A Mother’s Spirit

And she was, for she felt as if she had been engulfed with total bliss and her love for Joe was greater than ever.

Gloria and Joe returned from their wonderful honeymoon to find that Brian had bought them a Cadillac as a wedding present. With Joe at work all week, Gloria had charge of the car to go into New York on shopping trips, or to meet her friends for lunch, and in the evenings and at weekends she and Joe would often take off in it somewhere together. They had thought to begin a family straight away but each month they were disappointed.

They assured each other that these things take time, and meanwhile there were any number of distractions to be had in New York, and they had good friends to visit at weekends. They told themselves that they were young and free, and maybe it was as well to stay that way for a while.

However, they were fooling themselves. Each month Gloria’s longing for a child grew greater and she dreaded feeling the drawing pains in her stomach that meant they were once more unsuccessful.

Then just after Easter, Brian had a funny turn at work and Joe drove him home and sent for the doctor. He advised Brian that he had to take life at a slower pace if he didn’t want his heart to give out altogether. Joe had seen his father have the same warning and not heed it, but he had been a younger man then with no authority to tell his father what to do.

With Brian the relationship was totally different. ‘You have to do as the doctor says,’ Joe said. ‘What’s the point of having him come to see you otherwise? After all, I am here now. Over the years you have taught me well and you will be near at hand if I need advice.’

Brian knew that Joe spoke the truth, but he growled, ‘And what will I do all day? Now if you were to do the business and give me a grandchild, which I thought you would have done by now, I would be as happy as Larry to stay at home more.’

‘You can play about with your stocks and shares,’ Joe told him. ‘It’s what you love to do anyway. And didn’t the doctor tell you to take more exercise? A brisk walk every day would use up some of your excess time.’

‘You are ducking the issue, man.’

‘What issue?’ Joe asked, though he knew full well.

‘I want a grandchild to gladden my heart and give me a reason for living long enough to see him or her grow up.’

‘Aye,’ Joe commented wryly. ‘Well, we can’t always have what we want.’

‘Why’s that?’ Brian demanded. ‘Is there a problem? Shall I ask the doctor to take a look at you both?’

‘There is no problem,’ Joe said. ‘Leave well alone. These things take time.’ And surely, he thought, there couldn’t be anything serious wrong. He was as fit as a fiddle and so was Gloria, and he saw no reason why they wouldn’t soon have a child of their own.

However, the years passed and each month Gloria was sunk in despondency, especially as she knew her parents were waiting anxiously. She had a wonderful, happy life, money was no object, and she could have anything for the asking. Added to that she had loving parents and an adoring husband, and yet the thing she wanted above all this, a child, eluded her.

In the summer of 1929, when Gloria and Joe had been married almost three years, she said to him, ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that there has been no sign of a child, Joe? Maybe I should do what Mother wants and see the doctor?’

‘What can a doctor do about something like that?’ Joe asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Gloria said. ‘But it wouldn’t hurt to have a word.’

Joe said nothing else, but Gloria knew he didn’t want her to go to the doctor and discuss their most intimate affairs with him, and so she said, ‘I won’t bother the doctor yet. Maybe I’ll go next spring, if it doesn’t all begin naturally.’

She felt, rather than heard, Joe’s sigh of relief as he said, ‘Your father at least has something else to occupy his mind for now. He is buying shares left, right and centre, by all accounts. He doesn’t have to come into the office each day, but he insists, but I don’t let him do much. Actually he seems to spend most of the day on the telephone to the Exchange, buying and selling shares.’

‘He’s always been the same with stocks and shares,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t really understand it.’

Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t want to understand it,’ he said. ‘Seems like a mug’s game to me. Even Bert’s at it. I thought you had to be really wealthy, but apparently not. You buy on something called a margin, Bert said. First a person borrows the money and then uses that to buy stock, so he can put the stock up as collateral. The whole thing is decided by the value of the shares, which apparently go up and down continuously. When they rise, you collect the dividend. Then if they drop, as they did earlier this month, he said you raise some more cash and wait for them to go up again. He wanted me to go in with him.’

‘I’m surprised that he wasted his breath on you,’ Gloria said. ‘You don’t even trust banks. You have a stash of money in a biscuit tin.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Joe said. ‘I have got along without stocks and shares this long while, and I will continue to give them a wide berth.’

About the middle of October, Joe became aware that Brian was worried about something and he asked him about it.

‘It’s nothing that you need concern yourself about,’ Brian snapped.

‘Stop that sort of talk, Brian,’ Joe snapped back. ‘I am your son-in-law and so everything that bothers you this much is my concern too. If it is connected to the business in some way, then I need to be told what it is.’

‘It only loosely concerns the business,’ Brian said. ‘And it’s all to do with the shares. They dropped in early October, but they did that last month too and recovered.’

