A Mother's Spirit

by Anne Bennett

  ‘It’s a dreadful time for the whole of New York,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t know whether it will ever recover from this. It might be better for us to try our luck somewhere else, and yet we might be no better off. I think what has happened in New York is going to have repercussions throughout the whole of America.’

  ‘To move might totally unsettle Mother too,’ Gloria said. ‘I mean, she has lived here all her life, she knows nothing else, and Daddy and her parents are buried here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘We must stay here and weather the storm the best way we can.’ He gave a sudden sigh. ‘Now I must speak to the indoor staff and I am dreading it.’

  ‘Have you money for their wages?’

  ‘Not in the bank,’ Joe said. ‘There is very little there, but I have got a stash in that biscuit tin you used to tease me about.’

  ‘Good job you took no notice of me then,’ Gloria said. ‘It’s money that the bank need know nothing about.’

  That was true, and Joe was glad that he was able to pay the wages of the staff for the last time, but he found telling them how bad things were very hard, although they knew that with Brian’s suicide the news would hardly be good.

  ‘I wish you all the very best,’ Joe told them. ‘I will of course give you all excellent references. I wish I could ask you to stay on longer, but we have to be out ourselves next week.’

  ‘Have you some place to live?’ Planchard asked.

  Joe nodded miserably. ‘A two-bedroomed apartment downtown.’

  Planchard shook his head. His mistress and Gloria living in an apartment seemed all wrong to him.

  It seemed all wrong to Norah too – in fact, so wrong that she refused to accept that it was going to happen. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ she said to Joe when he tried to explain. ‘You cannot expect me to leave here and go into some slummy apartment block.’

  ‘Norah, it’s all that we can afford,’ Joe said. He felt sorry for her because she had been in a privileged position all her life and any other way to live was alien to her.

  ‘There must be money in the bank.’

  ‘There isn’t, Norah,’ Joe said decidedly. ‘And that is why we will have to sell the factory, and this house, and so we can’t live here any more. In fact we no longer own it, because Brian borrowed against it. The bank now owns this house.’

  ‘I have never heard anything so absurd in the whole of my life, and I will not move from here and no one will make me.’

  Joe could see that Norah was getting agitated and upset, and he left her and appealed to Gloria. ‘Talk to your mother,’ he pleaded. ‘I know she is fighting the inevitable because she’s scared. See if you can get her to understand.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Gloria said, though she too was frightened of the future and hated the thought of leaving her home. She knew there was no alternative, however, because Joe had written all the figures down for her. That was what she must make her mother see.

  Gloria tried hard. For a long time she explained how bad the situation was for them all, but Norah wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Ignore her,’ Joe said eventually. ‘You have done your best. Pack up her stuff along with your own. Take none of your fancy dresses or ball gowns, though you can take any personal items and gifts you have been given, so you can take your jewellery and your mother’s. We may well have need of it yet.’

  ‘Can we take nothing else?’ Gloria said.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Joe said. ‘It has to be sold to pay off the creditors. The bank has agreed, however, that I can take the everyday crockery and cutlery from the kitchen, and a selection of cooking utensils.’

  ‘Cooking utensils will be wasted on me,’ Gloria said. ‘I told you before we married that I couldn’t cook and didn’t know the least thing about keeping house.’

  ‘It can’t be that hard,’ Joe said, ‘for there are plenty of people at it. Anyway, I should think not being able to cook a four-course meal will be the least of our troubles.’

  Adamant to the last, even when the bailiffs entered the house, Norah sat on an easy chair in the drawing room and refused to move.

  Outside, a man with a clipboard gave a perfunctory look over the truck that Joe had hired to ascertain they hadn’t squirrelled away the family silver. They were ready to go, but Norah wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Lady, if you don’t move then we will lift you up and dump you on the drive outside,’ one of the men told her eventually. Norah’s lips were clamped shut and she glowered at him. He went out to where Joe stood leaning against the truck and said, ‘By, but she’s one cussed old bird.’

