CHAPTER 17
Her father laughed—laughed!—when Kick and Luella suggested the two of them get a flat together and enlist their services with the Red Cross.
“Nice try, you two,” he said. “But you can help the war efforts from the safety of American soil.” Turning to Luella, he said pointedly, “When I brought you here, you were a nice single girl, and I intend to bring you home to your family in the same state.” To Kick, he said, “I won’t tell your mother about this little request.” Then, turning his eyes to heaven, he said, “Is this your idea of a joke? I work myself into an early grave to avoid war, and now three of my oldest want to rush into it?”
It was pointless to explain that it wasn’t just Billy she wanted to stay for, that Billy had in fact told her to go back to America. Even though she knew England would change, she wanted to stay, to have the privilege of reminiscing about the last prewar season with the only friends who would ever be able to understand. She wanted to help care for London in its hour of need, and she wanted to be in her city when the lights came back on.
In despair, as Jack went to play boy hero in Scotland on Daddy’s orders, to rescue the survivors of the torpedoed Athenia, Kick went to the Red Cross to inquire about the shared homes for women who volunteered as nurses. Maybe if she had meaningful work to do, her father would change his mind—or she’d make just enough salary to allow her to stay anyway. After standing in line for close to two hours, she came face-to-face with a harsh-looking woman not much older than she was, with wind-scrubbed cheeks and an accent Kick could barely understand.
“I hardly need to ask your name, do I?” the woman snorted. “I’d rather ask what a fine Kennedy lady is doing looking for work of this sort. Bedpans and blood.”
Kick smiled as kindly as she could. She hadn’t imagined she’d encounter hostility like this for wanting to help, and she realized how foolish she’d been for not considering the possibility that she’d be recognized—Of course these girls read the society pages! It’s a national pastime. “I want to do my part,” Kick offered.
“Don’t suppose you’ll be needing the form for accommodations, then,” the woman sneered, handing Kick a white sheet of paper with blanks to fill in, volunteering her hands in the service of king and country. Fearing the newspaper maelstrom of speculative gossip if this young woman went to the press with her information—Ambassador’s daughter looks for anonymous digs in London—and the betrayal her parents would surely feel when the news broke, Kick did not ask for the other form.
When she returned to 14 Prince’s Gate, she found her travel trunks stacked in her room. All the desperation she’d been trying to channel productively unleashed like a storm inside her. She tore down the hall. Her mother was the first person she saw, in her own bedroom, sorting jewelry.
“Have you set a date?” Kick demanded.
Rose turned around and looked surprised to see Kick standing at the entrance to her room. “As soon as your father can arrange it,” her mother replied.
“Two days? Ten?” Kick was yelling, her voice hysterical. Though Billy was due to leave in five days to join the Coldstream Guards, it was thankfully only for training, so he would still be in England, where she’d be able to visit him.
“I don’t know, Kathleen.” Rose stood, and her calm demeanor made Kick even more irate.
“How will we know? When will we know?”
“We need to live as if we might leave the next day,” Rose replied. “Which is why you must pack immediately. Where have you been all morning? Eunice and Pat and Jean have finished already.”
“And Rosemary?”
Rose sighed and looked fleetingly away from Kick. Then she set her small brown eyes on her daughter and said, “Rosemary’s staying to complete her Montessori training.”
“What?”
“Kathleen, I can’t discuss this with you until you’ve calmed down.”
“I am calm!” she shrieked. She felt sick, though not like she had on the train from Cannes. This was worse—a vertiginous nausea had set in. She felt dizzy and queasy, like she was at the edge of a great and terrible precipice, staring down into certain doom.
Rose stood and walked slowly to the door, and stopped inches from Kick. “Ask the cook to make you some tea, and calm yourself. Then pack. We’ll discuss this later.”
Without waiting for her daughter to respond, Rose closed her door. If Kick had leaned forward even a centimeter, her nose would have touched the fine wood panel. She might as well have been in the closet in Bronxville, six years old again. All this time, she’d been seeking her parents’ approval, looking for ways to get what she wanted with their blessing. But she saw now that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted that way. She was going to have to summon the courage to go after it alone. She hoped God would help. Instead of packing, she found her wooden rosary and started to pray.
