A paternalistic US government assured military personnel volunteering for overseas service that the comforts awaiting them were no less complete than those they had come to expect at home, and so air transport began to fly into Effingham laden with deep freezers, washing machines, hi-fi equipment, electric organs and even Persian carpets. Many of those for whom these goods were destined had become accustomed to an annual trade-in, and a major disadvantage of the life overseas was that no regular outlets existed for the discarded equipment. Thus the efficient turnover of the entire system was threatened and a surplus built up, for base houses were small and soon glutted with gear.
Dick was everybody’s friend and often acted as a sort of go-between. When consulted about the American quandary, he immediately took it up with local shopkeepers and affluent villagers such as the Broadbents, and a number of them agreed to do what they could to ease the log-jam of consumer durables. It was Dick’s commitment to the future of his only daughter Jane that turned him into a salesman. First he accepted small gifts, then a trifling commission, then finally obliged American friends and begrudgingly accepted the role of purchasing their cast-offs to sell on. Thus trade developed. Dick was a reluctant and therefore good salesman, a little troubled about the legality of his enterprise, and there was a melancholic religiosity about him that reassured seller and buyer alike.
Dick and his family continued to live frugally, the appearance of an occasional cake at Sunday tea-time being just about the only outward sign of their newly-found prosperity. He himself did not like to talk about finance but his wife Dorothea, who was more intimately acquainted with the size of the cache of notes somewhere under the floor, quietly confided in him one day that the first few months’ operations had brought in enough to pay for one year’s schooling at Woodford. It was arranged that Jane would enter Gladben’s in the coming September.
Most of the married American servicemen and their families staved within the confines of the base, and the base did its best to provide those things that made home sweet to them. England remained largely unknown. Only the young servicemen ventured out, and when they did it was usually in search of female company. They were a godsend to the girls of Essex, which had become a real backwater for young people. The local girls found the Americans more considerate and enthusiastic than their English counterparts. In approaches to the opposite sex, the Americans often displayed an outmoded gallantry, which sometimes evoked pretended amusement but was always well received. Saturday night discos were about the only form of entertainment surviving in country places and a girl escorted to one by a local lad had to resign herself to a loutish rather than a romantic experience. By contrast, the dances at the base offered a model of propriety and good order.
The homely and somewhat formal atmosphere of the social club at the base seemed to exert a tranquillising effect upon even the most unruly and pugnacious English males. Finding it impossible to pick a quarrel with their urbane hosts, they soon gave up trying. The music at the base was good and played on the very latest system; the décor was tasteful and relaxing and avoided cheap effects. No one was ever overcharged, and the old, sly trick practised in so many clubs of turning up the heat to increase consumption was unnecessary, since base hospitality was not perverted by the profit motive. Above all, it was the servicemen themselves who impressed. A rumour circulating at the time was that they had been issued back home with a manual setting out the finer points of conduct they would be obliged to observe whilst on our shores. This struck all those who came into contact with them as absurd. These, the girls decided, were nature’s gentlemen: handsome, clean-cut in both appearance and motive, sophisticated and evidently well-off. In the most discreet fashion, at pains not to provoke the rivalry of their English counterparts, the Americans produced photographs of themselves in their civilian days, often at the wheels of enormous cars, in the glamorous environment of their homeland. Few impressionable young girls could resist such an emotional assault. It was an experience that turned many a head. To Dorothea’s horror, her daughter Jane was among them.