Courage of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  Vera’s.

  Entering the café, they saw two faces behind the counter immediately light up.

  ‘Welcome!’ Rina hurried over to her niece and her workmate and embraced them both. She saw the tear marks on Polly’s face and understood why Hannah had brought her here. She went to shut the door and turned the sign to show that they were now closed for business.

  Vera had also seen the marks of grief on Polly’s face.

  ‘I think a nice cuppa is what’s called for,’ she said, flicking the tap down on her bronze water urn, releasing a cascade of steaming water into a large ceramic teapot.

  ‘And a piece o’ cake to build you two up. There’s not a pickin’ on either of ya.’

  As they all sat down at one of the tables in the empty café to drink their tea and eat their cake, Vera thought that now would be a good time to tell Polly about the little boy who would come with his grandad to the café, scruffy and red-faced, and always starving. How she had watched him grow into a young man who, like his grandad, claimed to love her bacon baps more than anything else in the world. How she had seen that the young Tommy’s passion for this town – and, of course, its shipyards – had never waned and he had dedicated his life to both.

  She would tell Polly how all those who knew Tommy spoke about him with such obvious pride – he was ‘our diver lad’ who had gone to pull bombs off the bottoms of boats, to save the country he loved and, even more, the people he loved.

  Vera would tell Polly all of this in an attempt to fill the huge hole in the poor lass’s heart – a void the old woman knew that Polly would always have.

  For Vera knew there were such women in this life, herself included, who loved only the once.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Thursday 17 September

  When Rosie returned to work the day after her trip to Harrogate, she was, as she had anticipated, bombarded with questions.

  ‘So? How did it go?’ Dorothy demanded, as they all walked over to the quayside to have their lunch.

  ‘Yeh? How’s Charlotte?’ Martha asked.

  ‘Wot was it she done wrong?’ Angie said.

  ‘And what was Mrs Willoughby-Smith like? She sounded a right battleaxe on the phone.’ This last question was from Marie-Anne.

  Rosie looked at their expectant faces as they all settled down to eat their packed lunches.

  ‘Well, it didn’t go the way I thought it would,’ Rosie said, glancing at Polly and thinking the poor girl looked washed out.

  ‘Does this mean yer letting her come back home, miss?’ Rosie looked at Angie and had to suppress a chuckle.

  She had been full of it since she’d moved into George’s flat. She was even giving Dorothy a run for her money in the gobby department.

  ‘No, Angie, she’s definitely not coming home,’ Rosie said, pouring herself a cup of tea from her flask. ‘Charlotte’s at one of the best schools in the country – and according to Mrs Willoughby-Smith she’s doing really well in all her subjects. Extremely well.’

  ‘So, what’s the problem?’ Gloria asked.

  Rosie sighed.

  ‘It would appear that Charlotte has been in a fight with one of the other girls in her year.’

  ‘Really?’ Dorothy said, almost choking on her sandwich. ‘That’s awful,’ Hannah said, looking shocked.

  ‘I hope she came out of it on top, miss?’ Angie’s face was deadly serious.

  ‘She did come out of it “on top”, Angie. Perhaps a bit too much so,’ Rosie said, a little wearily. She had taught Charlotte how to defend herself. She knew how to throw a decent punch as well as where to kick a bloke if he ever got funny with her. Rosie hadn’t, however, expected her sister to use what she’d been taught on her own gender.

  ‘But no one was seriously injured, were they?’ Gloria asked, concerned. Any kind of violence always disturbed her.

  ‘I don’t think there was any blood drawn,’ Rosie said, ‘but it sounds like the other girl pulled out a clump of Charlotte’s hair and Charlotte retaliated by punching her in the stomach.’

  ‘Oh. My. God!’ Dorothy couldn’t contain herself.

  ‘What caused the fight?’ Martha asked. She had been listening intently while munching her way through two rounds of sandwiches.

  ‘That’s something I never really got to the bottom of,’ Rosie said. ‘Charlotte said the girl had been picking on her – but wouldn’t say why – and that the other girl had been the one to lash out first.’

  ‘And let me guess,’ Bel chipped in, ‘the other girl said the same thing about Charlotte?’