It embarrassed her to realize that she lacked the courage to defy her parents in the way she would have to in order to stay in London. She turned once more to the want ads, and even went to visit some of the bedsits, most of which were in unfamiliar parts of the city where getting to any of her favorite haunts would have required nearly an hour on the tube. In two apartments she heard mice in the walls, and in one, she saw large black insects scuttling around the single cupboard of the so-called kitchen. All the money in the bank with Kathleen Kennedy written on it wasn’t going to help her if she was going to stay in London against her parents’ wishes. Standing in a fifth and final apartment—this one at least in central London, a few precious blocks from Covent Garden—barely big enough for a small bed, desk, and wardrobe, she was embarrassed at how frightened she felt at the prospect of actually living there. The thought of tea and digestive biscuits for dinner depressed her. At least I’d be as thin as Mother always wanted me to be, she thought bitterly.
On her way home, she literally ran into Bertrand—her bowed head bonked right into his chest. “Whoa, whoa, there,” he said, taking her upper arms in his hands and holding her out for inspection.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, for once doing a rotten job of faking levity.
“I know I’m not Billy, but is it so bad to see me?” he asked.
She shook her head and opened her mouth to reply, but her throat was so clogged with strangled tears that she couldn’t speak.
“Kick,” Bertrand said more seriously. “Are you all right? Can I help?”
She shook her head again, wrapping her arms around her body and shivering.
Bertrand led her into a nearby pub, ordered her a shandy, and sat her down at a discreet corner table.
“Drink this, then decide if you want to talk,” he told her, pushing the half-pint glass toward her.
She did as she was told, guzzling the sweet combination of lemonade and beer. Bertrand always knew just what to order.
“Thanks,” she said. Then a burp escaped, and she blushed deeply and put her hand to her mouth.
“There’s my girl,” said Bertrand. They laughed together, drily.
“So,” he said, “you can tell me what’s wrong, or we can get drunk together. Both are good enough medicine.”
What did she have to lose at this point? If she didn’t speak up, she stood to lose everything. “I don’t suppose you have an attic to stow me away in when the rest of my family leaves for America?”
“Ah,” he said, and she knew he had immediately understood. “I don’t, as it happens. My matronly aunt in Liverpool might, but then you’d have to live in Liverpool.”
“Maybe only temporarily?”
“I’m afraid there is no escaping the north,” he said in an exaggerated northern accent.
She chuckled half-heartedly, then both of them were quiet before he jumped up suddenly, went to the bar, and came back with a full pint of ale. “Drink,” he told her.
“I already feel drunk,” she said, pushing the glass away. She hadn’t eaten in hours and the shandy had affected her quickly.
“I’ll feel better if you have three more sips before I tell you what I feel it my duty to tell you,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow, then followed his instructions, and immediately she felt more relaxed, even though she sensed that what he wanted to tell her was not something she wanted to hear.
“Go home,” he told her.
“Pardon?”
“Go home.”
“Can you elaborate, please?”
“Gladly,” he said, crossing his legs and sitting back in his chair. “It’s going to get messy here in England. I know you want to help, and believe me—we, by which I mean all your real friends here, know you want to stay in England for noble reasons: love of king, of country, and of a certain marquess, heir to one of the greatest dukedoms in the land. And we love you all the more for not loving him just for his lands and title. Because lord knows, you don’t need any of that.”
She opened her mouth to say something about his vulgarity, but he held up a finger and said, “Let me finish. If there was ever a time for bald honesty, this it is. Now.” He drew a breath, then went on. “What’s more, Billy knows you love him, and he knows you love him for the right reasons. But I’ve come to know Billy well, and I believe he will love you more if you remain unsullied by the filth and degradation that’s to come. Get on a boat and let him pine for you. Let him remember you in one of your fine Parisian frocks dancing with abandon, while every other Englishman wished he had you. Believe me, he will dwell at length on that image while he is stewing in his own sweat.”
“It just feels like such a risk,” she said.
“What’s your alternative? Staying here alone because he hasn’t proposed, and being the desperate American girl who waits around for the English aristocrat to make her an honest woman? No. That plot is beneath you.”
Her eyes went wide. She’d never considered the possibility that her staying might appear that way. She’d been so overwhelmed by her desire to stay, she hadn’t thought about it from every angle as a Kennedy should, as she’d been trained to do. Maybe she still needed more training. The thought was comforting, but also maddening, in the same way as looking at pictures of her hero brother in the newspapers every day.
“When would you suggest I come back?”