  ‘She’s scared and saddened,’ Joe said. ‘Let me talk to her again.’

  The man shrugged. ‘All right, pal,’ he said. ‘She’s all yours, but remember we haven’t got all day.’

  Joe went into the drawing room and faced Norah. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘What’s this about now? Both Gloria and I explained it to you.’

  Norah didn’t answer that. Instead, she said in an outraged tone, ‘He said – that man said – that he would pick me up and put me on the sidewalk.’ She gave an emphatic nod of her head and added, ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘He might well,’ Joe said. ‘He has a job to do.’

  ‘Then let him try,’ Norah said fiercely. ‘The audacity of it! Carrying me out of my own house.’

  Joe kneeled down and, taking Norah by the shoulders, he looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Norah,’ he said. ‘Listen to what I am going to say. This is not your house, not any longer, and you have no right here. The bank owns it now, and you must leave it to them and come with me and Gloria. She is waiting for you in the truck.’

  ‘Joe, it will break my heart to leave this place,’ Norah said, and Joe’s own heart turned over in sympathy for her, but this wasn’t the time to soften.

  ‘No it won’t. You are stronger than that, Norah, and anyway, there is no alternative.’ He stood up and put out his hand. ‘Come on,’ he coaxed.

  He saw the tears trickle down Norah’s lined cheeks, but she took Joe’s hand and he led her outside.

  Joe was very proud of the furnished apartment that he now rented in Manhattan West Side. It was expensive, though, and he knew that he would have to find a job as quickly as possible to pay for it. It was on the fifth floor and had two sizeable bedrooms, a living room, a separate dining room, a roomy kitchen and bathroom, and a balcony.

  Gloria could see that Joe was pleased with it and so she didn’t say that she thought it awful, cramped and squalid. She knew her mother felt the same, because she saw it in the disdainful curl of Norah’s lips and the set of her jaw. She said nothing, but then since the day she had been taken from her home she had said very little at all.

  From the very first day in the apartment Gloria’s life changed beyond all recognition. She had to learn to wash dishes, launder clothes and clean the apartment, and though she found things extremely difficult, she complained little, knowing that it wouldn’t help. She also looked after her mother, who was so sunk in melancholy that she seemed unable to rouse herself at all and spent most of her time in bed.

  In the early days, Joe showed Gloria how to cook porridge, bacon and fish, eggs, both boiled and fried, and how to make tea and boil potatoes. Apart from that they lived on sandwiches and pies they bought from the shop.

  Gloria had no idea of budgeting either, in the beginning, for in her old world, if she had money she spent it on anything she wanted. Much of what she bought was put on her father’s account before her marriage, and Joe’s after it. Now Joe had to explain about putting aside the money for bills and rent, and saving any spare in case he had difficulty in finding work, and she found this very hard to take.

  He thought he would find work with little trouble, but he soon realised there were few jobs to go around and many people after them. Men would cluster around the gates of one of the factories still operating, and that way might be picked for a day or two’s work. That work might consist of anything and whatever wage y
ou were offered, however paltry it was, you took it, for if you didn’t someone else would.

  Their poverty frustrated and angered him because it was the result of nothing he had done wrong. And the worry that he wouldn’t earn enough to keep them alive never really left him. He certainly wasn’t earning enough to pay the rent. Every week he had to dip into the biscuit tin and he knew things couldn’t go on like that indefinitely.

  By 1930 more factories had gone to the wall and it was harder than ever to get work. The cold was intense throughout January and February, and there were many snowstorms. Joe was often soaked to the skin after standing for hours in the hope of employment, only to be passed over for younger, fitter-looking men. That was a real problem, for in March that year Joe was forty and since finding Brian in his study that time, and the dreadful days following it, he really did look his age.

  Gloria, however, was still optimistic that their fortunes would improve and this seemed to be the case when Joe was taken on as a labourer in the building of the Empire State Building in March. She began to believe their troubles were over, but Joe told her to go easy, for the work would not last for ever. He was proved right too. The job was good for the months that he had it, but although the building was set to be the tallest skyscraper in the whole of America, it was going up far too fast for Joe’s liking and was finished by May of the following year.

