The Importance of Being Kennedy

He said, ‘I can do better than that. When she comes to visit I'll ask her to sign it for you personally.’

‘When Gloria Swanson comes to visit,’ was all we heard around the house after that. Fidelma and Gertie Ambler who cooked for us were all aflutter, and Kick and Rosie too. They were quite fans of Constance Bennett till their daddy took up with Miss Swanson. After that Constance Bennett was history.

Then he came home one weekend and said, ‘Nora, I want you to put on a Halloween party. Spooks and witches and all that. Miss Swanson will be in town with her children. It'd be a nice thing to do. Invite some neighbours' kids in, fix up some pumpkin lanterns. Boy, that takes me back! That was one of my first ventures. I bought up a whole load of pumpkins one fall, paid my sister Loretta to scrape the flesh out of them, ready-made lanterns, you see? I sold them off a handcart and turned quite a profit.’

We'd never had Halloween parties before and Mrs K didn't really hold with it, but she went along with it that year, as long as nobody dressed up as a demon. Euny and Pattie went as leprechauns, I remember, and Kick was a phantom in a sheet, gave Bobby nightmares with all her flapping and wailing.

All the talk in the kitchen was that Mr K was doing a lot more than putting up money for Miss Swanson's talking pictures.

Gabe Nolan said, ‘It's not talkies they're making. It's music. Know what I mean? I drive him round there and the Do Not Disturb sign goes up on her door. I've seen it. He's in and out in half an hour but that can be long enough for the pot to boil. But if her old man happens to be at home he only stays five minutes and he doesn't come out whistling and checking his fly. I tell you, it's in the bag. He's diddling her.’

If what Gabe said was true, you wouldn't have known it from watching Mrs K, not even the day he brought Miss Swanson to the Halloween party.

Gertie Ambler was scandalised.

‘The poor creature,’ she kept saying. ‘Having her nose rubbed in his goings-on.’

Fidelma thought the arrangement quite suited her.

‘Eight babies,’ she said. ‘She's wore out. And the old bugger's only forty. Sure somebody has to scratch his itch. So long as he keeps paying the dressmakers' bills I don't think Herself'll complain.’

But I thought it was a terrible thing him bringing Miss Swanson into the house and showing her off to his children. And still Mrs K held her head high.

It was only when she came up to the nursery at bedtime that I saw her wobble.

Kick said, ‘Miss Swanson said we must call her Aunt Gloria. Wasn't that nice of her? Don't you think she's beautiful?’

I caught Mrs K's eye and I'll swear I saw a tear, until she blinked it away. I hadn't intended to catch her off guard with her shame. It bothered me all that night, as if I'd been the cause of it. And I'll bet Joe Kennedy never lost a wink of sleep.

I'd always thought Gloria Swanson looked a fright in her photographs, with all that blacking around her eyes, so it had been a surprise to see her in the flesh, quite natural-looking and nice. She was wearing diamond ear clips and a sable coat though, every inch the film star. Mrs K had on a good wool dress and pearls, but the baby was showing well by then. She'd looked a prim little body beside Miss Swanson.

They'd had a cup of tea together and then Miss Swanson joined in the apple-bobbing and a game of Nelson's Eye, all very jolly. There was tittle-tattling in the kitchen, of course. I had to tell Fidelma to watch her tongue. I didn't want the children hearing things.

I said, ‘There might be nothing more to this than there is to him playing a round of golf with Jimmy Roosevelt. It could be a business arrangement. Just because she's a woman. Women can be in business.’

Danny Walsh said, ‘They can too. I wouldn't mind putting a bit of business her way myself. Did you see the pins on her?’

Miss Swanson had her children with her, the girl was Kick's age, the boy was a timid little mite, a bit younger than Euny Our lot were polite to them but that was about as far as it went. The Kennedys never really warm to outsiders. They had all the playmates they wanted in the family, and sometimes getting them to mix with other children was more trouble than it was worth. Joseph Patrick had come home from school with a fat lip, been in a fight with a boy he'd invited to the Halloween party. The boy said he wasn't allowed. His parents didn't think the Kennedys were suitable people. And somebody wrote on the chalkboard that Mr Kennedy took women to hotel rooms.

He said, ‘What does that mean?’

