A Mother's Spirit (9 page)

Everything Joe had to do seemed to take so long and there were only so many hours in the day. He had thought arranging the funeral would at least be straightforward. However, when he went up to the presbytery to make arrangements with the priest, he told Joe that Brian should not be buried in consecrated ground because he had taken his own life.

Joe glared at him for a moment before saying, ‘And exactly who would that punish?’

‘It’s the law of the Christian Church, Joe.’

‘You can’t put the word Christian to a law like that, which serves only to shame and stigmatise the people left behind,’ Joe snapped. ‘They are already coping with the fact that their loved one is dead, and by his own hand. Have you the least idea what that feels like?’

‘But, Joe—’

‘There isn’t a but here, Father,’ Joe said. ‘Brian has donated enough money to this church over the years and, added to that, his plot where his father is buried, and where Norah will lie eventually, is bought and paid for.’

‘Money and even ownership of a plot doesn’t come into this, Joe. It’s a question of doing what is right.’

‘You will be doing something badly wrong if you refuse to bury Brian’s body in the churchyard,’ Joe said. ‘The doctor said the balance of Norah’s mind is precarious.’

The priest shook his head. ‘Obviously I feel immensely sorry for Norah, for all of you.’

‘Oh, good,’ Joe said sarcastically. ‘That will make all the difference. Look, Father, when Brian came home from the Exchange he was in a bad way. Planchard said that he thought Brian wasn’t totally sane at that point, which was just a
couple of minutes before he turned the gun on himself. If he wasn’t in his right mind surely he can’t be blamed for his actions?’

‘Not if he wasn’t sane.’

‘Well, you know the manner of man he was,’ Joe said. ‘Could you see him ever even thinking about killing himself?’

‘No, Joe, I couldn’t.’

‘Well then, Father?’

‘All right, Joe, you argue well,’ the priest said at last. ‘Brian can have his Christian burial.’

Joe had been expecting the call from the solicitor, though he thought they might get the funeral over first, but it was the day before it that he was called to the office urgently. He was deeply shocked by what the solicitor had to tell him for he hadn’t dreamed that things could be so bad. He knew he had to deliver two new hammer blows to his beloved wife and his mother-in-law, and he didn’t know how in God’s name they were going to cope with them.

He decided to say nothing until the funeral was over, but that meant carrying the news alone, and he found it to be a heavy burden. He felt totally isolated, and bad that he hadn’t even had proper time to mourn the man that he owed so much to and thought so much of, for both Gloria and her mother looked to him for support. He couldn’t ever remember feeling so sad or so lost, not even when his own father died.

The church was packed out for the funeral, for Brian had been a popular man, but Joe was worried about his mother-in-law, who looked gaunt and frail. He knew, though, however gruelling she found the occasion, she would carry it through to the bitter end for she was that type of person. And so would Gloria, for she had her mother’s backbone. He had such admiration for both of them as he helped them into the funeral car that led the cavalcade of motor vehicles back to the house for refreshments.

He knew the two women might collapse when the mourners left. When the last one went home and Norah announced she was going to bed, Joe wasn’t surprised.

‘Aren’t you ready for bed yourself, my dear?’ he asked Gloria.

‘Not yet,’ Gloria said. ‘I will go up in a little while,’ but she barely waited until her mother had left the room before she asked, ‘What is it, Joe?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are holding something to yourself that I fear probably affects us all. Your eyes are quite haunted by something and you have been like this since you came back from the solicitor’s yesterday.’

Joe shook his head. ‘You don’t want to hear this today.’

‘D’you know, Joe, I have the feeling that I won’t want to hear it any day,’ Gloria said, ‘but the burden isn’t one that you should carry on your own.’

‘Are you sure?’ Joe said. ‘It’s bad.’

‘Then tell me and let me share it,’ Gloria urged.

Then Joe told her, and watched her eyes widen, her mouth tighten and heard her gasp with shock. Her voice was little above a whisper as she gasped, ‘You mean we have lost everything? The factory? Even the house? Everything?’

‘It certainly looks that way,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t know yet how much your father actually owed.’

‘He knew this,’ Gloria said. ‘When Daddy took his own life, he knew this.’

‘Your father wasn’t himself then.’

‘He couldn’t face it,’ Gloria said. ‘That was all. He took the easy way out and, whatever you say, Joe, he knew what he was doing all right when he put the house and the business at risk. He has left us destitute.’ She looked at him in desperation. ‘Joe, what are we going to do?’

Joe put his arms around her and said, ‘Survive, my beautiful, darling girl. We won’t be the only people that this has happened to. I will find us a place to live and take a job. While I have a pair of hands on me, I will not let us starve, never fear.’

Joe was to find that, as Brian’s partner, he was responsible for all his debts, which were considerable. In that first week after his funeral, he seemed to discover one shocking fact after the other.

As the shares had begun to fall Brian had borrowed more and more money, probably hoping to make a killing when they rose again, and he’d used both the factory and then the house as collateral. Quite apart from this, he owed money to many traders in the town. Then the club contacted Joe about the quite excessive gambling debts from Brian’s card games. When he thought he had learned everything, he discovered to his horror that the last two batches of stock had not even been paid for. He had been unaware of this because although he did the accounts, it was left to Brian
to pay the bills, and he had neglected to do this. All these creditors would have a claim on the estate.

There was money in the bank to pay the workers for just one more week. Joe went to talk over the future with Bert.

‘There is no point going on making the components anyway,’ Bert said. ‘The industries that we were supplying have gone to the wall themselves. The factory and all in it are worthless. Pay the men off, sir, tell them to go home, and hope to God most of them find jobs elsewhere before too long.’

‘What about you?’

‘Well, I was coming up for retirement anyway,’ Bert said. ‘I have had good wages for years and invested much of it. In the old days I did make money from shares and although I lost money recently, I had cashed in most of my shares in September when they eventually rose again after the dip at the beginning of the month, so I am all right. Don’t you worry about me.’

Most of the workforce knew what was coming too, Joe realised when he spoke to them, and though they were worried, they didn’t blame him. They knew whose fault it was.

That didn’t help Joe much. He locked and barred the factory doors for the last time, shook Bert warmly by the hand and returned home an unhappy man.

‘Don’t feel too sorry for them,’ Gloria said when he told her how bad he felt about making his workforce redundant. ‘We’ll be in the same boat soon, and you might be competing with them for the few jobs there are about, for places are closing down every day.’

‘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 you 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.