  Gloria felt engulfed in panic and misery when Joe told her that his job was at an end, because she knew he had nothing else lined up. He would be back to hanging around the factories, hoping to be picked for a job of work, and whether they ate or not depended on him.

  So the following morning, when Joe got up a little later than usual, Gloria assumed that he was going to be doing a tour of the factories, as he had done before.

  ‘No, not yet,’ Joe said, when she asked him. ‘I am off to see the Empire State Building opened officially by President Hoover first. D’you want to come along with me and see it for yourself?’

  Gloria stared at him as if she couldn’t believe her ears. What good was watching the opening of the Empire State Building – or any other building, come to that? It wouldn’t affect their lives in any way. They needed money and Joe hadn’t time to go gallivanting.

  ‘See it for myself?’ Gloria repeated scornfully. ‘I have no desire to see it and I am surprised that you want to. As you have no work, shouldn’t you be out looking for something?’

  ‘I will look for something,’ Joe said. ‘The opening shouldn’t take all day.’

  Gloria, however, was dreading going back to the way they had lived before, and worry caused her to lash out at him. ‘Joe, I don’t believe that I am hearing this,’ she cried. ‘You know yourself that there is not a chance of a job unless you are out early. You have said so yourself. When you are watching the President cutting the tape, as if you are a man of leisure, just remember that.’

  ‘And when have I ever wasted time?’ Joe ground out.

  ‘Well, you are proposing to now,’ Gloria retorted.

  ‘Dear God, woman …’ Gloria saw the rage building up in Joe. His face was crimson and his eyes flashed fire. She waited for the onslaught, but it didn’t come. Joe didn’t trust himself to speak. He couldn’t trust himself to stay in the same room as Gloria either, and he wrenched the door open, then slammed it so hard behind him that it shuddered on its hinges.

  Gloria sank onto a kitchen chair, and burst into tears. She knew how unjust she had been. Joe was out every day, in all weathers, and was willing to work his fingers to the bone for them. Why hadn’t she gone with him to see the opening of that magnificent building? He would have been so pleased if she had, but instead she had driven him out with her angry words.

  Norah lay in bed and listened to her daughter weeping. She knew Gloria was very near breaking point, for she had heard it in her voice, and now she faced the fact that she was partly to blame. Instead of being a help to her – to them both – she had been more of a hindrance. True, the way they lived now was as far from her former life as it was possible to be, but it was the same for Gloria and she hadn’t crumbled, but had soldiered on, making the best of it, though she was now at the end of her tether.

  It was time that she herself took an active role in the family again, Norah decided, and she threw back the covers.

  Gloria heard her mother’s approach with surprise. She lifted her tear-stained face and said, ‘Are you all right, Mother?’ for Norah spent much of her time isolated in her room. ‘Is there something I can get for you?’

  ‘There is nothing you can get me, girl, and yet I am definitely not all right,’ Norah said. ‘I am selfish and self-centred.’

  ‘Oh, Mother …’

  ‘Hear me out, Gloria. I have watched you and Joe struggle for months and as yet have not lifted a finger to help you.’

  ‘Mother, we understand. What has happened was a terrific shock for you.’

  ‘It was a terrible shock for all of us and my withdrawing from life helped no one. Your father took the coward’s way out, Gloria, and yet I envied him. At one point it crossed my mind to make an end to it all when I realised that I had lost the house. I felt that I was in despair. But I have finally got over that nonsense now, and for all he seldom complains I imagine Joe gets as fed up as the rest of us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gloria said. ‘And I have driven him away.’

  ‘You are under strain as well,’ Norah said. ‘And that is why you said what you did – because you know your man works himself to death for the pair of us.’

  ‘I know,’ Gloria said, ‘and I will apologise to him as soon as he comes in.’

