Victory for the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  As did Hope.

  At the thought of her sister, a new batch of tears trickled down her face. Her eyes were now panda-like with the residue of watery mascara. Helen pulled out a handkerchief.

  This should be a happy time! she chastised herself.

  You are a woman. You have made love! It would only be a matter of time before Theodore proposed. He had intimated more than once that he would, and then she could run away from all this and start her own family. Away from here. Away from the constant memories of her father. Away from Gloria and Hope.

  As Helen pulled off her dress, put on her nightie and climbed into bed, she forced herself to look at her future. At her escape.

  She would be happy.

  Her new life was just around the corner.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  South Docks, Sunderland

  Three weeks later

  Saturday 28 March

  ‘Sorry … Excuse me …’ Joe gently led the way through the crowds that had gathered on the south dock to see the latest launch from Thompson’s.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ Lucille was on Joe’s shoulders and pointing over the growing crowd of spectators that had gathered just up from the ferry landing.

  ‘Aye, there she is.’ Joe cocked his head to look up at Lucille, who was staring in awe at the huge frigate that was sitting in the dock ready for her baptism.

  ‘Mammy, Mammy!’ Lucille shouted out behind her. Joe could feel her twist her body round as she looked for her ma. Her little arm was flailing, pointing ahead at the huge metal beast waiting to take her maiden voyage. Bel returned her daughter’s look of excitement, at the same time hitching Hope up on her hip. Gloria’s baby girl was now seven months old and seemed to be growing by the day. She was certainly more than aware of what was happening around her and had developed a love of crawling around at great speed. Bel and Agnes had to watch her every move. Even Tramp and Pup were giving her grasping hands a wide berth these days.

  ‘Just say when you want me to take her.’ Agnes had her arm interlinked with Beryl’s. Her friend had only recently started to leave the house after the doctor had told her she had some kind of phobia and must try and go out at least once a day.

  ‘I’m fine for the moment,’ Bel said as Joe and Lucille made it to the iron railings of the quayside. Bel managed to squeeze up next to him and Agnes and Beryl gently edged their way through a group of elderly men to join their little party.

  ‘Made it!’ Beryl sounded relieved as they found a place overlooking an expanse of relatively calm water in front of them; the sunlight shining down as though a spotlight had been turned on for the midday matinee about to take place on the Wear.

  ‘Iris and Audrey working today?’ Bel asked Beryl, whose eyes were closed as she held her face up to the sun.

  ‘Yes, they’re working all hours.’ Beryl turned her face away from nature’s warm caresses and focused her attention on Bel.

  ‘But they’re enjoying it?’ Bel asked. She knew Beryl’s two girls had been taken on by the GPO just before Christmas. They had been put in the sorting office because they had only just turned fourteen and fifteen respectively, but they had both voiced their determination to become ‘proper posties’.

  ‘They’re loving it,’ Beryl said, ‘but there’s no end to the work. Constantly short of staff. Especially now they’ve pushed up the age of conscription to fifty-one.’

  Bel looked across to see if she could spot Polly, Gloria or any of the other women welders on the other side of the Wear. Polly had said this morning, before she and Gloria had left for work, that they would try and stand somewhere prominent so they could wave to each other.

  ‘Talking of the post, I’m guessing Pol didn’t get anything this morning?’ Beryl asked.

  Bel shook her head. It had been months since Polly had heard from Tommy, and it wasn’t just Polly who was becoming increasingly anxious about his well-being – they all were, though none more so than Arthur. The whole of the Elliot household was silently praying that the postwoman brought a letter – and soon.

  ‘There they are!’ Joe suddenly shouted, pointing across the river and waving his hand. His actions were mimicked by Lucille, who had become distracted by the large barrage balloon over the Wearmouth Bridge. Bel, Beryl and Agnes squinted against the sun’s rays, their eyes searching the hordes of grey suits, denim overalls and, of course, flat caps.

  ‘There they are!’ Beryl shouted, spotting Polly waving her red scarf in the air as though baiting a bull. Next to her she could see four other headscarves of varying colours, which she guessed belonged to the other women welders.

