Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  “You missed my birthday,” the boy said accusingly.

  “I was stuck on a ship. In the middle of the ocean.”

  “You could’ve sent a telegram. Birthday wishes. Did you bring me a present?”

  “I thought we’d pick something out here. Your choice,” Jack improvised.

  “Take me to the zoo tomorrow! There’s a baby elephant.”

  “You’re a baby elephant,” Bobby said scornfully. He’d risen from the table when Jack walked in and stood by his chair, the perfect diplomat’s son. “Tomorrow’s Friday. We’ve got school, and Jack’ll be going to morning mass with Father.”

  Mass. Jack felt something tighten in his gut. He wasn’t a bad Catholic but he wasn’t an ardent one, either—he lived in the gray area of life too much to believe in the black-and-white world Rome and his mother painted. Sinners and Saints, when most of us were somewhere in between. The idea of Eternal Damnation was never something he’d been able to swallow. But Bobby was different—he needed belief, Jack thought. If there were no reward in Heaven, life would be just so much hell. There was a certain satisfaction, too, in all those rules, in telling everybody where they’d screwed up. Jack eyed Bobby’s perfectly combed dark hair, the thin face that was too pale, the bitten fingernails. Bobby would probably end up a priest.

  “Where’s Jean?” he asked.

  “School.” Bobby shrugged slightly, as though he hadn’t been missing his favorite sister. “Roehampton. The convent there. She’s with Pat and Eunice. You know.”

  “And Rosie?”

  Bobby frowned, and glanced swiftly at Teddy; but the little boy had gone back to sawing his beef happily again. “Some place where she’s learning to be a teacher. Monty-something.”

  “Montessori?”

  “That’s it. I haven’t seen her since Christmas.”

  Rosie fell between Jack and Kick in the family pecking order. She was the prettiest of the Kennedy girls—but slow. Very slow. Jack had once punched a kid on the playground for calling Rosie a moron and he dreaded the nights when his mother insisted her brothers take her to their parties. Jack would dance with Rosie and pass her off to Joe just to shield her from some guy who’d try to get her out into a car and lift up her dress. They all tried to shield Rosie. But it was getting tough. Kick had written to Jack a few months ago, worried sick. Rosie had taken to slipping out of Prince’s Gate, and walking the streets of London at night, when everyone thought she was safe in bed. Probably why she’d been shipped off to this Montessori place.

  “Have you eaten, sir?” the nanny asked.

  “No,” he admitted. He eyed the boys’ congealing beef, the grayish peas flattened into gravy, the lumps of potato. English cooking at its finest. His bowel twisted suddenly and he grasped a chair, knuckles whitening. “I’m dining out this evening.”

  * * *

  THE 400 CLUB WAS IN A BASEMENT in Leicester Square. Along with the Café de Paris, it catered to the wealthy twenty-somethings of London. It had a minuscule dance floor and an eighteen-piece orchestra. You could get food if you needed it, but there was no menu; you simply ordered what you wanted and somehow the kitchen delivered. Drinks were sold by the bottle, not the glass, and if you didn’t finish the bottle the barman corked it and kept it until you returned the next night, or the next.

  The practice was useless with champagne, and so a great deal was ordered and drunk to the dregs in the 400 Club.

  Jack wasn’t a member—admittance was by subscription only—but everyone he knew in London belonged, and he’d spent most of last summer in the club’s perpetual gloom. Bert the Doorman, as he was affectionately called, would never turn a Kennedy away; Kick and Joe and Jack haunted the place. The dancing didn’t stop until four o’clock in the morning, and if you were still there at dawn, they gave you breakfast.

  Jack carelessly handed Bert a pound note and walked in. Tim Clayton’s band was playing swing and half the room was dancing the big apple, one of the wildest things to cross the Atlantic in the past few years. The big apple was something like the Lindy and something like the jitterbug, and it was worth watching in Harlem or in a juke joint down Carolina way. But here in London? Jack stopped in the doorway, his eyes roving over the gilded youth of Mayfair as it kicked up its heels in a wavering circle. Trumpets squealed and a redheaded girl fell into somebody’s lap.

