Page 22 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘How is your German coming along?’Diana asked.
‘Badly.You know how too frightful it is to learn foreign languages.’Unity shuddered.‘And how simply mortifying to try and speak them.But I am determined, so that by the time my engagement to Hitler is announced for real –’ she looked hard at Kick as she said this, a mean little smile at the corners of her mouth ‘– I will at least be able to manage a few sentences.’
‘Boud, don’tstir.’That was Debo, who gave Kick an apologetic grin as she said it.
Kick was relieved at the grin.She did hope Unity wouldn’t start going on about Hitler.Dinner was one thing, but she knew well what her father meant about distance, even when she pretended she didn’t.Sometimes conversations had a way of leaping ahead of her, often only half-explained, so that she struggled to understand exactly what was being said, but knew she had somehow ventured beyond ‘distance’.
The three sisters were funny together, Kick thought, watching the way they teased each other, finished each other’s sentences, made jokes that no one else understood.It was as though they had their own private language – a blur of nursery slang, references to old jokes and half-finished phrases.They were by turns sharp and affectionate, and quite unlike the open competition, the eager engagement, of Kick and her older brothers.And yet, they were like them too.Exactly as Debo had said – a family that was a tribe, with their own customs.She and her brothers and sisters were the same.How many times had someone said, ‘You Kennedys, you’re too much’, with affection, or resentment?
Mosley watched the sisters indulgently in a way that reminded Kick of something but she couldn’t recall precisely what, until Unity demanded, ‘What did you think of the Führer’s speech yesterday?Did you see how it was reported inThe Times?’
‘Better than it was reported elsewhere,’ Envers said.
But Mosley put a hand up.‘Hush, Unity,’ he said.‘We said no politics tonight.’
Unity looked as though she wouldn’t heed him, opened her mouth defiantly, then closed it and shrugged.‘Very well,’ she said, ‘but it’s not politics to me.’
And then Kick understood.He was like her father, at Hyannis Port, conducting discussion around the lunch and dinner table as though his children were a choir attuned to his baton; calling up now this voice, now that, bringing them out then stowing them away again.The base notes that were Joe Jnr and Jack; hers a contralto maybe; the girls, Eunice, Pat and Jean, altos; and the little boys, sopranos still, but with depth there.She looked at Mosley, who looked back at her.
‘Kathleen,’ he said, ‘why don’t you tell us what you think of England – and us English?You’ve had long enough to consider us all.And I don’t imagine you are slow to opinions.’
‘Oh, Kick loves everything English,’ Debo said.‘Especially anything beginning with B …’
‘Why B?’Unity demanded.Diana looked from Kick to Debo and raised her thin eyebrows to high arches.‘Why B?’Unity asked again, looking from Kick to Debo to Diana.‘I hate when no one tells me things!’
Kick could see they were making a big fuss of her, but didn’t understand why until, after dinner, when, instead of sitting over their port, the men came straight into the drawing room, and Mosley came to sit beside her.Swiftly, Diana crossed the room and sat on Kick’s other side.It was, Kick thought nervously, like sitting between two large cats.
Mosley asked her more questions – about England, about America – that were broad and innocent, and yet made Kick feel uncomfortably as though she was telling secrets when she tried to answer them.He listened so closely to everything she said, smoking cigarette after cigarette, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth away from her, that if he hadn’t been married, if his wife hadn’t been sitting so close to Kick that their arms were touching, if she hadn’t reached over and taken Kick’s hand at the very moment that Mosley said, ‘I do want us all to be friends,’ Kick would have thought he was making a pass.
As it was, she didn’t know what to think, and so she said something polite, casting for an excuse to remove her hand from Diana’s.Diana must have felt the twitch that meant she wanted it released, but she squeezed tighter.Then, letting go of Kick’s hand, she ran a finger lightly down her cheek.‘What pretty freckles you have.’
‘My mother says I need to wear a hat, that English girls are never so freckled,’ she blurted out.
‘A pity for English girls,’ Diana said lightly.
She couldn’t mean it, Kick thought, looking at the smooth creaminess of Diana’s face.But she felt a warm glow that she had bothered to say it.
‘I hear you have met the pope,’ Mosley said.
‘I have,’ Kick said, eager to tell her story.‘I was in Rome for Holy Week a few years ago, and I met His Holiness and Il Duce on the very same day, can you imagine?’
‘I can try,’ Mosley said, twinkling warmly at her.‘If I’m right, it was a family friend who made the audience with His Holiness possible?’Did he choke, just a tiny bit, on the wordHoliness?Kick wondered.
‘Cardinal Pacelli,’ Kick agreed, remembering the cardinal who had been so kind to her on her trip to the Vatican, and how, when he had come to America a year later, he had stayed with her family in Bronxville.
‘The very man.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘I hope to,’ Mosley said.
‘Did you know,’ Diana interjected with a laugh, her large eyes with their tiny pupils – black dots swimming in a sea of pale blue – open wide, ‘that in Leeds, there are so many Catholic members of the British Union of Fascists that Mosley’s nickname is “The Pope”?’
Mosley must have seen the shock on Kick’s face, because he shook his head – a tiny shake – at Diana, and said smoothly, ‘My wife jokes, of course.Although –’ thoughtfully ‘– it’s true that our cause appeals to a great number of Catholics, who understand instinctively, as we do, that there is right and wrong in the world, and that sometimes it is a matter of what we feel more even than what we think.’He paused and looked for a long time at Kick.‘Catholics are clever at understanding that there is only so far that logic can take us.That sometimes feelings lead us to know things that mere logic cannot.Don’t you agree?It is this same sense of trust, offaith– may I call it the discipline of faith?–’ Kick nodded, even though she didn’t know exactly what she was nodding at ‘– that Catholics understand.’
He talked fast, but picked his words with care.Kick could feel him doing it – considering one, then another, discarding, choosing.‘The truth is, we feel certain that, just as Rome supported General Franco in his crusade against communism, so Rome will support Germany.’He paused.Was he waiting for her to agree?How strange it was that he talked ofCatholicsas though they were different to simplypeople.‘But I suppose your father knows a great deal more?’Again, that inviting pause.‘Perhaps one day he might make it possible for me to exchange these views with Cardinal Pacelli.’
‘I’m sure he’d love to,’ she said, thinking of her parents’ delight in showing the cardinal around New York, introducing him to their friends and in turn meeting with his acquaintance.Mosley smiled.Which made Kick remember that she was the ambassador’s daughter, and that for all her hosts’ charm there was no such thing as idle conversation.The wine at dinner must have made her fuzzy.‘I mean,’ she temporised, ‘someday, if the cardinal ever visits England …’ How much simpler things had been in America, where she needed only to think about sports and lessons and who to go to the ballgame with.
