GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (27 page)

As the pile of money in the centre of the table mounted up, she also found herself worrying about the amount she and Bob were already losing, especially since she knew every cent counted if they were ever to move out of his parents' house.

‘I think I'll just watch for the rest of the evening,' she told Bob when the hand was over and Mrs O'Connor was once again eagerly sweeping up a pile of winnings.

The play continued for many hours and it was almost midnight before Sylvia and Bob finally climbed the stairs to bed. He seemed to be the last to want the game to end, and had gone away in a great mood, having ended up a dollar and a half richer than he had gone in. But Sylvia had hated the experience. She didn't like the thought of hard-earned money being thrown away like that.

Over the next few months, Sylvia got used to the weekly poker games, which rotated around the various houses in the family. Sometimes she would come along and read a book in the corner, other times she would wait at home for Bob to come back, which was often many hours later than he had promised. If he won, he would take her out for dinner or into town the next day. If he lost, he would say determinedly, ‘I'll get them next time.'

The regular poker group was from Bob's mother's side of the family, but his father's sister Myrtle and her husband John were also players. One day, Bob told Sylvia that he had been invited to a special game at their house, and half-heartedly she agreed to come along. He was so excited at the thought of the big game that it seemed unkind not to.

When they got there, the game was already underway and Sylvia was concerned to see a huge pile of cash on the table – not just loose change but a great stack of dollar bills. The guests were mostly neighbours of John and Myrtle's who ran their own businesses in the neighbourhood, and they had more money to gamble than the O'Connors. She estimated there was more than a hundred dollars in the pot.

After a few minutes of intense play, Myrtle scooped the jackpot and Bob was dealt in for the next hand. He played with gusto, but his luck seemed to have deserted him, and as the evening wore on he never won a dime, despite throwing more and more money onto the table. By the time he and Sylvia left he was down by $15. ‘I can't believe it,' he said. ‘I really thought tonight was my night.'

‘Bob,' she replied quietly, ‘I don't think I'll be coming with you next time you go to play cards.'

But she could tell he wasn't listening. He was still going over and over the game in his head.

As the weeks wore on, Sylvia found Bob's losses at the poker table increasingly hard to bear, knowing that every dollar he gambled put them further away from ever moving out of his parents' house. He stayed out later and later at the games, sometimes not returning home until four in the morning. There were jubilant celebrations when he brought home the jackpot, but plenty of disappointments too.

‘How much did you lose this time?' Sylvia asked him once, when he returned home well after midnight.

‘Did I say I lost?' Bob replied defensively.

‘You didn't have to. I can see it in your eyes.'

Bob hesitated. ‘Not that much,' he said. ‘Only about six dollars.'

‘Well, that's more time we have to live with your mum and dad then,' Sylvia replied. Bob sloped off to bed without responding.

Sylvia had wanted to go out to work to help her and Bob save up, but soon she had fallen pregnant. His mother, who had just taken a job as a chocolate-dipper, suggested she could take over the housework instead, in return for two dollars a week. It might be a pittance, but it was better than nothing, thought Sylvia.

But meanwhile, Bob was finding new ways to lose money. Since his mum's aunt Marion was the unofficial neighbourhood bookie, his parents had a flutter on the horses every week. His mother began offering to place bets for him as well, which meant he was wasting another six or eight dollars a week.

Sylvia was horrified. ‘Please don't ask Bob if he wants to bet,' she begged Mrs O'Connor one day, when the men were out of the house. ‘We're trying to save for our own place.'

Her mother-in-law shot her a look of annoyance. ‘All right then,' she said.

But the next week Mrs O'Connor took Bob's bets just the same as before, and he continued to lose on the horses.

Meanwhile, Sylvia had started to notice another problem. Ever since she had found out that she was pregnant, Bob's father had been treating her differently. He was surly and sullen around her, making snide and sarcastic remarks at the dinner table, and neither Bob nor his mother dared to challenge him. When Sylvia asked him to pass the salt or pepper, he would stare right through her as if she wasn't there.

One time, Sylvia was singing along to a Vera Lynn song on the wireless when Mr O'Connor came into the room. ‘Turn that crap off,' he shouted, twisting the knob to retune the radio to another station. ‘We had enough English music during the war.'

Sylvia turned to Bob, expecting him to say something, but he merely gave her a sympathetic look.

She thought back to the day she had arrived in Baltimore, when Mr O'Connor had been so friendly towards her. What had she done to alter his opinion of her? The only change she could think of was her pregnancy. Did he resent someone else being the centre of attention?

One day, they were all leaving the house, when Mr O'Connor, walking in front of Sylvia, purposefully let the door slam right in her face. She turned around to her husband in shock, thinking he would react angrily, but she was disappointed once again. ‘I guess we'd better slow down a bit,' he joked awkwardly.

‘I wish you'd stand up for me a bit, Bob,' she pleaded tearfully when they were next on their own.

‘What can I say?' Bob shrugged. ‘We're staying in his house.'

Sylvia could see the true reason for his reluctance to confront his father. Mr O'Connor was a bully, and Bob was scared of him.

Throughout Sylvia's pregnancy, Mrs O'Connor offered her no words of advice. Perhaps she felt it wasn't her place, as Sylvia wasn't her own daughter, but with Mrs Bradley 3,000 miles away in England she could have done with a bit of motherly support. As she had moved into her final month of pregnancy, she had grown huge, and her back ached permanently.

One morning, Sylvia came downstairs at 6 a.m. to find her mother-in-law getting ready to go to work. ‘I feel terrible,' Sylvia told her. ‘I've been up all night.'

