‘No. That’s the problem. She encourages him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a loose young fellow from California. A musician.’
‘Well, that’s three strikes against him,’ Jack said.
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ his mother said, unsmiling.
Jack shrugged. ‘You’ll all be on the Manhattan in a day or two and then your worries will be over.’
‘He’s got a passage on the same boat. He’s even staying in this hotel. He’s very persistent. And Rosemary’s utterly rebellious. As soon as I showed my disapproval, she was all over him. She does it deliberately to break my heart.’
‘I think she just wants to have fun.’
‘You know that Rosemary cannot have fun the way other girls have fun.’
‘Come on, Mother.’
‘Jack, you’re old enough by now to know that she’s never going to be normal.’
‘She just needs to grow up.’
‘She’s never going to grow up. It’s up to us to protect her. We can’t trust any man with her, let alone a man like that.’
‘Does this character have a name?’
‘He’s called Cubby Hubbard.’
Jack smiled. ‘“Cubby”?’
‘I’ve spoken to him. It didn’t do any good. I want you to explain things to him properly. Tell him to stay away from Rosemary. I don’t want to have to resort to the courts and the police and so forth. But I will if I have to. You understand?’
‘All right. If you really want, I’ll speak to him.’
‘He’s in the hotel now. If you ask at the desk, they’ll find him. And Jack—’
He was turning to go. ‘Yes?’
‘Don’t let him get around you.’
Jack nodded. ‘Okay.’
He walked to the white marble reception desk and asked for Mr Hubbard. The clerk called his room and then passed the telephone to Jack.
‘Hello, Mr Hubbard,’ he said. ‘My name is John Kennedy. I’m Rosemary Kennedy’s brother. I wonder if we could have a talk.’
The voice that answered him was young and cheerful. ‘Sure. Where and when?’
Jack checked his watch. ‘I have to get back to London this afternoon, so the sooner the better.’
‘No time like the present, then. I’ll meet you in the bar.’
Jack waited for Hubbard at the bar, toying with a cigar. He’d started the habit at school and by now it was ingrained. But he resisted the urge to light up. He would smoke it on the way back to London, once this conversation was over. He ran it under his nose, inhaling the rich aroma.
He was thinking of what his mother had said about Rosemary – that she would never be independent, never have a life of her own. He hadn’t heard it expressed with such finality before, but he knew it had to be faced. Rosemary was almost twenty-one. A lot of girls were married by that age, with children of their own. Rosemary was still a child herself.
She had been coaxed by nuns and coached by psychologists, but she couldn’t add up a column of figures. She understood nothing of geography or history. The simplest academic tasks were beyond her. When doctors said she was retarded, they meant it not as an insult, but as a clinical diagnosis.
All that might be passed over – after all, none of the girls were expected to be great scholars – if she were adult in other ways. But she wasn’t. There was the beauty and the warmth, to be sure, but those just made her all the more terribly vulnerable. They came with the temper tantrums and the sudden outbursts of passionate love. There was the headlong way she rushed into things, the havoc she could cause without meaning to. There was the blind way she trusted people, everybody, anybody. You could get her to do anything. Mother was right. She would need to be sheltered all her life.
‘Mr Kennedy?’
Jack looked up. The arrival was a young fellow in a checked jacket, open-necked shirt and brown Bostonians, his hair slicked back in a fashionable quiff. He was stocky – Jack was six foot and lean with it – with a pleasant face. He appeared to be a little older than Jack. Not much was remarkable about him except his eyes, which were dark brown and very direct in their gaze. Jack got off his stool to shake hands. ‘Mind if I ask how you came by the name Cubby?’
‘My mom,’ Hubbard replied. ‘It stuck.’
Jack smiled. ‘Figured something like that. It’s noon. Have a beer?’
‘Sure.’
The barman drew them each a pint of the dull, flat English beer which Jack had never come to like. Jack raised his mug. ‘Mud in your eye.’
‘Cheers.’
They drank, eyeing each other. ‘How do you know my sister?’ Jack asked.
‘We met at a party in the summer.’
‘So you’ve known Rosemary for no more than a few months.’
‘I’ve known her long enough to be crazy about her,’ Hubbard replied.
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty-four.’
‘What are you doing in Europe?’
‘I saved up to go to Paris. Always wanted to hear Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli.’
‘I have no idea who they are.’
‘It doesn’t matter. The war came along anyway and – well – Rosemary’s on the Manhattan and where she goes, I go.’
They drank. Jack put his mug down. ‘Look, I’ll come to the point. We’d prefer it if you would stay away from Rosemary.’
Hubbard did not look surprised. It was almost as though he’d been expecting something like this. He replied calmly. ‘If Rosemary asks me to stay away from her, of course I will.’
Jack frowned. ‘Rosemary can’t judge what’s good for her.’
‘Rosemary is the best judge of what’s good for her.’
‘If she was normal, that would be true.’
‘She is normal.’
Jack decided to apply his charm. He gave the other man his boyish smile, leaning forward. ‘You see Rosemary from the outside, as a pretty girl, and you can be forgiven for that. But we see her as she really is. She has the mental age of a six-year-old.’
Hubbard did not respond to Jack’s smile. ‘You ought to be ashamed to talk about your own sister that way.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘I plan to marry her.’
This was a lot more serious than Jack had anticipated. He tried to imagine what his father would say right now. ‘What do you do for a living, Cubby?’
‘I’m a bandleader.’
‘What’s your band called?’
‘“Cubby Hubbard and The Stompers”. I play guitar.’
‘A big band?’
‘There are seven of us.’
‘Jazz?’
‘Boogie-woogie.’
‘You mean that Negro stuff?’
‘It’s getting awfully popular. We’ve been playing to packed houses at the Moonlight Lounge in Pasadena. We plan to have a recording contract by the end of the year. Decca are already interested. They say our stuff’s perfect for the jukeboxes.’
‘It sounds kind of a rackety life.’
‘It’s a good living. And it’s what I love.’
‘Would you feel safe leaving Rosemary alone with a baby while you were stomping at the Moonlight Lounge?’
‘My mom and my sisters will be there for her. They can’t wait to meet her. Rosemary is a wonderful girl, and with them around her, she’ll do just fine.’
‘Have you seen how crazy she can get?’
‘Rosemary’s spent her life under the skirts of a gang of old nuns. That’s why she gets mad. She’s frustrated. Here she is, nearly twenty-one and still at school. What kind of life is that?’
‘She’s still at school because she can hardly read or write.’
‘I have a bunch of letters from her. Not exactly Shakespeare, but she gets her point across. She’s the sweetest girl in the world.’
‘Rosemary isn’t always sweet. She’s as strong as a lioness and she behaves like one sometimes.’