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Gladys Reunited

Page 22

by Sandi Toksvig


  ‘We should definitely go to Liberty Square,’ he said, looking at the map.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked Rita.

  I had been up since four and had read the guide book from cover to cover. ‘It’s nothing to do with the American Revolution,’ I said.

  ‘Corner of Kilby, Water and Batterymarch streets,’ said Paul.

  ‘It was named after the French Revolution,’ I tried. Rita and Paul both looked at the map.

  ‘Oh, I see it,’ said Rita. ‘We could go there.’

  ‘It has some kind of statue,’ said Paul.

  ‘It’s to Hungarian freedom fighters,’ I said feebly. Oh well, one revolution, another revolution …

  I had had enough history by then and wanted to see the site of the Great Molasses Disaster instead. I think a lot of the truly important events are lost in history. It was 15 January 1919, when a fifty-foot-high iron tank containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses exploded in the North End of Boston sending a fifteen-foot tidal wave across Commercial Street to the harbour. Twenty-one people drowned in the sugar mass, many more were injured and six buildings were swept into Boston harbour. What a fantastic way to come to a sticky end. We did walk up to the North End, but to see Paul Revere’s house and his church.

  Paul Revere is one of the most famous characters in American folklore. It was he who rode to warn the troops that ‘the British are coming’ and waited for the famous ‘one if by land, two if by sea’ signal from the North End Church.

  Except, that’s not actually what happened. He didn’t ride out by himself. There were three of them — Revere, William Dawes and Dr Samuel Prescott. All three were captured by a redcoat patrol but Dawes and Prescott escaped. They went on to alert everyone while Revere went back on foot. The history books never mentioned Paul Revere until Longfellow wrote a poem in 1863 called ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere’. Instantly fiction blended to fact and fame was assured. Maybe the names Dawes or Prescott didn’t scan so well.

  Paul Revere’s house (c. 1680) is probably the oldest wooden building in town. It’s next to a pizza parlour where the intense smell of tomato sauce must have driven the family demented. Across the road was a large edifice advertising itself as the Italian Catholic Church.

  ‘What the heck is that?’ asked Rita.

  I imagined it was a Catholic Church for Italians but no one was waiting for my opinion.

  The small dark green house was unique among the historical sites I had visited so far. It did actually have many things in it that had belonged to Paul Revere and he had actually once lived there. I like history when it comes to life and you discover that the great men (and sometimes women) of the past were just human beings. That is certainly true of the gentlemen who led America to freedom and separation from Mother England.

  For a start, they weren’t all that keen on each other and were given to quite a lot of name calling. Samuel Adams, Father of the Revolution, was deemed by his contemporaries ‘a poor student, and a failure at everything he attempted in life’. Before he became a famous Founding Father, he was a rather celebrated debtor and nearly went to prison for stealing public funds. Like so many students down the ages, Adams graduated from Harvard University by waiting on tables. He then failed at every job he tried —counting-house clerk, shopkeeper, salesman, brewer, until he found all these skills combined to make him a successful politician as one of Boston’s selectmen.

  Paul Revere was a silversmith and engraver by trade but he was considered greedy by his neighbours and described as ‘a poor artisan who copied everything he did from other artisans’. The greedy part seems clear. He once charged his mother when she borrowed half a cup of sugar from him and his detailed bill sent to the state of Massachusetts for his midnight ride is on display at the State Archives in Boston.

  Up in Paul’s bedroom, a man in a tricorn hat was waiting to interpret history for me.

  ‘This was the bedroom of Mr and Mrs Revere. They were a happy couple and Mr Revere fathered sixteen children.’

  This seemed like a lot. Certainly it seemed like a vast brood for two people to have and still be a happy couple.

  ‘Sixteen children!’ I repeated. ‘It’s a wonder he could still ride a horse.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the guide.

  I repeated what I had thought was a rather fine quip only to find it even less successful the second time.

  ‘I said, it’s a wonder he could still ride a horse.’

