by Anne Bennett
‘Oh, easily the most important man in the land, I would say.’
‘Golly,’ said Ben, and then for the first time he said, ‘I like it here in London, Daddy.’
‘I’m glad, Ben,’ Joe said. ‘Really glad, because so do I.’
The only thing that worried Joe, apart from finding somewhere to live, was the unsettled rumbling around Europe. Power-hungry Germany had already taken over Austria in March, but the Austrians had seemed not to mind, possibly because Hitler was an Austrian by birth.
Joe thought it was as well to keep abreast of things and he suggested getting a wireless.
Gloria clapped her hands in delight. ‘Ooh, Joe, it would be marvellous, as long as we can afford it. It is a great entertainment to have, with the music and the plays and all, and there is bound to be something on for children that Ben would like.’
There was also the news, which was what Joe really wanted it for, but when he said this Gloria told him that he was an old worry guts. Then when Joe got home the last Friday in September Gloria thrust the evening paper in front of him.
‘All your fretting was for nothing,’ she said. ‘They were shouting it out all over the newsstands and so I bought a paper to see for myself.’
She handed it to Joe and there on the front page was a picture of Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper and declaring, ‘I believe it is peace for our time.’
Joe had heard about the meeting Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister were having with Hitler in Munich, and as he read the report detailing the land Czechoslovakia had agreed to hand over to Germany in exchange for peace, he felt suddenly cold inside.
‘What are you looking so gloomy for?’ Gloria demanded. ‘It’s there in black and white. What more do you want?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Joe said. ‘I suppose I want the assurance that Hitler would honour any agreement made. As for Czechoslovakia giving away part of their country, well, I hope they don’t live to regret it. In my experience partitioning countries only causes more problems, not less.’
‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’ Gloria said.
‘All we can do, I suppose,’ Joe said.
However, he didn’t seem able to lift the mood he was in, and in the end he wrote an impassioned letter to Tom and urged him to get a wireless, to keep abreast of important developments.
Gloria was not looking forward to the deepening autumn and the colder weather for there was no let-up in the rules that the rooms had to be vacated by ten thirty every day. Joe too was quite desperate to find somewhere more suitable and everyone they knew was looking out for them.
Three weeks after the triumphant Chamberlain declared that he had averted conflict with Germany, a docker called Dermot Shields approached Joe one dinner-time. ‘Red says that you’re looking for a flat. Is that right?’
Joe nodded. ‘We’re in lodgings at the moment, and my wife and son have to leave there every day at ten thirty and trail around the streets. ‘Do you know of some place?’
‘Aye,’ the man said. ‘My brother Michael has a place in Tottenham, but he is going back home to take over the farm from my father. You have a good chance of getting the place if you are quick because he hasn’t told the landlord he is leaving yet.’
‘Is it around here?’
‘No,’ Dermot said, ‘I told you, it’s in Tottenham.’
‘Where’s that then?’
‘Miles away.’
‘Yeah, but what about my job?’ Joe said. ‘I don’t suppose that I could live there and carry on working here.’
Dermot shook his head. ‘Hardly likely. You would spend more time travelling than you would working.’
‘Then …’
‘My brother had a job in an armaments factory,’ Dermot told Joe. ‘And he could put in a word, if you fancied working there.’
‘I will work anywhere that pays a decent wage,’ Joe declared. ‘But I have never had anything to do with making guns.’
Dermot shrugged. ‘It’s a job and it pays well. I’m sure you would get on as well as the next man. The point is, do you want to keep the job you have and stay in the lodging house, or take the flat and find some other employment?’
Joe didn’t need to think about that for very long. He liked the work on the docks, that was true, but he loved his wife and son and couldn’t condemn them to the conditions they were living under one moment longer than necessary. It was now October, and since they had come to Britain in late March this was the first sniff they had had of any accommodation. Who knew how long he would have to wait for another, and that might not be near the docks either?
‘Could we go and look at it?’
‘Of course,’ Dermot said. ‘But like I say, the sooner the better.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Joe said decidedly. ‘I’ll take the time from work.’
‘Right,’ said Dermot. ‘It’s wise to move fast. I’ll go over tonight and tell Michael to expect you, and I will write down the directions and address.’
‘It’s very good of you,’ Joe said. ‘My wife will be ecstatic.’
And Gloria was ecstatic when Joe went home with the news that night. ‘I long to move out of here and have our own home,’ she said. ‘Is it near here?’
‘No, it’s in Tottenham,’ Joe said. ‘Miles away.’
‘What about your job at the docks?’
‘Well, I couldn’t work there and live in Tottenham.’
‘Oh, but, Joe …’
Joe saw the worry lines furrowing Gloria’s brow and he took her in his arms. ‘I know what you are worried about,’ he said, ‘but we will never go back to that uncertain and terrible way of living that we had in New York, believe me. There is work about for anyone and everyone here now, and I will soon get another job. In fact, Dermot said his brother works nearby in a factory and he might be able to put in a word for me.’
Joe didn’t tell Gloria what the factory made and was glad she hadn’t asked. He didn’t want her to know that he might be making guns or ammunition. She might then begin to wonder why a country so seemingly bent on ‘peace for our time’ had need of so many weapons. He had wondered himself, but not for long, because he didn’t like the answers his mind was coming up with.
