A Mother's Spirit

by Anne Bennett

  As Orchard Street was where Patrick Lacey lived, before Joe went to look at the place Red had mentioned, he looked him up. He was, however, long gone, the neighbours said, and none seemed to know or care where.

  Later, when he saw the rooms at the tenement in Ludlow Street, he realised that, with no indoor toilets, they were far worse than those in Orchard Street. The whole area was more run down and shabby, yet Joe knew he had to take tenancy on those rooms, though he guessed what Gloria’s reaction would be.

  She didn’t disappoint him. Like her mother before her, she tried to pretend the move wasn’t going to happen. It was Joe who packed their few meagre possessions and he bore Gloria’s glares of resentment and barbed remarks, for he knew she was dying inside at the thought of moving to the place she had seen for the first time the previous day. He knew even the day they were leaving, as he was stowing their things away in the truck that he had hired with the last of their savings, she was hoping that Joe would relent, or something else would happen to prevent them leaving the apartment.

  Nothing had happened, however, and as she surveyed the room that first day she looked at Joe, her eyes full of reproach and said, ‘What are you thinking of, bringing me to a place like this? Mother and I cannot stay here, Joe. You must find somewhere else. In the whole of the city there must be somewhere better to stay that we can afford. It’s just a question of looking, I’m sure.’

  Joe had had enough. ‘Look, Gloria,’ he said, ‘there is nowhere. I know that this is not what you or your mother are used to, but I am doing my level best to stop us all dying of starvation or exposure. Just at the moment this is the best that I can do, for it is either this or the streets. Sorry if it isn’t good enough.’

  Gloria heard the hurt in Joe’s voice and so did Norah. She was hiding her utter shock well, for even as Joe told her about the place she hadn’t been really prepared, but she heard his words and knew he spoke the truth. She knew that Gloria had taken almost as much as she could, and it was up to her to try to rally her daughter, and so she said, ‘Come, come, Gloria. The place won’t look so bad when it has had a thorough clean. And any day now Joe may get a regular job and we won’t be here that long.’

  Gloria knew what her mother was about and she felt mean. Joe was trying so hard for them all. She felt a momentary flash of anger for the father she had once adored who had got them into this mess and then couldn’t stay around even to attempt to put some of it right.

  ‘It’s me that should be saying sorry, Joe,’ she said. ‘I know you are trying always to do the best for us. It’s just this place … It’s such a shock. Maybe, though, Mother is right and we won’t have to stay here for too long altogether.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Joe answered. He didn’t believe that for a minute, though. He knew just how bad the unemployment was and he couldn’t see any let-up in the grip it had on the city.

  Month after month passed and the recession worsened. In the winter of 1931 severe blizzards began to paralyse the whole city and early in 1932, a gold pendant of Gloria’s and a set of pearl earrings had to be sacrificed to prevent the family from starving or freezing to death.

  By 1933 food became less freely available and more expensive, because a severe drought had followed the blizzards of the previous year, turning the farming areas into huge dust bowls. Farmers began leaving the land in desperation and seeking other forms of employment in the towns and cities, adding to the problems already there and causing a food shortage.

  The country had elected Theodore Roosevelt President in 1932. He was a popular man and people said he would be good for the country, but even a president has no control over the weather, and Joe began to wonder seriously how much longer they could survive.

  Eventually, the churches began to work with the poor and starving people. St John the Baptist, the church that Joe, Norah and Gloria attended every Sunday, was no exception and they operated soup kitchens. Each person was entitled to one bowl of thick, nourishing soup and one thick slice of coarse bread every day, which was dispensed from the streets to the homeless and destitute, and from the church hall to those in the tenements. For many that meal was a life saver.

  Gloria also thought it was good for her and her mother to get out of their small rooms, where they lived on top of one another. As the summer passed and autumn brought the cold and the damp, it was good to gather in the warm church hall, thereby saving money on coal. They met some of the people who shared their tenement and the neighbouring ones.

