Eighty Not Out (18 page)

12

New World Interlude

I
n mid-October 1965 the children and I flew from Belfast to Dublin before transferring to a 707 transatlantic flight to Boston. Before our long flight I took them for lunch in the airport restaurant, where they picked and messed with a delicious meal; however, the woman at the next table remarked on what a delightful pair they were. At this time children were not only tolerated, but received special attention from the flight attendants: crayons, colouring books, games and toys were offered, but thankfully not the plethora of digital games, audios and videos of current times, which assault the senses simultaneously, without concession to silence, peace and tranquillity. It seems that before I was forty I was already a grumpy old woman. Both children went to sleep for a while, and I drifted off, too, until awoken by an announcement that we would soon be crossing the Labrador coastline. Having thought, Good, we're nearly there, it was a shock to hear it would be three and a half hours before touchdown in Boston.

Fergus and his Iraqi doctor friend Edward met us and exerted their joint charm to such effect that the Aer Lingus stewardess facilitated us through customs with minimal delay. The airport was so hot and noisy we might as well have been in West Africa. It was dark, lights were flashing and sirens screaming, as Edward's Cadillac was swept into multi-lane traffic, and we headed for the International Student House, where we were to live for the next ten months. The children were barely awake when we put them to bed in their day clothing, and in the morning had little time to enjoy Fergus before he left for the first class of the day. They explored the apartment, commented unfavourably on the taste of the milk, and squealed with delight at the antics of squirrels stock piling nuts in one of the trees directly opposite.

Our block dated from the turn of the century. The living room was large with a bay window overlooking Fenway Park, so we moved the dining table to take advantage of the view; the rest of the room was so gloomy that the lights had to be kept on during the day. The view from the galley-shaped kitchen and our bedroom was of a dark chasm soaring from the basement, and ending at the third floor where a rectangle of sky could be seen – we were on the first floor. The bathroom, and a large closet intended for coats and cleaning materials, completed a total of six doors leading off the entrance vestibule. Worn, dirtengrained wood-block floors were throughout, the exceptions being the kitchen, where there were holes in brown linoleum, and the bathroom, which had once-white tiles with a black mosaic trim. I spent a lot of time, sweating because the radiators had been turned on early in October, scrubbing these floors, which afterwards looked little better.

The girls were impatient to explore their new surroundings, so I took them down to the entrance lobby, where the postboxes lined one wall, and a wide flight of steps led to street level. We walked a short distance to the playground, which was empty, but soon raucous cries of dispute signalled the arrival of other children accompanied by child-minders or, less often, by their mothers. One of the latter joined me and introduced herself. Tall, good-looking and unconventionally dressed, her brood of four, three boys and a girl, ranged from seven years to a one-year-old baby. Refreshingly forthright in manner, Carolyn confided how hard it was to retain sanity in the present circumstances. She was a Mormon from Salt Lake City, a professional artist, seeking an outlet in painting when the shackles of motherhood allowed. Her husband was a professor at the School of Public Health. I did not realise quite how liberated she was, nor how disturbing her opinions were to some members of our small, largely conventional community, the southern state missionaries in particular.

The birds in the park were unfamiliar, I found the local speech difficult to understand, and the brilliant casual clothing worn by the younger generation was in advance of what was worn in Ireland. Fergus and I realised that we had been missing out on the swinging sixties (though I suspect we would never have swung), had never been to a rock concert, nor had we smoked pot. We enjoyed the songs of Tom Lehrer but we were puzzled by Beatle mania, which was sweeping both sides of the Atlantic. Middle age and entrenched attitudes were rapidly approaching.

