A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