‘And shall we will go up tomorrow and look at the place?’ Joe asked, with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Oh, yes, Joe,’ cried Gloria. ‘What do you think?’
Dermot had given good directions to his brother’s place, with the number of the tram and where they caught it from. ‘The tram will take you up Broad Lane, and you tell the conductor you want the Stamford Road stop. Newton Road leads off it. The flats are right at the end of the road, and the one you want is the one to the right, Horton Tower.’
Gloria was in a fever of excitement and yet she enjoyed that tram journey, and she was particularly interested as the tram passed a goodly selection of shops just as the conductor came to them to tell them that the next stop was theirs.
When they alighted from the tram Ben was excited by the sight of children playing in the streets. There were mothers at some of the doors keeping a perfunctory eye on the children and they nodded and smiled at Joe and Gloria as they passed but Gloria had eyes only for the red brick building in front of her. She remembered the apartment that Joe had taken her to initially after the Crash and how rundown she had thought it at the time. How snobbish she had been then. But all that was behind her now, and she would welcome living in this place. Number 8 Horton Tower might soon be their new home, and she felt a tingle of excitement begin in her toes and fill her whole body, for she longed to be able to call somewhere home.
Michael and his wife, Lynne, were welcoming, and showed them over the flat eagerly. It was well furnished and they said that they were leaving most things for a fee to be agreed between them. ‘We can’t take it all with us, even if we wanted to,’ Lynne said to Gloria, hitching her plump and gorgeous baby further up on her hip. ‘In fact the only furniture we are taking is the baby’s cot.’
Gloria laughed. ‘Well, we will have no need of that at least,’ she said. ‘It would be a bit cramped for Ben. But,’ she turned to her young son, ‘what do you think about having your own room at last?’
Ben didn’t speak, and didn’t have to because, as Lynne said, ‘I think that beaming smile is answer enough. Come and I will show you the kitchen.’
Gloria loved the modern kitchen as she loved the bathroom with fitted hot water, and the large living room with its picture window overlooking the whole of London.
She turned to Joe with shining eyes and he was smiling as he said, ‘You like it then?’
‘No, Joe,’ Gloria said, spinning around in delight. ‘I love it, just absolutely love it. If we take this place then I would think I had died and gone to heaven.’
Red and his parents were thrilled about Joe and Gloria securing the flat, and came over to see it after Michael and his family had moved out.
‘With the flat so well furnished, there is little to buy,’ Gloria told Dolly.
‘No,’ the older woman agreed, ‘though I’d buy a new mattress for the bed.’
‘Yes, I will,’ Gloria said. ‘And I need a proper bed for Ben. The poor child has never had one. And he needs a cupboard or something for his clothes.’
Dolly went with Gloria to buy these items, showing her where the bargains could be had, so that Gloria had enough over to buy pretty bedding, and towels, a few rugs to cover the lino on the floor and cushions to brighten up the sofa.
When it was all installed, Gloria looked at her home with a sense of pride. She was surprised to find how much pleasure she took in housework. In her old life, which seemed aeons ago, anything that fell on the floor lay there until a servant picked it up. Her clothes were always at hand and ready to wear, and her meals were put before her and cleared away afterwards.
She had never had to lift a finger and, in the first apartment they’d had, she had not been good at it even though she had tried. Then in the slummy rooms of the tenement, it didn’t matter what a person did, the place never looked any better. With first Ben and then her mother to see to as well, it was often Joe’s efforts in his scant time off that had prevented them drowning in squalor.
But in this wonderful apartment she really wanted to make a cosy and comfortable home for Joe to return to each evening. He had started a job at the factory where Dermot’s brother, Michael, had worked. It was in Fore Street, so close he could walk, but if he was running late there was a tram all the way as well.
Added to this, St Ignatius’ Roman Catholic Church was only a short walk away, and there was a school attached, which Ben would be starting after Easter of the following year.
‘Oh, Joe,’ Gloria said one evening as they snuggled together on the sofa, ‘I know we can be really happy here.’
Joe kissed Gloria tenderly and said gently, ‘I know, my dear, and isn’t it about time we had some good fortune?’
NINE
The dangerously unsettled times continued, and the wireless brought it all into the Sullivans’ living room. In November, with heavy sheets of rain falling through the black night, they heard of news that had been leaked out of Germany of what was being called ‘Kristallnacht’. The newscaster said that it meant Night of Broken Glass and described a rampage against Jews in Berlin that had lasted three days. Nazi storm troopers threw Jews, men, woman and children, out of their homes and onto the streets, and any who protested were beaten up. Then the Nazis smashed and ransacked their homes before setting them alight. They set light to the synagogues too until, the report said, the sky was blood red from so many fires.
When the news had finished, Joe was not that surprised to see Gloria was in tears. As for the people subjected to these attacks, he could only imagine their abject fear and helplessness. He remembered seeing the frightened and often confused and disoriented Jews that had arrived in New York, and realised that they were the lucky ones.