“When Billy gives you a reason,” he said.
“A proposal.”
“Very likely.”
Bertrand’s advice bore a striking resemblance to Billy’s own plea, but Bertrand had only her interests in mind. “Thank you,” she said, feeling a bit like a scolded child who knew she was in the wrong.
“You are most welcome,” he said. “Now if only there was room in your bag so I could stow away to America with you and avoid fighting in this god-awful mess.”
Maybe she was luckier than she’d thought.
The sense of luck was fleeting. The next week, her final week in England, was as confused as it was confusing. She had to rummage around in her packed trunks every morning to find something to wear, and in the evening when she went out to meet her friends, they had to grope their way through darkened streets, often on foot because too many taxi drivers feared drawing attention to themselves with headlights. So she and her friends arranged to meet at houses where pockets of them lived. Debo showed up to one party before Kick left, on the night before Billy left to join his regiment.
Andrew, Debo, David, Sissy, Billy, Kick, and a handful of others were gathered in the Cavendishes’ London home for dinner and dancing, courtesy of one of the 400’s most popular bands, whom the boys had hired for the occasion. Were it not for the reason they were all coming together, the party had the makings of a perfect evening. Even Sally Norton wasn’t present, and Billy and Andrew had banished their parents to Chatsworth for the weekend. “I told them that this wasn’t the way they wanted to remember their son,” Andrew had said, ever the jokester. But that night, Kick saw great tenderness in the kind and gentle way he tended to Debo, drinking very little so that he could dance with her and remain alert, constantly asking if she needed anything, and keeping his hand protectively on her back.
Debo put on a good face, and for once she was the one to drink too much. Kick could hardly blame her; she’d have wanted to use the evening to forget her tragedy, too. Before she could say anything comforting to her friend, to whom she’d already written a heartfelt letter saying she wanted to help in any way she could, Debo said to Kick, “I don’t want to talk about Unity, Hitler, or anything to do with anyone who has ever caused me pain. So don’t even try to offer your sympathies.”
To which Kick replied, “I won’t. And me, either.”
Throughout the night, Kick kept Bertrand’s advice in mind and attempted to be her most lively, likable self. She wore an emerald-green bias-cut silk dress that Billy had once said he liked, and she laughed and joked relentlessly. But dancing with Billy was physically painful. When he held her close and she felt the satisfying way her cheek rested on his chest, the crown of her head nestled in the curve of his neck, her heart hurt with sadness and longing.
At last he pulled her away from the others, into the downstairs kitchen of all places, where it appeared they were alone—all the servants must have gone to their own quarters, as it was close to one in the morning. There, they kissed. And kissed and kissed. The open mouth that had once shocked her on that dark stairwell was now a familiar, welcome force, his large hands moving deftly over curves and hollows on her body she’d never have dreamed a man would touch only a year ago. Now she welcomed Billy’s hands, and wished, wished, they were in a position to enjoy more.
Both of them sensed when it was time to pull away. He picked her up by her waist and set her down on the rectangular wooden table in the center of the room, which gave her a little more height, enough so that he could touch his forehead to hers without having to stoop too much.
“I miss you already,” he whispered.
“I miss you, too.”
“If I asked you to marry me tonight, in Westminster Abbey, by the archbishop of Canterbury . . . would you?”
“Is that even possible?” Is it? She couldn’t think clearly with so much blood coursing noisily through her ears.
“If it was?” His eyes were closed, like a boy wishing on birthday candles.
So many things came to Kick’s mind . . . Father O’Flaherty’s kindness, Wickham’s and even Lady Astor’s prejudices, her mother’s door in her face, her father’s pride in her London accomplishments, Gabrielle’s childless future with the man she loved, the majesty of the new pope riding on his crimson throne into the Vatican, her imagined photo of herself with Billy on the lawn of Chatsworth, their children in white christening clothes.
No, she realized. Not tonight.
“I’d hardly be the woman you’ve fallen in love with if I just said yes without question, would I?” she asked, closing her own eyes and wishing herself.
She heard him inhale and hold his breath. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Then he kissed her fiercely and quickly.
“No,” he said, pulling his head back and looking into her eyes, which she had opened at the same time. “No, you would not. And I fear I love you all the more for it,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Race you to the first letter.”
“I’ve already started mine.” He grinned.
“Then I have some catching up to do,” she said.
“Hurry,” he said quietly. “Hurry.”