I said, ‘It doesn't mean anything. People in business like your daddy go to hotels all the time. There was no need to get into a fight over it.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘he had a smirk on his face so I figured I'd wipe it off for him.’

Herself got a new mink jacket for Christmas, picked it out herself from Jacoby's showroom in Manhattan, and when Christmas Day dawned Mr K had another surprise for her. He'd bought Malcolm Cottage, which we'd rented the last two summers at Hyannis, so it would be theirs to go to every year. He was having it renovated and rooms added. He said we should hardly recognise it the next time we went up there. Mrs K was thrilled. Of all the places they've lived I believe it's still her favourite.

I got a letter from Ursie the first week of the New Year, to say Margaret had another baby boy, Ramon Novarro Mulcahy, mother and child doing well. She wrote, I did everything I could to get the poor child a proper name. She could at least have named him Desmond for Dada, but her head is full of picture-palace nonsense and Frankie Mulcahy daren't say a peep to contradict her. I hope there'll be no more after this one. Two is surely enough for anyone in this day and age, especially for A FISH PORTER WITH ASTHMA. I'm certain Margaret didn't need advice from Ursie on how to stop having babies, and I was glad she'd got the two. More than the rest of us looked like having anyway. Edmond's Widow Clavin was too long in the tooth, Deirdre was a Bride of Christ, and Ursie had her old-maid dreams about Mr Jauncey As for me, well, there was a time. I thought I'd meet somebody, but in my line of work you don't get a lot of time for meeting somebodies. And now I look back, I had the best of both worlds. I had more of their little smiles and kisses than ever Herself did, and none of her aches and pains.

Ursie's letter went on.

I mailed Deirdre a box of initialled handkerchiefs from Federated. Whether they'll ever reach her I don't know. They'll probably end up in a mud hut somewhere, but it's the thought that counts. Mr Jauncey is visiting with his in-laws in Nashua.

Every year Ursie sends handkerchiefs, and if I know Deirdre, she gives them away. I bet all her little piccaninnies are wiping their schnozzes on hankies from Federated. I try to picture Deirdre getting older. The last picture we got she was tubbier and wearing spectacles, but she hadn't a line on her face. Still that big, shining ‘did you hear the angels’ smile.

Directly after the New Year Mr K was off on his travels, to Florida first, to play a few useful rounds of golf, he said, and then to California. The children hated to see him leave. The house felt different when he was at home. Kick and Rosie loved making up little dances to perform for him, and the boys liked to get him playing Spit or Concentration. That last evening, before he left for the train station, Herself even dusted off the pianoforte and played ‘Silent Night’. Me and Fidelma sat on the stairs and listened.

She said, ‘See, Brennan? Happy Families. I'm telling you, they've come to an arrangement about Miss Swanson.’

Mr K was to be gone a month at least. He came up to the nursery to kiss Bobby goodbye, only Bobby wouldn't be kissed.

He said, ‘Nora, I may not be around much but my children are everything to me. If ever there's a problem, if ever there's anything you think I should know about, especially when Mrs Kennedy goes away to have the baby, you can ask Eddie Moore to call me. I don't care what time of day it is. He always knows where I can be reached.’

I said, ‘They like to get your little letters.’

‘And I like writing them,’ he said. ‘Regular correspondence is a good habit for a child to learn. It's been such a swell Christmas. I really hate to go but when you're in business you can't turn your back for a minute. You have to be on the spot and on your toes.’

After he left I heard Mrs K back at the pianoforte. She was playing Mayor Fitzgerald's favourite, ‘Sweet Adeline’, putting in all the twiddly bits, but when I looked in on her to say goodnight her face was grim enough to stop a Waterbury clock. It was common knowledge, written up in the dailies, that Miss Swanson was down at Palm Beach and that was where Mr Kennedy was heading, and even a new mink jacket couldn't take the sting out of that.

Danny Walsh drove her up to Boston the next week, to a nursing home, to get ready for her lying-in. There were to be no more home births. She said, ‘I can't get the rest I need with children running up and down the stairs and it's not good for the baby to have a mother with jangled nerves. If there are any problems you must call Mrs Moore.’

