the wrong thing was said.
Bill Bullitt told Rose and Kick that one day he had taken himself for a long, relaxing swim in the Black Sea. He swam out deeply, then floated on his back admiring the azure sky. He was enjoying the sense of freedom, of not being followed, until he heard gurgling and splashing from another swimmer. He turned to see the familiar face of one of his NKVD followers, who was pretending to look the other way.
Despite this ominous atmosphere, Rose came to see why Communism was accepted: ‘The masses really were better off in a good many ways than they had been under the Czarist system.’ She spoke to several of the guides who told her that they much preferred the new system and had better lives, education, facilities, childcare and work opportunities, paid for by the state. One attractive guide amazed her by telling her and Kick that people could now read ‘any book in the whole library’ that they wanted to, something the Western world took for granted. Rose and Kick were acutely aware that the libraries were purged of books ‘critical of communism’. Rose was, of course, dismayed by ‘the official doctrine of atheism’.
The Kennedys always believed that experience was better than classroom knowledge. It was an education for Kick to have been to both Italy and the Soviet Union in 1936 during these critical times. She was falling in love with Europe. Travel was opening the world to her in a new and unexpected way. Rose asked her if she wanted to come back home early, but Kick decided that she preferred to stay and do some more travel in Europe. ‘Well, darling, I miss you and wish you were along,’ Rose wrote from RMS Queen Mary, ‘but I am so glad that you decided to stay. You are a great joy to us both.’8 Rose advised Kick to get lots of work done in her final months at the Convent. Kick, on the contrary, was ready to have some fun.
She was still determined to attend the Cambridge May Ball with Derek. While her mother headed home on the Queen Mary, she crossed the English Channel with her Noroton friend Ellie Hoguet en route to the university town of Cambridge. They planned to stay for four days and to attend two college balls. She went shopping and bought a beautiful white taffeta evening coat.9
They were staying in a vicarage in Cambridge in rather humble circumstances, sleeping on the floor on airbeds. ‘None of the rooms had any furniture but a bed.’ Kick said she felt as if she were ‘rolling all night’.10 The next morning, Derek was rowing on the Cam in the ‘Bump’ races, and Kick went along to support him.
Later, she dressed for the Trinity May Ball. Cambridge in summer is one of the loveliest places on earth and the Trinity Ball a highlight of the academic year. Exams were over, and the ball marked the end of the academic year. Strictly white tie and tails for the boys and long dresses for the girls, the event began at nine and the guests were encouraged to wine, dine and dance until dawn. Then, in the early hours of light, they would gather for a survivors’ photograph, still in their evening wear. Those who were still awake would punt down to Grantchester where breakfast was served in the Orchard tea garden.
A marquee had been erected on the banks of the Cam, lit with hundreds of lanterns. Kick had dressed carefully in silk chiffon. Derek was her partner for the evening, but many men were captivated by her and asked her to dance. Her friend Ellie was disheartened by the sheer number of Englishmen who fell for her, noting that forty men swarmed around her like bees at a honey pot.11 They were drawn to her openness and warmth and lack of pretension. The dowdy, prim English girls were simply no match for her, and Kick was incredulous at their drabness. ‘There is something wrong with the English Girls,’ she told her mother. ‘Hardly any pretty evening dresses or girls.’ She thought it amusing ‘to be walking around in evening clothes in broad daylight’.12 Her lovely chiffon dress ‘took rather a beating’.
Kick thought her time at Cambridge was ‘marvelous’. From then she went on to Suffolk with a schoolfriend. She was delighted that there had been no rain in England. Kick was asked if she would go back for another weekend the following year. She was a hit in England – a foretaste of things to come. She was determined to return. She told her mother: ‘Tell Jack that he has to come to Cambridge next year.’13
Her time at Neuilly was now over and she was to return to Noroton, but it had been the most thrilling success, and her year in Europe had made a deep impression, one that would never leave her. Eunice Kennedy remarked that for her father experience was the most important thing in life for building character, whereas for her mother it was religion.14 Kick chose experience.
Kick’s European adventure had given her a certain polish and sophistication, though she was still only sixteen. She had visited the best museums, galleries, churches and buildings of Europe and had acquired a new confidence. She had seen the Pope and Mussolini in Rome, attended the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia and the May Ball in Cambridge. Home in America seemed dull in comparison, though it was always a joy to return to Hyannis Port for the lengthy summer vacation. It had been a very long time since she had seen Jack, who had spent most of 1936 resting and building up his strength. He had been recuperating in Arizona and appeared to be making a good recovery before heading to Harvard in September, after a short stint at Princeton.
Now that she was older, and had been away for a year, Kick was becoming aware of the strangeness of her parents’ marriage. Rose took solace in her faith. She would go alone to St Xavier’s daily mass and, when she was troubled, take long solitary walks along the beach front. She even had her own little summer house (called ‘the White House’) to retreat to when she wanted to be alone.
Joe, meanwhile, continued to indulge his sexual appetite. Kick’s friends felt uneasy about her father’s unwanted advances. Some of them refused to watch movies in the basement cinema because he would touch them and pinch them. In the evenings, he would insist on a kiss on the lips.15 Kick’s close friend Charlotte McDonnell was surprised to discover that Kick’s parents led separate lives, and that when they came to New York City they always stayed in separate hotels, Mrs Kennedy at the Plaza, Mr Kennedy at the Waldorf.
One day, Charlotte went to meet Kick at the Waldorf and mistakenly entered Joe’s suite. He was in the shower and called out that she should leave her coat on the chair and meet Kick and Jack across the hall. He then appeared in just a towel and told the young people: ‘Will Hays came in and saw your coat and turned around and walked away, thinking I had a girl in the bedroom.’ Joe was clearly delighted by this and Jack and Kick thought it delicious that the man in question was responsible for the Hays Code, banning sexual references from Hollywood movies. Charlotte, on the other hand, was shocked. Her own father would never have behaved like this in front of her friends.16
That summer of 1936, Jack invited more of his ‘surprises’ to Hyannis Port, Cam Newberry, Charles Wilson and Herb Merrick. They all fell in love with Kick, who was the female version of her best brother, bubbly, witty, fun-loving.
Kick’s American female friends noticed a new ease in the tomboyish, sporty girl and were amazed by her success and popularity. Kick was not a conventional beauty, especially compared to her sisters, but men continued to flock around her. Kick’s girlfriends wondered privately about the secret to her success. Was it her wealth, her clothes, her connections, her warmth? Later on, her many English girlfriends would have the same thoughts and were equally intrigued by her allure.
Her close friend Nancy came the closest to an explanation when she observed that it was her ‘aloofness’ that set her apart.17 Kick sensed intuitively that men liked a girl who was hard to get.
