Читать книгу A Fickle Wind - Elizabeth Bourne - Страница 11

Chapter Five

We settled down and made our home in the front room of my parents’ house. Craig was now out of the Air Force and had started a new job maintaining and repairing calculators for an international company. It was a step up from his old position, and he seemed to take to it well. I wanted my husband to have the kind of job that no one could walk in off the street and just take over. At this point, it was about the best I could hope for, as at least it took some training.

At the rate we were both earning, however, we would never be able to have a house of our own. A down payment was way out of our reach, and any rental housing being built was snapped up immediately. I would often look out our room’s only window on a rainy, gloomy English landscape, wondering if this was all that my life would amount to. A holiday once a year at a Butlin’s holiday camp, perhaps. Even a chance to go abroad occasionally. We probably wouldn’t have children, as we needed our two incomes to survive. What a miserable, dreary existence. There were stars in my eyes and dreams in my heart but little idea how any of it could manifest by following the dismal path of drudgery allotted to the underprivileged masses in a broken country.

I had to get away. Others had done it. Why not us? I started to plant the seeds with Craig that perhaps we should try a two-year adventure. It seemed less daunting that way, and we could always come back. After a little while, he started to warm to the idea. America was my first choice, but that was out of the question. We needed one of three things, none of which we had: money, jobs, sponsors.

The first one was obviously out; we didn’t know any Americans and had no clue how to find work. Canada was a much more realistic proposition. I worried that it would be very cold in the winter, but then, so was England, and I had heard that Canada had central heating—a very happy thought! I’d had enough of tensing my back in November and not relaxing it until May. Even inside the house, where a small open fire was still about all the heat we had, except for an electric heater. Upon waking, one arm out of bed, I would hold my underwear in front of it until the steam from the dampness subsided.

The calculator company for which Craig worked had a branch in Toronto, and when he approached them, they promised him a transfer. He also had two cousins in Toronto to help us acclimate. And, surprise, surprise, when we broached the subject with my parents, my mother agreed that there was very little to keep young people in Britain, and all the opportunities seemed to be abroad. I was mystified by her cooperative reaction but was glad she wasn’t making waves.

My father, who had traveled the world in his Navy days, thought it was a great idea. Craig’s mother protested vehemently, but his father calmed her down, stressing that it was only for two years. Maybe! So we submitted our application, and I believe it came through in about six weeks. Because of our lack of money, it was decided that Craig would leave ahead of me and start working. I would stay behind to raise as much money as possible by selling the one room of furniture we had acquired.

Everything fell into place. Craig arrived without incident, and his cousins provided a bed for as long as it took for him to locate a suitable apartment. After paying our first and last months’ rent and security deposit, he had used up nearly all the money he had taken with him. Fortunately, however, he had a small salary. He borrowed a hundred dollars from his cousins to buy a bed, pillows and sheets, and some cookware. We could sit on the bed to eat.

I advertised the furniture, which was like new and sold quickly. I think I garnered about two hundred pounds. I quit my job, said goodbye to my friends and relatives, and prepared to leave. My father asked a neighborhood friend to drive me to Heathrow Airport, and my father accompanied us. In those days, one dressed for flights, and I was dressed elegantly! It was a very special occasion, after all.

There was always an awkwardness between my mother and me with anything that passed for emotion. It was almost not permitted. And, true to form, our leaving turned out to be business as usual, with a quick kiss on the cheek and a “travel safely” from her. I immediately turned and walked down the path with a sigh of relief and a spring in my step. I recall closing my eyes and drawing a deep breath when the goodbye was over. I was very excited to be leaving on this new adventure, and I couldn’t wait for it all to begin!

It was a long drive from the suburbs on one side of London to the suburbs on the other, where Heathrow Airport was located, and I was so appreciative of our neighbor’s help. I recall that he and my father dropped me off but couldn’t stay, as they had a long drive home and London rush hour traffic to contend with. Everything was infinitely easier with my father than with my mother, because he had always been affectionate with me. Sharing emotions with him wasn’t a stilted, almost alien, experience, as it was with my mother. He and I were sorry to part, but he genuinely wanted for me what I wanted for me: a better chance at life. He was definitely a “You go, girl” kind of dad.

As it turned out, there was a little delay to the start of my big adventure, so I enjoyed a little adventure. The plane had engine trouble, and the passengers were to stay in a London hotel overnight. Hotels had been thin on the ground in my life thus far—nonexistent, actually—so this was going to be my first such experience. On the bus taking us to our destination, I sat next to a fellow traveler, a Hungarian man who had escaped from Hungary during the uprising against the Soviet Union, had been in England for a while, and was planning to start a new life in Canada. He asked me out to dinner. First hotel, first fashionable London restaurant, first date with a man …!

Craig met me at the airport and took me to our apartment. I thought it was wonderful. It was attractive and modern. The appliances were new. There were hardwood floors in the living areas and tile vanities and floor in the bathroom. I was thrilled! I had never lived in anything so luxurious. It was on the outskirts of Toronto, and there was a convenient streetcar for transportation. I couldn’t wait to look around as soon as I had had a night’s sleep. It was nothing like I had imagined, but then, try as I might prior to the trip, the only pictures I could conjure up were of the Wild West. Silly, I know, but I really didn’t know very much about the North American continent other than what I’d seen in movies, usually westerns and musicals. They didn’t make many movies about Canada.

