One of the more notable things about Ground Zero had been how many Irish pubs there were in the area. All of them with shamrock green awnings now covered in dust and all of them closed. I know that much of the money for the IRA has come from America, from Noraid funds collected from Irish-Americans. It was a curious twist of circumstance that the Taliban had such an impact on the Irish troubles. I doubt the bearded men of Islam had given much thought to the Irish Republican movement. The decommissioning of IRA weapons which had taken so long, finally happened close on the heels of 9/11. It can only be that the money dried up; that the American supporters of violence suddenly looked at the World Trade Center on their doorstep and thought, Oh, I see, that’s terrorism. Oh, that’s not good.
It’s a terrible thing to say but perhaps they had to have something happen on their doorstep to get the message. So much of what happens in the world is distant and alien to America.
In Doyle’s pub we had arrived in Kennedy heaven. Mention the Kennedys to Bostonian Irish Catholics and they automatically genuflect. You might as well have mentioned His Holiness the Pope. Boston is full of high society and you don’t get any higher than the Kennedy clan. At Doyle’s you can’t help but trip over family paraphernalia. The place is littered with blurry pictures of the murdered President John Fitzgerald and sundry family members. Every wall beams down with photographs of JFK in endless handsome poses like early cigarette or sweater ads.
Doyle’s is wonderfully old fashioned. It has a strange tin ceiling, a long oaken bar to meet new friends, wooden booths to meet old friends and mural-covered walls. On the rear wall of the Michael Collins room, an eighteen-foot mural portrays the Irish legacy — the likeness of seven Boston mayors and forty-five other significant politicians, pals and patrons. Here you can eat and drink on a cash-only basis.
We settled at a small booth and the waitress came to take our order.
‘Please may I have spaghetti and meatballs?’ I enquired.
‘What would you have done if she had said no?’ laughed Barbara. I thought about it for a moment. ‘I would have ordered something else.’
While we re-read the menus to make sure we had ordered what we really wanted, we all became middle-aged and discussed the need for spectacles. Anne had always worn glasses.
‘I’d have that laser surgery but my corneas are too thin,’ she explained.
‘How fabulous,’ I muttered, thinking I would like to have any part of my body medically declared too thin. We had all put on weight. We all needed help with our eyesight. God almighty, we were getting old.
Paul was obsessed with The Big Dig. He wanted to buy a book on it. Of course he did. My seven-year-old son loves pictures of dumper trucks and men in hard hats.
‘What are they going to do with the bit on top? The big space where they are digging now?’ he asked. It was an area we had come to know well as the Heritage Trail passes right over it. At the moment it was occupied solely by several rather down-at-heel Halal butchers. If the area became smart, I thought they probably wouldn’t stay the course.
‘No one knows,’ said Anne.
‘It’s going to be a park,’ said Barbara.
‘I hadn’t heard that,’ said Anne.
‘It’s a pain in the ass,’ said Barbara.
I began to talk with pleasure about large engineering projects which benefit the next generation and not our own. ‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I enthused. The Victorians did it all the time. It shows vision. Like planting trees for an arboretum which you’ll never see mature in your lifetime.’
Barbara looked at me and nodded approvingly. ‘That’s very good, Sandi.’
‘What is?’
‘You have made a very good, positive reversal and my students would like that.’
A positive reversal? It’s another language. I had no idea what I had done so I changed the subject. They wanted to know about the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and how great he was for standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with America.
‘Yeah, what do you think he wants?’ I asked generally.
There was silence at the table broken only by the delivery of my spaghetti.
‘Wants?’ said Rita. ‘Why would he want anything?’
‘Well, everyone does, don’t they? I mean Pakistan is going to get their debts written off and Blair must be going to get something back …‘ I faltered. I looked to Paul for support but an Englishman doesn’t discuss politics when he is eating … or driving … or walking … or …
‘What could Europe want?’ asked Anne.
‘Well … lots of things … the … Kyoto agreement?’