  The guide was almost stern with me. ‘Oh no, ma’am, he was a very good rider.’

  Some respectful tourists from St Louis, who had said nothing about the fecund Mr Revere, eyed me with suspicion. The guide turned his attentions to them.

  ‘Where are you folks from?’

  Folks? That was the word George Bush had used to describe the terrorists being hunted down in Afghanistan.

  Having done the house, we felt obliged to do the church. It’s a pretty, white, wooden structure. Rather plain with a good bell tower if you fancied sending a signal to Charlestown. Inside there were white box pews: high-sided enclosed benches for individual families to keep out the wind and the riff-raff in equal measure. A trim middle-aged man drifted about with a label on his chest. It gave his name and said he was the ‘docent’.

  ‘What’s a docent?’ I asked Rita.

  ‘He’s the guy who knows about the church,’ she explained.

  I had never heard of the word. ‘Why is that a docent?’ I persisted. She was getting annoyed with me now. That’s his job.’

  Docent — another job I had never thought of. I sat in a pew trying to work out where the word had come from. I knew you could be a ‘docetist’ which was a second-century heretic who believed Christ’s body was only a semblance, but that seemed an unlikely person to work in a church. Still, Ron taught Bible studies and he didn’t have a Bible …

  It was time to get ourselves together and go and meet the next Gladys.

  Oh, if only Jupiter would give me back my past years.

  Virgil, Aeneid

  When you go back and review the past it has an interesting effect. As I travelled I realised that I had spent thirty years confident that the one year I spent with the Gladys Society had been the best time of my life. In a way I think such a belief holds you back. I had been so convinced of my fundamental Americanism that I had failed to see how very English I had become. Allied with this was my notional retention of Danish nationality as a mark of respect to my beloved father. Consequently, despite my passionate interest in politics, I realised that I had spent my entire adult life living in a country where I could not vote. Both a loyalty and a sense of duty to the past had stopped me applying for the British passport to which I am entitled. Now it was beginning to matter to me. The beloved Denmark that my father knew was changing and I could no longer take pride in its socialist kindness. I was aghast as it lurched further and further right in the political spectrum, horror-struck as I watched the parliament pass laws which seemed to me not just horribly conservative but to strike at the very heart of human rights. I didn’t want to live in Denmark so the truth was that I had no business holding Danish citizenship. I did, however, want to live in Britain and be involved in its politics. Not only was it something I would enjoy, it would enable me to do the one thing that matters most to me — to make a difference. I think it can happen that a person develops an image for themselves as a child that doesn’t sit well as an adult but which one fails to shake off.

  I was in a state of questioning some fundamental things about myself as we headed off to visit Sue’s sister, Anne, in the Bostonian suburbs. Anne had not been involved in the original play at school. Her membership in the Gladyses stemmed mainly through her sibling. She had not been very theatrical although she did play clarinet in the band in the spring musical. Going to see Anne I was reminded that the year had not been all golden and that actually there had been a darker side too. Anne had been one of the older members of the group and probably the most serious. Apart from
playing the clarinet her main interest at school had been sport. When she left high school she went to study political science in Maine for four years. I would have thought that was enough political science for anybody and it wasn’t surprising that after that she wanted to go back to her old love of hockey and physical education. I like the American approach to further education. It is not a finite thing but can stretch and twist and turn across many years and a multitude of disciplines. Then Anne met someone called Cindy and realised her personal preference in life. It was at a time when I didn’t see Anne but had become friends with her mother Pat. Towards the end of her life Pat would come to London fairly often and I would take her drinking in clubs. She loved that and she would talk to me about her daughters, about her rather more genteel upbringing and how she had borrowed every book the library had on offer to find out why her daughter had turned gay. Sue had not found it easy either. I remember her telling me with horror that Anne had brought Cindy to the house one Christmas, right near the beginning of the relationship, and sat on the sofa with her arm around her. That wasn’t necessary,’ Sue said.

