GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (24 page)

‘I don't want you doing that in the house, with the children here,' she told him.

‘You don't like it – don't stick around!' he told her, pouring himself a glassful and knocking it back.

‘You know perfectly well I haven't anywhere else to go,' she said, tears pricking her eyes. ‘Lawrence, you promised me!'

‘I don't owe you anything!' he said, slamming his fist down on the coffee table in front of him. ‘I've been working hard all day to feed those babies of yours! A man deserves a bit of relaxation in the evening.'

‘I've been with those babies on my own all day!' she retorted. ‘When do I ever get to relax? I'm stuck here, hour after hour, with no one to speak to, and when my husband does get home, he's drunk!'

‘I told you, if you don't like it, don't stick around, Goddammit!' he shouted. He hurled the glass across the room and it smashed against the wall.

Margaret fled to the bedroom, shaking with fear and anger.

In the early morning, she tiptoed into the kitchen to make some coffee. There, she found her husband passed out on his back in a pool of vomit, an empty bottle of Scotch still clutched in his hand.

‘Lawrence!' she cried, rolling him over. She was horrified to think he could have choked to death on his own vomit, just feet away from where she was sleeping.

He winced as if her voice was painful to him. ‘Quiet,' he murmured.

She got a wet cloth and cleaned his mouth, then helped him sit up. ‘Oh, what have you done to yourself?' Margaret said, unable to stop the tears running down her face. The angry Lawrence was gone and in his place was a man who was as helpless as a baby.

Lawrence slept off the hangover until noon and then headed into the office, telling Margaret he'd smooth things over with his boss. She knew he had the skills to charm his way out of anything, but she couldn't help worrying that even he would get into trouble soon if he made a habit of going into work late and hung over.

The next night was no different, however, nor the night after that – except that Lawrence's tolerance to alcohol seemed to be getting higher and higher, and he was drinking more and more. Margaret was unable to go to sleep herself before he passed out, too scared that he might end up choking on his vomit in the night, so she waited until he fell silent and then snuck in and put a pillow under his head. She would then be up half the night with the newborn, and by morning she was utterly exhausted.

She had other worries too. As his drinking got worse, the housekeeping money Lawrence gave her was dwindling. There was not enough to get a check-up for her or baby Maeve, nor for clothes for the two children. The only time she could speak to him about it was in the morning, before he headed out for work. Often he would promise to bring her back some cash when he returned home, but by then he was usually too drunk to remember. Soon she was finding it hard even to buy enough food from the little farm shop to feed them all, and she had to eke out what she had each day.

She didn't know if Lawrence himself was eating at all, since he now seemed to exist solely on alcohol. He had taken to having a drink first thing in the morning, which he said was necessary to ‘calm his nerves', and his hands shook until he had gulped down a glass of Scotch. His face was puffy and he was constantly sweating, and he complained of stomach cramps. He often went into work late, and some days didn't make it in at all.

‘If you carry on like this you're going to kill yourself!' Margaret told him, horrified to see him in such a state. But he just didn't seem to care. Even when he wasn't drunk, the old Lawrence had disappeared completely, and an irritable, irrational person had taken his place.

He was coming back later and later, and after a while there were some nights that he didn't return at all. Margaret sat up waiting for him, hour after hour, terrified that he was lying in a gutter somewhere or had crashed his car.

One morning, after he had failed to show up all night, she heard him fumbling with his keys at the door. When she went to open it for him she saw a police car drive off down the dirt path. ‘What's happened?' she asked Lawrence anxiously.

‘My friends offered to put me up for the night,' he said wryly. Lawrence had been picked up drunk and disorderly and spent the night in a police cell.

Margaret was too ashamed to tell anyone what her life had become, and in her letters to her father she never mentioned her troubles, nor how desperate for money she was. She had even begun to resort to stealing herself – picking her husband's pockets as he lay unconscious – since it was the only way she could get money to feed her children. Still, there hadn't been enough to pay the landlord when he'd turned up at the door, wanting to know why they were behind with the rent. He had arrived clearly angry, but at the sight of the thin, exhausted-looking young English woman with two hungry, crying children, he felt so sorry for them he had gone away again.

