CHAPTER 34
As soon as Kick and Billy announced the engagement on May 4, the press devoured them. It was worse than either of them had predicted, with reporters taking their tea and meals on the pavement outside all their homes as they waited for one of them to exit, and calling the Cavendish family secretary at all hours of the day and night, begging for a comment. They even had the poor taste to call Debo right after the birth of her child. Billy, staying in the house his family had rented in Easton for the reception, called Kick and said crabbily, “I don’t dare say anything over the phone for fear it’s being monitored.” No one in the family could leave their homes without being attacked by cameras and pencil-at-the-ready reporters. Kick assumed it was happening to her parents and siblings, too, though they also made no comment. All Kick knew of her scattered family was their worrying silence, and the fact that her mother was in a hospital in Boston.
Kick hunkered down in Marie Bruce’s apartment, allowing her mother’s friend to fuss over her and steadfastly not mention Rose or any other Kennedy, for that matter. Instead, Marie focused her energy on making sure Kick had a beautiful if last-minute wedding dress, which she insisted was a gift—and the milkman’s, it turned out, since she convinced him to give her a few of his fabric coupons when she didn’t have enough, promising to repay him with just as many of those plus some coveted bottles of wine when her next allotment came in. It was a knee-length dress made of a very fine crepe in the palest of pinks, reminding Kick of the peonies that bloomed in Hyannis Port in the early summer. Marie also wrapped up a box of brand-new lingerie she’d originally ordered for herself, and gave it to Kick over tea the afternoon before her wedding. “I can’t accept this,” Kick said, embarrassed by the charity as well as the unexpected frills and ties on the undergarments.
“I insist,” Marie replied firmly. “A young bride needs to feel seductive. It puts some of the power back in your hands.”
And she made sure Kick had a cake to serve to her guests. Because of the restrictions on sugar, even Claridge’s, whom Marie convinced to bake it, had to assemble it without frosting. But it would be chocolate, and that was a real consolation, to Kick’s mind.
At last the morning arrived. Kick stood before Marie in the dress that had come off the sewing machine mere hours before, with drops of Vol de Nuit on her wrists and behind her knees. Her mother had bought it for her annually since that first trip to Guerlain.
“You’re a vision,” said Marie, dabbing tears out of her eyes. They embraced, and Kick pretended for a moment that the other woman was Rose.
Then Joe Jr. bounded into the apartment looking very smart in a dark wool suit and tie, and exclaimed with open arms, “Where’s the bride?” with such enthusiasm, Kick felt her heart soar.
Ducking into a taxi, the three of them sped to the Chelsea Register Office.
“Have you heard from Jack?” asked Kick.
“No, and I cabled him the other day and told him he was a bastard,” Joe said.
“I’m glad I could provide you with another excuse to malign him,” Kick said.
“Yes, I appreciate that,” Joe replied. “He’s become Dad’s whipping boy, and it’s sad. But let’s not talk about sad things today. Let’s think about Debo’s new baby, and champagne in a few hours, and how pretty you look, and how you’ll become a marchioness today. Little Kathleen Kennedy of Boston, a marchioness! It’s quite a coup, little sister.”
“Oh, Joe, don’t be vulgar,” said Marie, but Kick could tell she was amused by her brother’s bragging.
“Kick loves vulgarity,” whispered Joe. “It’s one of her best-kept secrets.”
He prattled on the whole ride, and Kick loved him for it.
In its staid redbrick way, the Chelsea Register Office was a reassuring building even if it wasn’t Brompton Oratory or Westminster Abbey—maybe, Kick thought, because it was neither the Oratory nor Westminster. It was their place, hers and Billy’s, and she was suddenly happy about the uniqueness of it, the way it said, We made our own choice.
“Ready?” Joe asked her with his most open and exultant expression, his hand on the door of the taxi as the reporters swarmed the black car.
She closed her eyes and pictured Billy in her mind and saw his smile at the May Fair nearly a year ago when she’d returned. “Yes,” she said. And her brother opened the door.
As the flashbulbs popped and the reporters shouted—“Miss Kennedy! Is there a Protestant priest inside?” “A Catholic?” “Did your parents call to congratulate you this morning?”—Joe put his arm protectively around her, and they ran from the taxi, up the steps, and into the building, which was mercifully free of the press. In fact, with all the neatly dressed people going about their quiet business, no one would ever know there was a tempest outside.