Mary Moore was very good-humoured about taking over when Mrs K was away. She even came down when Joseph Patrick made his first communion because neither his mammy nor his daddy could be there. But I didn't have to call upon her while Mrs K was away to the baby hospital. Even Jack managed not to get sick and we had a grand time. I gave Rosie a holiday from learning her letters and she helped me with Bobby and Pat, and when the others came in from school I left them in peace to play their own games. There were none of Mother's Quizzes to study up for. Joe was thirteen by then so he thought he was too old for milk and cookies by the nursery fire. He liked to be out of doors, throwing snowballs at tin cans or polishing his ice slide. But Jack didn't care for the cold. He'd have his head in an adventure book or play a game of Chutes and Ladders with Kick and Euny.

It didn't worry us that Mr and Mrs K were both away from home. In fact we all preferred it. With Mrs K you could never be sure where you stood. Little things bothered her. You could be getting the ‘dear heart’ treatment, hearing how she could have married Sir Thomas Lipton, if she'd played her cards that way, and been a real English Lady, then she'd start going through the trash can and before you knew it you were getting a telling-off because you might have eked one more spoonful of malt extract out of the jar you'd thrown away. Left to ourselves, me and Fidelma could run that nursery blindfolded, and after Jean arrived we had plenty of chances.

Jean Ann was born on Kick's eighth birthday. We were having a little tea party for some of her friends from the day school when we got the telephone call. Mr K was already on his way up to Boston to see the new arrival.

Joseph Patrick said, ‘Nora, do you think I'm old enough to be the new baby's godfather? I think I am.’

He was a hard one to fathom. I'd had to read the riot act only half an hour before, because of his silly rough-housing, nearly pulling Jack's arm from its socket, and then there he was, talking about standing godfather to his new sister. And he did it too. Mr and Mrs K thought it was a wonderful idea.

Jean Ann was a month old before she was brought home from Boston so Herself had been gone eight weeks complete.

‘Milking it for all she's worth,’ Fidelma said. ‘Well, I suppose it'll be her last time.’

We lined them all up outside the door like a guard of honour for her homecoming and young Joe carried baby Jean in from the car.

Danny Walsh said, ‘Mrs K's done all right out of this. Your Man gave her a diamond bracelet, and when she feels up to it she's going on a trip, anywhere in the world she fancies.’

Gabe Nolan said, ‘But here's the best bit. The lady friend only went and sent her flowers. A great big bouquet of roses that nearly filled the room. How about that for front?’

Fidelma said, ‘See what I mean, Brennan? They're the best of friends, Miss Swanson and Mrs K. They're in cahoots.’

I said, ‘I wouldn't believe everything Gabe Nolan told me. It could have been anybody sent her flowers.’

She said, ‘Will you ask her or will I?’

We went up to the nursery to give Jean her bottle. The nearest I could say, she had a look of Kick about her. Poor Jean. That's how we always talked about her. ‘Like Kick but fairer, and a look of Joseph Patrick about her when she smiles.’

Mrs K said, ‘Now, dear hearts, I'm going to take a little nap, but later on I want to see the weight charts and bring my records up to date.’

Fidelma said, ‘Oh Mrs Kennedy, we heard you got roses after the baby was born. Is it true? Can you really get roses in February?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did get roses, from Miss Swanson and her husband. It was a great extravagance but such a very kind thought. Of course I received letters and cards from so many of Mr Kennedy's business associates.’

She saw Fidelma's little game.

We went in convoy to Hyannis as soon as school was out, to the ‘cottage’ as Mrs K called it, though it was hardly a cottage any more. Two big new wings had been built on, and garages and an extra floor, with a deck. I was given the first weekend off, to go on up to Boston and see Margaret's new baby and little Rudolph Valentino. They'd already shortened ‘Ramon’ to ‘Ray’, which Ursie said sounded common. She didn't approve of pacifiers either, but then Ursie had never walked the floor all night with a child cutting his first teeth. Margaret wanted to know all about Miss Swanson.

She said, ‘You've done all right for yourself, no mistake. I'm stuck behind Middleton's counter every afternoon, weighing sugar and slicing bacon, and you're rubbing shoulders with film stars.’

Ursie said, ‘Just keep your feet on the ground, Nora. You know we get famous people coming to the office, senior figures from the business world, but I treat everyone the same.’