  I thought it probably was but I didn’t say so.

  Anne had always been kind to me but we were not friends in the same way as I was with some of the others. During the year at high school, I’d had a great time doing all sorts of ‘theater’. Then things started to unravel.

  My parents had been busy with the new baby, my sister Jeni, and I had often been left to the care of my close and older group of friends. This care had included going into the city to see shows, sitting around backstage at the high school theatre and rarely, if ever, actually going to any classes. I had worked out that as long as you turned up for homeroom in the morning, then as far as the school was concerned you were attending. Everyone went to such a variety of classes that it was impossible to keep an eye on who was doing what. Certainly your guidance counselor didn’t seem to have time for you unless the police had also called for an appointment. I don’t know why I started cutting classes. Perhaps it was the appalling social studies classes or perhaps I just found better things to do. Then my parents made the unexpected decision to go to a parents’ evening. I don’t know what possessed them, but I do know they were hard pushed to find a teacher who knew me. It’s not how they had hoped the evening would go. I had always been such a good girl. My fate was sealed, my cards were marked and I was off to the first British boarding school that would have me.

  Anne picked me up in her brown Ford Pinto to take me to the usual Friday night for the Gladyses at her house. It was unusual that no one else was in the car. For once in my life I was allowed to ride in the front. Anne was a senior and we didn’t have that much to talk about. She was always nice to me and let me sleep on the floor in her room if I was scared at night, but we weren’t exactly close. She often kept to herself and was less openly theatrical than many of the others. She parked in front of her parents’ garage and turned to me.

  ‘So, what’s the matter with you?’ she asked, and I began to sob. She put her arms around me and I sobbed and sobbed. My life was over and she was the first one there to help me.

  Despite Rita’s thorough organisation for our trip, the instructions to Anne’s house were not entirely clear. She lives in a suburb of Boston and the instructions out to Jamaica Plain contained few if any actual street names. There were, however, quite a lot of instructions about ‘turning left at Dunkin’ Donuts’. It had proved impossible to pass a Dunkin’ Donuts in the car without Rita saying how happy the place would make Ron. I could only think that the man must be in a permanent state of euphoria as they are everywhere. You could not take directions from anyone without including a left or a right at a Dunkin’ Donuts.

  By the time we even got to the general neighbourhood it was pitch black outside. Relentlessly we turned left at a Dunkin’ Donuts and kept coming back to a large clock tower illuminating the entrance to the public transport system. It didn’t help that we couldn’t read the few instructions we had. I had left them in my rucksack where they were now covered in melon juice from the fruit I had completely forgotten about.

  ‘I think we should be eastbound on Potter,’ said Rita from the back.

  ‘This is Woodbourne,’ I pointed out as we passed the same street sign for the eighth time.

  ‘Maybe she said Woodbourne,’ said Rita, who I think by now was just trying to be amenable.

  I phoned Anne. It was our first phone call for thirty years but I was beyond nervous into a new state of hyper-irritation.

  ‘Anne? This is Sandi. Okay, we are quite lost.’

  Probably she detected a certain note in my voice. ‘What do you see?’ she asked quite reasonably.

  ‘I have the Sydney Opera House ahead of me and Big Ben is on my right.’

  There was no pause at all as she shot back with, ‘On your right? No wonder you are lost. It should be on the left.’

  I knew in that moment that she and I were going to get on. In the end, Anne was reduced to standing in her street waving a torch to bring us in like lost sheep on an airfield. I was impressed. I might have had a torch at home but definitely not one that worked. We had passed the house several times. Rita had been told it was a grey house with red-brick trim. At night they all looked grey and none of them seemed to have any bricks whatsoever.

  Anne and I hugged. A woman wearing a face I once knew but now framed with grey hair cut short. Anne is one of the statistically high gay contingent of the Gladys Society. I was glad. Her boyfriend at high school never seemed right for her. Now she has a delightful partner, Barbara, who works as a social worker for women with breast and uterine cancers.

