rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">23 Video footage of the family at Hyannis Port shows the children pushing, jostling, racing one another, showing off. But always having the greatest fun. Their friends appeared happy to float in their orbit, perhaps hoping that some of the Kennedy glitter would rub off on them.
Kick and Jack grew closer and closer. Like all the Kennedys they bickered and bantered, friends remarking that they were like Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday.24 Jack, the great reader of the family, would tease Kick for her philistinism. She would tease him back for being skinny and vain. But Jack adored Kick, and it was of vital importance that his favourite sister sanctioned any girlfriend of his. She was so popular and easygoing that it was almost impossible for anyone not to get along with her. If she had disapproved of a girlfriend of Jack’s, that would have been the end of the relationship.
Jack had now got his driving licence and they would take off together to a dance at the Yacht Club or a movie at Idle Hours, the local theatre. If Kick stayed out late, at the golf club or the drugstore (the favourite hangout for American teenagers with ice-cream sodas), her mother would come looking for her in her little blue car. ‘Dear, it’s time to come home,’ she would say. The children always recognized the headlights on her car, and knew that it was time to go home.25 If Jack and Kick were very late home, they would crawl into the drive, turn their own headlights off, be careful not to slam the doors, take off their shoes and creep into bed. In the morning, Kick would find a note pinned to her pillow: ‘The next time be sure to be in on time.’26
When she was at her friend Nancy’s house, over the road, staying beyond her curfew of nine o’clock, Rose would lean out of the window and summon her home calling out ‘Kaaaathleen!’ in her whiny Boston drawl.27 The Kennedy children thought it a great tease to call out their sister’s formal name in imitation of their mother.
Despite their great wealth, the Kennedys were often scruffily dressed and rarely carried cash. They would put their ice creams and drinks on account at Megathlin’s Drugstore. Kick was usually barefoot and dressed in cut-off shorts and T-shirt. On rainy days, she would cycle the 3 miles to the movie theatre, where she loved to watch romantic films.
Kick chafed against her mother’s efforts to turn her into a proper young lady. One sunny day, Rose called her in from the beach to give her a flower-arranging lesson. Kick was torn between giggles and being horrified. Her mother gave her a basket and a pair of scissors and told her to go and cut flowers and then arrange them. Kick cut the flowers the wrong length and then put the basket down, absent-mindedly, leaving the flowers to dry out in the heat of the sun.28
Kick, like Jack, was untidy and disorganized. Her clothes would be strewn over her bedroom floor, just waiting for someone else to pick them up. Make-up and the latest records were scattered over her dressing table. She would retire for the evening to find another of her mother’s interminable notes pinned to her pillow telling her to be sure to wipe her lipstick off her mouth before going to bed.29
A hierarchy was established within the family with Joe Jr, Jack and Kick firmly at the top. Kick would introduce her brothers to her girlfriends for dates, and their friends in turn would fall in love with her. She would tease her brothers when she found bobby pins in between the car seats.
Kick and Jack shared a sense of irony and got through life on their charm, whereas Joe was strong and opinionated, with an explosive temper. But he rarely lost his temper with his youngest siblings. People remarked that he treated little Teddy like a son. In video and photographic images of the Kennedys in Cape Cod, Joe is often seen with a small child on his shoulders, or cuddling one of his younger siblings.
But Joe Jr could be tough with Jack and Kick, and in many respects they feared him more than their father. He was the one who often meted out discipline. He was over-protective and obsessed with the family honour.30 Jack did not try to be the favoured son. He knew how difficult it was to compete with Joe the Golden Boy, so he rarely bothered. ‘Jack did the best on the intellectual things and sort of monopolized them,’ Eunice recalled.31 It was also a way of rebelling against his father who rather disliked intellectuals. Kick recognized that Jack, like her, was a rebel, and that rebellion could take many different forms. For the moment, she was content to flirt with her brother’s friends, play her records on her Victrola, tease her siblings, show allegiance to the Kennedy code. Kick was biding her time.
Friends noticed the especially tight bond between Joe Jr, Jack and Kick. They were an unbreakable trinity, talented, good-looking and most of all good fun. A friend of the family said that the three were like a family within a family: ‘They were the pick of the litter, the ones the old man thought would write the story of the next generation.’32
8
Every time I think of that darn brother of mine I burn.
Kick Kennedy
September 1935.
They boarded the Normandie. This was the golden age of the ocean liner, and the Normandie, finished entirely in Art Deco style, was extremely popular among wealthy Americans. It was the fastest ship, and in June had broken the transatlantic speed record, averaging nearly 30 knots.
It boasted a huge swimming pool, a theatre, a winter garden, a gym, a chapel and a nightclub. Among its magnificent interiors was a huge, luxurious first-class dining room, illuminated by twelve pillars of Lalique glass, and with thirty-eight matching glass columns; comparisons were drawn with the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, which earned the liner the nickname ‘The Ship of Light’. The room could seat 700 people, and served the very best French cuisine. ‘The food here is very pimp-laden,’ said Jack in a letter to Lem in reference to the gorgeous French puddings that he was devouring. Joe was constantly criticizing Jack for his spotty complexion, but the boy comforted himself with the knowledge that Kick also had a huge pimple on her chin.
Joe Sr had recently resigned his chairmanship of the SEC in the hope of getting a better position, though he had declined all the posts that Roosevelt offered. What he wanted was to become Secretary of the Treasury. Before setting off for Europe, he had announced to the press that he was ‘through with public life’.1
It was Jack and Kick’s first trip to Europe. He was en route to the London School of Economics, she to the Sacred Heart Convent in St Maux. But, for now, they had a few days of fun to look forward to on the world’s most glamorous ocean liner. Jack twirled Kick around the dance floor of the Grille, and they swam and played deck tennis and promenaded the liner, discussing and planning their year together in Europe, the places they would visit during the holidays.
Kick arrived at the Sacred Heart Convent in St Maux. She loathed it, and was determined that nothing was going to make her stay. Rose later admitted that the school was ‘so strict in its rules and so remote from the general life of the country’ that Kick was ‘forlorn’.2 Kick pleaded with her mother to let her transfer to the Holy Child Convent at Neuilly in Paris. Rose, for once,