A giddy Anne Cavendish stopped Kick in the hall and said, “You look absolutely beautiful! I’ve been sent to whisk you away so Billy can’t see you till you walk into the room. You should see him, by the way. A nervous wreck! I’ve never seen him so emotional about anything.”
“I hope that’s a good sign!” Kick said, following this girl who would soon be her sister-in-law to a whitewashed room only big enough for a desk and two chairs. She wondered what it was used for. Joe went to check on Billy, and Marie to check on the flowers.
“Of course it’s a good sign,” Anne reassured her. “I didn’t mean to worry you, only to let you know that he is rather overcome.”
Kick longed to see him. It had been three whole days since she’d laid eyes on him. Anne chattered on about something to do with their parents, but Kick couldn’t focus on a single word. She was sweating. She hoped she didn’t stain her delicate dress!
Soon, though, Joe knocked and put his head around the door and declared, “Showtime!”
He handed her a bouquet of the pink camellias from Chatsworth that the duchess had brought down for the occasion. Kick put her nose to them and breathed in the sweet, springtime scent of her future home. She felt honored that Billy’s mother had wanted her to carry them toward him that day.
Jutting out his elbow, Joe offered Kick his arm, and the two of them followed Anne down the hall to a room only a little larger than the one they had been in, equally unornamented except for the proudly displayed Union Jack, and a few vases of pink carnations and camellias blooming cheerfully around the room.
Kick had thought that when she was finally in the room with Billy, she would look to him right away and their gazes would be romantically locked for the rest of the ceremony, but she found herself feeling suddenly and deeply shy. So instead of raising her eyes to the front of the room where Billy stood in his uniform waiting for her, she made grateful eye contact with her new family and old friends—Elizabeth, the duke and duchess, Anne, Nancy and Waldorf Astor, Debo, Sissy, David—and smiled with a slightly bowed, embarrassed head.
A man at an upright piano in the corner played the most famous bars of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” for Kick’s short walk from the door to Billy on her brother’s arm. At last, she looked up at him, and his smile—that same smile she’d loved even when she feared she’d forgotten it, that smile she’d changed her whole life for—made everything else disappear. Their short ceremony was like an intimate prayer. I, Kathleen Agnes Kennedy, take you, William John Robert Cavendish, to be my wedded husband . . . I, William John Robert Cavendish, take you, Kathleen Agnes Kennedy . . . in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. When he slid the eternity ring onto her finger, it looked new again. She gave him a golden band that clinked against hers when they kissed to seal their promises to each other. When their small audience cheered, Kick was startled to remember they were not alone.
At the reception in the Easton town house, where two hundred guests gathered to wish them their best and enjoy the chocolate cake, Kick found that all she wanted to do was leave and be truly alone with her husband. Her husband! Even though this party was for them and about them, it didn’t feel nearly as merry and gay as any of their evenings at the 400. For Kick, the highlight of the tedious hours was the moment when the duke took her aside and said, just, “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Duke,” she replied, and when he smiled, she knew that he understood she was talking about much more than the party or the sparkling bracelet, a Cavendish heirloom, he had given her as a wedding present.
At last Billy came to her side, put a warm hand on the small of her back, and whispered in her ear, “Come with me.”
Lacing her fingers through his—her husband’s fingers, she thought with a shiver of pure happiness—she followed him out of the drawing room, up the stairs, and into the bedroom where he must have been staying these past few nights, judging from the men’s grooming materials on the vanity.
He shut the door, then scooped her into his arms and laid her down on the bed. Her whole body hummed with desire; even her toes were curled with it. He gently lowered his body onto hers and began to kiss her. First on the lips, and then her jaw, and neck, and even the tender space below her ears—what a revelation that such a small bit of skin could be sensitive enough to make the rest of her convulse with pleasure. She reciprocated, at last able to touch and kiss him the way she had dreamed so many times. His body was heavier on hers than she’d imagined, but she wasn’t afraid of his desire, even though she’d thought she might be when it came to it. When she felt him press against her, she moved her legs so that her knees were on either side of him, and she could feel him, the beginning of what it would be like to be fully one with him, and there was no fear, no hesitance, only an intense, resonant craving.
Unexpectedly, Billy groaned roughly and then pulled away, rolling onto his side, and put one hand on her feverish belly.
“What?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“Not here,” he said. “Not the first time, with all those people downstairs wondering where we are.”
“Oh, them? I’d forgotten all about them,” she said, and they both laughed, but with a note of dread that they did have to face them once more.
