by Nancy Revell
As Helen turned to leave, Dr Parker took her hand.
‘I want you to really think about this,’ he said, looking at her. Her emerald green eyes never failed to take his breath away. ‘To be one hundred per cent certain this is what you want.’
Helen held Dr Parker’s gaze. She knew he meant well.
‘It’s important you have no regrets,’ he added. ‘Whatsoever.’
Helen nodded.
‘And if you change your mind, I’ll still help you in any way I can. That goes without saying. All right?’
Helen nodded again, although she was quite sure there was no way she was going to have a change of heart.
No way.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Daddeeee!’
Joe had just stepped off the bus at the main depot in Park Lane and had been greeted by Lucille pelting full force towards him.
‘Well now, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ He quickly put his walking stick under his arm, grabbed Lucille and raised her squealing into the air.
Watching them both, Bel had a sudden flashback of going to meet Joe off the train after returning from North Africa, and how Lucille had run to him as fast as her little legs would take her. Bel had been furious that her daughter had thought Joe was Teddy. How ironic that she had ended up falling for the man she had been determined to hate.
‘What a lovely surprise,’ Joe said, putting Lucille down and hobbling towards Bel.
The pair stood for a moment, kissing.
‘Daddy!’ Lucille started tugging at the arm of Joe’s khaki uniform, wanting his attention.
‘So then, what’s the special occasion? This isn’t anyone’s birthday, is it?’ Joe looked down at Lucille, who shook her head with a stubborn expression on her face. Her fourth birthday was just over a fortnight away and she was counting down the days.
‘I thought it would be nice for us to come and meet you off the bus for a change,’ Bel said. ‘Go for a little walk through the park.’
Joe eyed his wife with suspicion.
‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, as Lucille positioned herself between her mammy and daddy, holding both their hands and demanding they swing her.
When they reached the park gates, Lucille broke free and ran to the top of the small grassy embankment.
‘So, come on then,’ Joe said, taking hold of Bel’s hand. ‘Spill the beans.’
‘Well,’ Bel said, knowing she had limited time as the thrill of being in the park would only hold Lucille’s attention for so long. ‘It’s good news. Well, I think it’s good news. I just hope you think it’s good news too.’
‘Go on then, spit it out,’ Joe said, quickly checking that Lucille had not wandered out of sight.
‘Well,’ Bel said, straightening her back, ‘I’ve got a job!’ Joe stopped walking and looked at her.
‘Now, that is a surprise,’ he said. ‘A bit of a bolt out of the blue. What job? And where?’
His face didn’t give away whether he was pleased or not.
‘And why didn’t you tell me you wanted a job? I thought you were happy at home …’
‘I know, I’m sorry, Joe. I know I should have told you. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d get it. It was a moment of madness really.’
‘So, tell me more,’ Joe said, curiously. ‘You’re not going back on the buses, are you?’
Bel shook her head. ‘I don’t think they’d have me back even if I wanted to.’
‘So, where’s the job? Or rather, what is the job?’
‘It’s a clerical job,’ Bel said.
Joe’s eyes widened.
‘I know,’ Bel said. ‘I can’t even type. But they reckon I’ll pick it up quickly.’
‘I’ve no doubt that you will be the best and the quickest,’ Joe said. ‘You’re as bright as a button. Always were. Even as a bairn. Just like this one.’ He looked over to Lucille, who was walking back towards them, dangling a daisy chain in the air.
‘So, come on, don’t keep me in suspense,’ Joe said, squeezing his wife’s hand. ‘Who’s going to have the good fortune to have you working for them?’
Bel decided it was best to just come out and say it.
‘Thompson’s.’
‘What, J.L. Thompson’s? A job at the yard?’ Joe was taken aback.
Bel nodded, scrutinising her husband’s face.
‘That’s the last place I thought you’d want to work.’ ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
Joe looked at Bel quizzically. ‘Of course I don’t mind. Although I can’t say I won’t be a little worried with all the air raids we’ve been getting.’
