GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (36 page)

‘Don't worry,' Ben whispered. ‘He'll soon get used to the chair.' He wheeled Lyn up the drive and into the house, where her private nurse was waiting.

That night, Lyn's family ate their first meal together in what seemed like a lifetime. But when the time came for Ben and John to leave, Lyn felt so sad she could barely say goodbye. ‘Don't worry, honey,' Ben told her. ‘As soon as you can wheel the chair yourself, we'll find a ground-floor apartment and we can all be together again.'

Now Lyn had another goal ahead of her, and once again she approached the challenge with relish. Day by day, working hard on her physical therapy with the help of her nurse, she continued to improve, until she was able to get from the bed into the chair with only minimal assistance.

Living with Auntie Louise and Uncle Sid, Lyn was able to see Ben and John every day now, but every time they left to go home to Mrs Patrino she felt another pang of frustrated jealousy. To make matters worse, John remained very nervous around the wheelchair, something Lyn found extremely upsetting.

‘I can't bear it,' she told her doctor when he came to visit for a check-up. ‘My own son is scared of me now.'

‘Lyn, that's perfectly normal,' he replied. ‘It's not you, it's just the chair.'

‘You don't understand,' Lyn protested. ‘Do you realise how much it hurts me?'

‘Come on Lyn, he's a child,' the doctor insisted.

It was true, she realised. What could she expect of John, after being without his mother for so long, and at such a young age? Suddenly, her sadness was replaced by a feeling of guilt.

Living at Auntie Louise's, there were no set visiting hours, and Lyn found more people coming to see her. Mrs Patrino continued to stay away, but Ben's sister-in-law Thelma began to turn up regularly, and Lyn even had a couple of visitors from the University of Santa Clara. Among them was Mr Stefan, the manager who had hired her. He had already written to Lyn in hospital offering his best wishes for her recovery, and letting her know that they had found someone to cover for her while she was off sick. ‘So, how's the new girl working out?' Lyn asked him when he came to see her a few months later.

‘Oh, she's great,' he replied without thinking. ‘We've just signed her on for a year.'

Lyn was devastated. ‘Does that mean I'm not coming back?'

‘Lyn, be realistic,' Mr Stefan replied.

They were the most crushing words that anyone could have said to her. Lyn was terrified that she might never get out of the wheelchair – her physiotherapist was constantly encouraging her to keep going, but knowing that others had already decided her efforts were pointless, she struggled to find the will to continue.

Nevertheless, bit by bit Lyn continued to improve, until she had mastered the use of the chair by herself, and could even manage to get into and out of it from her bed. If she ever fell over she would be stuck on the floor until someone came to rescue her, but aside from that she was pretty much mobile.

It had been almost a year since Lyn first moved in with Auntie Louise, and when her physiotherapist told her, ‘I think it's time you and your husband started looking for a place of your own,' she was over the moon. She might still be confined to a wheelchair – with no guarantee from her doctor that this would ever change – but soon her little family would be together at last.

Before long, Ben found them a nice ground-floor apartment in a quiet part of town. Finally, Lyn and Ben felt like a real couple again, and despite the wheelchair they were able to lead a relatively normal life.

The next challenge for Lyn was to learn to walk using leg braces. The heavy steel encumbrances were intended to keep her legs straight, and had a catch that allowed them to bend at the knee so that she could sit down in them, and then lock when she stood up again. The mechanism took a lot of getting used to, and at first Lyn found it would often lock or unlock unexpectedly.

Clomping around in the braces was exhausting, and nothing like the easy movement she had been used to before the polio, but for Lyn the newfound freedom was exhilarating. She no longer had to look up at other people the whole time. Best of all, she no longer felt trapped – her greatest fear, that she would never leave the wheelchair, was behind her.

Once again, however, Lyn found that her disability was distressing to her son John, who disliked the braces even more than he had the wheelchair. Lyn explained patiently that they were to help her walk. ‘I'll get rid of them as soon as I can,' she promised him.

With the help of the braces, Lyn was able to regain her independence. She was gradually getting used to the awkward contraptions as the muscles in her legs began to grow stronger, and she even began to go out on her own. One day, she decided to go into San Francisco, to visit Macy's in Union Square. It was a beautiful day, and as Lyn walked slowly up to the store's grand marbled frontage, she felt a sense of pride and accomplishment. It wasn't so long ago that she had been confined to a bed in the county hospital, staring up at the ceiling for hours on end, afraid that she would never walk again.

Inside the store, Lyn passed through the jewellery and cosmetics departments and took the elevator up to womenswear. She picked out a beautiful cashmere cardigan in bright pink, just the sort of thing the old Lyn would have bought.

‘That's a pretty colour,' the girl at the cash desk told her. ‘It'll look nice with your complexion'.

It felt good to be noticed for something other than her braces, Lyn realised. She thought of Auntie Louise, always so impeccably turned out despite her own limp, and decided that she would always follow her example. She spent a good while wandering around every inch of the department, although her legs were already getting tired, and picked up several more garments before she decided to head home.

Since the elevator was at the far end of the department, Lyn decided to take the escalator down to the ground floor instead. She gripped the rail carefully with her right hand as she stepped onto the moving staircase. Then she heard a sudden click. The noise sent a jolt of panic through her as she realised her braces had locked. Lyn tried to jiggle her leg to release the catch but it was no use – the knee stubbornly refused to bend. She didn't dare take her right hand off the rail in case she fell over, so she tried to use her left to disengage the catch, but as much as she fiddled the damn thing refused to budge.

