At the farm Catherine would ride on the horse-drawn stone boat, jump off, and gather rocks. Grandpa would stop the team when a rock was too heavy for her and pick it up in his massive hands. Her hands and arms grew strong from the early farmwork so that in the fifth grade when a boy pushed her down she was able to slam him against the wall and choke him. The teacher had to rescue the boy. He warned Catherine about “farm girls” misusing their strength.
One morning in Catherine’s eleventh year Mother announced the good news. Her father in London was sending her and Catherine tickets on the Queen Mary to visit in England for a year. It was a troublesome time in the world, a scant month before World War II broke out as it turned out, though they didn’t expect it when they went. Her father looked happy to see them go. Catherine knew that her father frequently visited a divorcée across town who lived next to Laura’s family, which Laura had told her, but her mother didn’t know. Of late her mother had been drinking nearly as much as her father which worried her but Catherine thought if she and her mother could just go to the farm, or stay away from town, everything would remain as it was. And she was ecstatic about visiting England on a great boat, said to be the largest in the world that carried passengers.
In early August Catherine said goodbye to her chickens, the only things she regretted leaving behind except her grandparents and Laura. They took a long three-day train journey to New York, stopping for a night in Chicago where her mother had English friends she said were “posh.” They certainly were, living in a brownstone downtown near Lake Michigan. Catherine had never seen such furniture and when they arrived from the train station a uniformed man was polishing the doorknob that looked golden though her mother said it was brass. Her mother and the woman of the house were old school friends and laughed a lot. The husband was what was widely known as a “pain in the ass.” He had too much to drink at dinner and railed loudly that bankers had gotten a “bum rap” for the Depression. It was obviously a performance for the benefit of a new audience, Catherine’s mother Alicia. It became unpleasant though the roast beef was the best she had ever had. The man lurched to his feet before dessert and they heard him crash to the floor with a roar in the den. Servants came running but his wife merely shrugged and smiled and said, “It would be very nice for me if he would break his fucking neck.” Catherine’s mother and the wife laughed loudly although Catherine worried that the man might be injured.
Breakfast next morning before their noon train was pleasant as the man had long gone off to work.
“You’re going to be very lovely. Take care in your choices. You can’t be too cautious about who you marry. I’ll probably see you in London for a visit,” the woman said to Catherine as they said goodbye.
To Catherine the three days in New York City were fine, especially the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The hard part was her mother’s interminable shopping. Catherine wasn’t fascinated by clothes the way some girls her age were, in fact she simply didn’t care much about them. Her favorite thing to wear was her overalls out on the farm, just like Grandpa’s. Her mother, however, had inherited some money from a maiden aunt in Hereford, England. Her father thought that they should buy a new Ford roadster with the money, but her mother had brought the money along in traveler’s checks to keep him away from it.
The voyage was utterly grand to Catherine. They had middling tickets, not first class but certainly not steerage. She didn’t really know the difference and didn’t care. She was completely untraveled and New York City had been stunning in terms of the people she saw. The ship was the same but because it was confined she was able to wander around and study the variety of people as if she were studying her chickens.
The only thing irritating to Catherine was that there was a certain kind of older man who would stare and wink at her. In truth despite her ignorance of sexuality she was a little early in her pubescence and had begun to have breasts. She was five-foot-nine and graceful with big eyes and certain men have a taste for the too young. To Catherine these men were no different from the boy behind the school who had aimed his hard dick at her and yelled, “Bang.” She wanted to continue being a girl and had no interest in becoming a woman which she could see was a disadvantage, in Montana and maybe everywhere else. In school even the teachers fawned over the boys who were star athletes. A mere perfect student like herself was largely ignored except by one or two. Luckily her Sunday school teacher Mrs. Semmes had taught her the value of humility which allowed her not to become angry about those conditions she couldn’t change. Several years later some girls she knew asked her to join them on the cheerleading squad but frankly she hated the idea of yelling, maybe because of her father who did so much though never at her.
She immediately loved London and her grandparents though she grew quite tired of accompanying her mother on her visits to old friends. Mother treated her as if she were a trophy which she disliked and Catherine was at a loss for anything to say to her mother’s schoolmates. Finally she relented and let Catherine take walks with either of her grandparents. They lived about a block off Cheyne Walk in a house that came to them through her grandmother’s parents, otherwise it would have been too expensive for them in that lovely neighborhood. They would walk along the Thames and Catherine thought there was no substitute on earth for a big river. London was simply a fabulous walking town and they strayed far in the short time before the war started. It was pretty much all that anyone talked about.
They were there six months when there was a wire saying her mother had to go home because Catherine’s grandmother on the farm had died and her father was ill from a possible stroke. Catherine didn’t think her mother cared about her father but there were many things to be sorted out that required her at home. She had trouble booking passage as there were so many people trying to get out of England in fear of the possibility of a German attack. Finally Grandfather got her aboard a big yacht returning to Newport, Rhode Island, in exchange for his wangling enough gas for them to reach port. Grandfather had been very high in the civil service, basically looking after all transportation in the London area. Catherine deduced later that this must have been how he wangled gas for the yacht. Her grandfather was called in for many civil defense — type meetings during the war, some at their home during which she had to go up to her room. Secrets were being told and she shouldn’t know them. She liked this air of intrigue having read mystery books.