Page 108 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
Chapter Fifty-Four
London, September
Kick
Kick had begged every way she knew how.She had pleaded how much she wanted to stay; how useful she would be – all the things she could do for her father once Rose was gone; how she could keep Rosemary company, because Rosie, it seemed, was to stay.But the ambassador was adamant.She was to go home, sail on theWashingtonwith her mother and siblings.Jack was here to escort them home.
‘Why does Rosie get to stay?’Kick demanded.
‘Rosemary is settled here.It wouldn’t be good to move her,’ was the evasive answer.
‘I am settled here too,’ she protested.
‘You are more adaptable,’ her mother said crisply.She didn’t sayIt doesn’t matter where Rosemary goesbut Kick felt it.
‘But why can’t we both stay?We can be company for one another,’ Kick begged.‘I can’t go now.Think how bad it will look, when Brigid and Debo are learning to drive ambulances and make themselves useful, for us all to run, as though we are afraid.’
‘It doesn’t matter.You’re not English, Kathleen, may I remind you.You are American.What happens here, now, is none of your business.England is at war, America is not.It doesn’t matter what people here think of you.It’s time for you to go home.’
‘But Pa is American too, and is not going home,’ she said.
‘I will be,’ her father said shortly.‘Now that it’s war, there’s nothing for me to stay for.’
Still Kick couldn’t reckon with the word ‘war’.She had heard it for so long, out there, part of every conversation, but no more substantial than the weather.Will it rain and must I bring a coat?Will it be war and must I go back to America?Each as insubstantial as the other.Because sometimes it didn’t rain, even when you had a coat.And so many times, it hadn’t been war, even when they were told for sure it would be.
But now it was.
And suddenly all the new rules were overthrown.The way her parents had learned to listen to her and consult her about what she did was finished.Now, she was no more than Pat or Eunice, to be sent where they decided.The views she heard when out with friends that she had passed along to her father, these mattered no longer.The rush to enlist, to learn bandage-folding and basic nursing duties, the ambassador didn’t care to hear about them.And when Kick complained that she felt left out, all he said was, ‘It’s not our war.’
*
‘At least you tried,’ Brigid said later, when they sat in Kick’s bedroom, with the gramophone playing softly; Glenn Miller, ‘Wishing (Will Make It So)’.She lit a cigarette, breathed in deeply and coughed.
‘Smoking?’Kick asked.
‘Trying.It seems the thing, no?Now that I have ajob.’She wore the slightly baggy green dress and burgundy cardigan of the Women’s Voluntary Service with as much pride as she had ever worn Schiaparelli, Kick saw.
‘Don’t,’ Kick begged.‘It’s so unfair.’
‘Well, it’s foul,’ Brigid said, dropping the cigarette onto a saucer.‘I cannot make any headway with it.’
‘Not the smoking, silly, the job.I’m so very jealous.’
‘Jolly hard work,’ Brigid insisted cheerfully.‘Yesterday we lugged old saucepans and ladles about for hours, great piles of them, all to be melted down.Mamma was frantic that we didn’t have more to give.Silver isn’t much use, they say.Then Papa pointed out that we’ve already had all the iron railings taken up around Grosvenor Place and Elveden, and even the great iron knocker from the front door, and perhaps that would do for now.’
‘Here too,’ Kick said, looking out the window.‘It’s like an obstacle course out there.’The railings outside Prince’s Gate and all around Hyde Park had been torn up and out so that only deep holes remained.It looked, she thought, as though some angry, careless creature had lost something, and dug all over in a frantic effort to find it.Without railings, the streets and green spaces seemed to bleed into each other.Trenches had been dug across the entrance to the park, deep scars of brown in the soft green; graves, open and waiting.And the very same people who, only a year ago, had scolded Teddy and Bobby for trampling the grass or knocking a flower had watched without comment, except to say, ‘They won’t be driving any tanks through here,’ with quiet satisfaction.
‘Somehow, one doesn’t think war will be sopractical,’ Brigid said thoughtfully.‘Everyone talks of sacrifice and duty, but in the end it’s miles and miles of bandages to roll and jumpers to knit and pots of tea to make and pour.’
‘How I wish I could stay, and roll and knit and pour with you,’ Kick said.She lay back on her bed, arms behind her head.‘How sickening it is to leave now.To run away.’She looked sideways at Brigid.‘I guess our friends think I’m the worst sort of coward?’
‘No one thinks that, darling,’ Brigid said vaguely.‘We know you’d stay and help if you could.’
‘I still hope to persuade Pa.TheWashingtondoesn’t sail for a week yet.’She sat up, suddenly energetic.‘Why, anything can happen in a week.’
‘Anything,’ Brigid agreed.Then, ‘What of Billy?’
‘Joined his regiment weeks ago.The Coldstream Guards.’Kick knew she sounded proud and tried to be nonchalant.‘Andrew too.And Chatsworth is to be a boarding school for girls.’