Inevitably, Lawrence was sacked from his job at Goodyear. Margaret felt desperate – how would they carry on now, without even the little he had been bringing home?

That weekend, Lawrence's younger sister Judy was getting married, and he had agreed to give her away. The whole family was convening in Atlanta for the wedding, and with no reason to stay in Akron any more, Margaret and her husband packed their bags, took the girls and headed back to Georgia. ‘I'll get a job there,' Lawrence told her, confidently.

‘All right,' Margaret replied wearily. As they left Ohio, she remembered how hopeful she had felt when they had first arrived, and she couldn't believe what a disaster the whole scheme had been. She didn't care what came next – nothing could be as wretched as living in the middle of nowhere, waiting for Lawrence to come home and drink himself half to death.

The family had booked a suite of rooms in a hotel downtown, and Margaret felt a sense of overwhelming relief at being in a city again, not to mention seeing Lawrence's family. Ellen greeted her like a sister, and Margaret could tell she was shocked to see how thin and tired she looked. ‘He's worse again, isn't he?' she asked, and Margaret nodded, too upset to speak. She had coped on her own for so many months, but now that she finally had someone sympathetic to speak to, she couldn't help bursting into tears.

The marriage ceremony took place at the Winship Chapel of the First Presbyterian Church, a beautiful old building with enormous stained-glass windows. Judy, a pretty, red-haired girl, looked stunning in an eggshell-satin wedding dress that had belonged to her great-grandmother, Eliza McCaskill. Around his younger sister, Lawrence seemed like his old self, making her giggle as he walked her down the aisle by whispering, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You just say and we'll turn around and get out of here!'

For her part, Judy clearly adored her older brother. At the wedding reception, she told Margaret how, before the war, she and Lawrence had lived together in Washington, where he was working for the Ministry of Agriculture and she was a secretary for a Georgia senator. ‘I remember when I came back crying because I had letters to send out to a whole heap of constituents, and I hadn't got half of them done,' she told her. ‘Lawrence said, “Well, that's no problem – we'll write 'em tonight!” and he stayed up all night long helping me finish the job. That's how kind my brother is.'

Her story reminded Margaret of the charming man she had first met in London, and she felt a stab of sadness.

When they got back to the hotel that night after the reception Lawrence was drunk as usual, and quickly fell into a stupor. By the time Margaret woke the next morning he was already on the bottle again.

There was a knock on the door and Margaret opened it to find Ellen and Jack, who had come to say goodbye before they went back to Arlington.

‘Wait a minute,' Lawrence called out. ‘Can you do something for me? Take the kids until we get settled here. Just until I find a place and get a job.'

Margaret could see from the look on Jack's face that the last thing he wanted was to bail out his brother-in-law again. ‘No, Lawrence,' he said, ‘we can't do that. We've got four children at home ourselves.'

‘Ellen, come on!' Lawrence begged his sister. ‘Just till we get settled!'

But Ellen shook her head. This time, she was sticking by her husband.

Lawrence was already halfway drunk, and he was furious at not getting his way. Before any of them could stop him, he grabbed baby Maeve out of her carrycot, ran over to the window, opened it, and dangled the child outside by the back of her collar.

Margaret screamed.

‘Lawrence, for God's sake, what are you doing?' cried Ellen.

‘No one move, or I'll drop her!' Lawrence shouted. ‘Now, promise me you'll take the kids. Promise me! Or I swear I'll let go!'

‘I'll take them, I'll take them!' his sister exclaimed.

At that, Lawrence brought the baby back inside and handed her to Ellen.

Shocked by his behaviour, the Cowarts hurried away, taking Maeve and Rosamund with them. Ellen threw Margaret a sympathetic look, and they were gone.

Margaret hurled herself down onto the bed and burst into tears. For the first time since she had married Lawrence, she felt true hatred for him.