At that time, of course, Toronto wasn’t the sophisticated, cosmopolitan city it has become in the ensuing years, but it didn’t have wooden sidewalks and dirt roads. It was a Sunday when we ventured out, and everything was closed. True to form, I wanted to see the stores, and I recall being very disappointed in the fashions displayed in the windows. They were several years behind London, not in the least high-style, and really pretty boring. Craig helped me get my bearings that day and showed me where the financial district was and where I would need to go to enlist with employment agencies. And that would have to begin immediately. Our rent was due again, our money wouldn’t last long, and we had a debt to repay.

I made the rounds, took my tests, and was on the “available” list with several placement agencies. We had no phone, so I needed to call from the public call box on the corner of our street to check for work. I allocated two dimes a day to do this at about ten every morning and four every afternoon. I don’t recall how long it took, but one morning I was told that a man downtown wanted a typist for the afternoon, and I should report at noon. I was to earn $1.25 per hour.

As I walked into his office, a girl from a local lunch café was delivering a sandwich. They couldn’t make change between them, and he asked if I could lend him fifty cents, which I did. He gave me the project, and I started to work.

As the afternoon progressed, it became apparent he wasn’t going out, and I started to worry about how he would repay my fifty cents. This sounds a little ridiculous now, but you have to remember my circumstances. That was actually five phone calls for me to look for more work. And this was my first working experience in my new country. Was I going to be “taken” right away? Not if I could help it!

When it was time for me to leave at the end of the afternoon, I gave him my time card. He calculated that he owed me for five hours and, since there had been no discussion of repayment of my fifty cents, I suggested he make it five and a half hours. He looked puzzled and asked why he should do that. I explained, and after showing some surprise and hesitation, he did.

I recall running down the stairs feeling quite elated and, strangely, with a sense of relief. I think it was more than just the repayment. It had been a test of my mettle—and I had passed. I had stood up for myself, even in this new land, three thousand miles from home. My mother would have been proud of me. And hadn’t that been the name of the game all my life?

I found a job in a British car dealership. I had gone on a temporary assignment and noticed they were interviewing. After about three days of proving I could do the job, I asked to be considered. One of the principals for whom I was working liked my work and was a declared Anglophile, so I was hired. It wasn’t what I would have chosen—I sat facing a muddy-green wall with a crack running through it—but it was a beginning.

Craig had become friends with a man with whom he worked, and it was time for me to meet him and his wife. Don and Jean were our first Canadian friends, and we were blessed. Not only did they take us under their wings and show us wonderful Canadian hospitality, but they provided our first true Canadian adventure. Jean’s parents owned a cottage on a lake in Muskoka, a beautiful summer resort area about 120 miles north of Toronto. When the weather permitted, Jean and Don went up on weekends. They invited us to join them on one of these occasions shortly after we met.

To go away for the weekend was a whole new experience for us. It hadn’t been any part of the life we had left, and Craig and I were somewhat overwhelmed. How grand everything was turning out to be. The cottage was cozy and comfortable but was, indeed, a cottage, with an outhouse.

Jean and Don had a boat, water skis, other sports equipment, and water toys. There was a large dock, which was a favorite hangout for Jean and me. We sunbathed for hours, ensuring a dark bronze tan when we returned to the city. One of the men I worked for once said I looked like Lena Horne, and I was thrilled. Our time there was magical, and I loved it.

We became fast friends as a foursome. The guys were both athletic and energetic, and Jean and I had lots in common. We both loved to be glamorous and fashionable, and we enjoyed relaxing, reading, and being very lazy on our weekends. Sometimes we would get the guys to drop us off in Port Carling, where we sat at the bar of the drugstore drinking Pepsi floats. How sophisticated and cool! And how very different and eye-opening it all was to me. It was what the young people did in the American movies I had so loved. It was those movies, I believe, that had planted the seed—the family was supposed to be poor but had a telephone, and the teenage daughter would skip out of the house and get into a huge car to drive to meet her friends at the drugstore to drink Pepsi floats! It was a whole new world, and my toe was in the water.

Summer weekends in Muskoka became a way of life. Sometimes Jean’s family would be there: her mother, father, brother, and his girlfriend. But no one expected anything of us, and we went about our own established routine.

For some reason, Don seemed to enjoy teasing me, naïve and unsophisticated as I was in those days. I recall he made lunch one day, and in my chicken salad sandwich he hid dried grasshoppers. I thought the sandwich tasted weird, but I was too polite not to eat it. This led to much hilarity when he later produced the container.

A couple of weekends after that, I brought up a homemade blackberry pie. I explained I had done my best to pull off all the stems, but if anyone found one, I was sorry. After it was consumed, I put a can of dried bees in front of Don and explained that no one else would have noticed any “stems,” but that I had lifted the crust on his piece and mixed the bees in with the berries, so whatever he had noticed resembling stems had actually been bees’ legs!

On another occasion, when we went to a local dance, Don went up to the band and announced over the microphone that a celebrated singer from England had recently arrived on their shores, and everyone should give the young lady at the table in the front (pointing at me, of course) a big hand to encourage her to get up and give them a song. I was horrified as everyone started to applaud and cheer. I cannot carry a tune and I could feel the panic rising. But this needed some fast thinking …

When the applause died down, I stood up and said that I was so sorry to have to disappoint them, but I was under contract to a promoter in Britain and was actually forbidden to sing anywhere at all without prior arrangements with my agent. I think it was after that incident that Don started to believe he’d possibly met his match and I was not quite as gullible as he had thought. We are still the best of friends.