  Many hours later, when the early summer’s evening had a dusky tinge to it, Joe arrived home, worn out and footsore. His face was grey and lined with fatigue. Norah, looking from him to her daughter, felt that her presence wasn’t necessary and took herself off to her room.

  Gloria said gently, ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘Were you?’ Joe asked wearily. He looked at her steadily. ‘I don’t think you were. You probably just wanted to establish that I was out looking for work and not wasting time.’

  ‘No, Joe,’ Gloria maintained, ‘I was truly worried. I thought something might have happened to you and I couldn’t have borne that. I am so sorry about what I said to you this morning. I was wrong and I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth.’

  Joe’s face lightened a little, but still he asked, ‘Do you really mean that?’

  ‘Yes, Joe,’ Gloria replied earnestly. ‘I mean it from the bottom of my heart.’

  ‘That, my dear girl, is all I wanted to hear,’ Joe said, and as he held her closer she heard the rumble of his stomach.

  She pulled away from him slightly. ‘Joe, you’re hungry.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t eaten all day,’ Joe said. ‘You can’t buy anything when you haven’t even a dime in your pocket.’

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ Gloria said, ‘I only have bread in, but I have milk and tea.’

  ‘Tea and bread is a banquet to a starving man,’ Joe said, giving Gloria a peck on the cheek. ‘Lead me to it. You must feed me up anyway, for I have at least a day’s work at the docks tomorrow.’

  Gloria used to love the docks, she remembered, and would nag her father to take her as often as she could. It had all stopped when she was fourteen and Joe had put his life on the line to save her from greater injury or death. That, however, had been in her other life when she had been living, rather than merely existing. Now she said, ‘Oh, Joe, that’s wonderful.’

  ‘Aye, isn’t it,’ Joe said. ‘I would have hated to come home with nothing, and I only got this because I can drive.’

  ‘Oh? What are you driving?’

  ‘Trucks. One of the hauliers is a driver down, and I wish the man no harm, but I hope he takes a while to recover from whatever it is he is suffering from.’

  ‘Ooh, yes,’ Gloria said. ‘A whole week would be lovely.’

  ‘A week,’ said Joe. ‘That is nothing at
all. I was thinking more of six months or so.’

  ‘And I would say you were tilting at windmills.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be saying anything at all,’ Joe said. ‘You should be putting food on the table before I start gnawing on the table leg.’

  Two months later Gloria looked down from her fourth-floor window to the dusty yard below and thought she had died and gone to hell. She could see the doors to the communal lavatories sagging open on broken hinges, and the dustbins spilling onto the yard, and she wanted to die. She never in all her life thought that people lived like this, let alone that she would be counted as one of them.

  She faced the fact that she was no longer a person in straitened circumstances, but part of New York’s poor, and that realisation was hard to take. They no longer had an apartment, for despite Joe’s semi-permanent jobs at the docks, they couldn’t pay the rent. Instead they had rooms in a tenement building. Her mother had the one bedroom, and in the other room the family had to live, Joe and Gloria sleeping on the settee, which opened up as a bed at night. Any basic cooking would have to be done in what was laughingly called ‘the kitchen’, which housed a battered table and four rickety chairs, a sink under the one cold tap, a couple of shelves and two gas rings. The lighting too was from gas. They had no bathroom, and the toilet was a shared one, with access to it across the dusty yard. Gloria bitterly resented Joe bringing them there.

  She hadn’t really believed Joe when he told her in July that they were going to have to move to a cheaper place because the money in the biscuit tin was almost all gone and they could no longer afford the rent of the apartment. When Joe had taken Gloria to see this place she had been appalled. She couldn’t believe that he could possibly think she could live here. Now the apartment she had once thought of as small and squalid seemed like a palace in comparison.

  Joe knew how she felt and he felt a failure because he could provide nothing better. In fact they were lucky to have anything at all, for many in the same circumstance as Joe lived on the streets. A man he worked with at the docks, named Red McCullough because of his shock of red hair, had told him of the vacancy, in one of the tenements in Ludlow Street, nearby where he lodged in Orchard Street.