Joy Street Part VIII

Emily takes Simonetta in, and Roger goes to visit Nazareno Pacetti, Pell's uncle, who inherited the family restaurant. He is an agnostic and dislikes Carmela. The trial comes up, to contest the will and Roger is conscious that this is a very important case in his legal career since it is to help a friend. He cross examines Carmela, and she breaks down, and says that she is not the daughter of the man who reared her, Antonio Pacetti. Roger has found out that Carmela was registered as Pacetti's daughter and brought up by him and his wife, but she is actually the child of Luisa, one of Pacetti's Italian cousins, who became pregnant by someone before the family left Italy, and her cousin took the baby and registered her as his own, but his own wife was pregnant then with Adelina, Pell's mother so she could not be the mother of Carmela. The case ends in triumph for Roger and Pell as Carmela is proved to be lying. However when Roger gets back to Boston he is exhausted and ill, and collapses. Emily calls in a doctor who says it is pneumonia and its serious. Emily is happy that Roger is safely home and that he's won his case, and she tells him she has some news for him as well. After several years, she is finally pregnant. Roger is delighted but he is very ill and he dies within a few days.

Joy Street Part VII

Emily takes on war work, helping as a nurses aide at a hospital and organising knitting groups and giving blood. Her servants leave the house, to work in factories, except for their elderly cook housekeeper, Deirdre, who keeps things running with Emily doing more housework. Roger also takes on extra volunteer work for the war effort, and she worries that he's working too hard. Elizabeth Emily's aunt marries her admirer and they have a baby son Archie.. Pell de Lucca has also left the law firm to join the army... so now Roger is almost the only one left there. Priscilla joins the women's services and hopes to be posted overseas. Mrs Forbes who is a very shrewd old lady suspects that this is partly because David is likely to be posted overseas also...She loves Emily best of all her grandchildren, and she is aware of that she has feelings for David, although she is loyal to Roger. Then Pell de Lucca comes to ask Roger's advice as a lawyer... and he and Emily listen to the Italian man's story. They learn that Pell has been in love for years with his cousin Simonetta. He was an orphan and was brought up by his Aunt Carmela, who was widowed at the end of the war. She had a baby of her own, Simonetta, a very beautiful girl. Pell wants to marry her, but as they are first cousins, they are forbidden by the Catholic church. Carmela is against the marriage. She became very embittered after her husband's death, and became reclusive and fanatically religious. She didn't want Simonetta to marry and certainly not to make a marriage which is not approved by the Church. Pell's grandfather has died recently and in his will, he left some money to Pell. Pell did not like his grandfather, who had shown him little kindliness - but he wants Roger to arrange for some of the money to go to SImonetta to give her a better education than she has had. Emily says that she thinks there is something odd about the Grandfather's will, since he only left his daughter Carmela a small amount and Carmela has now decided to contest the Will. Pell has to go off back to the army, and as soon as he's gone, Simonetta turns up at the Joy St house, saying that her mother has turned against her and thrown her out, and she has nowhere to go.

Joy Street Pt VI

Roger realises as things get worse, that the other lawyers will probably join up and he will be landed with all extra work in the office. David prepares to go to Washington, and is dismayed when Priscilla makes a proposal to him. She says that she loves him and she believes he loves her too, and that in time he would get around to proposing. He tells her that he is not in love with her and he's in love with someone else. Angrily, she retorts that she knows he has feelings for someone else and she knows who it is too. She lets him go and David goes to Emily's house to say goodbye before he leaves. He reminds her of what had happened on New Year, how they both realised that they had to shut the door, and he was tempted to try to seduce her when he found her out of bed. However he realised that he could not do it, because Emily is an honourable married woman and not someone who has casual affairs... and that he would be very wrong to sleep with her, knowing that she would regret it and that it would damage her marriage. She says that she thinks she understands, and he says that he realised over the past months that he loved her and he couldnt do anything that would cause her pain, even if there was a brief period of pleasure. He tells her that Roger is a great guy and that Emily knows that and that she would not be happy if she did anything to hurt her husband or break up the marriage. Emily realises that he's right and when he leaves she commits herself to looking after Roger and trying hard to be a support to him. Brian is called up but then let back into civilian life, and he and Roger try to clear up a lot of work that is piling up. Then Pearl Harbor happens and Brian is recalled to the Navy.

Joy Street Pt V

David makes a pass at Emily, and she is angry and rebuffs him.. But she does feel an attraction to him that scares her. He tells her that he's not a man to make friends with a woman and he thinks in time she will come to want him as her lover. At New Year, Priscilla suggests that she Roger and Emily go to Elizabeth Forbes's farmhouse in New England, for a holiday, as she is bored with society events. David and Brian are also invited and Elizabeth who is still teaching at a posh girls school, invites a middle aged admirer who is a lecturer. Emily goes skating, and enjoys the break, but Roger is worried that he may have trouble getting back to Boston for a trial, in the early New Year, so he thinks he ought to go back home in case they are snowed in. Then Emily races on the ice with David, falls and hurts her ankle. Elizabeth bandages it up and she rests in bed, while Roger prepares to get a train back to Boston. Left to herself, she begins to muse about David and realises that she is thinking about him too much. She is sleeping in the next room to his, and a door begins to bang in the wind. Feeling afraid of her own desires, she gets up and decides to limp into Elizabeth's room to get away from her sinful thoughts, but David appears in the doorway, trying to shut it. The New Year starts well but the Americans are aware that war is coming. David, as a Jew is eager for America to enter the war, but Brian refers to it as Englands war. David decides that he should offer his services as a lawyer to the US army's legal department, and tells his bosses he will be going to Washington and that if he has to resign from his job at the law firm he will do so. His boss is furious at his decision to leave, but feels he can't back down so he tells David if he leaves, he wont be welcome back. Roger has been in the National Guard for sometime but he now finds that his health problems mean that he is not strong enough to join the regular army. He is upset and feels emasculated, and Emily does her best to support him through the stress of taking on more work at the office, and not beign able to serve his country.