Margaret said, ‘You kill me, Ursula Brennan. You're not telling me you get anybody to top Gloria Swanson coming into the stuffy old place where you work.’

When Margaret and Ursie saw each other they never stopped picking.

I said, ‘I don't rub shoulders with anyone. There are days I hardly set foot outside the nursery. We've eight of them to see to.’

Margaret said, ‘Eight. Sweet Jesus. Could you not take my two as well? Just slide them in on the quiet? I'll bet they'd never notice.’

Mr K was away in California most of the summer of ’28 but when he did come home he arrived in style. Gabe Nolan would meet him off the train in New York City and drive him out to Queens, to where he kept his latest toy. An airplane that could land on water. It meant he could fly up to the Cape and land right on his own doorstep. The first time he arrived it caused quite a stir. People were running around, thinking a plane had crashed into the sea, but after they found out who it was and what it was they didn't pay any more attention. Hyannis folk were too dignified to get excited about Joe Kennedy and his trappings.

The house renovations were still going on and some of the new bathrooms had still to be finished, but the movie theatre was ready, downstairs in the old furnace room. Danny Walsh was taught how to work the projecting machine and Mr K kept us supplied with new movies, cowboy stories mainly, hot off the press. They'd arrive by special messenger once a week.

Fidelma asked him why it was always cowboys and Indians.

He said, ‘Because they're easy to do. I can make twenty of them for what those fur hondlers spend on one movie and folks are just as happy to watch mine. People in Scranton, Pennsylvania, would watch paint dry, they're so bored.’

Danny reckoned we saw things before they were in the picture palaces even in New York City, and we were all allowed down there to watch because, as Mr K said, he'd never allow a movie to be made in a studio of his that wasn't fit for his family to see, and the help too. Mrs K didn't care much for movies though. She'd sit at the back and after half an hour or so she'd slip out. She was happier pulling on an old pea jacket and going for a walk along the strand.

She said to me once, ‘Movies are so noisy. I don't like all the shooting. Peace and quiet are what I like. That's why I go to first Mass. It's worth getting up early. If you go later other worshippers can be so irritating. I love a room to myself, Nora, and stillness.’

Well, she was in the wrong family for that.

KENNEDYS EVERYWHERE, LIKE A RASH

The house in Riverdale was a rental. We knew Mr K had told Eddie Moore to look out for a place to buy and in the spring of 1929 we moved again, to Bronxville, to a villa standing in its own park, Crownlands. I suppose the money was fairly pouring in by then. He owned the companies that were making the movies and he owned the picture houses where they were shown. For all I know he could have owned the celluloid factories and the popcorn machines too. Not that any of the help saw much of the money he was making. You only asked for a raise if you were prepared for a big performance from Herself. To hear her you'd think they were down to their last dime. She should have been on the stage, that one. By the time she was done with her sob story you felt you should maybe offer her a loan yourself.

So it wasn't the money that kept me with the Kennedys. I stayed because I liked the life and I loved the children. Anyway, blessed are the poor. As Mammy used to say, ‘If you want to know God's opinion of money you've only to take a look at them he gives it to.’

People like me and Fidelma and Gertie Ambler who cooked, and Danny and Gabe, we were the lucky ones, because we were permanent staff, kept on whatever the time of year. But the maids and the gardeners at Hyannis had to find something else when the house was closed up for the winter. Mrs K didn't see why she should pay people when she was finished with them for the year.

Crownlands was our grandest house yet. We had beautiful grounds and every convenience, and yet Herself still didn't seem happy. Thwarted, I always thought. She'd had her education and been the toast of Boston, riding with His Honour the Mayor. She had money and a fine family, but there was no joy in her. She could tell you the date of every doctor's visit and she could tell you to the last cent what we were spending on socks or baby bottles, but she didn't have anything to occupy her that would use all her brains and foreign languages. She was more like a head housekeeper than a mother, and she was so restless. She wanted to go back out into the world and make her mark, you could tell, but she'd eight children and her sacred duty hung round her neck like a sack of rocks. Mr K did take her along with him to California one time, which was how she happened to miss Jack and Rosie's first communion, but she never went again.

