, truly independent in London for the first time in her life, she felt relief and joy bubble up inside her like the champagne fountains of the prewar years. She felt positively effervescent.

  “Golly,” said Johnny Williams, her navy escort that evening. “I’ve never seen a girl dance like you, Miss Kennedy.” Admiral Stark’s fresh-faced blond aide refused to call her Kick despite the many times she’d corrected him that evening, starting with their dinner at Quaglino’s. She’d met Johnny at the Red Cross offices a few days before; he was there with Admiral Stark himself, the commander of the entire United States Navy in Europe. “Betty” Stark was a tall, severe-looking man with a head of white hair, but as soon as he smiled at you, you knew he’d be fun at a party. He’d introduced himself to Kick right away, saying with a hearty handshake, “I knew your father years ago when he was in Washington with the SEC. He’s a good man. Misguided much of the time, but a good man.”

  “I completely agree, Admiral,” said Kick, which he found amusing.

  Then he’d introduced his aide, saying, “Johnny here’s been sampling the city’s many delights, and would be glad to escort you around safely. You’re not just any Red Cross girl, after all.”

  “Shhhhh,” breathed Kick with a finger to her lips. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m asking for special treatment.”

  The 400 and the streets around it looked and felt the same as they had before the war, though she knew there had been bombings right nearby. A few years before, Billy had written to her about being trapped inside for a few hours starting around two in the morning, “the only time the music’s ever stopped there, God bless it.” The music had long since picked back up, and that night the jazz orchestra was blaring all the most popular tunes, like “Stormy Weather” and “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” They had a front man who was a dead ringer for Bing Crosby, with his dark good looks and smooth voice. No one was dancing the Big Apple anymore, and Kick pined for that toward the end of all her jitterbugging and jiving. But she wasn’t surprised—she hadn’t joined in one of those euphoric circles in quite some time, even in the States. The war had made it feel insincere somehow, and it had faded from fashion.

  It was a good thing she didn’t have to work the earlier shift, since she didn’t fall into bed until five in the morning, with her feet and head throbbing. It was almost as if she’d tried to cram four years of dancing into one night.

  Thus far, the only blight on her homecoming had been a ranting letter from John White, written from California, where he was stationed with the navy, saying what a fool she was for going to England and chasing after some lord who’d never have her, and when would she finally learn her place? That’s rich, she thought, after his arrogance had gotten him clamped into prison for taking pictures of British destroyers while he’d been stationed in Ireland. Her final reply to him had included the condom he’d set on her desk at the start of her Washington adventure; she’d unrolled it and put a note inside saying, “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  At least the letters from her mother had been cordial, full of the usual news about friends and family and shopping and plays and church. Once Kick had finally fessed up and told her mother that she was going to London with the Red Cross, Rose had pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. Then she’d looked at Kick and said, to her daughter’s astonishment, “I’m going to miss you. I hope . . . I hope you find what you’re looking for. But remember that if you don’t, I’ll always be here, as will God.”

  * * *

  Before meeting Debo—at last!—at Fortnum’s for lunch, she discovered that she was to be placed at the Hans Crescent Club, right around the corner from Harrods in her old neighborhood. Fourteen Prince’s Gate would be a five-minute walk from her new home. The club itself was a gloomy, severe Victorian building, a former hotel, but that concern faded completely in light of her dearest wish being granted: a post in London, and in Knightsbridge at that!

  Thank you, Daddy, she thought gleefully. And thank you, Lord Father, she added.

  “Debo!” she exclaimed as she hugged her dear friend, not caring how loud she was in the subdued atmosphere of Fortnum & Mason. “I feel like my homecoming is complete now that I’m here with you, just like the old days.”

  Despite having delivered a healthy baby three months before, Debo looked as lithe and lovely as ever. “Where’s little Emma?” Kick asked. “I thought maybe she’d join us.”

  “I forced her to leave the tyke with the nurse, so she could enjoy herself,” said Fiona, casting a stern eye at Debo, who sighed.

  “I miss her,” she said forlornly.

