GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (38 page)

Sylvia felt like something within her had shattered. She walked straight down into the living room, picked up the phone and dialled the number of a cab firm. Then she went out onto the street and waited for the car to arrive. She felt like she was in a daze – just as she had all those years before in London, when the V-2 rocket had hit her train on the way to work. Right now, her brain was only focused on one thing – getting away as quickly as possible.

Bob heard the click of the front door and came down to investigate. ‘What are you doing?' he called.

‘I'm getting out of here,' Sylvia replied. ‘I can't stand it any more.'

The car pulled up and Sylvia got inside. She gave the driver the address of her English friends Bill and Dot Langston. They had always said she could call on them any time, day or night.

As she sped off in the cab, Sylvia felt a kind of calm settle over her, but it didn't last long. By the time she arrived at the Langstons she was shaking all over, and she fainted as soon as they got her into the house.

Bill called a doctor to come and examine her, and was told that Sylvia was having a breakdown brought on by extreme stress. ‘She just needs time to rest and recover,' he told the Langstons.

When Sylvia came round, she was frantic with worry. ‘I walked out on my children,' she told Bill and Dot desperately. ‘I never thought in a million years I would do that.'

‘It's all right, love, Bob'll look after them,' Dot told her soothingly. But Sylvia was not to be reassured. Eventually, in a state of extreme anxiety, she picked up the phone herself and dialled Mr and Mrs O'Connor's number, begging Bob's mother to go round and check that the kids were all right.

But her mother-in-law said coldly, ‘They're your children, not mine.'

‘Try not to worry, love,' Dot Langston told her. ‘The kids'll be fine.'

The older couple were like surrogate parents to Sylvia, and as she recuperated in their house they took good care of her, offering plenty of tea and biscuits and listening as she talked about how bad things had got with Bob. The warm, cosy environment and the Langstons' cockney accents made Sylvia almost feel she was back in Woolwich.

After several days at the Langstons', Sylvia was beginning to feel calmer, but she continued to worry constantly about the children. ‘I think I need to go back there,' she told Bill and Dot.

‘All right then,' Bill replied. He picked up the phone and dialled Bob's number. ‘Get over here right now and pick up your wife,' he told him gruffly. ‘She wants to come home.'

But Bob was in no mood to be dictated to. ‘She left on her own, why can't she come back on her own?' he demanded.

‘Don't be so bloody daft,' Bill shouted angrily. ‘You come and get her right now or I'll bring her round myself, and you'd better be there.'

Suitably chastened, Bob came and picked Sylvia up. When she returned to their house, the four kids were standing waiting for her at the front door. The younger ones were bawling their eyes out as they saw the car draw up, and Sylvia rushed out and hugged them, wiping away their tears with a handkerchief. She felt terrible at having walked out on them and was almost beside herself with guilt.

At Bill and Dot's suggestion, Sylvia booked herself and Bob in for a course of sessions with a marriage guidance counsellor called Dr King. The idea was that in the first session they would take turns seeing the counsellor individually, so they could each explain their view of the situation, and then in succeeding sessions he would see both of them together and try to work towards a solution.

In the course of the first private session, Sylvia talked Dr King through the ups and downs of her relationship with Bob: how they had met and fallen in love at the Red Cross club in London, how he had bought her a ticket to fly over to America with his winnings from a craps game – ‘That should have been the first warning sign,' she told him, ‘but I didn't know it at the time' – and how she had encountered his difficult family, with their constant poker games and betting on horses. ‘It was an alien world to me,' she said.

She explained how Bob's gambling had become worse and worse as the addiction had taken hold, and the effect that it had had on their relationship. ‘He used to be so loving and affectionate,' she said, ‘and then something seemed to dry up inside of him. He became moody and difficult, and it just seemed like he didn't love me any more.'

The doctor listened patiently as Sylvia told her story and explained how she had suffered a breakdown. Then it was time for her to go, and Bob took his turn in the consultation room.

The next week, Sylvia was getting ready to return for their first session together when Bob announced he wouldn't be coming. She was furious. ‘Well, I'm going on my own then,' she told him, and she marched out the door.

‘Where's your husband?' Dr King asked when Sylvia walked into his office on her own.

‘He decided not to come,' she explained.

‘To be honest, I'm not surprised,' Dr King said. ‘I shouldn't really tell you this, but in his private session last week, Bob told me he doesn't think he should have to see a psychologist, since he's not the one who had a breakdown. Whenever I asked a question about your marriage, all he did was talk about money.'

‘That's Bob,' Sylvia replied. ‘All he ever thinks about these days is how to come up with a system to beat the odds, and how once he works it out we'll be rich beyond our wildest dreams.' She sighed. ‘So, what am I supposed to do now?'

‘Well, it seems to me you have two options,' Dr King replied. ‘Either you have to leave Bob . . .'

‘I just can't do that,' Sylvia interrupted. ‘I couldn't afford to bring up the kids on my own, and I couldn't live with being a burden on my parents.'

‘In that case,' the counsellor continued, ‘you have to accept that Bob isn't going to change, and you can't make him. The only thing you can change is yourself.'

‘What does that mean?' Sylvia asked.

‘It means you have to learn to stand up to him,' he told her. ‘You can't bottle everything up inside until it explodes again. You've seen where that got you before – you ended up having a breakdown.'