‘And this time they haven’t?’

‘Not yet,’ Brian said. ‘They will eventually, but they are still dropping at the moment.’

‘Why don’t you sell up while you have the chance?’

‘I can’t do that, Joe,’ Brian said. ‘You don’t know how much is at stake. I would lose a packet if I sold at current rates.’

‘I hope for your sake that prices soon rise then.’

‘You worry too much, Joe,’ Brian said. ‘I have been doing this for years. And the uneasiness sort of adds to the excitement.’

It was excitement that Joe could well do without, and he saw Brian develop deep furrows across his brow and down each side of his nose, and sometimes he looked quite grey. Joe knew he was more worried than he was letting on and he was very concerned about him, but Brian refused to talk about it.

The following week, Bert sought Joe out. ‘I am selling my shares back to the bank tomorrow,’ he said. ‘The boss should do the same. I tried telling him and got my head bitten off for my trouble. He said he’ll lose money. Hell, I will lose money, but at least this way I’ll get something back. People say the stock market is going to crash. Try talking to him, Joe. He listens to you.’

‘Not at the moment he doesn’t,’ Joe said grimly. ‘But I will do my best.’

Brian, however, was intractable. ‘People are getting fearful, that’s all,’ he told Joe. ‘They just have to hold their nerve and sit tight.’

The following day, Bert told Joe of the agitated crowds of people who had flooded the Exchange, frantically trying to redeem their shares. ‘Good job I went early,’ he said. ‘For all that there was a mile-long queue already there, at least I got in. Some poor devils didn’t. When the hall reached what they considered capacity, they just shut the doors. People were hollering, crying, screaming in the streets, banging on the doors. I tell you, Joe, it was mayhem, and some of those who got in got no money, for the Exchange just closed down, couldn’t cope at all. God Almighty, Joe, where will America be after this?’

Over the weekend, the market seemed to recover a little and there was a glimmer of hope that it would bounce back as it had so many times before. Brian had a smug, ‘told you so’ look on his face as he read the financial papers. But, by Monday the shares began spiralling down again and the evening papers were full of doom and gloom, and bad forecasts of worse to come. Brian decided he had to go down to the Exchange and see how things were for himself, and so on Tuesday morning, without a word to anyone, he got up early and left the house.

The streets around the Exchange were busy for that hour in the morning, and in the milling crowds around the closed doors the desperation and panic could almost be felt. Brian felt the knot of worry he had carried for a few weeks harden and he was suddenly filled with dread. No one spoke to averyone else, and even avoided eye contact. Brian admitted for the first time that he might have made a ghastly mistake. It seemed hours later that the staff began arriving and then the crowds surging against the doors burst them apart.

The sheer number of people streaming in that day made it impossible for the staff even to attempt to try to close the doors again. Brian stood cheek by jowl with his neighbours and saw the shares drop that first hour more than they had ever dropped before.

The ashen-faced people began to shriek and scream, and then the massed crying of wretched people settled to a loud hum of profound distress that filled the room and rebounded off the walls. There was pandemonium on the Exchange floor, and Brian saw some men grab frantically at their collars before collapsing beneath people’s feet. Brian didn’t blame them; it was only the people pressed all around him that were keeping him upright, for he knew he too was ruined. His major investments were in radio and steel, and when the value of them dropped so low they were worthless he knew his life was effectively over.

Stumbling through the door and into the street, he began to lurch from one side of the sidewalk to the other as if he was in the throes of drink when really he was trying to come to terms with the anguish and wretchedness that he was going to inflict on those he loved best in all the world. He walked for miles and for hours, trying to ignore the sharp pains shooting across his chest, but when eventually the cold and darkness caused him to head for home he knew what he was going to do.

There had been a little concern when there had been no sign of Brian when the house was astir that morning. When he hadn’t made an appearance or contacted anyone, either at the factory or the house, Joe had come home early, intending to take the car out and look for him.

He was in the bedroom, changing from his suit when he heard the loud hammering on the front door.

‘Thank goodness, that must be Daddy now,’ said Gloria, who had followed Joe upstairs. And then, just a few minutes later, they heard Norah’s cry of distress.

The knocking on the door had been so loud and insistent it had brought Norah from the drawing room, and so she was in the hall as Planchard crossed it and opened the door to see his master holding the evening paper in his hand, leaning heavily against the doorjamb. He looked as if he had had a skinful, although there was no smell of drink upon him at all.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Planchard said, going forward to support him.

Norah gave a little gasp of shock, seeing Brian brought into the light, leaning heavily against the butler. His face was grey, even his lips had no colour, and his rheumy eyes were red and bloodshot with huge fleshy bags beneath them.