Mrs O'Connor phoned the local doctor, who advised them to take a cab to the hospital.

‘We'd better call Bob and get him to come back from work first,' Mrs O'Connor said, giving him a ring at the post office.

Sylvia waited patiently until her husband returned home and then the two of them set off for the hospital. It soon became clear that it was not going to be a simple delivery. The waters were stubbornly refusing to break.

Sylvia was taken onto the maternity ward, leaving Bob in the waiting room. There, she went through a difficult twelve-hour labour, twisting the bed sheets in her hands with every agonising wave of pain. The woman in the next bed was screaming blue murder and cursing the day she ever met her husband, but Sylvia, always shy, felt too embarrassed to shout out.

‘You know you can scream if you want to,' one of the doctors told her, but as painful as the experience was, she just couldn't bring herself to make a fuss.

Throughout the ordeal, Sylvia was comforted by the thought that Bob was in the hospital with her, even if he wasn't allowed in the room. But when the baby was finally born and she asked to see her husband, she was surprised to be told that he would have to be summoned from home.

Half an hour later, Bob and his mother arrived, and he rushed over to see his new son, cradling him lovingly and placing a finger in his tiny little palm. ‘He's beautiful, Sylvia,' he told her, leaning over and kissing her on the forehead.

But Bob's mother was not so overwhelmed by the spirit of the moment. ‘Well, that was great timing,' she told Sylvia. ‘You broke up a pretty good card game.'

After a few months, Rae was slowly adjusting to life in Hackett, Pennsylvania. At first she had struggled with how quiet it was out in the sticks, having grown up in noisy London. But after a while she began to appreciate the peacefulness – after six years of war it was something of a relief.

Although Hackett only had one small store, a mile and a half's walk up the road was Finleyville, which had a small cinema and a few more shops. Soon after Rae arrived, she and Raymond had visited a bar and restaurant there called Boyko's, where, to her amusement, everyone already seemed to have heard about the arrival of ‘the war bride' and was very excited to meet her. News clearly travelled fast in small-town America.

Raymond's family had continued to be warm and welcoming, and his brothers had moved into their parents' bedroom in order to give him and Rae a room of their own. The neighbours in Hackett still viewed Rae as an object of fascination, and she struggled with their ignorance about the war, but for the most part they treated her with kindness. Rae had already made a few friends in the community, in particular a young woman called Mary Gurem who lived next door.

As he had promised, Raymond had not gone back to the coal mine, and had got a job at the Clairton steel mill instead. When Rae saw how his father came home black from the mine every day, and how Mrs Wessel had to scrub his back at the kitchen sink, she felt doubly relieved.

But despite it all, Rae was not entirely happy. She felt bored during the long weekdays while Raymond was out at work, and once the ironing was done – her main job in the household – she had nothing to do but sit smoking in the swing chair on the front porch. She found herself longing for the hard-working days of the war years, and imagined herself with her welding torch in her hand, a row of tanks lined up in front of her for mending. She missed the sense of doing something important, and the camaraderie of her friends in the ATS.

But more than anything else she missed her family, and sitting around idly for hour after hour there was plenty of time for homesickness to creep in. She hoped that before long she and Raymond would start a family of their own, and that it would help ease the pain of separation. They were trying for a baby, although so far without success.

Rae was also coping with psychological scars from the war. When Raymond had asked if she would like to come with him to the Fourth of July celebrations in nearby South Park, she had agreed, keen to experience first-hand this famous American tradition. There was music from a small brass band, a hotdog stand and local children waving American flags, and the atmosphere of community and kindness reminded Rae a little of the war years in England.

Then, as night fell, it was time for the highlight of the event: the fireworks display. As a series of rockets shot into the air and exploded, Rae was transported right back to the bombing of London. She felt her stomach tightening and her heart beginning to race. Gripped by fear, she instinctively threw herself down on the grass, her hands covering the back of her head.

Raymond had to prise her off the ground and quickly lead her away. ‘It's all right,' he told her. ‘You're safe.'

It was the last time Rae went to a fireworks display.

Since Raymond worked at the steel mill, he generally arrived home separately from Mr Wessel, so Rae was surprised one day to see the two men walking back to the house together. She was even more shocked when they got closer and she could see that, like his father, Raymond was blackened from head to toe.

‘Hey, honey,' he called, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

‘What's going on, Ray?' she asked him anxiously, as Mr Wessel went through to the kitchen where his wife was waiting to scrub him down.

‘I'm working at Mathies Mine now,' Raymond told her. ‘I wanted the same money as my dad.'

‘You said you wouldn't go back there!' Rae protested. ‘You promised me.' He knew how much she hated the thought of him going down the mine, in danger of being buried alive or killed in a dust explosion.

If Raymond was aware of the turmoil his wife was enduring, however, he gave no sign of it. He simply shrugged his shoulders and walked off to join his father.

There was nothing Rae could do. Before long, she was scrubbing the coal dust off his back every day just like her mother-in-law.

A few weeks later, Rae got a new job of her own. She and Raymond were out for the evening at Boyko's bar and restaurant in Finleyville, where she had become a hit with the owner, who liked her English accent.

‘How would you like to work here?' Mr Boyko asked her as she was finishing her Pittsburgh salad. ‘I'm looking for another waitress, and everyone round here loves to talk to a real English war bride.'

Rae said yes immediately. Any chance to get out of the house and actually do something was hard to pass up, and in a neighbourhood as small as the one they lived in, opportunities for work didn't come along very often. ‘You don't mind, do you?' she asked her husband.