  Bel turned her attention to Hope and pointed across the water. ‘There’s your mammy!’ Hope gurgled and stuck her hand into her mouth, feeling the build-up of excitement around her.

  Bel looked at Joe and saw a sadness in his eyes. She nudged him gently.

  ‘You all right?’ Bel knew Joe desperately missed working in the shipyards. He would have given anything to be working again with his old squad of riveters. It had been his life. He and Teddy had spent their boyhoods down by the docks, trying to wheedle their way into the shipyards. The pride they had felt at being part of the town’s revered shipbuilding industry had never diminished but had grown stronger as they had become men.

  ‘Aye, I’m all right,’ Joe said, moving his walking stick over to his left hand so he could take hold of Bel’s. His gammy leg would never allow him to do what he loved. He just counted his blessings that he was here now, that his work with the Auxiliary Unit of the Home Guard gave him purpose, and that Bel loved him and had been able to allow herself to return the love that he had secretly felt for her his entire life.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Joe asked. ‘You look a little pale?’

  It was coming up to five months since they had got married and Joe knew Bel thought she should have fallen pregnant. Perhaps a little naïvely, they both thought they would be giving Lucille a little brother or sister by the end of the year. Joe had seen the look on Bel’s face this morning after she had come in from the washhouse and knew that her hopes had been dashed yet again.

  Bel smiled and leant up to kiss Joe on the cheek.

  ‘I can’t keep anything from you, can I?’ She looked up at Lucille, who still seemed entranced by the barrage balloon. ‘I’m all right. Just a little disappointed.’

  Joe squeezed her hand. ‘It won’t be long, I’m sure of it.’ In reality, he wasn’t at all sure. The war had taught him that nothing in life was certain.

  ‘Yer ma working at the pub this afternoon?’ Beryl asked as she continued to wave over to the women welders.

  ‘Yes.’ Bel looked at Beryl. ‘I think my ma should just get herself a camp bed and stay there – she’s rarely home these days. I’ve hardly seen her, only really hear her trying to be quiet when she gets in after last orders.’

  Beryl laughed. She knew Pearl well and knew that although she might be working all hours, she’d also be enjoying the perks of her labour.

  ‘You knew Ma when she was younger, didn’t you?’ Bel asked. Her question came out of the blue and both Beryl and Agnes looked at her.

  ‘Aye, I did, pet,’ Beryl said. ‘When she moved round the corner to us when you were just a little bairn.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you knew anything about her before then?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Beryl wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Pearl’s reputation had certainly preceded her move to Back Tatham Street. Everyone knew she was a ‘right one’, always drinking, causing a nuisance, gadding about with some ne’er-do-well. Neglecting her only daughter. God knows what would have happened to Bel had Agnes not taken her in.

  ‘What kind of thing do you want to know?’ Beryl asked. She sensed Agnes shift about uncomfortably next to her.

  ‘Well, Maisie was telling me that when Ma came back from London – you know, after she’d had Maisie and had to give her up?’

  Beryl nodded.

  ‘Well, Ma told Maisie t
hat she got work as some kind of maid, and I was wondering if you knew where that was …?’

  ‘Actually,’ Beryl said, her face suddenly lighting up, ‘I do remember. Pearl’s mate Sandra – I don’t know if you know her?’ Bel shook her head. The name rang a bell but that was all. ‘Well, I remember Sandra telling me ages ago that Pearl had once worked in one of the big houses that overlook Backhouse Park.’

  The words were just out of Beryl’s mouth when there was an almighty cheer, followed by shouts of ‘There she goes!’ and ‘God bless all who sail in her!’

  ‘Yeah!’ Lucille’s jubilant cry sounded out alongside the clamour of voices and the sporadic blasts of the shipyard horns. Men, women and children all celebrating the birth of a new ship. All captivated as it careered down the slipway and sliced into the placid waters of the Wear, in doing so creating two huge waves that rocked all the other vessels bobbing on the river’s surface.

  Bel looked up at Joe’s face – a big smile showing his delight at the launch. No hint of sadness now, just pure pride at what his home town had produced. Bel stroked Hope’s face and pointed out the small tugboats that were guiding the 440-foot-long vessel out of the river and into the North Sea. The little girl’s face, which had crumpled at the sudden explosion of cheering voices, was now relaxed and smiling, soothed by Bel’s gentle chatter and calming words.