‘Why?’ asked Barbara, seemingly genuine in her bafflement.
‘Because the world is dying. I mean I see it. You know, if I go skiing in the Alps I can see the destruction on the trees where acid rain …
It sounded like a poor argument. People should be more conscious of the environment; Americans should spend more money on petrol so that I could get a better experience when I went skiing. No one agreed with me about Kyoto. Everyone agreed we should have dessert. Somewhere Tony Blair was no doubt busy doing things just because it was good for America. I think my fear was that they were right.
Rita changed the subject. ‘Do you guys remember Steve Immerman?’
I did, only vaguely but I did. He was a young man whose Jewish identity, even at high school, had been hugely important to him. In fact, I think it was the only thing I could remember about him.
‘He found out he wasn’t Jewish,’ announced Rita.
‘What?’ Anne and I exhaled together.
It seemed Steve’s grandfather had died not all that long ago. Steve had gone to his house to go through his papers and made a startling discovery. His grandfather was a tailor. He had arrived in New York via Ellis Island and he had quickly discovered other tailors. These tailors were Jewish but Steve’s grandfather was actually an Italian Catholic. He decided it would be better to be a Jewish tailor. So he changed his name. Steve Immerman was not an Immerman at all but something with more of the hint of pasta about it.
This was one of the funniest things I had ever heard. I thought it was a hilarious tale about the human condition. About the ridiculous elements we gather up to create an image of ourselves.
‘What if bin Laden suddenly discovers his grandfather has lied and he is actually a Hassidic Jew from Yonkers?’ I asked. ‘I think that would be great.’
Barbara and Anne laughed but Rita did not think the story was funny.
The good thing was that his father married a Jew,’ she persisted.
‘Why?’ asked Paul, who didn’t know Steve Immerman but liked the topic better than politics or environmental issues.
‘Well, if your mother is Jewish then you are Jewish,’ Rita explained.
‘Yes, but his name isn’t Immerman,’ I said giggling. ‘He’s Dagostino or whatever.’
‘He’s still Jewish. That’s the point,’ she insisted.
I paid the bill. Anne had been a little reluctant to meet up, I felt. She had been slow to answer my emails and less than enthusiastic to make arrangements. She had been one of the Gladyses I had tried to meet in Arizona when I had my unfortunate equine encounter. Now, as we stood outside Doyle’s she said, ‘When are you guys leaving town?’
‘Day after tomorrow,’ I said.
‘You wanna have dinner tomorrow night?’
I felt like I was suddenly in a hit show.
The next morning I was out early again. Like Mr Revere himself, I was looking for the great white steeple to guide me into the North End. Here, Barbara had assured me, I would find a Little Italy full of Italian family dining at unsociable hours. I wandered up the Paul Revere Mall, a broad memorial walk where the names of men, many men, of the Revolution and the Civil War are commemorated. The sun was just beginning to shine on a giant statue of Paul on horseback, either delivering his news or the bill for the same. I think I was over-tired.
‘Where are the women?’ I shouted u
p at Revere, who sat proud by a twist of poetic fate. ‘I don’t believe they were all at home wringing their hands!’
Where were the women who farmed, butchered, sewed, cooked, baked, gardened, brought up the kids and probably ran a business on the side? Where was the tribute to Katherine Goodard, the female printer of Baltimore, who published the first signed copy of the Declaration of Independence, and the blacksmith Betsy Hagar, who helped repair weapons and cannon for the colonial army. What about Deborah Sampson who joined the continental army as Timothy Thayer? After her true sex was discovered she left, only to join the 4th Massachusetts Regiment as Infantry Private Robert Shurtleff. I was very conscious when I was a child of the need for feminism. I look at the Gladyses and at the women I know and I can’t help but feel anxious that nothing much has changed.
