GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (37 page)

Before long, Sylvia felt she had known the other girls her entire life. She no longer felt alone in America – being part of a GI-bride sisterhood, she felt like she had family to support her.

The more she got to know the other women, the more Sylvia realised that she wasn't the only one with problems stemming from her marriage. One of the Veras had already divorced her husband by the time she joined the club, while Ethne's husband was a very domineering man. As a captain in the Army he had been used to ordering people about, and he did the same with his wife as well. ‘She practically has to ask him if she can blink her eyes,' one of the other brides commented.

Well aware that Ethne's marriage could not be a happy one, the girls did their best to intervene. ‘Why don't you leave him?' they asked her. ‘You don't have to put up with the way he treats you.'

But Ethne looked them straight in the eyes and replied very calmly, ‘We got through the war. We're British, we can stand anything.'

Before long, her words – often repeated – had become the unofficial motto of the group. Whenever one of the girls shared a story of misfortune, the other women would chorus, ‘We're British, we can stand anything.'

Those simple words brought great solace and support to a group of women building lives far from family and home.

The Bluebells weren't the only Brits in Baltimore with whom Sylvia had grown friendly. Through another organisation, the Daughters of the British Empire, she had encountered an older couple called Bill and Dot Langston. Bill was a painter and decorator from the East End of London – ‘He's a proper cockney,' Sylvia had told Bob excitedly – and his house on Harvard Road boasted a magnificent English-style garden.

When Bob wasn't out playing cards with his family, he and Sylvia would often visit the Langstons, whose door was always open to them. They cooked traditional English food, including sausage rolls and Banbury tarts, and after dinner there would always be some old East End games, such as pass the orange. Bob did his best to join in, but the games didn't mean anything to him – they evoked no nostalgic memories as they did for Sylvia. In any case, she thought ruefully, the only games he truly loved were those you could bet on.

The years rolled on, and Bob and Sylvia's little family grew larger. First, she gave birth to a daughter, Victoria, and then two more sons, Brad and Rodger. As the number of mouths to feed increased, Sylvia began to struggle on the housekeeping money she got from Bob.

‘Are you sure you can't give me a little more?' she asked him.

‘I'm sorry, honey,' he replied. ‘Mail carriers just don't get paid that well.'

Sylvia accepted Bob's answer and determined to tighten her belt another notch or two. He had never told her how much he earned, and she hadn't pressed him.

Then one day, Bob came home and announced that he was being transferred to a different district.

‘Does that mean more money?' Sylvia asked hopefully.

‘No,' he replied. ‘Just a new patch.'

The new patch meant new colleagues, in particular a man called Bernie, who stood next to Bob filing the mail at the sorting office, and with whom he struck up a firm friendship. Bernie soon invited Bob out to play golf with him.

‘You could come along too,' Bob suggested to Sylvia, but she decided to give it a miss.

When Bob came home to announce that he had won some money on the golf game, Sylvia was a little surprised. Was it normal to bet on golf? she wondered. But with four kids to feed, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Unfortunately, the odd flutter on a round of the green was the least of Bernie's betting activities. Soon Bob was playing cards with him every lunchtime, and losing badly.

When Bob announced that he and Bernie were taking a vacation in Las Vegas, Sylvia tried to reason with him. ‘You know, love, Bernie only has a wife to take care of,' she told him, ‘but you've got four children as well. We can't afford to bet the kind of money he can.'

‘Don't worry, honey,' Bob told her with a kiss. ‘I know what I'm doing.'

Bob set off for Las Vegas convinced that he could beat the casino, but when he returned home a few days later he was several hundred dollars worse off.

‘I just don't know what to do with him,' Sylvia told her friends at the Bluebell Branch. ‘He's always so convinced that he's going to win.' She thought back to the plane ticket Bob had sent her to fly over to America, which he had paid for with his winnings from a craps game. That time luck had been on his side, but he didn't seem to realise how rare that was.

‘You'll be all right, Sylvia,' the other girls told her. ‘Just remember, we're British, we can stand anything.'

