The Ocean Liner

Wisconsin

Cubby reached St Coletta at mid-morning. He’d started making his travel plans the moment he’d heard about the assassination on Friday. He’d wanted to be with Rosemary as soon as possible. During his long journey from California to the Midwest over this weekend, he had seen the grim faces, the women who still cried in public, the huddled groups who talked in hushed voices and occasionally glanced up at the sky. People were still saying the killing of the president was the prelude to a Russian attack. Some were waiting for the nuclear missiles to begin raining down.

Out here in rural Wisconsin, that horror seemed less likely. The November skies were cold sapphire, scattered with fleecy clouds that caught the sun. The last of the autumn leaves were clinging to the woods, red and frail. He saw a flock of wild turkeys scrambling across the road, and once a solitary whitetail buck, looking at him over its shoulder.

He turned off County Road Y towards the school, which was set among trees on a rise of land. As he drove slowly between the school buildings, several people waved to him. He was well-known here.

It had been called many things: ‘St Coletta Institute for Backward Youth’ had been pretty blunt. ‘St Coletta Feeble-Minded School’ had been well-meaning but discouraging. Finally, the Catholic Church had hit on the brilliant idea of renaming it ‘St Coletta School for Exceptional Children.’

It had been called many things, and it was many things: a school where the young were given hope, a farm, an orchard, a haven where the irreparably damaged were sheltered, a housing programme where the vulnerable could live with dignity. And it was now Rosemary Kennedy’s home.

Rosemary had her own cottage, a little white unit that was screened off from prying eyes by tall firs and cypresses that were always dark green at any time of the year. There were borders of geraniums and a patch of lawn, all kept neat by the gardeners. Compared to the residences of her surviving siblings, it wasn’t much to look at, but it was sufficient for her simple needs.

He pulled the rental car up in front of the cottage and got out, his ears singing in the silence. There was nobody in the little garden, so he entered the house. The television was on. Rosemary sat in front of it, flanked by two of the sisters. The sisters were both in tears. Rosemary, whom they’d dressed in black, was watching the images on the screen intently but with no outward show of emotion.

‘Oh, Mr Bigelow,’ Sister Ursula said, rising and coming to Cubby, ‘isn’t it terrible?’ She was pressing a handkerchief to her mouth so that Cubby could barely understand what she was saying.

‘How is Rosemary taking it?’ Cubby asked.

‘She was watching the television on Friday when the news came through. I don’t think she really understood. We’ve been trying to explain to her, but—’ Sister Ursula blew her nose. Her eyes were swollen and red. ‘Perhaps it’s a mercy if she doesn’t quite get it.’

Cubby sat on the sofa next to Rosemary. Her hands were lying open in her lap, as they so often did. He took one of them. ‘Hello, Rosie.’

She drew her eyes away from the screen and glanced at him. ‘Jack is dead,’ she said.

So she understood that much, at least. ‘Yes. I’m so sorry, Rosemary.’

She squeezed his hand briefly, then returned to watching the television. Jack Kennedy’s funeral was underway in Washington.

They watched the widow emerging from the White House, draped in black lace, leading her two small children by the hand. The coffin, covered with the Stars and Stripes, was laid on a gun carriage, pulled by six white horses. They began the long, slow march up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

As the funeral cortege passed the blocks, the television cameras panned across faces in the crowd, the soldiers immaculate and expressionless, the civilians stunned, grieving. Many of the women wore headscarves, as though in church. A young girl looked on with tears streaming down her cheeks. Mostly, people were silent and motionless.

Cubby was remembering his meeting with Jack, twenty-four years earlier, in Southampton. He’d liked the young man, despite everything. Everyone liked Jack. He was luminous, persuasive, disarming. His murder in a public street in Dallas had changed America. A light had gone out and nobody knew how to reignite it. The nation was groping blindly.

The nuns brought cups of tea as they continued to watch the long-drawn funeral on the small TV that stood on a shelf next to a brightly glazed tortoise made by Rosemary in pottery class.

‘Is he the president now?’ Rosemary asked, pointing. Her words were slurred. You had to get used to the way she spoke before you could understand her.

‘Yes,’ Cubby answered. Johnson looked worn, already overburdened by the office he had once sought, and which had fallen to him so shockingly.

Rosemary hardly said another word after that. In St Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, the requiem mass began. The cameras focused on a statue of Jesus while a tenor sang Ave Maria. The voice of the priest was disembodied, intoning words which meant nothing to Cubby, though the nuns crossed themselves from time to time. He wondered how much of this Rosemary was following. He’d raced to be here with her in case she needed him, but it seemed as though the death of her brother, the third of her siblings to die – and all of them violent deaths – had left her unmoved.

Suddenly, however, Rosemary yelled, making them all start.

‘Lollie! Get off the chair!’

Rosemary’s poodle had jumped on to an armchair with a ball in its mouth. ‘Hush, Rosemary,’ Sister Ursula said in dismay.

But Rosemary was furious. ‘Get off! Get off! ’ Her yelling made the dog roll its expressive brown eyes, wriggling its stump of a tail. Rosemary got to her feet, still a tall and daunting figure. The dog leaped off the chair, dropped its ball to bark, and then picked it up again. ‘Taking her for a walk,’ Rosemary said, stamping after the animal, which was already making for the door.

‘But the funeral—’ Sister Ursula protested.

Cubby also rose. ‘I’ll go with her.’

They walked among the trees, the poodle frisking around them. After a while, Rosemary took Cubby’s hand. Her fingers clutched his tightly, like a child. ‘They’re crying all the time,’ she said. ‘Getting on my nerves.’

‘They’re sad because your brother was a great man.’

She nodded. ‘I can’t cry any more. Don’t know how to.’ She touched her head. ‘After they did this.’

‘I understand,’ Cubby said gently.

‘Used to cry a lot. Before.’ She stopped at the sound of a distant shot.

‘It’s just a hunter in the woods, a mile or two off.’

She resumed walking. ‘I cried all the time when you went away.’

‘I know you did.’

‘Why didn’t we ever get married?’ she asked.

He was always stuck for an adequate answer to that, though she asked it almost every time he came. ‘Well, the war started. I had to go and fight.’

‘Can’t have children now.’ She laid her hand on her belly. ‘All gone. Operation.’

‘I know.’ They’d given her the hysterectomy some years earlier, but it was still fresh in her mind, even though she’d been through an early menopause as a result. She was forty-five now. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Wish I could cry now. But I can’t.’ Abruptly, she kicked at the dead leaves, her face red with anger. The fragile brown things flew into the air, then settled around her shoes. ‘I get so mad. So goddamn mad.’ She put her arms clumsily around him and held him tight, her cropped head on his shoulder. Cubby wanted to cry for both of them, but like Rosemary herself, he didn’t know how to any more.

They stood like that, leaning on one another among the stark trees, for a long while. At last, she kissed him clumsily on the mouth. There was nothing sexual in the kiss. It was almost a blow, her lips dry and hard. ‘Love,’ she said, looking into his eyes.

‘Love,’ he agreed.

They walked back to the cottage.

The funeral took all day. It ended in Arlington, in the dusk. The soldiers fired three volleys into the air. A bugler played ‘The Last Post’. The setting sun streaked the sorrowful faces of the crowd who stood among a sea of fallen leaves. Jackie and Bobby lit the flame that would burn for evermore. The coffin sank into the earth at last. Evening came swiftly, and the flame was left flickering in the darkness, alone and restless.

By now Rosemary was tired and irritable. He knew it was time to leave. He said goodbye to her, and then set off on the long journey home.