  Rosie nodded, taking a bite of corned-beef and potato pie she’d got from the canteen. She’d been too tired this morning to make sandwiches.

  ‘Don’t they suspend or even expel pupils for that kind of behaviour?’ Marie-Anne asked. Her previous job with a particularly affluent local family had given her an insight into how the other half lived.

  ‘Yes.’ Rosie washed down her mouthful of pie with a glug of tea. ‘As Mrs Willoughby-Smith was at pains to point out. She said the only reason Charlotte was presently sat in her classroom learning how to conjugate a verb in Latin … ’

  Everyone looked baffled.

  ‘Don’t ask!’ Rosie laughed. ‘I also have no idea what that means. But anyway, the only reason she said that Charlotte wasn’t being expelled – or given a suspension at the very least – was that they were aware that Charlotte came from one of the most heavily bombed towns in the country and the other girl came from London. And because of that, she said, they were prepared to make an exception, providing there wasn’t a repeat performance any time in the future. She told me that she had given Charlotte a good talking-to and she suggested that I do the same and teach her the “Christian values as written down in the Gospel according to Matthew”.’

  ‘Eee, she sounds a right stuck-up cow,’ Angie said.

  ‘I think that might well be a good way of describing Mrs Willoughby-Smith,’ Rosie said. ‘She actually quoted the exact verse word for word, which basically amounted to, if someone slaps you then you must turn the other cheek.’

  ‘Wot, so yer can get whacked again on the other side of yer face?’ Angie’s mouth dropped open in a display of sheer disbelief.

  ‘It’s what posh people like to say, Ange,’ Marie-Anne explained.

  ‘So, what did you say?’ Polly asked, puzzled. Rosie let out a bitter laugh.

  ‘I have to say I think I may well have added oil to the fire.’

  ‘Why?’ Martha asked, biting into an apple.

  ‘I think I might have been a bit brusque.’ Rosie’s mind skimmed back to yesterday afternoon and feeling uncomfortable in her tweed suit as she sat in the oak-panelled room.

  ‘And?’ Dorothy said, eager to hear what Rosie considered ‘brusque’.

  ‘I told her that as Charlotte had lost both her parents when she was just eight years old, it had fallen on my shoulders to bring her up in a way I saw fit. That one of the most important lessons I’ve instilled in her is never to lie – and I believed Charlotte had told the truth when she said she hadn’t started the fight. And the second most important lesson I have taught her is to always stand up for yourself.’ Rosie could feel the anger welling up inside her as she relayed yesterday’s tense face-off with the school’s deputy. ‘And if someone strikes you – or pulls out a clump of your hair – then you fight back. And that I most certainly won’t be telling Charlotte to turn the other cheek.’

  ‘Bravo!’ Dorothy shouted more loudly than she had intended, causing some of the caulkers to look over at her.

  ‘Hear! Hear!’ Bel chipped in. She had been relentlessly bullied at school.

  ‘Yeh, good on ya,’ Gloria said.

  ‘I might have also said,’ Rosie added, a little shamefaced, ‘that it would be a dire state of affairs if we as a country had decided to turn the other cheek with Hitler and allowed him to just come on over and stomp all over us.’

  Dorothy clapped her hands.

 
‘Hurrah for Rosie!’

  Rosie looked at Dorothy and the rest of the women.

  ‘I don’t know about cheering me, Dorothy. I don’t think my attitude helped much.’ Rosie thought about Mrs Willoughby-Smith’s pursed lips and clipped words as she had brought the meeting to a close.

  ‘I think I might have marked Charlotte’s card even more than it already was. Especially as I could tell that the deputy’s alliance was clearly with this other girl, who, Charlotte told me afterwards, comes from a very well-to-do family, and whose father is some kind of politician.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Marie-Anne said, ‘but why don’t you want to bring Charlotte back here?’

  Everyone looked at Marie-Anne. She was the only one of them who didn’t know about Rosie’s ‘other’ life at Lily’s. And, therefore, the only one who didn’t know the real reason behind Rosie’s refusal to let her sister come home.

  Rosie seemed stuck for words.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Martha said, coming to the rescue. ‘It’s like what that Mrs Willoughby-what’s-her-name said. She doesn’t want her here because of the bombings. Look at what happened in Ryhope the other week.’