As time went on, though, Bob's gambling became more and more of a problem. Under Bernie's influence it was turning into more than just an occasional habit – it was compulsive. ‘Sometimes I think he'd bet on a drop of water coming down the window,' Sylvia joked to her friend Dot Langston.

As Bob's gambling increased, Sylvia noticed it was affecting his personality too. On the rare occasions that he won he was on top of the world, as charming and full of life as when she had first met him, but when he lost he was sullen and low-spirited.

One day, when Bob came home from work in a particularly miserable sulk, Sylvia said, ‘Don't you see what this gambling is doing to you, Bob? It's poisoning your happiness.'

But Bob just went upstairs, giving no acknowledgement that she had spoken.

Sylvia felt on the verge of tears. She wanted so badly to get through to him, but it was as if a glass wall had gone up between them. The only person Bob let into his life now was Bernie.

Sylvia decided that a change of scene might be good for Bob, so she persuaded him to take the family away for the weekend, renting a little apartment on the coast. But while Sylvia played in the surf with their four children, Bob refused to budge from his armchair. He was too absorbed in the latest horse-racing almanac, comparing facts and figures in an attempt to devise a fool-proof system to beat the odds.

‘Bob, you're missing out on your children,' Sylvia told him. ‘Please won't you come down and play with them?'

‘This is my vacation,' Bob replied. ‘I'll spend it how I choose.'

When Sylvia's parents flew to Baltimore to visit her and the grandchildren for the first time, they were shocked at the change in Bob's personality. Where once he had seemed charming, he now merely moped around in a perpetual sulk. Worse, he seemed resentful of the attention Sylvia paid to her parents, even though it had been years since she had seen them.

‘Are you sure this is the same chap we met in London?' Mrs Bradley asked when Bob left the room. ‘How long has he been like this?'

‘Oh, I don't know, Mum,' Sylvia replied. ‘It feels like forever.'

‘Well, for goodness' sake girl, why didn't you come home?' her mother asked her.

Sylvia choked back tears. ‘You told me I'd made my bed and I had to lie in it.'

‘Oh, love,' Mrs Bradley sighed, ‘I never meant that.'

When the time came for her to depart for London with her husband, she did so with a heavy heart. If she could have bundled Sylvia and the kids back onto the plane with her, she would have.

Sylvia's parents weren't the only ones worried about her. The Bluebell girls asked her why she didn't just leave Bob, since he was making her so unhappy.

‘I couldn't afford it,' Sylvia replied. ‘We barely manage as it is. I can't raise four children on my own.'

Despite what her mum had told her, she didn't see returning to England as a viable option either. Her parents were near retirement age and she didn't want to be a burden on them.

‘I'll be all right,' she told the girls. ‘After all, I lived through the Blitz. We're British, we can stand anything.'

But each time she repeated the motto it sounded more hollow.

Sylvia knew that Bob must be gambling a sizeable proportion of his earnings, and she begged him to give her more to help bring up their children. ‘There are four of them now, Bob,' she pleaded. ‘I can't manage on the same amount of money as before.'

But Bob was resolute, and refused to offer up another dime. Sylvia started looking for jobs that she could do in the evening, when Bob was at home and could look after the kids. Soon she was working part time as a waitress, and putting in shifts at a local bowling alley.

Back at home, Sylvia found ways to make what little money she had stretch further than ever before, applying the old wartime ethos of make-do-and-mend. She began cutting the children's hair herself, rather than taking them to a hairdresser, and even started making their clothes.

One night, when Bob's parents had come round for dinner, his father mentioned a big raise all the postal workers had received. Sylvia was dumbfounded – Bob hadn't mentioned anything of the kind. Once they were alone, she asked him how much his salary had gone up by.

‘Oh, not that much,' Bob replied evasively. ‘It'll be a few more dollars a month.'

‘Well, can I have this month's now?' Sylvia asked.

‘I already spent it,' he muttered.

‘You mean you gambled it?'

Bob didn't reply.