  We sat in Anne and Barbara’s beautiful house with its hand-painted kitchen and lovely art work. A house of two females and no children. We talked about the past and I reminisced about her mother.

  ‘She was a Southern belle, right?’ I said as a statement.

  Anne laughed. ‘No, she was from Philadelphia.’

  ‘But she had all that stuff about manners and society. She knew how long fingernails should be and when you should wear white gloves and she——’

  ‘She had all that stuff but she was from Philadelphia.’

  Anne studied in Ohio, then Texas, then broke up with Cindy and came back to the East Coast.

  ‘How did you pay for all that studying?’ Paul wanted to know.

  ‘I got my masters by teaching bowling,’ replied Anne.

  This silenced everyone in the room. I don’t think even Rita could imagine a degree riding on several spares and a strike.

  ‘Now I coordinate a crisis management programme for elementary schools.’

  I found we were endlessly rolling down alleyways of conversation that I didn’t fully understand. Elementary schools are for little people. What kind of crisis could they have that would need to be managed? There was a short period of time in my junior high school when the National Guard pitched up but that was during the nationwide student protests against the war in Vietnam, when some college kids were shot at Kent State University. We didn’t have that kind of trouble in Mamaroneck. I think mostly the guards hung around and traded baseball cards with the kids.

  Rita, bless her heart, was keen to talk about gay rights. None of the gay people in the room was that bothered and Paul would have preferred to chew glass professionally. I like Rita’s attitude to the subject: it is commendable, but it had the same effect on me as would being especially nice to any Third World people who might happen to come in for drinks.

  ‘So, Barbara,’ she said brightly, while Anne opened some much-needed white wine, ‘how long have you two been together?’

  ‘Seven years,’ replied Barbara.

  ‘And is it still a romance?’ Rita enquired.

  ‘I said seven years,’ said Barbara evenly which made me laugh.

  ‘I bet it is,’ said Rita, who is kind enough to want it all to be wonderful for homosexuals without really understanding that seven years would be a long time to sustai
n romance in a pair of astrologically suited lovebirds. I don’t think gay people want gay rights. I think they want equal rights and mostly what they wanted that evening was dinner.

  The arrival of the Irish is a formidable attempt of Satan and his sons to unsettle us.

  Puritan minister, Boston, 1654

  We headed for dinner in the heart of Irish Boston. The city’s strong Irish connection was quite literally built upon the backs of immigrants from the old country. Before they came to labour in the town and reclaim land from the sea, Boston was no more than three miles long and a mile wide. Then, in the spring of 1654, the ship Goodfellow arrived in Boston harbour. On board were hundreds of Irish men and women. There are now ten times as many people claiming to be Irish outside Ireland as there are in their native land. They were the first large foreign ingredient placed in the famous melting pot of America. They originally came as slaves and later as refugees. During the great Irish Famine of the mid-I 800s, one-third of all Irish men, women and children died of starvation and disease, one-third survived and the rest went to America. They went to Boston and New York — natural ports across the Atlantic — and by 1857 almost half the Boston population was Irish. I’ve always thought it was ironic that the potato came from America and that it was the lack of potato that brought the Irish to these shores.

  The Puritans were about as keen on the Irish as they were on Quakers but the pilgrims shipped in as many Irish servants as they could get. Irish girls were often sold into servitude and the kidnapping of Irish boys and girls by English sea captains became fairly common practice. When in the early winter of 1626 a forty-foot vessel heading for Virginia from Ireland was wrecked off Cape Cod, Governor Bradford wrote: ‘Most of her passengers were Irish servants’; and apparently a fair number ran off ‘to live with the Indians’, which seems to have been preferable to living with the English.

  If you want a bit of the Emerald Isle in Boston, and it’s almost de rigueur, then the place to go is Doyle’s Pub. It has been serving up baked beans and brew to the Irish on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain since 1882. It claims to be The Best Pub in All of America’. Surprisingly, I think this might be quite a hotly contested title.

 

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