  Norah and Gloria had never associated with such people, and though many cursed and swore worse than any rough man, Gloria enjoyed listening to the ribaldry and banter between them.

  It gave them something to talk to Joe about in the evenings too, for though he had met many of the men as they roiled around the streets together looking for work he had had little to do with the women. ‘They are destitute, Joe, some even poorer than we are but many refuse to let life wear them down. You can’t help respecting an attitude like that.’

  ‘I agree,’ Joe said. ‘Sometimes life seems one wearying and never-ending struggle.’

  ‘And yet you wouldn’t think some of these people had a care in the world,’ Norah said. ‘Today for example a few of the Irish women lifted up their skirts and danced a jig for us.’

  Gloria smiled at the memory and added. ‘Yes, and a boy, little more than a child, was there playing the tune for them on a battered old violin.’

  Unbidden there flashed into Joe’s head the picture of himself and Tom playing the music for Aggie to dance to. He remembered her plaits bouncing on her back and her eyes alight with delight, for she adored Irish dancing and yet, in the end, dancing had been her downfall.

  Gloria saw the shadow flit over Joe’s face and she stopped talking and said, ‘What is it, Joe?’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Just memories. Nothing important.’

  ‘Important enough to put a frown on your face.’

  Joe sighed. ‘Well, I suppose I might as well tell you,’ he said. ‘I was remembering a time when my brother and I would play the Irish music at home. He played fiddle or violin as you call it, and I would play the tin whistle and our sister Aggie would dance.’

  ‘I never heard you mention anyone called Aggie,’ Gloria said. ‘I thought you only had the one sister Nuala who worked for the Protestant people near your home in Buncrana. And then in the Troubles she went with them to their second home in England and never came back. You never said why not.’

  ‘I’ll tell you about Nuala another day,’ Joe said. ‘It was my elder sister, Aggie, that used to do the dancing and,’ he added grimly, ‘she disappeared off the face of the earth at fifteen years old.’

  Gloria’s eyes grew wide with surprise. ‘Why did she do that?’

  ‘Because she was raped by the dancing teacher,’ Joe said simply. ‘When Aggie discovered she was expecting the man’s baby she knew she would have to leave her home, because for an unmarried girl to have a baby is just about the worst thing in the world to those over in Ireland.’

  Gloria was incensed. ‘That is monstrous. What of your parents?’

  ‘They knew nothing,’ Joe said. ‘And they were never told. Tom is the only one who knew all about it and he told me just before I came here. The man McAllister said he would deal with things and Tom said he was sure that he was sending Aggie to his sister in a place called Birmingham in England. Aggie agreed to go to save the family’s shame. From the night Tom saw her being driven off in the man’s cart in the early hours of the morning, he hasn’t a clue what happened to her.’

  ‘What a perfectly dreadful story,’ Gloria said. ‘That poor, poor girl, driven to such lengths. I know such things go on and the man is seldom held responsible for anything, but I have never met anyone affected in such a way.’

  ‘And it gets worse,’ Joe said. ‘The dancing teacher died shortly afterwards and when the man’s wife contacted his sister to come to the funeral, the letter was returned saying she didn’t live there any more, so
Aggie truly did disappear into thin air. That thought haunted Tom for years. He wonders if he could have handled things differently, but he was only thirteen himself.’

  Norah noted Joe’s doleful face and she said gently, ‘However dreadful it is, Joe, you must put it out of your mind because all the fretting and worrying in the world cannot change what is past and gone.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Joe said. ‘And I really have got quite enough to worry about now without looking for other things I can have no control over.’

  Gloria knew that was only too true for despite the daily soup ration, life was still a struggle, but she was glad that Joe had told her about his sister Aggie. It was good to share burdens. And so she would get him to tell her about his other sister, Nuala, too. There was another mystery there, she was sure.

  October was drawing to a close when Gloria suddenly leaped out of bed one morning and just made the chamber pot in time, for the nausea had risen inside her as soon as she’d opened her eyes.