She said, ‘Mr Kennedy is so busy with meetings all day when he's travelling but I'm not the kind of wife who sits around waiting to be entertained. I shall take a trip to Europe.’

Fidelma said, ‘Do you think we'd ever move, to save Mr Kennedy all the travelling?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I do not. We're not California people.’

Still, he was so tied up there he didn't even come back for the burying of his own father. I'd have thought they could have kept the old feller on ice until Mr K had time to attend, but Mrs K said it wasn't necessary. She said it was time Joseph Patrick learned to represent his daddy on certain occasions and his grandfather's funeral was a very good place to begin. He was bought a new black suit from Alexander's. Only fourteen but he was already a head taller than his mammy, quite the young man when he offered her his arm and walked her to the car. I told Mr K when I saw him.

I said, ‘Young Joe did you proud. And my sister wrote me from Boston. She said there was a very big turnout for the funeral.’

‘So I heard,’ he said. ‘And I wish I could have been there, but I couldn't leave town. It's dog eat dog in the movie business. If you turn your back for five minutes those Jewboys rob you blind.’

Herself went off to Paris, for culture and shopping she said, and she was hardly out the door before Miss Swanson came visiting. I thought it was highly irregular, and Jack didn't like it either. He stayed out in the bay in his sailboat after everybody else had come in, and he had a monkey face on him when it was time to go in to dinner.

I said, ‘What's eating you?’

He said, ‘How come Mother has to go to France just when Dad's come home and we can all be together for a change? What kind of a family is this, anyhow?’

Miss Swanson was very nice. She remembered all the children's names, and she went along to the movie-star club Kick and Rosie and little Nancy Tenney had got up to swap photographs and act out scenes from the movies they'd seen. She climbed the ladder up into the attic over Mr Tenney's garage to say hello to Nancy and sign her autograph book, like a regular aunt might have done. But it still wasn't right that she was in the house when Mrs Kennedy wasn't.

Mr K took her for a ride through town in his Rolls-Royce but according to Gabe Nolan nobody paid them any attention. If people in Hyannis had money, they never flashed it, and most of them wouldn't have walked to the foot of the stairs to see even Tom Mix. Kick was film-star crazy though. That's where all her pocket money went. Rosie used to save hers to send to the missionary nuns and Euny just counted hers and then put it back in her piggy-bank, but Kick's went on movie magazines the minute the money was in her hand, and then she cut them up for photos of Douglas Fairbanks or Miss Greta Garbo to thumbtack to the wall.

Young Joe and Rosie both went away to school that autumn. It had been decided that Rosie would never catch up at the day school so she had to be boarded, at a special place for slow learners. I knew that wouldn't last five minutes. It was out beyond Philadelphia, and it could have been the far side of the moon for all that meant to Rosie. She sat with the map Mrs K had showed her, with her finger on the place, looking and looking at me, to see if I could save her from having to go.

Euny kept saying, ‘You're lucky. I wish I could go away to school.’

But all Rosie wanted was to stay home and help me look after baby Jean.

‘I'll try more hard,’ she said. Well, she managed one term at the school but she came home for Christmas such a wreck even Mrs K hadn't the heart to send her back. She said there were other places that might be more suitable and God knows we worked our way through a long, long list of them before we were done. I could never see why it was such a crime for Rosie to be slow. Apart from Euny they were none of them great scholars and Mr Congressman Jack still can't spell for taffy.

Joseph Patrick went off to Choate School in Connecticut that October. He was raring to get there, although Herself would have liked to see him go to a good Catholic school. She was worried he wouldn't be allowed to go to Mass.

Mr K said, ‘Of course he'll be allowed. I'll make sure of it. The main thing is I want my boy in a school where there's no funny business. You can spend a pile of money and end up with a sissy, but they guarantee there's none of that at Choate.’

It was a top school. The kind top families had sent their boys to for generations. I wondered if they wouldn't look down their noses at a Kennedy, especially if Mr K started throwing his money around and turning up in his gold limousine, but the thing about young Joe was, he was one of those people who expected everybody to like him, and if they didn't he just chose not to notice. And he went right along with whatever his daddy said he must do. Like the first term when he wanted to take horse-riding lessons but it would have meant he couldn't go out for the football team and Mr Kennedy put it to him, the football was more important.