‘Sounds great! When do we go?’ I said. I could hardly wait to see Bobby, and was thrilled at the prospect of meeting more fellow British women.
The organization was called Daughters of the British Empire (DBE), and Bobby had been right. The women I met there were amazing, but best of all was that each one had a great sense of humour. What a relief to find this haven, which made me a little less homesick. The members all seemed to love throwing parties and having get-togethers; there was usually a party every month at someone’s home. It was comforting to be with people who enjoyed the same things and spoke the same language. Most of the women had been married during the war and were considerably older than I was, so I was the baby of the group and they all took care of me. At one of my early meetings, a wonderful woman named Joan Murphy, who was Regent of our DBE chapter, the House of Windsor, asked, ‘How old were you, Iris, when the Second World War started?’
‘One or two,’ I replied, whereupon she choked, spraying tea from her nose.
When at last she composed herself, still with tears of laughter rolling down her face, she explained, to our puzzled group, ‘That’s how old I was when the First World War started.’ We had a good laugh over that.
The British consul general and his wife attended one of Joan’s parties. As always, after dinner, we played silly games. In one, the men stood behind a sheet with just their legs from the knees down showing, and the wives had to pick out their own husband’s knees. Then it was the women’s turn. Well, my poor Bob marched right up to the sheet, bent down and grabbed a leg. ‘I’d know this skinny old sausage anywhere!’ he shouted.
It belonged to the consul general’s wife, and I honestly don’t know who was more mortified, poor shy Bob or her. We teased him about that for a long time and my British friends nicknamed me Sausage Legs, which was nothing new since my brother Robert had once told me that my legs were like sausages. I don’t think the consul general and his wife came to any more of our parties. They did invite us all to cocktails at their swish apartment once, but after one of our girls threw up over their bed, we never saw them again.
The DBE’s annual fête was fun too. It was held at the British Old People’s Home in Brookfield, Illinois, and was modelled on English village fêtes, with stalls, maypole dancing, games and races. They even served cream teas in the food tent, and it always ended with a performance by Chicago’s Stockyard Kiltie Band. Hearing the bagpipes and watching the swirl of the kilts always made me emotional; it was hard not to cry. The old people’s home, though, had been built next door to Brookfield Zoo, which provided material for many jokes.
Bob was usually reluctant to go to parties or events like the fête.
‘We’ve been invited to a party this weekend,’ I’d tell him.
‘We’re not going,’ he’d say. ‘You know I don’t like parties.’
‘Please, Bob, I’ve been stuck in the house for weeks and I need to get out.’
At first he made the effort to take me, and I think he managed to enjoy himself once he was there, especially after he’d had a few drinks, but later he began refusing to go. I didn’t know why the fun had gone out of him, and decided to ask if it would be okay for me to go without him.
‘Will you take care of the baby, then, if I can get someone to take me?’ I’d plead. Sometimes he said yes, at others he said no; when he said no, I was devastated. When he agreed to baby-sit, I would arrange for someone to pick me up and take me, then bring me home. I didn’t want to miss time with my English friends: I needed them. In addition, when I visited the neighbours I’d met in the apartment building, he usually chose to stay at home watching TV. For the most part, all Bob wanted was for dinner to be ready when he came home from work, then to sit in an armchair, where he usually dozed off until it was time to go to bed. My once fun-loving husband had disappeared and been replaced by an old stick-in-the-mud. When we were with people, the old Bob reappeared, his cute smile, his lovable chuckle, it was all there, so why couldn’t he show it at home to me?
More and more frequently, after putting the baby to bed, I’d leave Bob snoozing in his chair and wander downstairs to my neighbours, the Ballmaiers, where at least I had someone to talk to. I’m sure Bob wasn’t very sociable because of his upbringing. The Ballmaiers, Cindy and Phil, were true social animals. They always seemed to have company, always had the coffee pot on and always cooked huge amounts of food to feed whoever turned up. They were a blessing to me in those days.
Cindy and I still laugh about the time she came up to our apartment to have coffee with me and to let our two little ones play together. The boys, who were the same age, having been born just a week apart, were playing on the newly carpeted floor of our living room, while Cindy and I were in the kitchen, chatting over coffee and cake. Suddenly, an awful stench drifted into the kitchen, overpowering the aroma of the gorgeous, freshly baked cake we’d been enjoying.
‘What’s that smell?’ I said.
‘Smell?’ she replied, almost choking on her cake. ‘It smells like shit to me.’
We dashed down the hallway to investigate and, to my horror, found that one of the little angels had messed his pants. The result had fallen out onto the carpet and they were now happily bulldozing it everywhere with their toy trucks. No wonder they’d been so quiet.