  Joe looked across at her with his eyebrows raised. ‘What was that all about?’ he said. ‘It couldn’t have been something you ate. You eat so little.’

  Gloria shrugged. ‘Could have been anything,’ she said. ‘I am fine now, anyway.’

  In fact she felt far from fine, but Joe couldn’t afford to lose time from the job at the docks that he had had for three days now, and she waited till the door had closed behind him before she allowed herself the luxury of a groan.

  Gloria was sick the next day and the day after that, and Joe was beside himself with worry. He was still at the docks and well liked because he worked hard and never refused to do anything. He would work till the job was done whatever time it was, so sometimes the hours were long. He knew that if he didn’t go in one day someone else would take his place, and yet he was so worried about Gloria he wanted to stay at home and have the doctor brought out.

  Norah wouldn’t hear of it. ‘D’you think I can’t look after my own daughter?’

  ‘You’ll call the doctor out to have a look at her?’ Joe asked, as he hovered at the door, worry lines creasing his forehead.

  ‘I will if I think it necessary,’ Norah said. ‘Now, for God’s sake, will you go to work before someone else is given your job?’

  The door had barely closed behind Joe when Norah looked at her daughter and said, ‘You couldn’t be pregnant, could you? I know you haven’t had your monthlies for ages.’

  ‘They have stopped before when I haven’t had much to eat for a while.’

  ‘But you have a big bowl of soup every day at least,’ Norah said. ‘And there is a sort of bloom to your face that wasn’t there before.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, do you really think I could be having a baby?’ Gloria cried, hardly able to believe it.

  Norah laughed. ‘I don’t need to ask how you would feel about it.’

  ‘I’d be ecstatic if it were true,’ Gloria said, ‘and that’s even taking into account the situation we are in. It is what I have longed for most, the one thing I thought I would never achieve.’

  ‘Well,’ Norah said, ‘let’s just wait and see, shall we? Wait until Joe hears.’

  That night when he came home Gloria was up and dressed, and he asked immediately how she was. She smiled at him. ‘Me? Joe, I am as fit as a fiddle.’

  Joe was puzzled by her answer, by her very manner, and said, ‘Is that what the doctor said?’

  ‘I went to no doctor,’ Gloria said, ‘because I am not ill, you see. I am just expecting our child.’

  Joe’s first reaction was a feeling of unparalleled elation, and then realisation kicked in and the burden of keeping a child hale and hearty and well fed and warm in this beleaguered city seemed almost insurmountable. And so his first words were, ‘Oh my God, Gloria! How the hell are we going to cope?’

  Gloria leaped to her feet and stamped her foot angrily. ‘Shame on you, Joe Sullivan, to greet the news that you are to be a father that way.’

  Immediately, Joe felt ashamed. Whatever his worries, it was no way to respond, and it was news he had never expected to hear. He put his arms around Gloria and said, ‘I am heart sore for what I said earlier. You have made me one of the happiest and proudest men in the whole wide world.’

  Joe never expressed any negative feelings again in front of Gloria or her mother, who both seemed on top of the world at the news. Only in his letters to Tom did he confess his true feelings. Tom had been devastated at what had happened to his brother and he understood his concern about caring for a child in the penurious way they were living. But despite that, Tom envied him that he would soon hold his own child in his arms.

  SEVEN

  Gloria had a trouble-free pregnancy. As her stomach swelled, her skin took on a glow that seemed to radiate the happiness inside her and she could hardly wait for the baby to be born so that she could hold him in her arms.

  For much of the pregnancy, Joe had had fairly regular though not permanent employment, and so was able to give Gloria extra money to buy some flannelette material that she and Norah made into soft nightgowns, and towelling that they hemmed to make diapers, and he made a rocking crib from orange boxes and scrap wood that he found at the docks.

