The Importance of Being Kennedy. Laurie Graham

       LEARNING THE WAYS OF THE ENEMY

      Bobby was born eighteen months after Pat. He was another one looked like a skinned rabbit, same as Jack. We thought he'd be the last.

      Fidelma said, ‘She'll tie a knot in her hanky now. Sure, she only kept going to get another boy.’

      I thought so too. She was tired of it all by then, even though she had me and Fidelma in the nursery and all the help she wanted in the house. Poor Bobby. He loved to be allowed up to her room, to sit on her bed and watch her get dressed for dinner, but there were times when I thought she'd forgotten she'd ever had him. Rosie was the only one in the family who petted him.

      Kick was at St Aidan's, in first grade, and Euny was just starting in the kindergarten. Joe and Jack were day boys at Nobles down in Dedham. Herself would have liked them all taught by the sisters but Mr K said the boys had to go to a top-drawer school and start mixing with Protestants.

      He said, ‘When you intend to go places it's never too early to study the competition and learn the ways of the enemy.’

      There was talk though that we might leave Boston altogether. Mr K was doing more and more with the moving-picture business, on the train once a month to Hollywood, California. Danny Walsh said it was quite on the cards that we'd be shifting there, getting a house on the same street as all the movie stars.

      He kept saying, ‘That'll give Brookline something to think about.’

      As if Brookline gave two cents about the Kennedys. The children were at the age when they should have been having friends round to play but the neighbours were very stand-offish.

      Mrs K always said they didn't need other children because they had each other but it didn't seem natural to me. That's why I loved going to Hyannis for the summer. Every blessed minute didn't have to be regimented when we were there.

      As long as they worked hard at their sailing lessons and their swimming they were left to run free the rest of the time and they did mix with other children, Kick especially. The first thing she'd do when we got to the cottage was race round to see if Nancy Tenney was at home, and Rosie'd tag along with her. Mrs Tenney might have been a friend for Mrs K too. The Tenneys were a nice family, no airs and graces, but Herself wouldn't socialise. She'd get Danny to run her to early Mass at St Francis Xavier, then she'd be reading in her room or going for her swim, no matter how cold the water. Two or three times a week she'd go to the golf course, but just to play by herself, for the exercise, not for company as Mr K did.

      Danny said, ‘And do you know what she does? She slips onto the course at the seventh and plays the same half a dozen holes over and over. She seems to think she's saving money if she's not seen going out from the clubhouse. Worrying about green fees with all the money she's got.’

      That was her. Penny-mean. I know for a fact she spent five hundred dollars on her outfit for her sister Agnes's wedding but we were only allowed forty-watt light bulbs in the nursery.

      Very often Mr Kennedy would be away a month at a time, but he'd write to the children, and always a proper personal letter to each of them that was old enough to understand, not like Herself, who wrote one letter and sent them each a carbon copy when she went travelling. And then when the word came that he was on his way home you'd have thought the President himself was expected, the children got so excited. They'd all go along to his dressing room, first thing, to watch him shave and tell him everything that had happened while he'd been gone, and then he'd read the funnies with them before they went down to breakfast. ‘Captain Easy’ and ‘Tailspin Tommy’. It was like a holiday for me and Fidelma the mornings Mr K was at home.

      He always brought them presents too, when he came home from a trip, but only little things. A scouting knife or a Spaldine ball, or picture postcards of the movie stars. The only extravagance was the time he brought Tom Mix cowboy costumes, with the kerchiefs signed by the great man himself. They were intended for Joe and Jack, and they caused nothing but trouble because Kick helped herself to one of the hats and wouldn't be parted from it. Joe usually behaved nicely around his sisters but he lit into her as though she was some boy in the schoolyard and he wouldn't be pacified till he got his cowboy hat back.

      When Mr K had been away he'd want to know about what they'd been up to, chapter and verse. How they'd been getting on in school or at the sailing club if we were up to Hyannis. Joseph Patrick won at everything he turned his hand to and so did Euny. Kick just enjoyed herself. If she won anything it was a happy accident, and Jack was the same. He could never quite be bothered to make that extra effort, even though he knew exactly what his daddy would say.

      ‘Don't let me hear you bragging about getting second place,’ he'd say. ‘All second place means is you have to try harder. First place is the only thing that counts. You're a Kennedy, remember, and Kennedys are winners!’

      That was what they had drummed into them and they'd knock you flying to be first over the finishing line. I used to enjoy a game of checkers until the children got old enough to play. They'd study the board and try to distract you while you made your move, as if their lives depended on beating you. Rosie was the only one who wasn't like that. She didn't have the cunning to put one over on you, and anyway, she didn't really care. To her a game was just a pleasant way to pass half an hour, but naturally she did want to please her daddy. She'd have loved to go running to him, to tell him she'd won at slapjack.

      I'd say, ‘For the love of God, let her win, why don't you? Just once in a while?’

      ‘Why should we?’ they'd say. ‘What's the fun in that?’

      ‘I'll try harder, Daddy,’ she used to say, when she could get a word in edgewise.

      ‘Good girl, Rosie,’ he'd say. ‘That's the right attitude.’

      He loved her, of course, but you could tell it irked him to see a child of his so slow. Sometimes it took her a while to think what she was going to say and he didn't have the patience to wait while she got her words out.

      When Mrs K took her up to her room to make her practise her letters he'd say, ‘I don't know where you find the patience, Rosa darling.’

      He always called Herself ‘Rosa darling’.

      She'd come down on a Sunday morning, wearing one of her new rigs, ‘Looking a million dollars, Rosa darling,’ he'd say, and then he'd run off to make one more phone call before we went to Mass.

      I never saw him take her hand though or ruffle her hair. She'd hang on his arm, gazing up at him, but he didn't pay her a lot of attention and neither did the children. When they sat down to dinner he was the one they listened to.

      ‘Dad said this, Dad thinks that,’ was all you'd hear.

      I said to Jack one time, ‘And what did your mammy have to say on the subject?’

      ‘Mother?’ he said,