  Rosie smiled at Martha, thankful for her intervention. ‘Anyway, enough about Charlotte,’ she said, ‘I’m sure it’ll sort itself out.’

  They were all quiet for a while as they ate their lunch. ‘Have you heard when Helen’s coming back?’ Rosie’s question was directed towards Marie-Anne, whose face immediately lit up.

  ‘Yes! She rang me for an update today. She said she’d definitely be back on Monday – possibly before. Thank goodness.’

  ‘Marie-Anne, you must be the only person who’s glad to have her back,’ Dorothy joked.

  ‘Only because it makes my life easier. I can understand why you lot don’t want her about, though.’ Dorothy had filled her in on all the wrongs Helen had committed against the women welders, Polly in particular.

  ‘Well, that’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?’ Gloria tried to make her voice sound upbeat.

  ‘Is it?’ Dorothy sniped back.

  As the afternoon shift got going and they were all once again immersed in their own world of sparkling arcs of molten metal, bereft of chatter and, therefore, with nothing to listen to but their own thoughts, Rosie reran the events of yesterday.

  She felt she had done little to calm the waters regarding Charlotte’s situation. Actually, she felt she’d done quite the opposite and instead had poked the hornets’ nest – more than once. And any good her dowdy conservative attire might have done helping her to ingratiate herself with the school deputy had been obliterated by her sharp words. She might as well have gone to the meeting in her overalls and with her hair in a turban.

  As Rosie burnt metal into submission, the anger she’d felt within the confines of that musty room came flooding back. Anger about the way Mrs po-faced Willoughby-Smith had talked about Charlotte, and even greater anger that the behaviour they were trying to instil in Charlotte was the antithesis of the way Rosie felt her sister should conduct her life.

  Rosie sat back on her haunches and looked at her perfectly straight weld. She might have sounded convincing to Angie that there was not a cat in hell’s chance she would consider having Charlotte back, but Rosie had to admit – much as she hated to – that she did, in fact, have her doubts about Charlotte’s continued education at the school.

  And now, on top of everything else, she had another nagging worry to add to the many others concerning her sister.

  Neither girl had been forthcoming about what it was that had riled them both so much that they had gone at each other hammer and tongs.

  They were clearly hiding something.

  What had Charlotte’s fight really been about?

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Friday 18 September

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t a bit early to be going back to work?’ Dr Parker had a concerned look on his face.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Helen said. ‘It’s not as if I’m out in the yard, like Gloria, doing physical work. I’ll be sitting behind a desk, putting up orders, telling people what to do. The most strenuous activity I’ll be doing is lifting up the bloody phone! Now stop treating me like I’m one of your patients and try and catch that young waitress’s attention to give her our order. It shouldn’t be hard, she’s been giving you the glad eye ever since we came in here.’

  Dr Parker looked over at the pretty blonde waitress in her black short-sleeved dress and frilly white apron tied tightly around her waist, accentuating her petite but womanly figure. He raised his hand and smiled and she hurried over, her pocket-sized notebook in one hand, a pencil in the other.

  ‘Tea for two, please,’ he said. ‘And two scones.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Helen interrupted. ‘Really, I’m not hungry.’ The waitress scribbled in her pad and smiled sweetly at Dr Parker before returning to the counter, ripping the page from her pad and handing it to the matron-like woman behind the display counter.

  ‘You should try and eat plenty,’ Dr Parker said. ‘Build yourself up.’

  ‘God, John, now you’re beginning to sound like Mrs Westley. She’s done nothing but nag me to eat and shove liver and kidney casseroles and any kind of red meat she can get her hands on in front of me. She even tried to get me to eat some black pudding, which she knows I hate.’

  Dr Parker chuckled. He had met the cook the day after Helen had been discharged from the hospital and had instantly taken to her, in part because she had sat him down and fed him the most delicious pie and pea supper, but mainly because it was obvious by the way she fussed over her that she adored Helen.

  ‘Well, she’s not daft,’ Dr Parker said. ‘That’s exactly the kind of food you need to be eating. Plenty of iron.’