‘But rarely during daylight hours,’ Bel said.
‘Mm,’ Joe was forced to agree.
‘So, you don’t mind?’ Bel implored.
‘No, of course I don’t mind. Why would I?’ Joe asked, genuinely perplexed.
Bel let out a sigh of relief.
‘Oh, it’s just me being silly. I thought you might feel … I dunno … perhaps a bit resentful. I know how much you miss working in the shipyards.’
‘Oh, yer dafty, of course I’m not resentful. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it. But I’m lucky to still have my own two legs, even if one of them is gammy. And more than anything I just count my blessings Major Black was able to make use of me.’ Joe paused. ‘I guess I’m just surprised you would want to work somewhere like that. I wouldn’t have thought it would have been most women’s first choice of a job.’
‘It was Polly’s,’ Bel countered.
‘Aye, but Polly was always obsessed with the yards from very young. Mind you, she’s going to be over the moon when she finds out.’
‘She is! Although I think she was a little hurt I hadn’t told her beforehand.’ The words were out before Bel had time to think.
‘Ah, I see,’ Joe said in mock earnestness. ‘So, I’m the last to know, am I?’
‘No,’ Bel said, waving at Lucille to come and join them. ‘Polly’s the only one to know. Apart from Gloria, of course, and the other women welders.’
Joe laughed again.
‘Yer know how to make a man feel important.’
He put his arm around Bel as they made their way over to Lucille, who was concentrating on making more daisy chains.
‘I’m pleased for you,’ he said, kissing his wife’s forehead.
As they made their way home to break the news to the rest of the household, Joe thought about the Havelocks and their long association with Thompson’s. Mr Havelock’s son-in-law, Jack, had been there all of his life until just recently; his granddaughter, Helen, was rapidly making her way up the managerial ladder; and it was known that Miriam occasionally showed her face there.
If Bel wanted to put the recent revelations about her paternity behind her, then this was not the way to go about it.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Agnes was standing in the doorway of the scullery with her hands on her hips. ‘So, now I’ve got double the worry. My daughter and my daughter-in-law both working in that bloody shipyard!’
Agnes was trying her hardest to keep her voice down as Joe had just taken Lucille upstairs to bed, having promised to read her a bedtime story; she didn’t want her granddaughter hearing her nana spitting nails.
‘Ma, she’s going to be doing an office job. The worst she can expect is a paper cut!’ Polly looked across at Bel, who was trying but failing to keep a straight face.
‘Ah, so all this is a laughing matter, is it?’ Agnes stomped across to the kitchen table, picked up the plates and cutlery and stomped back into the scullery, letting the dirty dishes clatter into the porcelain sink.
‘I’ll tell yer what,’ Agnes said, ‘I’ll go and get meeself a job down the yards as well, why don’t I?’ The Irish in Agnes was now well and truly fired up. ‘I’ll go down there in the mornin’ and get meeself a job working right out there in the middle o’ the yard – or better still, up on one o’ the top decks, so I can wave at them German bombers when they come flying over. What do
yer reckon, eh?
‘Oh,’ Agnes made a pantomime expression of having just had a great idea, ‘and better still, I’ll get me little granddaughter there as well, helping the little tea boy scurry around the workers. Mm? Then we can all stand and wave at the bloody bombers! We can all jump up and down with excitement that every one of us Elliots have worked in the blasted shipyards.’
‘I’ll leave yer all to it, then.’ Arthur pushed himself out of the armchair next to the range and gave Tramp and Pup each a pat on the head.
He was just leaving the kitchen when Pearl came clomping down the hallway.
‘Y’all right there, Arthur?’ she asked.
Arthur gave Pearl a nod, before making a beeline for his bedroom.
‘Eee, yer could cut the atmosphere with a knife,’ Pearl said, walking into the kitchen and taking one look at Agnes, Polly and Bel. She glanced down at the two dogs. ‘Even the mutts look like they wanna fade into the background. Who’s in the doghouse then?’ She hooted with laughter at her own joke.