‘How utterly, utterly cruel,’ Gloria said. ‘What if it was us – you, me, Ben, and all our neighbours on the streets on this filthy night – and the churches we might have sought shelter in set on fire? What would we do, Joe? What are any of those people going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said miserably. ‘I can only imagine many of them will perish. Maybe you see now why I was so sceptical about the agreement Chamberlain drew up with a man who can order savagery like that?’
‘Yes, Joe,’ Gloria said. ‘And I am frightened of what lies ahead of us.’
In March, Hitler’s armies invaded Czechoslovakia and just after Easter, Joe began to worry about what would happen to his family if war came. He didn’t think that it was going to blow over, and he had to admit that for some time he had seen the war clouds gathering. What if he had brought his family to something worse than they had left behind? That thought haunted him.
Gloria had known for a while that there was something bothering Joe. She waited for him to discuss it, but when a few more days went by and he still hadn’t spoken, she waited until Ben was in bed and then said, ‘What is it, Joe?’
Joe sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know really …’
‘Come on,’ Gloria said almost impatiently. ‘Something has been eating away at you for ages. Can’t you share it with me?’
‘All right then,’ Joe said. ‘You have a perfect right to know anyway. The fact is, I think the whole world is balanced on a knife edge. If it comes to all-out war, then civilians will be as much at risk as serving men. I have been thinking about it seriously: if you want, I will take you back to America.’
Gloria stared at Joe, hardly able to believe her ears. She thought of the life they had had before they left. She remembered the deprivation, the poverty, the constant hunger and she shook her head.
‘To what?’ she said. ‘I couldn’t go back now to the life we had in New York, and there is no guarantee that we would be returning to anything better.’
‘No,’ Joe had to admit. ‘But—’
‘Look at the life we have here now, Joe,’ Gloria went on. ‘I am happy here. I feel I have settled at last.’
Joe knew that Gloria was happier than she had ever been, certainly the happiest he had seen her since they had arrived in England. Even though he had sometimes seen the homesickness in her eyes, he knew that she hankered for the New York that she remembered from her youth and the early years of their marriage, a New York that he feared was lost and gone for ever.
‘You have a good job here and Ben has just started school,’ Gloria reasoned. Ben really enjoyed school and he was proving very popular amongst the other children. Most of them had never heard an American accent, unless it was on the cinema screen, and so Ben was looked upon almost as a celebrity. His hair was like a golden halo around his head and with the large violet eyes he was also a very handsome child. He was a favourite with many of the teachers too. Gloria knew that even if she had wanted to go back to America, she would have hated to wrench the child away from where he was happy and had made friends, and she couldn’t return him to the hardship they had come to England to escape.
‘There is nothing for us in New York, Joe,’ she said firmly.
‘And if war comes?’
Gloria gave a sudden shiver. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘that thought does scare me, but if it does happen, the whole of London isn’t going to empty, is it? We have weathered so much already, and come through it. I want to stay put here now and I imagine that most people will feel the same.’
‘I agree with you really,’ Joe said, ‘but I think that war is inevitable now. I heard a couple of weeks ago that the TA is being recalled and there is conscription beginning for men aged twenty and twenty-one.’
‘It’s just a matter of time then?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Just a few weeks later, Gloria waited until Joe had finished his evening meal before saying. ‘I want to get a job.’
Joe was taken totally by surprise. ‘I don’t want a wife of mine to work,’ he answered rather stif
fly. ‘There is no reason for it.’
‘Don’t be so stuffy,’ Gloria complained. ‘Everyone has to do their bit and the government are recruiting people. They’ve put leaflets through the letter boxes.’
‘And what about Ben if you take a job?’
‘He is at school all day.’
‘It isn’t a full day,’ Joe pointed out. ‘And what about in the holidays?’
‘I enquired about that,’ Gloria said. ‘There are clubs being set up before and after school and to run through the holidays for children with mothers doing war-related work. Lots of the mothers I meet at the school gates are taking up some type of work.’
‘And will you like that, Ben?’ Joe asked.
Ben shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘But if it’s like school it would probably be all right,’ cos I like school.’
‘I’m lonely here all day,’ Gloria said. ‘I can’t even see Dolly easily now that we are so far away. You have your job all day, and you see Red once a week but I often have nothing to do and no one to talk to.’
Joe sighed. ‘All right. I see you have a point. So what sort of work are we talking about here?’
He thought of the factory that he worked in where he spent the day at a machine that bored holes in the barrels of rifles. It was dirty, greasy and noisy, and ribaldry and coarse jokes and language were just part of the working environment, but he didn’t want his Gloria to be exposed to that sort of thing.
So, he was quite relieved when she said, ‘Well, there are all kinds of jobs they want women for, but I have been talking to Elsie Bannister about it. She only lives up the road and has a little girl, Sally, in Ben’s class that he is quite sweet on. They often come out of school holding hands. Anyway, she fancies having a go at sewing parachutes.
I wouldn’t mind that either and we could go together. It isn’t as if it’s really hard work.’
Joe wasn’t very surprised. It was so typical of her to want to do her bit rather than sit back and do nothing. She looked so delicate, but he knew she had such admirable reserves of strength and fortitude.