One day when Cindy and Phil’s child, Little Phil, came running through the living room he tripped over his toy Mickey Mouse guitar. As he started to cry, we heard him mutter, ‘Fucking Mickey Mouse!’ Of course, his parents claimed they had no idea where he had heard such language. That little boy, whose mouth was washed out with soap, is now a minister …
As I think about the Ballmaiers, I’m reminded of another entertaining event that they shared with me. I’m sure it wasn’t funny to them when it happened, but I still grin when I think about it. Apparently, Cindy was in the living room talking to an insurance man. Phil was elsewhere in the house so was unaware that Cindy wasn’t alone. Suddenly, he called out to her: ‘Hey, Cin, come see the size of this turd I just did. I’ve never seen such a long one.’ Poor Cindy, I can only imagine how she felt, and God knows what the insurance man thought. She said he left in rather a hurry.
I had never before met anyone quite like the Ballmaiers, nor have I since, but Phil claimed a special place in my heart because of something he did for me soon after we first met. He and Cindy invited Bob and me for dinner one evening, and when we got there, I had the shock of my life well, almost. Besides cooking platters full of his famous fried chicken, he had baked a birthday cake for me, complete with eighteen candles. ‘Cindy told me you’d never had a birthday cake,’ he explained, ‘and when she told me it was your birthday in a couple of days, I thought I’d better remedy that. I can’t believe you’ve never had a birthday cake before.’ Well, I cried like a baby. His thoughtfulness bowled me over.
I don’t know when I began to get restless but I knew I needed to do more with my life. The problem was that I lacked the confidence and skills to go out and get a decent job, and I felt decidedly frumpy.
One day as I was browsing through the newspaper for inspiration, I saw an advertisement for Sabie’s Modelling School. It offered evening classes and promised to ‘give you the confidence you need to do something worthwhile with your life’. It was as though the ad was there just for me. I knew I was not model material but felt that if I went through their training I might gain the confidence I needed to make something of myself. I rang to ask for more information.
‘Are you crazy?’ shouted Bob.
‘How selfish,’ commented his parents, who somehow became involved in the debate.
‘You go for it,’ encouraged Cindy and Phil.
Of course, Bob and his family thought I was crazy, and I’d known they would, but I signed up anyway. I don’t remember what it cost but it wasn’t much. I managed to stretch the housekeeping money and was able to make small weekly payments; I also had a little birthday money put away. The classes were held once a week, in the evening, so usually Bob could baby-sit, but if he was being difficult about it, as he sometimes was, I could always leave Wayne with the Ballmaiers.
I thoroughly enjoyed the classes. They were what I imagined finishing school to be like. We learned about makeup, hairstyles, clothes and appropriate accessorizing, walking, sitting and standing correctly, how to enter and leave a room graciously, and so on. It was great fun and the class often dissolved into gales of laughter at some of our less successful attempts at graciousness. At the end of the course, the graduates’ husbands, boyfriends and others came to watch the fashion show we put on and to see us get our diplomas. I was the only one there with no family in attendance, but that was nothing new: when I was a child, no one had ever come to see me in school plays.
Surprisingly, after I left Sabie’s I had some calls to do modelling assignments, not runway stuff, of course, but enough to boost my confidence and morale. I mostly did catalogue work for Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck, or modelled at shows for the wholesale buyers’ markets. I still laugh when I think of how skinny I was at the time; I sometimes had to wrap a small towel around my middle to fill out the dress or coat I was modelling. It was hard work and the pay was good but I knew I wanted, and needed, to get a full-time job.
While all this was going on, my brother Peter and his wife Brenda decided to come to America. They would stay for just a couple of years and hoped to make enough money to go back to England and buy a decent house. I was thrilled at the prospect of having some of my own flesh and blood nearby. Bob was kind enough to sponsor them into the United States and, as luck would have it, the apartment next door to ours became available so we snatched it up for them. I could never have believed I’d be lucky enough to have family close by. It was a miracle.
Peter had no problem getting a good job, as he was a fully qualified journeyman compositor and a member of the International Printers’ Union. He started work just a day or two after they’d arrived in the US. Initially, he had to work night shifts, so Brenda and I spent many evenings together. We loved it when Peter stopped off at the bakery on his way home from work in the morning to pick up a loaf of freshly baked Gonnella bread, still warm from the oven and crunchy. I would go over to their apartment and we would sit at their kitchen table, eating slice after slice of bread and jam. I had missed good bakery bread since I’d been in America, so the crusty French and Italian bread we bought was like manna from heaven.
Shortly after Peter and Brenda came to the States we and our parents each bought a tape recorder. They were the reel-to-reel type and it took ages to fill one of the tapes, but at last we could actually talk to each other, hear each other’s voices. I used to live for the days when a tape arrived in the mail. Mum and Dad still didn’t have a telephone and had no idea when they’d be able to get one. Anyway, on a tape we could chat for hours while on the telephone we could talk for a few minutes at most. I wish I still had those tapes but they were soon forgotten after telephones and travel between the two countries became more available and affordable.
When the novelty of having my family next door began to wear off, I believe Bob became jealous of my friendship with Brenda because we spent a lot of time together. We were always nattering over cups of tea, she telling me about her family, the life she’d left behind in England, and how hard it was being in America, with Peter working nights and sleeping all day. It was wonderful to share everything we had in common, the memories of home and families, and the difficulties we faced in the States, the frequent homesickness and our guilt at leaving our mothers. We shared lots of laughter and tears, and always tried to see the funny side of things.