Agnes cast an angry look over to Bel.
‘Yer daughter here has got herself a job at Thompson’s.’
The shock on Pearl’s face was obvious for all to see.
‘Why dee yer wanna work there?’ Pearl asked, all joviality now gone. ‘And what about the bab? And LuLu? And the neighbour’s bairns ’n all the laundry yer take in?’
Bel looked at Agnes and back to her ma. ‘Beryl has all the children round hers now.’ Her tone was placatory. ‘And Lucille’s always round there anyway. There’s loads of people that can look after Hope – Agnes, Beryl … there’s even Joe and Arthur if need be.’
The room was quiet.
‘And if there’s any laundry to be done, I can do it when I get back from work. And don’t forget, there’s going to be an extra wage – it’ll help out no end.’
Agnes and Pearl looked at each other.
Neither was convinced by Bel’s argument.
For once, the pair were in agreement, although the reasons why they were against Bel working at Thompson’s could not have been more different.
After Pearl had gone back to the pub, and Bel had made her escape upstairs using the excuse of getting her clothes ready for tomorrow, Polly made Agnes a cup of tea and suggested they both take two chairs out in the backyard and sit for a little while before hitting the sack themselves.
‘You know, Ma,’ Polly said, turning her teacup around on the saucer so as not to drink from the side with the chip, ‘this job of Bel’s might be just what she needs.’
‘How do you work that one out?’ Agnes was still far from happy about Bel’s new job, but her anger was waning.
‘Well, she won’t admit it, but I can tell she’s really upset ’cos she’s not fallen yet. It’s been eight months now since the wedding.’
‘I know, and she fell straight away with Lucille,’ Agnes mused.
‘And all Bel’s ever wanted, even from being a child, is to be a wife and mother and have loads of children.’
‘I know,’ Agnes agreed, pouring the tea from her cup into the saucer to cool it down and taking a slurp.
‘And, if you think about it, she’s spending her days looking after other women’s little ’uns when all she wants is to have her own.’
‘Yer right, Pol,’ Agnes sighed. ‘And there’s a couple round the doors who are in the family way. Suppose it can’t be easy.’
‘And she’s become so close to Hope. A bit too close, in my opinion,’ Polly said quietly.
‘Mmm,’ Agnes murmured. ‘Anyone who doesn’t know her always presumes Hope’s hers. Sometimes she’s not put them right. I keep trying to take Hope off her hands, but she won’t be having any of it.’ Agnes looked at Polly. ‘And I’m sure Hope called Bel “Mama” the other day. The little mite clearly thinks she’s got two mammies.’
They both sat quietly for a little while.
‘I just worry,’ Agnes said. ‘I worry about yer working in that yard, especially after that poor chap got his leg crushed last year. I can’t help it. And I know I sound like a broken record, but the yards are that madman’s prime target. I couldn’t bear for anything else to happen to any of yer.’
Polly looked at her ma and thought that she looked older. Tired.
‘I know, Ma, but you can’t keep us all nicely tucked up at home,’ she sighed, ‘and besides, it’s not as if being at home is all that safe either. Jerry has hit more homes than anything else. And not exactly a million miles from here.’ Polly exhaled. ‘Don’t worry about me or Bel, Ma. We’ll be all right. And besides, with the extra wage things won’t be so tight, and it’ll mean you don’t have to take in so much laundry.’
Agnes slurped down another mouthful of tea.
‘I’d take in a mountain of laundry if I could just keep yer all safe ’n sound.’
Agnes looked at her daughter. It wasn’t often it was just the two of them. Polly spent a lot of time with Arthur when she came back from work, either meeting up with him down the docks, or sometimes going to the allotment he kept with his friend Albert. Agnes didn’t mind. She was pleased. She knew it was her daughter’s only connection with Tommy and that it brought her comfort.
‘Anyway, how are you feeling about everything?’ Agnes asked. The change in her tone made it clear to Polly that her ma meant Tommy.