  The whole tenement had taken an interest in Gloria Sullivan’s first baby, including Red McCullough, who had become such friends with Joe. It was an odd friendship for Joe was twenty years older than young Red. He had arrived in America the spring of 1929 and so he had just had a short taste of what New York had to offer before the Crash.

  ‘I suppose because of that, I have no great affinity for the place,’ he said to them all one night.

  ‘I can understand that,’ Gloria said. ‘But my home is New York and I would hate to leave it. Wouldn’t you, Mother?’

  ‘I wouldn’t leave it,’ Norah said emphatically. ‘I have put up with a lot of changes in my life in recent years, but that would be one change too many for me. My husband did a bad thing in killing himself, but before that he was a good husband and provider, and a wonderful father. He is buried here and so here I will stay too.’

  ‘Well, London is my home,’ Red said, ‘and I would return to it tomorrow if I could, but they are in a recession as bad as this in America, which is why I left in the first place. My parents are managing because the family all lives around the docks, on one another’s doorsteps really, and it’s share and share about, but I would be just one more mouth to feed.’

  ‘Well, then, I see no advantage in moving anywhere,’ Norah said, ‘especially when you say that England is the same. I think most of Europe is affected in some way.’

  ‘You’re right, Norah,’ Joe said. ‘And, apart from the unemployment situation, Europe is a hotbed of unrest just now. So we will just sit tight and wait for that baby to be born and hope America pulls herself out of this in time.’

  ‘And I wish this baby would hurry up.’

  ‘Well, you know, I would say it takes time to grow a baby to be fine and healthy,’ Joe said, ‘and that’s what we want, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Joe,’ Gloria said fervently. ‘More than anything in the whole world.’

  At last, on Friday 6 April 1934, Gloria had her first pains. Initially, they weren’t that strong and so she said nothing before Joe left for work, knowing he would worry about her if she did. Her mother, though, had been aware of her slight grimaces of pain and so when Joe had gone she asked if she should go for Bella Turner, a retired nurse who helped out at most deliveries in the tenements. Gloria shook her head.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Bella says first babies usually take some time.’

  ‘Well, she’s right there,’ Norah said. ‘I mean, I know I only had the one, but you were in no hurry, as I remember.’

  ‘We’ll leave it a little while then,’ Gloria said.

  By the afternoon, though, the pains were stronger, and by the time Joe came home, Gloria was installed in Norah’s bed in considerable discomfort. Norah was mopping her glistening brow and Bella was also i
n the room. She had tied a towel to the bedhead for Gloria to pull on when the pains got bad, and it worried Joe greatly to see Gloria suffering the way she was. Bella shooed him from the room as she assured him everything was completely normal and nothing to worry about at all.

  Expelled from the bedroom, he was too anxious about his wife to be able to rest. He paraded up and down the room, like some sort of untamed beast, suffering with her at each anguished shout as the clock ticked and the hours passed.

  Joe had been home three hours when he heard the first new-born wail, and he burst into the bedroom before either of the women was able to stop him.

  ‘Mr Sullivan,’ Bella said crisply, ‘your wife is hardly decent enough to be seen.’

  Joe barely heard her. He was gazing with awe at the tiny bundle Norah had, which she wrapped in a shawl and gave into Gloria’s waiting arms. Joe saw that Gloria looked tired and her face was damp with sweat, her tousled hair plastered to it, and yet to him she had never seemed lovelier. When she smiled at him, he was across the room in seconds.

  ‘You have your son, Joe,’ Gloria said.

  ‘A son,’ Joe repeated, as if he wasn’t quite able to believe it.

  He was so small and fragile-looking, with hair so fine it was like down covering his head. His milky blue eyes tried to focus. ‘Isn’t he just magnificent?’ Gloria said. ‘This is our little Benjamin Thomas.’

  Joe just nodded. He was unable to speak, for a huge lump was lodged in his throat. He traced a finger gently down the baby’s cheek and sudden overwhelming love for him washed over Joe. He knew that he would willingly lay down his life for the two people who mattered more to him than any others on earth.