It was another several hours before their train arrived in Eastbourne. They walked in the twilight to Compton Place, where a romantic meal with another bottle of champagne was waiting for them in the dining room, which they completely ignored in favor of retangling themselves as they had been earlier, and then as they never had before.
Sissy had been right. Kick wore very little real clothing in the next few days, and instead was extremely grateful for Marie Bruce’s generous stash of lingerie, not that she ever wore any single piece for long, as Billy became hilariously adept at untying, unsnapping, unhooking, and flinging away. Still, she wore every item and discovered that satin sheets felt even better, more shivery and supple, on her legs sliding toward his than she’d dreamed. She hadn’t felt this good and strong in her own body since she was a child glorying in the surf at Hyannis Port.
They ate strawberries in bed and read bits of their favorite poetry and novels to each other, letting newspapers stack up outside their unopened door. When they did leave the room, it was to take long walks in the orchards or laze on chaises among the copious spring flowers in the gardens. Once they walked on the beach, getting themselves ice-cream cones and eating them even though the wind whipped their hair and made them freezing cold. It was fun to get warm again.
They did initially accept the post into their little bubble, but it was a mistake they didn’t repeat, for among the plentiful notes of congratulation were envelopes full of vitriol, mainly for Kick. The worst of them were from strangers, Catholic matrons from Boston to Dublin. Whore! You little Judas. How could you do this to your mother? Other letters, from people she knew, were more tempered in their outrage, but she felt them just as sharply.
While Billy went through his own stack of missives, lying with her on the bed, she began to sniff back tears.
“Darling, what is it?” he asked, suddenly alert and sitting up.
She handed him one of the letters.
“This is abhorrent,” he said.
She nodded. “The thing is, this,” she said, crumpling one of the letters, “doesn’t bother me as much as knowing my mother agrees. I still haven’t heard from her. She’s gone down to a spa in Virginia, and she hasn’t even said hello, or . . . or . . . anything. I’d rather her get angry with me, and say something.”
Billy kissed her on the cheek, then disappeared for a few hours that afternoon while she bathed and got some fresh air. The next day, the disagreeable mail had been tidied away, and all Billy said of it was, “Let me deal with the letters, since it’s my fault they’re arriving at all.” And two cables arrived. The first was from Jack, and it read:
SORRY FOR THE RADIO SILENCE YOU’LL ALWAYS BE MY KICK GIVE ONE TO BILLY FOR ME I SAW YOU FIRST LOVE JACK
She laughed till she cried, and pressed the telegram to her chest. Billy was pouring himself a whiskey and looking rather pleased with himself, and she asked, “Did you have anything to do with this?”
He shrugged. “Your brother loves you, Kick. I don’t think he realized how much you were suffering.”
She hugged him tightly and felt slightly more relaxed.
A few hours later, another cable arrived from her father.
WITH YOUR FAITH IN GOD YOU CAN’T MAKE A MISTAKE REMEMBER YOU ARE STILL AND ALWAYS WILL BE TOPS WITH ME
“And this?” she asked Billy, showing him the second wonderful telegram.
He shook his head. “Much as I’d like to take responsibility, I can’t in this case.”
It must have been Joe, she thought, and her chest filled with relief and love for her oldest brother. She would try once more with her mother.
Kissing Billy on the cheek, she said, “See you at dinner? I have a letter to write.”
“Of course,” he said.
After saying a rosary in the quiet of her own room, which she hadn’t visited since her arrival, and lighting a candle to the Virgin, Kick sat down to write to Rose. She told her mother how much she hoped she had regained her health, and took pains to reassure her. “You did your duty as a Roman Catholic mother. You have not failed, there was nothing lacking in my religious education.” And she stated again, as she had many times before, that she herself was still a Catholic, and would continue to be one. Billy didn’t want it any other way. She would pray, and hoped her mother would pray, that the church would change its views of marriages like hers. I love him, Mother, and I know you love me. And I love you. Please let your love guide you to know how I feel, and why I’ve done what I’ve done.
She felt better for having written it, and sent it with the evening post, telling herself as the butler took it away that it was the best she could do and every word was true. God, she felt certain, would forgive her.
It was time to enjoy the rest of her honeymoon.