  As Bel looked back out at the flurry of life and activity on the river, it wasn’t the launch that had her attention, but the short chat she’d just had with Beryl. And as she was gently jostled by the jubilant crowd around her, there was just one thought swimming about in her head.

  Backhouse Park.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Glen Path, Sunderland

  1913

  From the off, Pearl had realised that the mistress of the house was not in her right mind. It didn’t take Pearl long to learn, due to the rest of the staff’s relentless gossiping, that everyone else also thought that Mistress Henrietta was, in the words of Velma the cook, ‘short of a few slices’. The mistress was, without doubt, one of a kind. Heathcliff, who was really called Eddy, said she was a ‘different breed’, whereas Agatha, the housekeeper, was less subtle and simply said, ‘The woman’s as mad as a March hare.’ But Pearl also knew that Henrietta was not a bad person, and so she continued to keep her head down, smile when she needed to and simply exist.

  Most of the time Henrietta either had her nose in a book and was not to be disturbed, or else would be flying around the house, full of endless energy and ideas. She went on huge spending sprees in town with delivery after delivery arriving at the house not long after she returned. These bouts of frenetic activity were usually followed by days of solitude. It didn’t take Pearl long to see the pattern and predict the swing of her employer’s moods.

  Pearl also learnt that the master of the house worked away most of the time. (It was whispered that he did so out of choice rather than necessity.) And the couple only had two children, two girls, who were both away at something called a ‘finishing school’. Pearl had no idea what this was until Eddy told her it was where they taught you how to be a lady.

  The few times she had been upstairs, usually when one of the maids was off colour and needed a hand with the cleaning, Pearl had seen photographs of the daughters, who seemed to be around the same age as her. They were both blonde and pretty, with a look of refinement about them. Catching a glimpse of herself as she was dusting the large gilt-framed mirror, Pearl thought they did not look unlike herself. Perhaps this was why Henrietta had taken pity on her that day.

  During those first few months, however, Pearl heard very little about the master of the house. It appeared that the rest of the servants were not keen to talk about him, and when they did, there was never any joy in their voices.

  News filtered downstairs at the start of December that the master was definitely coming home for Christmas. As a result, over the ensuing weeks Mistress Henrietta seemed to be in a constant tailwind, swishing around the house in her colourful silk creations. She drove the cook mad by changing her mind every few days, and followed the maids around, getting them to check and recheck for dust, ripping off bed sheets and demanding they be laundered again. On the day the master stepped over the threshold, the house was in perfect order.

  The atmosphere, however, when the news filtered downstairs that the master had arrived, was not, as Pearl would have expected, one of relief, but instead an uncannily tense one.

  ‘And here, Charlie darling, we have our very own household cavalry.’ Henrietta chuckled at her own joke and waved her hand from left to right across the half-dozen employees who were standing in a line in the large reception room at the back of the huge, twelve-bedroomed mansion.

  ‘Charlie darling’ was still in his jodhpurs and knee-high leather riding boots, having just returned from giving one of their fillies a good thrashing around Backhouse Park. Pearl had been told it was always the first thing he did on returning home after a spell away.

  Pearl was surprised he was so old. He must have been easily fifty, much older than Henrietta, who she guessed was in her late thirties. For some reason Pearl had imagined him to be plump, probably because most rich men she’d seen were shaped like a barrel, but Charles was lean and wiry, and unlike many his age he still had hair – a covering of thin blond strands that were swept away from his narrow face.

  ‘This is Heathcliff.’ Henrietta giggled as she placed a hand out to show her husband who she was talking about. ‘Of course, Heathcliff has not always been called Heathcliff, but we’ve grown quite fond of the name, haven’t we, Heathcliff?’

  Heathcliff gave a convincing smile and, as always, Pearl marvelled at the man’s restraint. Henrietta treated him like he was her pet poodle. Pearl had asked him once how he managed to put up with it, especially as he had to spend so much of his day in her company, but Eddy said it didn’t bother him. ‘She means no harm,’ he’d told Pearl. ‘There’s worse.’

