The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham

Author:Laurie Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

21

Future Prospects Unknown

The sirens did keep sounding but there were never any bombers. Every time it was due to something different. Electrical malfunction. Testing the system. False alarm over friendly planes. But it got to your nerves just the same.

Mrs. K sent for me. She said, “Now, Nora, here’s the plan. I’ll be sailing on the Washington with Kick and Euny and Teddy and Cook. Fidelma will bring Pat and Jean and Bobby, with Danny Walsh to help her. I want you to stay here with Rosie until she gets her teaching certificate. The Ambassador will get you on the first sailing after that. You’ll still be home by Christmas. You do understand, dear? This is so important for Rosie. It’ll be her first big achievement.”

I said, “Does Rosie know the rest of you are leaving?”

She said, “I’ll see her if I have time before we go. But you know she doesn’t really pay attention. If I tell her we’re going she’ll have forgotten it five minutes later.”

But Rosie knew all right. I took Teddy and Jean out to visit with her before they all left and she was full of it. Proud as a princess.

“I’m staying on,” she kept saying, “because Daddy’s going to need help and I’m the oldest girl. I can make tea parties for him if he likes. I can come at weekends and play checkers with him. That’ll help him to relax.”

England and the war might have started the undoing of Kick, but I could see it might be the making of Rosie. The rest of the tribe was going to be out of her hair and she was going to have her Daddy to herself for five minutes.

Two days before the first sailing we drove to Prince’s Gate to finish up the packing.

Mrs. K said, “Nora, I want you to go to Rigby and Peller to collect my new brassieres.”

Kick said, “I’ll go.”

“No,” she said. “You’re to come with me to say good-bye to Lady Bessborough.”

Maybe she guessed what Kick had in mind. Billy Hartington was at the Devonshires’ town house in St. James’s, waiting on orders from his regiment. Kick came running after me with a letter for him.

“Please, darling Nora,” she said.

Ink on her fingers. Smudges all over the envelope.

I said, “You’ll get me shot.”

She said, “Please don’t tell. I’ve written Billy that I’m going to do everything I can to come back. I’ve asked him to wait for me. If he really loves me, he will, don’t you think?”

There was no arguing against that. If she’d been mine she’d have had my blessing anyway. I thought the likeliest thing was, when she got back to New York she’d fall back in with her old crowd and Billy Hartington would be forgot. It’s hard to keep love warm when you’re half a world apart. That was what I had in mind to write to Walter Stallybrass. I’d promised Mrs. K to see Rosie safely home and that was that. But that note never got written.

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