  Kick knew, but didn’t want to mention at such an otherwise happy moment, that she understood perfectly why Debo should feel that way about her new baby daughter after having lost her first child. Instead she hugged her friend again, this time more gently, rubbing a few consoling circles on her back. When she pulled away, she suggested some of their old favorites: “Darjeeling and currant scones, and some of those funny little ham sandwiches?” Debo’s eyes went shiny with tears. But she valiantly blinked them back and replied, “What else? Though I suspect it’ll be tinned ham today.”

  Though it was indeed tinned ham in their sandwiches, and there was no little pot of butter served alongside the scones, it was all delicious and Debo relaxed with every bite.

  “I start work tomorrow,” Kick said with an excited smile.

  “You sound so plucky about it,” Fiona observed, “and all you’re doing is serving coffee and dancing with a lot of GIs.”

  Debo laughed and said, “Surely you know the real reason she’s over here.”

  “I am here to do my patriotic duty,” said Kick solemnly with a hand on her heart, “and if anyone asks you, I hope you’ll tell them the same or I’ll be shipped back to New York on the first boat!”

  “Oh, my lips are sealed,” Debo said, pretending to lock up her pale lips.

  “Besides,” continued Kick, looking at Fiona, “not everyone can be an artist and a speedboat racer.”

  Fiona waved her hand, dismissing Kick’s compliment. “The war makes boating impossible,” Fiona said. “All waters are dangerous.”

  “It won’t be forever,” said Kick with conviction. “And you’ve had more time to devote to your paintings, which are gorgeous.” Fiona’s latest project was a series of outdoor watercolors of her garden in Hempstead, which Kick had seen a few days before. The pictures were as lush and colorful as the flowers themselves.

  Fiona waved this off as well, and asked Kick to tell them all about writing for the Washington Times-Herald. Back in 1939, Fiona had seemed part of a different world, since she was two years older and already married. But now that Kick’s own debutante set was mostly married, and everyone was involved in some way with the war, those formerly significant differences had become inconsequential. The fact that she herself was not yet married occasionally made Kick feel self-conscious, but she tried to remind herself that she had been enjoying what many other women might envy as genuine freedom. She could travel and pursue activities as she pleased, which were not things Debo or Sissy could do anymore. And while Jane hadn’t had any children yet, she was pining for her husband Peter Lindsay and using her prodigious organizational and preparatory skills, once devoted to parties and charity events, to arrange to be with him where he was stationed in India.

  As Kick regaled her friends with stories about her life at the Times-Herald, complete with nearly missed deadlines for plays and movies she had to review mere hours after having seen them, she thought, To them, I probably sound more like Inga Arvad than their old friend. The thoug
ht made Kick giggle to herself.

  As they were saying their goodbyes, Debo whispered in Kick’s ear, “Billy’s beside himself that you’re here. Go easy on him.”

  This was unexpected. Though Kick replied, “I have every intention of it,” what she really wanted to ask was why. It appeared that her once-staunchest ally was now more concerned for her brother-in-law. Why else deliver such a warning?

  The next afternoon she had lunch with the Astors at the House of Lords. “Kathleen, darling, I knew you’d figure it out!” Nancy said when she greeted Kick in the dining room, where paintings of monarchs and PMs hung from the damasked walls. “How wonderful to see you in England, alone at last.”

  Nancy and Waldorf were unreservedly thrilled to see her, and before she’d even had a chance to sit in her burgundy leather chair, at least a dozen MPs she’d known from the embassy days had come over to say hello and to welcome her back. Even Aneurin Bevan, who’d been so downbeat at the Savoy, kissed her on both cheeks and gave her a wide smile. Nancy beamed as if she had brought Kick back personally. Kick supposed that Nancy had played an important role in getting her back to England, but in truth Kick was very proud of how hard she’d worked to finally make this happen by herself—the applications, the interviews, the letters, the training. It hadn’t been easy, and she’d done most of it before even telling her parents.

  Once the three of them were alone at the table with their first course of consommé, Nancy said, “I know you haven’t seen Billy yet, because I haven’t read about it in the papers.”

  “Goodness, she’s only just arrived!” Waldorf said with good humor. “And William is doing his duty to his country.”

  “Thankfully not on the front,” said Nancy. “And you’ll be such a help to him when his run for Parliament gets under way.”

  “Yes, he’s written that he’ll be glad to have my writing skills for speeches,” said Kick. “But surely he won’t need much help. Isn’t he going for a seat the Cavendishes have occupied for ages?”