The staircase was moving quickly and Lyn could see the ground getting closer. In a few seconds she would be there. She could see herself now, being thrown onto the ground, or caught up in the machinery of the escalator. Her heart raced as she continued to fumble wildly with the catch.

At the last moment, as the escalator reached ground level, Lyn heard a second click and felt the catch release, allowing her leg to bend slightly. She pushed herself forward with all her strength and then took a moment to regain her balance, her heart still racing. All the confidence she had felt before seemed to have drained out of her, and she felt powerless and scared again.

‘Hey, lady, what's the matter?' a security guard demanded, rushing over.

‘My brace locked,' Lyn replied breathlessly.

‘Your what?'

She gestured to the catch. ‘The brace locked on my leg.'

‘Well, stay off the escalator then,' the man replied brusquely, before turning and walking away.

Lyn staggered to a nearby bench and lowered herself onto it, taking care to ensure the catch on her brace was properly released this time. She was still panting and she felt almost dizzy with the stress of the ordeal. It was yet another reminder of how far she still had to go on the road to recovery.

Lyn had always done her best to stay strong in the face of adversity, but right now, knocked by yet another setback, a new feeling suddenly overwhelmed her. For the first time since she had come to America, she felt an intense pang of homesickness. All she wanted was to go home and see her mum.

Sylvia woke suddenly in the dead of night. Lying next to her, Bob was yelling incoherently, sweat dripping from his brow. ‘Get down!' he screamed, convulsing frantically and tangling himself up in the bed sheets.

‘Bob, it's all right,' Sylvia whispered soothingly. She cautiously reached a hand out to stroke his brow.

He started awake and stared at her with a horror-struck look on his face.

‘It's all right,' she repeated. ‘You're safe here.'

He nodded, and drew a deep breath. ‘I thought I was back in France,' he said.

She stroked his forehead again. ‘I know,' she said softly. ‘You can go back to sleep now.'

Bob had never spoken to Sylvia about his experiences in Europe during the war. When she had first met him at the Red Cross club in London, he had already returned from the front lines for the last time. She knew that he had been at the Battle of the Bulge, and in a prelude to the Battle of Remagen, which was when he had been wounded in the shoulder and received the Purple Heart, but those were all the details he was willing to give. Years of carrying heavy mailbags were beginning to take their toll on his bad shoulder, but despite the pain and the occasional nightmares, the cause of his injury was still clearly off-limits.

Aside from Bob's occasional nightmares, though, Sylvia's life was a happy one. She was living in a dream home, with a husband who loved her and a child they both adored – and the distance between them and Bob's gambling-obsessed family was proving to be a godsend.

Sylvia could not have been more pleased with their new house. Their neighbours were mostly young couples like themselves who had also bought starter homes, so it was the perfect place to raise a family. Looking back on it, Sylvia couldn't quite believe that she had been brave enough to sail back to England, leaving Bob with the ultimatum to find them a house or never see her again. But clearly her own gamble had paid off.

Sylvia had already begun putting her stamp on the place, repainting the bathroom, changing the curtains and adding splashes of colour to the neutral living room with some bright cushions. Meanwhile, she had brought a number of trinkets back from her visit to England, and these were soon dotted around the mantelpiece and window sills. Every so often a parcel would arrive containing another ornament, posted to her by her mother.

With Bob out at work during the day, Sylvia devoted much of her time to housework. She was also working her way through an English cookbook her mother had given her, trying to perfect her culinary skills. Before long, she was serving roast dinner every Sunday, and at Bob's request she soon mastered some American dishes as well. When he arrived back from his mail route in the afternoon, Sylvia would have a jug of iced tea waiting for him. It was an idyllic life for the whole family.

Then one day, Bob returned home with some unexpected news. ‘I've just been talking to my dad at work,' he told Sylvia, ‘and apparently they're thinking of moving. A coloured family just moved in two blocks away and Dad says the neighbourhood's going to the dogs.'

‘Right.' Sylvia had better things to do than get involved in an argument about Bob's father's racist views.

‘They're thinking of buying somewhere up this way,' he told her.

Sylvia was silent for a moment as the news sunk in. She couldn't believe it. It had taken her two years of badgering, and an eight-month trip to England, to get Bob away from his family and their gambling. Now the in-laws had decided to follow them.

Once Bob's family moved in nearby, the gambling resumed with a vengeance. There were late-night poker sessions every weekend, and more flutters on the horses than ever before. At least Bob was only betting within limits, thought Sylvia – and there was no more secret raiding of their savings tin. He paid her regular housekeeping money, and it was enough for a family of three to live on fairly comfortably.

But with Bob spending more and more time with his family, Sylvia started to feel lonely. Fortunately, she soon found an opportunity to socialise, thanks to an organisation called the Transatlantic Brides and Parents Association. The TBPA had originally been set up in England by the father of a GI bride who wanted to negotiate group charter rates with airlines so that he and others like him could come and visit their daughters in America. It had rapidly expanded into a social network for GI brides living in the United States.

Sylvia's local TBPA group called themselves The Bluebell Branch, while others were known by such names as The Tea Bags and The Crumpet Club. It comprised two women called Vera, two Phyllises, and Rose, Florence and Ethne. The women soon bonded over their shared frustrations at everyday life in America: being misunderstood by the locals, how much they missed fish and chips and Yorkshire pudding, and, most important of all, the trouble they had getting hold of a decent cup of tea. The meetings would always end with a sing-along: ‘We'll Meet Again', ‘The White Cliffs of Dover' and ‘There'll Always Be an England'.