The playroom in the basement led off the communal laundry room, where sooner or later I encountered all the resident wives. Sitting, quietly reading in a corner of the playroom, was a neat little figure with a solitary male child the same age as Katharine. She looked out of place, quite why was hard to define. It was not the clothes, as she wore blue jeans and a horizontal striped T-shirt; maybe it was the hair, worn like a ballet dancer in a knot tightly scraped up from the forehead. She did not look American – nor was she: both she and her husband were Scottish. I pondered on what constituted not looking right, and realised our family came into the same category. Our mouths were not big enough, and our teeth, while not neglected, were not uniformly even and white. Our clothes tended to be tweedy and of classic cut, and I abhorred flashy costume jewellery. In the street people turned to stare at us. Sybil Wilson was to become a lifelong friend, but at the start our shared loathing of the house mother, and wariness of the American lifestyle, were enough to form a bond. Unfortunately she did not like my Mormon friend, quite why I could not understand – I suspect they were competitive in the field of arts and literature, or maybe Carolyn's appearance at evening functions in a purple silk sari, which did not suit her pale northern hemisphere skin, was to blame.

The welfare of residents in the house was the responsibility of a formidable widow whose husband had been
US
ambassador to one of the smaller Middle Eastern states. Despite her background, she retained narrow parochial attitudes and was discomfited if she sensed these were not shared: I took an instant dislike to her, and while the niceties were strictly observed, I sensed the dislike was reciprocal: unfortunate, considering Fergus was class president and chairman of the house committee for the year.

Our neighbours on the first floor were an East Coast Jewish
MD
, who was studying in the same class as Fergus; an earnest Canadian sexologist and his nice but humourless wife, with one child whose conception, as everyone sooner or later was informed, had been planned with the aid of a bedside thermometer; and a Brazilian doctor, Celso, his wife and two daughters. The Brazilians were friendly and helpful, but their command of English so poor that Fergus wondered how Celso was able to follow lectures. On the ground floor was a family of southern state missionaries who had also worked in West Africa; both parents were doctors and they had three pasty-faced children. Goodwill was exuded, but there was an underlying zeal to take charge of any situation. Not long after our arrival, my back seized up while I was hauling large bags of shopping and the children up the stairs from the basement: medical advice was to remain in a horizontal position for three days, so I could not escape their solicitous visits and gratuitous advice. Thereafter, if any of us developed a sore throat – we had on average one per week, the suspect source being the playgroup – they proposed a throat swab. My firm refusal of this, as well as anal suppositories, labelled me as negligent in matters of health; worse still, they suspected we were unbelievers.

Anything found faulty in the apartment – windows that would not open, curtain rails that did not run smoothly, electrical problems, leaky taps or blocked drains – was to be reported to the janitor, who lived a troglodyte existence in the basement with his gigantic wife and overweight daughter. Warned of his prickly character, and tendency to take umbrage, I trod warily, conscious that my accent was thought to represent unwelcome ‘foreign' demands, but anxious to ensure our problems did not go to the bottom of his priority list. The interior of his dungeon was full of plastic flowers, imitation stone-wall screens, Murano glass
objets d'art
, chairs with lace antimacassars. The
TV
was permanently on, there was a pervasive smell of deep-fat frying, and someone was always eating at a big table amid an assortment of sauces and pickles. Only much later did I see some of
The Flintstones
cartoons. Probably because of Fergus's position on the house committee, we got through the year without a major dispute, although I was impatient with such inefficiency at basic levels – hard to reconcile with
US
dominance in space research.

Most of our shopping was done at the neighbourhood A & P (Atlantic and Pacific) corner store, where I was impressed by milk packaged in waxed cartons rather than glass bottles, and we all became addicted to ice cream, available in varieties we had never dreamed of: mocha, chocolate chip, pistachio, mint, treacle toffee, forest fruits, raspberry ripple – in Ireland we had been restricted to vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. In Africa I had made my own, best forgotten, variety.

By the end of October autumn was turning to winter, and a penetrating wind from the east swept down the Fenway, stripping the trees bare, and the squirrels had found the food intended for birds on our windowsill. I took the children to feed the ducks and watch baseball practice, and drew their attention to the beautiful Russian Orthodox church and a striking modern office tower on the skyline. At the other extreme, the park boasted the ugliest public convenience I had ever seen. To mark its opening a plaque dated 1928 had been engraved with the names of benefactors and the architect: vaguely Spanish, the roof was flat with numerous small battlements and decorative grilles protecting the windows. Our Scottish friends, who had a car, took us to Franklin Park Zoo, but we found it as depressing, as did its miserable, hunched animals in their cramped cages: the pools were filthy, and there was litter everywhere. We also visited the house where Nathaniel Hawthorne, of whom neither of us had heard, set his novel
House of Seven Gables
. (Confession – I still have not read any of his books.) I think it was the following spring when we visited Salem and Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, further highlighting our joint ignorance of American history and literature.