Polly was quiet for a moment.
‘To be honest, Ma, I’m not sure.’ Polly looked down at her tea as though she might find the answer there. She could feel the tears that she normally kept at bay until she was on her own rising to the surface.
Agnes reached out and took hold of her daughter’s free hand.
‘I keep trying to convince myself that everything’s going to be all right.’ Polly’s voice was shaking with emotion.
‘That Tommy’s fine. That he’s somewhere, we just don’t know where, and for a while I can trundle along in my head actually believing that – and then suddenly it’ll hit me like a brick. That everything isn’t fine. That everything’s far from fine. That I’m just kidding myself thinking there’s a chance he’s going to come back. That I’m living in cloud cuckoo land … When people ask me about Tommy and I tell them he’s been reported missing, I can see it in their faces. Their reaction’s the same as if I’d said he was dead. And then all of a sudden I’m thinking what they’re thinking.’
She looked at her ma.
‘That he’s dead.’
Polly tried to restrain the tears but failed.
Agnes put her cup and saucer down on the ground and moved her chair so that it was right next to Polly’s.
‘Come here,’ she said, putting her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulling her close. Polly put her arms around her ma’s waist, buried her head into her chest and sobbed her heart out.
Agnes was old enough and wise enough to know that sometimes words had the ability to heal, other times they were totally futile. This was one such occasion, and so she just held her daughter tight, like she had done when she was a child.
Brushing a loose strand of thick brown hair away, Agnes bent her head and kissed Polly’s furrowed brow.
How she wished she could take the pain away and suffer it herself, but she couldn’t. This was Polly’s journey in life, and she had to endure the lows, just as she had enjoyed the highs.
She just prayed to God that the low her daughter was presently dragging herself through would not last so long that it became the norm.
When Agnes went to bed she pulled out the top drawer of her bedside table and took out Harry’s war medal – the Military Medal for ‘acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire’ – along with the telegram that she had received twenty-five years ago informing her that her husband was missing. Unlike Polly’s letter, though, the word ‘missing’ had been followed by ‘presumed dead’.
For months after receiving her letter, Agnes had lain awake, begging the good Lord to bring her Harry home, just like she was sure Polly was doing every night.
&
nbsp; Of course, the good Lord hadn’t done what she’d pleaded for him to do and in the end she’d had to finally accept that, along with thousands of other women the length and breadth of the country, she would never get to see the man she loved ever again. Nor would she get to give him a decent burial, and in doing so be given the minor consolation of being able to visit his grave.
Agnes had been about the same age as Polly when she had lost the man she loved.
She knew only too well what her daughter was feeling. She might have lost her husband a long time ago, but she could still remember how it felt as though it were yesterday.
Why was it that history often had a way of repeating itself – and not in a good way either?
Agnes hoped, for her daughter’s sake, that she did not have to go through the pain of not knowing for long, and that soon she would know whether the man she loved was coming back to her – or not.
Downstairs, Polly sat in bed, holding Tommy’s last letter in her hands. When she had originally received it, her heart had filled with joy as she read the words of the man she loved telling her how proud he was that she was building ships and doing her bit to help win the war. But as time had gone on, and there had been no other letters arriving from Gibraltar, she had read and reread Tommy’s words and had seen them in a different light.
It was as though Tommy had known that this might well be his last letter to her, and because of that he had wanted to tell her just how much he loved her – and how proud he was of her. She had told Bel she wondered whether Tommy had had some kind of a forewarning, and had anticipated her grief and known that the best way for her to deal with it would be to carry on working, to keep doing the job she had always dreamed of doing.
Bel had told her that she had thought the same about Teddy’s last letter, but that now, with hindsight, she believed that he, like Tommy, had not had any kind of premonition of his own impending death, but rather he’d had the sense to know that they could die at any time. Teddy had written his letter just before a large-scale military operation, while it was Tommy’s job to remove limpet mines from the hulls of Allied ships. Their odds were not good.