‘You weren't going to tell me, were you? You were going to let me carry on struggling month after month while you blow the extra money on your gambling.'

Silently, Bob sloped off out of the room.

Sylvia was livid. She knew that Bob had a problem with gambling, but she had always assumed he was honest.

The next month, Bob gave Sylvia a little more housekeeping money, which helped ease things slightly, but feeding the family of six remained quite an art. And something had changed within Sylvia too. Her trust in Bob had been broken. Who knew whether this was the first raise that he had received without telling her. She might be killing herself, working evening jobs and making the kids' clothes, all for nothing.

One day, Bob arrived home from work with a rare smile plastered across his face. ‘So, you won some money today then?' Sylvia asked him.

‘I sure did,' Bob replied excitedly. ‘In fact, I won a whole bunch of it. Enough to pay for a vacation abroad.'

Despite herself, Sylvia's heart leaped. Maybe he would take her back to England, like he had promised all those years ago.

‘I've already booked the tickets,' Bob continued. ‘Bernie and I are going golfing in Scotland. There's a course there he says is the best in the world.'

Scotland! Sylvia couldn't believe it. Bob wouldn't take her back home to see her parents, but he would fly the same distance to play golf!

Not long after Bob returned from the trip, Sylvia made a discovery that shook her to the core. She received a letter from the bank about some loans they claimed she had taken out recently.

‘Do you know anything about this?' Sylvia asked Bob, showing him the letter.

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, I took out some money, but I'll pay it back soon enough.'

‘You took out loans in my name?' Sylvia cried. ‘How could you do something like that?'

‘I just needed a bit of dough to tide me over. I'm going to win big, Sylvia, I know it. I've got a system now.'

Sylvia felt like she had reached breaking point. ‘Well, a fat lot of good your bloody system has ever done us!' she shouted angrily. She stopped for a moment, surprised at herself.

‘I know what I'm doing!' Bob bellowed. ‘You're my wife, it's your job to stand by me.' He stormed out of the room and headed upstairs to bed.

Sylvia had never imagined that she would be the sort of woman to end up screaming and shouting at her husband, but once the pressure valve had been opened, she and Bob seemed to be fighting almost every day. Where once she had been wary of broaching difficult topics and he had skulked off at the first sign of conflict, now they were having blazing rows. One time, Bob grew so irate that he raised his hand to hit her.

‘The minute you do that, you'll be sorry,' she told him. ‘You see all them?' She gestured at the collection of English knick-knacks dotted all over the room. ‘You lay so much as a finger on me and you'll find every one of them flying at your damn head, and you can bet I ain't going to miss!'

Bob backed down and crept out of the room.

Sylvia flopped down on the sofa and burst into tears. She had put up with so much, but she felt she couldn't take it any more. His gambling was ruining their lives.

In desperation, Sylvia looked up the number for Gamblers Anonymous and called them. ‘My husband's gambling is tearing us apart,' she told them.

The woman on the end of the line was sympathetic, but told her there was nothing they could do. ‘Your husband has to admit he has a problem,' she told Sylvia. ‘He has to ask for help, not you.'

Sylvia felt as if the last breath of hope had been sucked out of her. She had tried everything she could think of to get her husband to change, and it had come to nothing. She felt hollowed out, helpless and desperate. If only she had stayed in England when she first walked out on the O'Connors all those years ago. She had come to the United States for the love of a man, but the man she had fallen in love with was long gone – his very soul had been taken over by the addiction.

A single straw had been enough to break the proverbial camel's back, and for Sylvia all it took was a few stray hairs. She had been giving her son Rodger a haircut one evening, and was just getting him settled in bed, when she heard a commotion in the bathroom. Her daughter Victoria had got out of the bath and begun to dry herself on the nearest available towel – which just happened to be the one that Sylvia had put around Rodger's neck.

‘Urrghh!' Victoria cried. ‘This towel's got hair on it!'

Bob's response was to side with his daughter. ‘It's disgusting,' he shouted. ‘What kind of a woman would do something like that?'