By the time the first snow fell, the children's vocabulary included ‘cookies', ‘candy' and ‘sidewalk'. The temperature plummeted so dramatically that the frame of Fergus's glasses snapped, and we all took to wearing earmuffs, and, in the park, the children cried to go home because of the cold. Halloween and Thanksgiving loomed, and I was inundated with literature inviting me to join the Society of Harvard Dames, as well as sundry groups and ‘programs'. I got roped in for the Library Committee and for the Arrangement Committee of a Pot Luck Supper – I reckoned that was better than the Clean-Up Committee. The children were invited to the birthday party of a four-year-old boy, whose mother, between sorting out quarrels, gave me a lecture on the importance of instilling a sense of leadership and achievement at an early age. Po-faced, earnest, well-intentioned, all frivolity would have been alien to her nature; I wonder if her son enjoyed his party – neither Katharine nor Mary did.

One evening, after the children had gone to bed and Fergus had settled to his ‘homework', I decided to walk to the nearest Sears department store. The neighbourhood, despite its academic population, had a reputation for thuggery and violent crime. A man had recently been murdered, and women were advised not to walk across the park after nightfall. Before we left, a body was found among the bins, at the bottom of the chasm in our block. Despite being advised against my solitary walk – it was along the busy, well-lit, main route to the store, after all – I set off alone and arrived in one piece. I expected something like Harrods but the reality was far from that: it was loud, it was vast, and its claim to stock everything was probably true, but I found it difficult to locate not only the elevator, but the right level on which to start my search for dress fabrics. After the open markets and ramshackle stores of West Africa, I found it repulsive; ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' and ‘I Saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus', piped throughout the store, were proof that the festive season was in full swing. I wanted to replace our ancient Christmas tree decorations, but could see only balls made of fine glass which would shatter on the parquet floors. Forget about good taste – I settled for a flat-pack white plastic tree with tiny coloured lights, which Katharine and Mary thought was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen – apart from the one in the window of the A & P store.

Later I was advised to take a whole day off – possibly thanks to a reciprocal child-care programme – to visit the better stores in downtown Boston. Our budget was restricted because Fergus had brought us over at his own expense, so I was overjoyed to discover Filene's Bargain Basement, where top quality, and some designer, goods were marked down on a daily basis: a grey Aquascutum rainproof, bought for ten dollars and later known as Dad's flasher coat, lasted into the student years of our (as yet unborn) son. I bought high fashion shoes and good quality clothes for the girls. We also patronised the Salvation Army shop, where Katharine pounced on a huge stuffed tiger unloved by some rich kid; she still has him. The windows of Jordan Marsh were enough to convey that the exquisite luxury goods on display were beyond my range, or indeed ambition.

Drinks parties mostly began at six thirty with lethal cocktails accompanied by insufficient snacks, and we were seldom invited to stay for dinner. Our novelty value as (a) being Irish and (b) having lived in the wilds of Africa, wore off after we had ‘performed' a few times. One invitation, however, is memorable: we were invited to a reception at the house of the faculty dean in an exclusive part of Boston. He had an eclectic collection of paintings and sculptures, and Caucasian rugs and Afghan carpets covered the floors of a succession of open-plan rooms, in each of which a blazing fire burned. His wife was charming, allowing each person more than perfunctory time. The guests ranged from very old parchment-skinned academics, Daughters of the American Revolution, members of the diplomatic service, down to students at the School of Public Health, and others, like Fergus, already advanced in their careers, who were studying for a master's degree in public health and hygiene. I do recall feeling ashamed by having to admit to being a wife and mother, with no academic qualifications, in the company of so many leaders and achievers, and wanting to show that I was not quite brain-dead. Women's liberation and protest groups were in their infancy. Only very recently have I realised that I was a women's libber from the start, always swimming against the tide.