The Importance of Being Kennedy. Laurie Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ minutes I'd forget what a slave-driver she could be.

      She said, ‘God's sent me another little blessing, Nora, but I'm thirty-eight. I'm too old to be having babies.’

      She was the same age as our Margaret.

      I said, ‘You look ten years younger than my sister and she's only having her second.’

      It was the truth. I wasn't buttering her up.

      ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I put in a great deal of work to keep my looks. These things have to be worked at.’

      That was Mrs K. Just as you were warming to her she'd say something that reminded you she wasn't any old girl-next-door.

      She said, ‘Men have it so much easier. They go out to business, but when they come home everything else has been done for them. We women have to be wives and mothers and careful home-makers. We have to stay young and beautiful and keep our minds lively. And somehow we carry it all off. I never bother my husband with anything, you know? I deal with everything concerning the household myself. I had a college education. I could have done any number of things with my life, but being a good wife and mother, smoothing the way for a great man, those things are just as important, just as satisfying.’

      She made that pretty little speech just before the gossip about her great man started buzzing. Mr K got a new business partner. Miss Gloria Swanson, no less, who'd starred in Zaza and Beyond the Rocks and The Untamed Lady. Fidelma asked him if he could get her Miss Swanson's picture, autographed.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