  His mother considered the big apple vulgar, probably because it looked like something cannibals danced before eating their supper. Kick was brilliant at it, drunk or sober; she could snap her fingers and shift her hips and smack her neighbor’s ass with the best of them, her mouth open wide in a shriek of laughter.

  Convinced he’d find his sister out on the floor instead of tucked into a corner with Billy Hartington, Jack searched among the dancers—and there she was, crying “Bumpsa-daisy!” as the big apple gyrated to a close. She swung her tush into the backside of the guy next to her.

  But the guy was neither Billy nor his brother Andrew nor his friend David Ormsby-Gore, all men Jack would trust with Kick’s life, but an iron-chested Aryan with massive shoulders and a suit that might have graced Al Capone. He was turning toward Kick, his arm coming up to steady her. He smiled at her glowing face and muttered something she seemed unable to hear. She was leaning toward him, attentive and earnest.

  The White Spider. With his hand gripping Kick’s arm.

  Jesus. Jack shoved his way through the milling crowd, a tea-kettle whistle singing in his ears and the words get away get away get away pounding in his head, frantic and accelerating. Not a knife in an alley for the ambassador’s son but a sacrificial lamb, a girl diabolically chosen, a strike at the Kennedy heart.

  This was true fear and he felt it, now: fear not for himself but for the only thing he really loved, Kick with her monkey’s smile. The Spider jerked her toward the door and she began to look uncertain, as though the script had changed. Then, as Jack watched, she raised her hand and slapped the man’s cheek.

  The Spider reared back and Jack swore aloud but the music started again and his obscenities were drowned in a swirl of sax. He shoved a middle-aged man aside. The Spider wasn’t even aware of Jack; he was looking at Kick. Not with rage or violence, but overwhelming hunger. Because Kick had resisted? Because she’d slapped him?

  The guy gets off on pain, Jack thought. And drove his fist into the Spider’s gut.

  The man’s breath left his body in a whoosh as Jack connected. But he barely registered the punch; he smashed a right like an anvil into Jack’s left cheekbone. Jack’s head snapped back and he reeled, off balance, then put his shoulder down and executed a perfect Harvard tackle, bowling the Spider back against the wall. It didn’t matter that he was a flyweight or that the man could snap his neck with his bare hands, because Jack was suddenly surrounded by Kick’s friends—Billy and Andrew and David and even Bert the Doorman, whose refrain of Now then, Gents, now then, rattled in Jack’s ears.

  He righted himself, skull aching and wind tearing in his throat, his eyes fixed on the Spider. It was clear from the way the man stood that he could toss all of them in the air like cricket balls; but he was being careful now. He did not want more attention. What Jack knew and no one else could suspect was that the Spider was a German and a killer. He would not want to talk to the British police.

  “Jack,” Kick said worriedly. “Jack, you’re bleeding.”

  He felt her butterfly fingers against his cheek.

  “Somebody call the cops. Fast, you hear?”

  “That’s a little close to the knuckle, isn’t it?” she murmured. “The guy didn’t hurt me. He’s just fresh, is all. And he could have you up for assault, kid.”

  Bert and Billy and Andrew hustled the German across the tiny dance floor.

  “Call the police!” Jack yelled furiously. He thrust himself in front of them, blocking the way. The Spider’s face was inch
es from his own. The scar bisecting his lip; the utter lack of expression in his flat blue eyes—

  “Now, now, Mr. Kennedy,” Bert said soothingly, “None of our young people want to talk to the bobbies tonight. I’m sure you’ll agree, once you’ve had a breather.”

  They pulled the man away. Kick’s hand was on his arm. “Jack—do you know that guy?”

  He shook her off and pushed through the crowd, already dancing again, already singing the latest tune, and tumbled out into the street. He had to catch him.

  But the Spider was gone.

  FIFTEEN. DRESSING FOR AMERICA

  “JACK!” His father looked up irritably from his desk. “That’s a helluva shiner. And you haven’t even been in London twenty-four hours, for chrissake.”