The following week found Kick and Billy in the little town of Alton southwest of London, where his regiment was once again stationed. They knew he’d be sent to the front soon, and so Kick tried to make sure every moment they shared as newlyweds would be like a page in a book Billy could turn to when he’d gone. It was no mean feat, since their suite of rooms at the Swan Hotel amounted to little more than the single bedroom they’d spent so much time in at Compton Place, and they were far enough away from London to make all their favorite social rituals impossible.
“Well,” she’d said when they first surveyed the tiny quarters, “good thing we’ve been practicing living small.” She wondered idly where the Greek vase from her mother had gone.
Billy laughed and pulled her to the bed. “We don’t need any other furniture, do we?”
When he wasn’t with the guards, they went on bike rides and ate picnics, napped in the long grasses of summer meadows. She shopped for his favorite lemon-cream biscuits and whiskey and even discovered a bottled local ale that met his standards, kept vases of fresh flowers in their rooms, and dreamed up new ways to please him in the evenings when he returned. They visited with Boofie and Fiona, and David and Sissy, and went to Crash-Bang one weekend and had a marvelous time with Joe and Pat.
“How’s it feel to be a marchioness?” Joe asked her.
“Like nothing,” Kick replied. “I haven’t assumed any duties yet.”
“You just wait,” Billy said threateningly. “Mum’s giving you an adjustment period, but she’ll be sending the lists soon.”
“Well, tell her I can’t wait,” Kick replied. Because she couldn’t. People like the Irish bellboy at the Swan treated her with an almost absurd level of respect, Marchioness this and Marchioness that, but it all felt very abstract. Half the time she didn’t even respond when they addressed her that way, since she was so used to responding to Miss Kennedy. She longed to do something—and initially, she hoped that something might start with a baby, but then her period arrived. Billy had said with a naughty grin, “We’ll just have to try harder.”
In a moment by themselves at Crash-Bang, Joe Jr. said to Kick, “I got a letter from Mother. She’s back to buying you clothes at Bergdorf’s, so you must be forgiven.”
So Kick’s earnest letter from Eastbourne must have had some effect. But still. “Marie Bruce told me she’d heard from Mother, too,” Kick said, “and that she was in good health. I just wish she’d write to me.”
“She will,” Joe reassured her. “Give her some time.”
Kick sighed. She’d begun to grow numb to it all. The happiness she was experiencing with Billy tempered every other feeling, made all that sadness and loss feel somehow irrelevant. The ocean between her and the rest of her family helped, she had to admit.
“What about you?” Kick changed the subject. “By the looks of things, you and Pat are closer than ever.”
Joe laughed in a chagrined way. “I can’t explain it,” he said. “After all the other girls, why should a married mother of three kids make my heart triple its former size?”
“Maybe it’s because of the children?” Kick mused. “The little ones adore you, and you like being adored.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. They were both quiet for a few minutes, then Joe went on, “I hope I’ll finally get my opportunity to show everyone what I’m really worth on this second tour of duty.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Joe. Nor to Pat. I hope you know that.”
“I do,” Joe said. “I have something to prove to myself, though.”
“Don’t go doing something stupid just to be a hero,” she said, her voice becoming wet and thick with emotion, “because I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She wanted to say the same thing to Billy, since he was so eager to get to France, but she didn’t dare. She knew he’d hear such a warning as sacrilegious, since his primary quarrel wasn’t with his brother, as was Joe’s—no, Billy’s fight was a sacred one for king and country.
“Don’t you want to be proud of both your big brothers?” Joe asked.
“I am proud of you both.”
Joe shook his head. “All right, I want you to be more proud of me. Is that so terrible?”
Kick laughed. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she said. “I already am.”
For just a second, Kick saw Joe’s eyes go watery. Then he coughed and used the back of his hand to rub his eye. “You don’t have to flatter me, little sister.”
“I’m serious. I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you for everything.” Everything hardly covered it. Joe Jr. had been there for her when no one else in the family had. And he’d been amazingly humble about it, too. She’d learned the other day, from Debo, that her brother had even stood up to Billy’s father before the wedding when he’d asked Joe to get Kick to sign some paper saying she’d raise the children Protestant. “You even told the Duke of bloody Devonshire where to put his pen,” she said to him now, slyly. “That took some guts, big brother, guts and backbone.”
“Well, Billy’s father needed to know you’re a woman of your word.”
“You’re a good man, Joe. Better than you give yourself credit for. There’s more than one way to be a hero.”
This time he cleared his throat and stood up. “Enough of this sissy talk,” he declared. “Time to find the monkeys and teach them some American football.”