Those awful sobs were coming faster now, sounding more like choking than crying. She didn’t even look like herself any more.
She grabbed at Rosemary’s wrists, but Rosemary was far too strong for her to subdue. She clawed and panted and thrashed. Pat was forced to back away, gasping, ‘Okay, okay, okay. I’m not touching you.’
Something raced through the wilderness of Rosemary’s mind. A yellow animal, with its ears back.
She recognised it. The yellow cat that her brothers had trapped in a fishing net in the rambling garden at Hyannis Port. It had rolled its eyes and hissed and bared its teeth and fought for its life, while the boys had laughed and tormented it. She could see it now, as vividly as though it were happening in front of her.
Why did the boys do that? Why did they hurt and torture weak things? They said it was a game, but it wasn’t. She knew, because they did the same thing to her when the mood took them. They said they loved something and then they hurt it for fun. Why? She’d begged them to free the yellow cat, and eventually they had done so. It had streaked away across the sand, not stopping till it was out of sight. But she didn’t know how to free herself from the invisible net that had closed around her.
Her bladder was bursting. She couldn’t bear it any longer. She fumbled her skirt up and squatted on the floor, her underpants around her knees.
Pat ran back out. ‘Mother, she’s going to pee on the floor.’
‘Well, stop her.’
‘I can’t. She’s hitting me in the face every time I come near her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
‘She knows very well what she’s doing.’
‘Mother, please come.’ Pat dissolved into tears, too upset to continue.
‘I’ll call you back,’ Mrs Kennedy said to her husband, and replaced the receiver. She went to the bathroom, where Rosemary was crouching in a spreading puddle. ‘Oh, for the love of God. Don’t you see the lavatory right next to you?’
All around Rosemary was flashing light, roaring sound. Her own pee running over her thighs was like boiling water. She tried to squirm away from it.
‘We have to call someone,’ Pat said, appalled.
‘There’s no one to call. We can’t let anyone see her like this. Nobody can know. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Come out of here. Leave her.’
‘But Mother—’
Mrs Kennedy pushed Pat out and closed the bathroom door on Rosemary. ‘She’ll come to her senses in there. Until then, there’s nothing to be done.’
Mrs Kennedy went to the window and shed some tears of her own, crying silently into a handkerchief. Rosemary had been in secure schools from puberty onward. With all the other children to deal with, there had been little option but to shut her behind high walls, leave her in the hands of devoted nuns who had dieted her, schooled her, drilled her, supported her, loved her, and attempted vainly to discipline her. She had been safe.
But it had become increasingly difficult to keep Rosemary shut away. She had turned into a beautiful young woman, and the press were hungry for news, eager to photograph her. So far, those who knew the truth had remained obligingly silent. But their discretion could not be relied upon forever. And the terrible reality was that Rosemary was getting worse, not better.
Mrs Kennedy was conscious that an era was coming to an end. Over these past two, glittering years, the most glamorous years of a life that had not been short of glamour, she had dined with the King and Queen of England (beef on a Friday once). She had been in every newspaper, met every celebrity, sparkled like a diamond. She had played golf with diplomats and film stars, had seen the great art, music and ballet of Europe, holidayed in the south of France. Teddy, at seven, had received his First Communion from the Pope himself in Rome.
All that was over. Joe’s diplomatic career was now in jeopardy, despite the folderol that continued. His support for Hitler would never be forgiven or forgotten by the Brits now that war had broken out. The only hope for his remaining as ambassador – and continuing his political career in the United States thereafter – was an early peace settlement. Or, of course, a German victory.
For her and the children, there was little option but to return to the safety of America. And there, a solution to the problem of Rosemary would need to be found.
The Western Approaches
An absurd confrontation had arisen aboard U-113 in the lull produced by several days without action of any kind. Captain Todt had subjected the boat to a prolonged programme of Hitler speeches.
The crew bore this for several hours, and then countered the musical tyranny by setting off their own gramophone at full volume. They chose a selection of songs from popular German films of the past ten years. For a while, Mein Gorilla hat ’ne Villa im Zoo competed cacophonously with Brünnhilde, rendering the forward section of U-113 almost uninhabitable.
On a destroyer, such a minor mutiny would have resulted in disciplinary action, even courts-martial; but the submarine service was different, as Leutnant Hufnagel pointed out to the captain. The nervous pressure of long voyages in U-boats could be explosive, and some high spirits had to be tolerated among the crew, so as to keep morale high.
Todt responded by cutting off the men’s supply of tinned cream, condensed milk and butter. These delicacies, kept in a cupboard to which only he had the key, were crucial to the men’s happiness (especially the condensed milk, which they loved to put in their coffee).
Hufnagel approached the captain, determined to end the growing feud between the commander and the crew.
‘Kapitän, surely the crew deserve a rest?’
‘You have taken it upon yourself to defend them, I see.’ Hufnagel was dismayed to see that the commander’s hands were trembling and his jaw clenched tight under the straggling blonde beard. This ridiculous contretemps was telling on his nerves, where another man would have laughed it away. ‘Have you come to tell me to turn off the words of our Führer in favour of some frivolous Semitic rubbish?’
‘Not at all, Captain. It’s simply that long speeches are—’
‘Long speeches are what?’
‘As a general rule,’ Hufnagel tried again, ‘it is wise for us all, during a long voyage, to leave politics in port.’
‘Politics?’ Todt was genuinely astounded. ‘The speeches of the Führer are not political. They are above politics.’
‘Hitler is a politician,’ Hufnagel replied cautiously, ‘if nothing else.’
‘What does that mean?’ Todt demanded, growing pale. ‘If nothing else?’
‘I mean that he is the chief politician of our country.’
‘You are determined to insult Adolf Hitler in my presence?’
‘It’s not meant as an insult,’ Hufnagel replied, growing even quieter. ‘He’s the leader of the ruling party.’
‘He is our Führer. The politicians are the ones who bear the guilt of the catastrophe of 1918, the hour of our deepest degradation and dishonour. It was the Führer who, with his superhuman willpower and energy, saved our nation.’
‘I do not deny that, of course. I am concerned only with the morale of the crew.’
‘The morale of the crew is the very reason that I am playing the Führer’s speeches.’ Todt held up the sleeve of the record, which showed a painting of a giant Adolf Hitler emerging from a mass of tiny, ordinary people, rather like a Fleischkäse being formed from crumbs of meat. ‘Hitler is the apotheosis of the German volk, Hufnagel. It is the values embodied in Hitler which are sadly lacking in this crew. It has been my misfortune to inherit the problems of other captains.’