  ‘Will you please take off your doctor’s hat for one minute and just go back to being my friend?’ Helen laughed sadly.

  ‘All right, no more nagging,’ Dr Parker agreed as the waitress arrived with a tray and carefully unloaded a pretty Garrison pottery teapot, two matching cups and saucers, a little jug of milk, and a small plate on which there was a large scone filled with a good dollop of jam and cream.

  The young girl’s eyes kept flicking to Dr Parker and when he finally looked up to thank her, she gave him a beguiling smile.

  ‘Well,’ Helen said after the waitress had gone, ‘I don’t think it’s just the scone that’s been offered to you on a plate.’

  Dr Parker could feel his face flush.

  ‘You should ask her out on a date,’ Helen said, pouring out their tea and adding a splash of milk.

  ‘If I promise to stop being doctor, will you also refrain from being matchmaker?’

  Helen laughed. ‘Agreed. Anyway, it’s better for me if you remain single, because as soon as you do start courting, there’ll be no way you’ll be allowed to go out for tea with me.’

  Dr Parker looked at Helen.

  Why would he bother going out with another woman if he’d simply end up spending every minute thinking about the woman he was with now?

  ‘So,’ Dr Parker leant forward and put his hand on Helen’s, ‘tell me, how have you been since I saw you last?’ His tone was serious, and it was clear he wanted a truthful answer.

  Helen took a sip of tea, partly because she was thirsty, but also because it helped to keep the tears at bay, which just seemed to come out of nowhere.

  ‘Honestly?’ Helen said. She could feel the sting at the back of her eyes and she blinked hard and took a deep breath.

  Dr Parker nodded. He looked into her emerald eyes and saw such deep sadness. Her outward appearance of bravado and smiles didn’t fool him.

  ‘In a word,’ Helen said, ‘wretched. More wretched than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.’

  Dr Parker squeezed her hand gently.

  Helen took another sip of tea and swallowed the tears that had once again tried to break free.

  ‘It’s like there’s deat
h everywhere.’ She kept her voice low. ‘All those people that died when the Laconia got hit.’ Dr Parker nodded sadly. More than a thousand lives had been lost when U-boats had struck just off the coast of West Africa.

  ‘And,’ Helen continued in an even lower voice, ‘the bits and pieces that have been coming out about all those poor Jews – all those children – being treated like animals.’ Helen had to stop. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. And then I keep thinking about Tommy. It’s just so unfair. Tommy never did anything even remotely nasty to anyone. Even when we were little. I miss him. And lately, I seem to be missing him more.’

  ‘Do you think that’s because it’s looking likely that he’s no longer alive?’ Dr Parker consciously avoided using the word ‘dead’. He looked down at Helen’s hand, covered partially by his own, and he had the urge to take it, lift it to his mouth and kiss it. He wanted to tell her that there was death. Too much death in all of their lives. He had seen the life leave too many men under the glare of operating-room lights. But there was also love.

  Helen couldn’t say any more. Her throat was constricted. It actually ached with the effort of keeping back the grief that she knew was desperate to escape – to make itself heard.

  ‘Come on, eat your scone,’ she finally managed to say. ‘And then tell me about work. I want to hear about what you’ve been doing this week.’

  Between mouthfuls of scone and sips of tea, Dr Parker told Helen about the recent batch of wounded soldiers that had been admitted to the hospital. He purposely kept the conversation light, telling her about some of the characters he’d come across, the pranks they played on the nurses, even about a few romances that had blossomed.

  Helen listened, enjoying the reprieve from her own thoughts, her own world, even if it was just for a short while.

  When they were preparing to leave, Dr Parker once again asked if Helen thought it wise to be going back to work so soon.

  ‘I think I might go mad if I don’t,’ Helen said. ‘Just coming here with you for a cup of tea has made me feel so much better. I can’t bear the thought of spending another day at home. It feels like a mausoleum. Besides,’ she said, ‘when I spoke to Marie-Anne yesterday it was obvious she’s run ragged and struggling. Harold should have stepped in while I was away, but he’s pretty hopeless. He should really retire. Anyway, when I told Marie-Anne I’d be back on Monday and may well come back before then, I could almost hear her praising the “good Lord” and doing an Irish jig around my office.’