  ‘And this is Marian,’ Henrietta said, her arm again reaching out as if to display her finest china. She looked at Charles and put a finger to her mouth like a little girl. ‘Again I’ve been rather naughty and Marian isn’t really called Marian, but, well, she is now – she’s my Maid Marian!’

  More giggles.

  Everyone stood ramrod straight as Henrietta continued to introduce the staff to her husband. It was a ritual Charles had been forced to endure from early on in their marriage every time he returned from a prolonged period away, usually from some far-flung country where he’d been sent in his capacity as chief negotiator for one of the big shipping companies.

  Henrietta’s employees had changed over the years, although there were some stalwarts like Heathcliff and Marian, otherwise known as Agatha, who had been there for as long as Charles could recall. The names, however, were always based on some fictional character from one of the many novels his wife spent most of her day lost in.

  Finally, Henrietta came to Pearl.

  ‘And this is Pearl. She’s our scullery maid!’

  Charles had been inspecting each person as though they were livestock at a cattle market, and he looked particularly interested when his wife came to introduce the last of her employees.

  ‘And do enlighten us, Henrietta …’ This was the first time the master of the house had spoken and six pairs of eyes stared at him in surprise. ‘What is Pearl’s real name?’ His voice was deep and serious and had an almost imperceptible touch of menace to it.

  ‘Ah,’ Henrietta said, as if she was about to reveal an extremely closely kept secret. ‘Pearl is Pearl.’

  She looked wide-eyed and expectantly at her husband, waiting for the penny to drop.

  ‘From The Scarlet Letter, of course!’ Henrietta reprimanded him as if he had committed some terrible faux pas. ‘By Nathaniel Hawthorne!’

  Seeing the continued blank look on Charles’s face, Henrietta tutted.

  ‘In the book Pearl is symbolic of the act of love and passion and, of co
urse, of adultery … She is a beauty, not unlike our Pearl here, only dark-haired …’ Henrietta’s mind seemed to wander for a moment before she snapped back to reality.

  ‘Isn’t she a real little gem?’ She touched Pearl’s cheek. ‘Quite delectable.’

  Pearl tried to emulate Heathcliff’s convincing false smile, but felt it probably looked more akin to a grimace, not that Henrietta would have noticed as she was now rustling her way over to the drinks cabinet.

  ‘She certainly is,’ Charles agreed, copying his wife’s action and tracing a line down Pearl’s cheek with his finger.

  Pearl’s impulse was to swipe the master’s hand off her face, but luckily she managed to stop herself. She wanted to keep this job, and although she still felt pretty much indifferent to life in general, she no longer wanted to bed down in the park and suffer the same fate as the little match girl.

  ‘Oh my goodness me! Is that the time already?’ Henrietta exclaimed. There was no clock in the room or watch on her wrist, but they all knew this meant it was time for the mistress to indulge in what she called her little midday ‘pick-me-up’.

  Pearl had learnt fairly early on while helping the cook that Henrietta survived on steak and caviar and a drip feed of various pills and potions taken at regular intervals throughout the day – all washed down with what she called her ‘special Russian water’, which was, in fact, vodka she ordered in from the town’s top wine and spirit merchants, J.W. Cameron & Co.

  ‘Shoo, shoo!’ Henrietta flicked her hands into the air to show that her staff were being dismissed. ‘My darling husband and I have so much to catch up on.’

  She then turned around and scuttled towards the red-lacquered Chinese cabinet she’d had imported, which was where she kept her supply of ‘Russian water’ and a good stock of what she liked to call her ‘essential remedies’.

  Velma had told Pearl to ‘keep clear of the master’, but when Pearl had asked why, the cook had said he could get ‘a bit nasty’ when he’d had a few. Pearl had taken this to mean he had a temper on him, which hadn’t perturbed her too much. Her own da had been free with the use of his hands and she knew how to get out of the way and avoid a good hiding. Besides, ‘keeping clear of the master’ would be easy. Her work as a scullery maid kept her pretty much entrenched in the kitchen, clearing up after the cook, scrubbing pots and pans, and running out to the vegetable plot, something she was particularly fond of doing as she had started to learn the names of all the herbs and vegetables that were grown out the back.