On one occasion the funny side was hard to find. For some reason, perhaps our janitor was away, the garbage bin, which we shared on the porch between our facing back doors, hadn’t been emptied for at least a week. It was now overflowing and we couldn’t get the lid to close, so Brenda and I decided to take it down to the basement ourselves. We each took a handle, and as we lifted it, it tipped, emptying the contents all over the back porch and down the stairs.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Oh, my God,’ screamed Brenda, and when I realized what she was screaming about, I screamed too. Millions of maggots were crawling everywhere.
‘I knew that garbage had been left too long,’ I said.
‘Now what do we do?’ moaned Brenda.
‘Let’s see if we can just sweep them down the stairs and over the edge,’ was my first suggestion. I fetched a broom and began to sweep, but got nowhere.
‘They’re just crawling back,’ said Brenda. ‘We’ll have to kill them.’
‘What with?’ I asked, but then I had an idea. ‘I’m going to run some really hot water and put bleach in it. That should kill the little buggers.’ Off I went to prepare the lethal potion.
When I came back out, I took off my shoes so they wouldn’t get wet, and began swooshing the water over the maggots and sweeping them away in a tide of noxious hot water. Brenda stood and watched as I sloshed about in the now muddy, maggoty water. It took ages to sweep it all the way down two flights of stairs and off two back porches. I left the broom by the basement door, staggered back up the stairs, and told Brenda, ‘If I don’t get a cup of tea soon, I’m going to die.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you can’t come in here with those dirty feet. You’ll have to wash them first.’ Then she added, ‘You can’t wash them in the sink, Iris. That would be disgusting. You’ll have to flush them clean in the toilet.’ And that was exactly what I had to do before she’d make me a cup of tea. We’ve often laughed about that nightmare situation, but it still makes me shudder.
Brenda and I often went shopping in the evening, as girls do, and we occasionally went to see a movie. This meant Bob had to baby-sit, but he usually just wanted to watch TV anyway, while I was not prepared to sit out the rest of my life glued to a TV screen and neither was Brenda. One night Brenda and I were watching a movie when, about halfway through, the film suddenly stopped and there was an announcement over the loudspeaker, which at first I didn’t understand.
‘They’re calling your name, Iris. They want you to come to the manager’s office right away,’ said Brenda.
‘Oh, God, no, something must have happened to the baby!’
We scooted out of our seats and rushed up the aisle towards the exit. Scared half to death, we went to the foyer, and there was Bob, with Wayne in his arms. ‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘Your son’s been crying ever since you left and I want to go to bed.’
Everyone was staring at us and I could have died of shame at the idea that people might think I was neglecting my baby, and at the spectacle my husband was making of himself and me. I wasn’t sure if I hated Bob or myself more. On the drive home, I clung to my small son and cried. Eventually I glanced at Brenda. She looked back at me and shrugged, as if to say, ‘Don’t look at me. I don’t know what to say or think either.’ I dreaded the scene that might erupt when we got home, but there was no scene. Bob didn’t say a word, just took off his clothes and went to bed, while I sat there, crying and rocking Wayne, all the time thinking what a terrible person I must be.
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br /> Shortly afterwards, Bob said he had a surprise for us. I thought he must be trying to make up for our recent trouble. ‘We’re going on vacation,’ he said. ‘Someone at work told me about a place in Michigan that’s cheap and right on a small lake. They have cabins for families and you can either cook your own food or arrange to have meals included.’
‘Where is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s called Paw Paw Lake and it’s in Coloma, not too far to drive, and it’ll be cooler there. What do you think?’
‘Sounds great.’ The change of scenery would do us both good. Perhaps we’d be able to get closer again, rekindle the flame that used to burn so brightly.
Excited, we made plans for our holiday. Summer was just about over and Bob told me it would be beautiful in Michigan, with the leaves on the trees beginning to change colour.
‘Autumn comes to Michigan earlier than it does in Chicago,’ he told me, ‘and it won’t be as crowded as it is in summer time. That part of Michigan is famous for its apples, so we’ll have to bring a couple of bushels home for Mom to make into apple sauce.’
‘I can hardly wait!’
So, off we went on a week’s holiday. I’d be able to tell my family back home that I’d visited another of America’s many states.
The resort we’d booked into was a series of small, very old cabins, furnished to a minimal standard, but it was perfectly adequate for our needs. On the first day, we drove around the area, checking out where everything was, especially the grocery since we planned to cook most of our meals. The second day was glorious: the sun was shining and it was still warm during the daytime. We borrowed a couple of inflated rubber inner tubes and floated around on the lake for hours, that being my only option since I couldn’t swim.
Wayne had a grand time, taking turns with each of us to paddle around in the rubber dinghies. At one point, Bob had apparently hung around the old wooden dock with him for too long because when I hauled Wayne out of the water his little legs were covered with black things. I screamed, and soon Bob was beside me.
The GI Bride Page 8