Sylvia carried on seeing Dr King on her own, and over the course of their sessions he taught her how to assert herself with Bob. She learned to state calmly but firmly what she needed, rather than suffering in silence. If Bob tried to ignore her requests for things like money for the kids' clothes, she would keep repeating them, refusing to let him shut her out. It didn't always get the desired result, but at least she felt that she was being heard.

To begin with, Bob didn't like it that his previously shy wife was becoming more confident, and it made him angry. One day he told her that if she didn't stop it, she could get out. ‘No, you get out if you want to,' Sylvia replied coolly. ‘I'm not leaving again.'

She had learned to control her own anger, which meant that their conversations didn't spiral so often into rows. Dr King had taught her that when she found herself feeling overwhelmed she could express her frustrations in writing, pouring out her troubles in a diary, rather than lashing out. As a result, she no longer felt that she had resentment building up that risked making her ill again.

At the same time, Sylvia had acknowledged that she would never be able to change Bob. As Gamblers Anonymous had told her before, his addiction was his problem, and he was the only one who could tackle it. Sylvia knew that he was unlikely ever to do that, but finally giving up her battle to stop him gambling brought her a certain amount of relief. She learned she could choose to compromise without having to feel like a victim – deciding to stay with Bob despite not agreeing with what he did.

Sylvia had long since given up the romantic notions she had held when she first married her GI boyfriend and came to America. It was far from the Hollywood ending that she had dreamed of, but she had come to realise that, rather than looking to him to make her happy, she would have to find happiness elsewhere. She put her energy into her relationships with her children instead, and into her friendships with the Bluebell girls, who had become like a second family to her.

She set her own boundaries now, carving out a life for herself that was increasingly separate from Bob's. They moved into different parts of the house – he upstairs and she downstairs – and saw less and less of each other. She also kept her finances separate, making sure that her money was out of his reach. She had accepted the fact that she would always have to keep working, so that she could cover the inevitable shortfalls in the money she got from him, but it also enabled her to start putting aside a small amount each month in a savings account of her own.

After many years of hard work, Sylvia had put by enough to fulfil her long-held ambition to return to England for a holiday. Bob might have failed in his promise to take her home, but together the Bluebell girls managed to get a cheap flight by chartering a plane.

Finally, Sylvia was able to show her children the place that, in her heart, she still called home. Bob might not be by her side, but she had got there thanks to her own strength of will and determination – and she knew that was enough to carry her through.

‘I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, and particularly to Great Britain, of which I have heretofore been a subject.'

At the Washington County courthouse, near Pittsburgh, Rae stood and recited the words as instructed. The most patriotic of British subjects, she had never imagined herself taking out American citizenship, but Raymond's threats to deport her had only made her determined to stay in the United States. She might have been desperate to jump off the boat and swim home when she first arrived, but she wasn't going to let her cheating husband force her out now when she had done nothing wrong.

When she had told her mother that she and Raymond had separated, Rae had expected her to beg her to return to England. But to her surprise, Mrs Burton was so outraged to hear how he had treated her daughter that she told her: ‘Stay and fight him.'

Luckily, Rae had a formidable lawyer on her team, in the shape of her employer Pap Oppenheim. Every time Raymond had approached an attorney about his scheme to boot Rae out of the country, Pap had intervened and dissuaded them from taking on the case. Word had spread quickly, and Raymond had been forced to abandon his campaign.

Over the past few years, Rae hadn't heard from Raymond at all, and her life with the Oppenheims had proved a full one. There was never a dull moment with Donny, Jay and Billy around. The older two were always up to some prank or other – peeing in the builders' coffee when they were working on the house, or sneaking unexpected things into the wastepaper basket before Rae emptied it into the fireplace at night, causing sparks to fly out and burn holes in the carpet. Their reputation as little rascals preceded them, and other women often asked Rae how she coped. But she always replied, ‘I wouldn't change them for the world.' Pap Oppenheim, meanwhile, often told Rae that she was like the daughter he and Minna never had.

Rae really had the ideal set-up, living in the lap of luxury with the kindest employers imaginable. But after three years, she was beginning to wonder if it was all a little too easy. As much as she liked the Oppenheims, she couldn't help thinking that perhaps she was putting her own life on hold by staying with them.

Another matter was beginning to weigh on Rae's mind. She had fallen in love with baby Billy as soon as she had seen his big brown eyes, and over the years she had spent more time with him than his own mother had, looking after him while Minna worked at the furniture store. Rae had begun to notice that when Minna left the house, Billy would say, ‘Bye bye, Mommy,' quite contentedly, whereas when she left, the boy would scream blue murder. She knew that he was getting too attached.

Rae loved Billy like her own flesh and blood, and saying goodbye to him, and to the Oppenheims, who had been so kind to her in her hour of need, was heartbreaking. But she knew she had to find her own way in life and prove that she could stand on her own two feet again.

She decided to make a fresh start in McKeesport, a bustling steel town a little further up the Monongahela River that was known affectionately as ‘Tube City', since the famous National Tube Works was based there. She already had a friend in the town, Marlene, who had offered to put her up.

On her first day in McKeesport, Rae set off to look for a job, working her way along the main shopping street, Fifth Avenue, and calling in at every building to ask if they were hiring. She tried everything from the National Bank and Murphy's Five & Dime to Immel's Clothing and the Minerva bakery, but at all of them she met with the same answer: ‘There's no work here.'