  It was the first time Jack had seen his dad since landing in Southampton. They’d both returned to Prince’s Gate so late last night they’d missed each other at breakfast. But Joe Kennedy made no move to greet him. No bear hug or handshake from the Bronxville Shark. “The papers say you threw a punch at some poor bastard in the 400. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “He . . . insulted Kick.”

  “Kick can take care of herself. Whereas you just embarrassed the whole family. A public brawl? From the American ambassador’s son? You know what kind of damage that does to my reputation, Jack? They’ll say it’s because you’re an Irish lout. No couth. No background. Most Brits are just looking for a reason to write us all off. And on your first night back in London, you gave them one.” Joe whipped his wire-rimmed spectacles from his face and tossed them petulantly on his desk. “Your brother would never throw a punch in public, I can tell you that. He knows what he owes the Kennedy name.”

  A wave of heat rose in Jack’s face, along with a memory—sharp as though etched in glass—of Joe systematically pummeling the face of Ritchie Sanborn in the dirt of the Dexter School playground while he took bets from the crowd of watching boys. Joe beat up somebody nearly every day and Jack made a fortune in marbles, the betting currency of nine-year-olds. Brawling was what the WASP kids expected from Joe, who was perpetually as tough and hearty as Jack was pale and ill. The other boys taunted and ridiculed the Irish Catholic Kennedys daily until the fighting began. Then they lined up to watch.

  “I’m sorry if I let you down,” he said.

  “It’s time to grow up, Jack.” Joe shuffled some papers, refusing to meet his eyes. “We’re all tired of your screwups. Joe’s risking his life in Spain, you know—and doing good work. I read his reports to the folks at Nancy Astor’s last weekend, and the Cliveden Set was mighty impressed, I can tell you. When Joe says this Franco’s the only hope for pushing the Communist thugs out of town, high-level Brits sit up and take notice. And by high level, I mean Chamberlain’s cabinet.”

  “You read Joe’s letters to Chamberlain’s cabinet?”

  “Nancy thinks I should get them published,” Joe retorted. “I’m working on Henry Luce over at Time right now. But as for you, son—straighten up and fly right. You can’t be an embarrassment forever. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Jack said.

  Joe nodded brusquely and reached for a file. Son dismissed. Jack stood there, awkward as only his father could make him.

  “It’s swell to be back. Not much has changed—except your walls, of course.”

  His father had inherited a large office on the American embassy’s second floor, swathed in pale blue silk. He’d replaced what he contemptuously called “the fairy look” with oak paneling. The room overlooked Grosvenor Square, where already the gardens were being sacrificed to a British trench crew. There were trenches in Hyde Park, too, and the streetlamps were being painted black. London feared attack from the air, delivered without warning or a declaration of war.

  His father glanced at him; something in his face softened. “Need a beefsteak for that eye?”

  Jack’s left socket was swollen, the skin every kind of color.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “I hope the other guy looks worse.”

  Jack smiled faintly. There was no way on earth he could begin to explain the White Spider to Joe Kennedy.

  “How was your crossing?”

  “Lousy. I spent most of it in bed.”

  “—And slept in everything you own.” His father scanned him briefly. “Those clothes are a mess. Get down to Poole’s right away and order some things that fit. You’ll need lounge suits, morning dress, white tie and tails. And a pair of silk knee breeches.”

  “A pair of what?” Jack demanded, revolted.

  His father’s mouth twisted. “It’s queer as hell, I know. But that’s England all over. Tell Poole’s you need everything by middle of next week—we’re flying to Paris.”

  Paris. Jack’s pulse quickened. Diana.

  “I want to chat up Bill Bullitt on this Munich business—get the French view.” Bullitt was Roosevelt’s ambassador to France. “Then we’re heading to Rome for the Pope.”

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “And his successor’s about to be crowned,” Joe said patiently. “Roosevelt’s asked me to attend. I’m the most prominent Catholic in the diplomatic corps.”

  “Swell.” A papal mass. At the Vatican. That would last the better part of an entire day. Standing and kneeling, standing and kneeling, while the incense settled in his hair.