Joy Street IV

Roger is learning his trade as a lawyer and feels that he will never be as brilliant at it as David is. David seems to be able, once he has a start, to get on well with Bostonians, and does not seem to need any further social help. Emily likes him but has an uneasy feeling that she is attracted to him, and that he is trying to make love to her. She does enjoy his company, but she is wary. She learns that his mother has remarried after his father died and his step father is Morris Brucker a well to do antique dealer from New York. Priscilla agrees to move into Emily's house to take part in the social season and she's more outgoing than the family expected. However, Emily worries that the girl has developed a crush on David and she is not sure if he's a suitable husband for a girl brought up to a simple life. There is tension between her and Priscilla as the younger girl is very determined, and Emily ifeels she has to hide her own infatuation for David. Roger gets an invitation to Brian's house in South Boston; Brian tells him that he wanted to say for some time that he's sorry for making a fool of himself on the night of the dinner party, that he really did think it was a poker night for male friends.. Roger agrees to go, and enjoys himself. The family is large, and rather Catholic, but he finds he likes them and they treat him as a friend. He has a game of poker.. gets to know Brian's siblings and parents. When he goes home however Emily is furious because he had forgotten to let her know that he was going out. Rogers rarely gets angry but he tells his wife that he likes Brian and that he intends to go on being friends iwth him.. Emily realises that he's serious and she breaks down and tells him that she is sorry that she got so angry with Brian over the dinner party. She knew it was a mistake on his part, but she felt annoyed and wanted Brian to humble himself to her. She admits that in spite of Brian's occasional rough ways, he is very likable. They decide to invite Brian and some of their male friends for a poker evening, one night when Emily is out, and the Irishman becomes a friend of the household. Pell De Lucca, the Italian Catholic lawyer, is not at all well off and says he cant afford to play poker, but Emily likes him. He does not socialise much, but lives in a shabby part of Boston and Emily wonders about a very beautiful girl whom she has seen with him once or twice.. is she a relative or something closer.

Joy Street III

Roger and Emily settle into the new home and he has a dinner for a few friends and they invite the young lawyers from his firm. Emily has hopes that it will help bring together people who do not know each other and are prejudiced. Brian Collins the Irishman is from a well to do building family, but when he turns up, he's mistaken it for a night of poker with the boys, and is a little drunk. The dinner doesn't go well as one of the older guests makes an anti Semitic remark in front of David, and Brian makes an aggressive response. Emily also wants to help her cousin, Priscilla, who is the daughter of her uncle Sherman. Priscilla has been let run wild by her sport loving parents and is painfully shy in Boston society. Emily feels its her duty to help the girl mix in her natural environment. She is a little relieved to find that David seems to be able to break through Priscilla's awkwardness, and they get on well. She feels that at least she has done a little bit of good with the dinner party, but the attempt to bring together alien groups has not had a good start. She feels angry towards Brian Collins for his gauche behaviour. She doesn't much like her husband's sister Caroline. She is 10 years older than Roger and very prim and proper and prudish and Emily finds her hard going. Roger begins to feel uneasy about the friendship that is developing with David. He likes and admires him but he is a little envious that David is so handsome and charming... and he begins to wonder if the man is trying to flirt with Emily.

Joy Street II

On Christmas Eve, Roger is invited to the Forbes house on Louisburg square, and when he arrives Emily lets him in. He tells her that he has finally had a chance to ask her to marry him. He is in his last year at Law school, and has had no job offers but he has been offered a job in a successful but unconventional firm of lawyers. The partners are considered rather odd by most of the Boston elite, but one of them, Harold Swan, has ideas of taking in junior lawyers who are from different groups in Boston society. They have brought in an Irish Catholic from South Boston, Brian Collins and an Italian, also a Catholic. He has even brought in a Jewish lawyer, David Salomont who is very bright but Jews are not liked in upper crust society. Roger asks Emily to marry him and she agrees that once he has his new job and has saved up a bit, they will marry. Her family are horrified. Emily does not fight, she just tells them she is going to marry Roger and she herself is going off to join the Frontier nursing service, where she can do some useful work while waiting for her fiance to be ready to wed. Her grandmother supports her, but her godfather, Homer Lathrop, who is trustee of Emily's money, is not happy. Emily stays away for over a year, and Roger goes to work and get his first raise. Homer gives up and agrees to the marriage, releasing part of the income from her trust fund for her. Roger does worry about where they will live, as he doesn't have a lot of capital to buy a house, and he wishes they could buy one which is for sale on Joy Street. So Emily cajoles her grandmother into buying it as a wedding present for them.