I never found Little Italy but ended up in a place called Theo’s Cozy Corner on the corner of Salem and Sheefe and in the shadow of the North End Church. Here everyone spoke Portuguese. Two men sat at the three-stool breakfast bar wearing clothes straight from The Big Dig and baseball caps on backwards. One of them was on a loud walkie-talkie. The reception was bad and he couldn’t hear properly so he turned it up — now we could all hear that the reception was bad. Two other men at an adjacent table were discussing a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The place smelled like any other greasy spoon and I didn’t have high hopes for my coffee..
A young Portuguese woman slouched over to the men at the table. One of the young men began to order.
‘Could I get an egg and cheese sandwich?’ She wrote that down. He held up his hand. ‘No, could I get the bagel special?’ She wrote that down. He held up his hand again. ‘Actually I’ll get the toast with the bacon.’ The short order chef put some bacon on the grill. The woman looked at me.
‘Do you want coffee?’ she asked.
I did and I didn’t want to change my mind. It never came. She took my order and went to sit at the counter without mentioning it to anybody. As she sat the young man called out, ‘Did you start cooking yet, ‘cos I’ll get the French toast instead.’
He got what he wanted and my coffee never came. Shades of the Algonquin. Invisible women.
I met Paul and Rita and we wandered around Quincy Market. There was a stall for the Boston Historical Society. Here two women volunteers were bickering about stall layout.
‘I was wondering if you know why baked beans come from Boston?’ I asked. They didn’t know but the rather keen younger woman went to look it up. It turned out to be a cheap food for Irish immigrants. The town was awash with molasses from the Caribbean trade so they would shove that with some beans in a pot and take it to be cooked at the local bakery while they attended to their souls in church.
The older woman nodded at this information. ‘I am always telling my daughter-in-law — why don’t you just make baked beans? When I was a kid it was a meal. I say to her, don’t do all this other stuff. Baked beans, I’m telling you, it’s a meal and my son would love it. She doesn’t know what he would like. Only the other day I said to her…’
My heart went out to the daughter-in-law.
We couldn’t visit the replica boat where the Boston Tea Party had taken place because, like Margaret Mitchell’s place, it had burnt down. Apart from maybe preserving some actual antiques, it seemed to me that people interested in American history would do well to invest in a few smoke alarms.
We went for a trolley ride and drifted about for the rest of the day. I had booked a table for the evening at the Union Oyster House, which is the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States. They have been serving since 1826 which must be an annoyance to Durgin Park, the other old restaurant in town, which opened a year later. It’s a great place. The building itself is more than two hundred and fifty years old and once housed Hopestill Capen’s fancy dress goods business which was called ‘At the Sign of the Cornfields’. I don’t know if I have ever had a call to buy fancy dress goods but I should like to have seen what Hopestill had on offer.
You can’t escape the Revolution in Boston and it was on the upper floors of this house that America’s first newspaper the Massachusetts Spy was printed, calling citizens to arms. Then, during the 1776 war, it became the place where troops came to get paid. No doubt even Washington popped in for his expenses. But it’s the small stuff of history that I like. The tales which make all the grand people a little more human. It was in the Oyster tavern that in 1796 you could have had French lessons from the king of France himself. Louis-Philippe lived in exile on the second floor. He made a living by teaching verb declensions to rich young women before eventually going home to be king. I like this. By appearing on television there is a general presumption made about me that I have riches beyond my wildest dreams, that I need never work again but merely dally with tasks for my own amusement. Entertainment has changed beyond recognition in Britain. It is not the world I first entered. There is less and less work and less and less of it worth doing. I thought about the king. A man reduced to putting a sign out: ‘French Lessons Given’. I could end up like that myself, except my ad would be on a sticky label in a phone booth.
Downstairs the large semi-circular bar is made of beaten copper Here Daniel Webster of Webster’s Dictionary daily drank his tall tumbler of brandy and water with each half-dozen oysters. He often had six plates after which, I imagine, he started making words up. Good fellow, Dan. Here the toothpick first came into everyday use. Charles Forster of Maine imported the picks from South America and as a promotion he hired Harvard boys to eat at the restaurant and ask for toothpicks.