Despite his drinking, Lawrence managed to talk his way into a job on an Atlanta newspaper. He had written a few articles for them when he was in the Canadian Army, about being a Georgia boy abroad, and now they agreed to make him a staff writer.

He and Margaret moved to an apartment in Hapeville, south of Atlanta, and she noticed that Lawrence seemed much happier as a journalist than he had been working for Goodyear. She could see that it suited him better than a corporate job – he had more freedom to come and go as he pleased, and he certainly fitted into the heavy-drinking culture.

But she was desperate to get the children back again, and made frequent attempts to persuade him.

‘Margaret, can't you see I'm only just getting back on my feet?' he retorted. ‘Do you want everything to go downhill like it did before?'

All Margaret could do was keep trying. In the meantime, she got herself a job as a typist, and tried to save as much of her wages as she could. She was determined that when Rosamund and Maeve did come to live with them, they wouldn't go hungry again.

But with no children around, and his wife working, Lawrence simply relinquished all responsibility for the bills. Margaret found herself having to pay for almost everything, which on her small salary was a struggle. She had no choice but to do it or risk them being evicted, but once again she found it was hard to find enough money to buy food.

In Arlington, the Cowarts were struggling to cope with six children to look after. Ellen's patience with her brother was running out, and one day she decided they would have to send the girls back.

Jack Cowart drove Rosamund and Maeve to Atlanta in the pick-up truck. ‘Enough is enough,' he told Lawrence, handing the kids over. ‘You're taking your children back.'

Margaret was over the moon to have her daughters with her again, but it put Lawrence in a black mood. That night, he railed drunkenly at Margaret, telling her, ‘You've ruined my life with your babies!'

Now that she had her children, Margaret could no longer work, and she lived in constant fear that they would be evicted. She begged Lawrence for money whenever she saw him, and once again fell to picking his pockets when he passed out drunk. She was more worried about money than ever, since she had just found out that she was pregnant again.

Meanwhile, she was increasingly concerned about Rosamund, who seemed to be somewhat behind in her development. She hadn't started walking until she was one and a half, and at two and a half she could still only say single words.

Margaret thought back to Rosamund's difficult birth, and how she had started trying to breathe too early. The doctors in England had been unable to say if those first moments being deprived of oxygen would affect her, but now it seemed clear that they had. Margaret was desperate to take her daughter to a doctor, but she knew that would cost money.

She waited for Lawrence to come home that evening, planning what she would say to convince him to pay for the appointment. But when he did, he was drunk as usual.

‘She doesn't need to see any doctor,' he slurred. ‘We both know why she's like she is, and it's all your fault!'

‘What do you mean, it's my fault?' Margaret said. ‘She was deprived of oxygen when she was born.'

‘You tried to abort her with a coat hanger!' he shouted.

Margaret felt fury rising in her. She had suffered under this man for so long, and to hear him now place their daughter's problems at her door was just too much. ‘How dare you!' she screamed. ‘How dare you blame me, you worthless drunk. What kind of father are you? You can't even feed your family!'

Lawrence's eyes flashed with anger, and suddenly Margaret felt his fists beating her around the head, pummelling her over and over again until she couldn't see or hear anything any more. She collapsed into a heap on the ground and he stormed out of the house, slamming the door, the sound of his crying children following him down the street.

When Margaret looked in the mirror the next morning, the sight of her bruised face filled her with horror. She had put up with Lawrence's drunkenness and neglect, but he had never been violent before. She was terrified that if he attacked her again he might harm not only her, but the unborn baby.

The next day, a letter arrived addressed to Margaret in Ellen's handwriting. She tore it open and discovered inside a stack of dollars, along with a letter from her sister-in-law, explaining that the money had come for Lawrence from the Canadian Army. ‘I'm sending it to you, because I thought you might need it,' Ellen had written.

Margaret knew exactly what to do. She took the money and booked herself and her daughters onto the next boat out of New York.