  “Your brothers and sisters are coming later, by train. Mother’s flying in from Egypt.”

  “When’s the . . . coronation?”

  “Next Sunday. March twelfth.”

  “How long will we have in Paris?”

  “A few days.”

  “And when will the rest of the family get there?”

  His father shrugged. “Next Friday?” He leaned toward him conspiratorially. “How’s about you and I paint Paris red? Folies Bergère? Or there’s Josephine Baker. I hear she’s something else.”

  “We ought to take Kick with us,” Jack said suddenly. “On the plane. Instead of sending her with the kids.”

  Joe Kennedy frowned. “Put kind of a damper on the Folies Bergère, don’t you think?”

  “Well, maybe, but—”

  How to say I don’t want to leave her alone? He’d watched his little sister like a hawk last night, urging her whole glittering group of friends to abandon the 400 Club for the Café de Paris, glancing back through the black cab’s rear window to make sure no blond-headed thug was following. He was terrified Kick would wander off, with only Billy between herself and a knife.

  “She’d like a few days in Paris,” he said lamely. “Shopping.”

  “Judging by the bills I’ve paid, she gets over there often enough.” His father clapped him on the shoulder again. “This is a stag trip, Jack. Now get outta here and order your clothes. I don’t want to see you again until you’re presentable. You’re dressing for America, remember?”

  Jack went. Poole’s was not all that far from the German embassy. He could look up Willi Dobler on his way.

  * * *

  A KID WITH A BLEMISHED FACE and a feldgrau Nazi uniform told him in heavily accented English that he was in the wrong building. This was the embassy, Number 9 Carlton Terrace. Herr Dobler worked in number 8.

  Jack didn’t ask what they called number 8. He thought he had a pretty good idea.

  He gave his card to a bland individual in an impeccable suit, who eyed his wrinkled jacket dubiously. “May I ask why you wish to see Herr Dobler?”

  The accent, this time, was Oxbridge; and the boredom in the drawl was familiar from a hundred London parties.

  “We met on the Queen Mary. He suggested I stop by.”

  “Ah. You’re one of those.” The cool eyes surveyed him again; the lips quirked with amusement. “Aren’t you Ambassador Kennedy’s son?”

  “He has
a few.” What did the guy mean, you’re one of those? “Could you tell Herr Dobler I’m here?”

  Jack waited while the man’s shoes clicked down a marble hallway and disappeared through a door; number 8’s business was conducted at the rear of the building. And probably, Jack thought, through antennae on the roof.

  He shifted from one foot to another, his right thigh throbbing. The small pocket he’d carved in the muscle for his DOCA tablets was red now and sensitive to the touch; probably an infection. He’d have to abandon it and cut a new flap of skin elsewhere. In the meantime it was growing uncomfortable to stand. There were no chairs arranged before the reception desk; building number 8 discouraged visitors. But an Ionic column thoughtfully supported a corner of the foyer; Jack retreated and leaned against it. He glanced at his watch. How much time would his father mentally accord him for ordering clothes?

  The door at the far end of the hall opened quietly. Willi Dobler strode toward him, neat and elegant; before he’d even reached the desk, his hand was extended.

  “Jack! What an unexpected pleasure! Have you had luncheon yet?”

  The languid Oxbridge man followed behind; the scent of his cigarette wafted across the foyer. Jack was conscious of him watching Dobler. Watching them both.

  “I’ve barely had breakfast. I was out late last night—at the 400 Club. But you know that, don’t you? Your friend the Spider probably reported already. He’s stalking my sister.”

  A silence; Dobler’s smile faded slightly; his eyes slid over Jack’s bruises, slid away. Jack read something like nervousness in his face.

  “I want his name,” he said.

  “Whose name, my dear fellow?”

  “The Spider’s. Because if I see him near my sister again—or anyone else in my family—I’m calling the police. I’ll have him arrested for harassment. Questioned by people who count in the British government. Got it?”

  His voice was rising and it echoed around the marble walls of Number 8 Carleton Terrace; Dobler glanced over his shoulder. The Oxbridge man eased around him and confronted Jack.