Rita, Paul and I were early. I gave the woman at the front desk my name. She ticked it off and said nothing.
‘Can we get our table?’ I asked politely but using Americanese.
‘Not till your party is assembled,’ she said, without looking up. There was a rather long pause. ‘You can go to the bar if you like.’ JFK came here so often he has a booth upstairs dedicated to his memory. I bet he could get his table when he wanted. We looked in the gift shop instead. Here you could buy any lobster thing you may ever have thought of — lobster-shaped ovengloves, lollipops, pens, notepads … I wondered what the chances were of having steak for dinner.
Anne and Barbara appeared and we were allowed into the inner sanctum. I had booked early and was anxious that we would get a good table. We were led through a lovely dining room, full of people enjoying themselves at intimate tables. It was quite a big building and we finally came to a halt at a back room full of picnic tables for coach parties.
‘Isn’t there anywhere in the actual dining room?’ I asked Charlene, my waitress for the evening.
‘I’m afraid it’s full,’ she replied, smiling.
What a good thing I had bothered to book. We were not the only ones who had been given the short end of the toothpick. At the next table but one was another group of adults.
Charlene served us. She was very pleasant despite the fact that no one except Paul and me ordered anything the way it appeared on the menu. We two English had the lobster and everyone else had a combination of foods unique to themselves. Meanwhile one of the men at the next table had begun humming.
‘UHHHHMMMMMMMM!’
It was very loud and completely toneless. No one at his table said anything. They just carried on as normal.
HMMMMMMMM!’
Patently the man was suffering from some kind of syndrome or possibly, syndrone. It was like sitting at an RAF base with incoming Spitfires. Maybe that was why they had been put in the back room where no one wanted to sit. That was understandable. Perhaps the unfortunate man had been droning loud enough to cause vibrations in the crockery cupboard. I wondered what it was about our party that had led the restaurateurs to think we too should be isolated. We were very politically correct and tried to carry on our conversation, but it wasn’t easy.
‘UHHHHMMMMMMM!’
The quiet, elegant meal I had imagined was turning into a trial. Everyt
hing we said was accompanied by sounds normally generated by a faulty and irritable boiler. The lobster arrived amid a wealth of tool options to crack the life out of the thing. I once read that lobsters, like people, are left- and right-handed, well … left-and right-clawed. If you examine the claws, the claw they favoured in life will be larger than the other. I also read (and I begin to think that my choice of literature would not stand up to examination) that when lobsters outgrow their skin they shed it and wander about naked for a while. I eyed my left-handed potential nudist and wondered as to the best mode of attack. Barbara came to the fore.
‘UHHHHMMMMMMMM!‘ went the man.
‘This reminds me of that time I was teaching class on racism,’ she said, as she cracked the back of my benthic dweller, ‘and there was this person at the back with Tourette’s syndrome. I’m talking about racism and he’s in the back chanting “Fucking nigger, fucking nigger”. It wasn’t my best day at work.’ Barbara took her index finger, shoved it up the arse of my dinner and promptly pushed out in a great lump all the meat the creature had once called its own. It was one way to get to know somebody.
I looked at Anne and then Barbara and we got the giggles. The humming continued, rising and falling in volume, throughout the meal. Finally the poor man and his companions were ready to leave. The man got up just as his large friend next to him struggled to put on a leather jacket. As the friend pushed his arm into the coat, his heavy sleeve swung round and struck the aeroplane impersonator square in the face. Maybe the friend was clumsy but maybe he had been annoyed with all the noise. There was a loud ‘thwack’ followed by a sharp intake of air and it completely knocked the hum out of the man. Perhaps it was a medical technique. Like the Heimlich manoeuvre.
Barbara, Anne and I got the giggles again and I don’t think I stopped for the rest of the evening. Rita persuaded Charlene to give Paul and me our plastic lobster bibs to take home as souvenirs. It was kind but I couldn’t think what on earth we would do with them.
Gladys Reunited Page 23
