Secrets of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  As the men’s talk got louder and louder, so did the shrieks and cries of Pearl’s three younger siblings now fighting more than playing on the sofa. Pearl got to work getting the fire going. Tonight she was tired, and just wanted to put something in her belly and then crawl off to bed. She could tell her da and brothers had been to the Welcome Tavern just across the road from where they lived on Barrack Street. It meant they must have had some success in whatever wrongdoing they had been up to.

  As Pearl reached for the matches across the old Victorian range, she accidentally knocked over her mother’s cup, which had been left on the floor. Quick as a flash her mother turned on her.

  ‘Watch it, yer clumsy clot!’ she said, grabbing the mug and sucking the last few drops out of the bottom. By the smell Pearl could tell it was gin. Her ma had probably got it from the bloke down the street who brewed it in his backyard.

  As Pearl worked the blower with the last bit of strength left in her arms, and the flames slowly started to lick up and create a yellowy-orange glow, the banter between her mother and father started up; as it always did. It would begin in a jokey fashion and could be quite amusing sometimes – but then it invariably turned nasty.

  Pearl was determined to have her bread and lard and get to bed before the atmosphere soured.

  As she stood up from the fire, which had now caught and was starting to throw out heat, she felt a twinge in her stomach. She knew it wasn’t the deep gnawing pain of hunger that could be remedied with a piece of stale bread or a gulp of milk – no, this pain was something else entirely, which she knew could not be so easily cured – if at all. She had tried these past few weeks to find a solution to her problem, to put an end to what was happening to her body, but she had so far not succeeded. She had sneaked into the public baths up the road and sat for ages in the hottest water she could endure until she had been shouted at to ‘Gerr out!’, but nothing had happened. She had pinched some of her mother’s gin and drunk as much of it as she could, but all that had done was to make her sick. There was another option, but that needed money, and she didn’t have any. And besides, going to those places down the back lanes of the east end scared her. She had heard horror stories of young girls bleeding to death or dying in pain slowly with the fever.

  Pearl pushed through her da and her brothers who had formed a human barrier across the front of the stove so as to warm their backs on the now roaring fire, and headed to the cupboard in the corner of the room. She had to tiptoe to open the doors and look in. Her heart sank when she saw there was nothing in there. As she looked down, she saw a slice of bread had fallen by the side of the little wooden table and on to the dirt floor. Quickly she picked it up and slid it into her pocket and hurried off to her bed in the front room.

  She was so tired and she was so cold, she didn’t even attempt to take her clothes off and put on one of her mother’s old raggedy dresses she used as a nightie. Instead she pulled back the blankets on top of the dirty lumpy mattress to check for cockroaches. They were one of the few things that really frightened her – which was stupid, as she should have been used to them by now. After all, they had been her bedfellows for as long as she could remember, but still, she had never got used to them. They never once failed to make her jump like a right old scaredy cat. She took great pleasure in killing them, but they were resilient buggers and sometimes took a good hammering before they stopped wriggling about. But it was the rats which really terrified her. It wasn’t very often they got into the front room, but there had been one or two occasions when they had, and she had screamed the house down.

  Feeling assured that there were neither cockroaches nor rats to disturb her tonight, Pearl sat in her bed and ate her slice of bread. She knew that, at the moment, her mother and father had no idea about her condition. She put her hand on her stomach and thought about the woman on the beach picking coal and how huge her tummy was. It panicked Pearl to think that she too would be that size in a few months. She didn’t know how far gone she was, only that she hadn’t had the curse for a couple of months. Why it was called ‘the curse’ she would never know. She would give anything to be cursed to kingdom come; every time she went to the lavvy she begged for a visit from what some called their ‘lady friend’. God, what she would give for her to come knocking now.

  As Pearl felt her eyes droop with the heaviness of sleep a part of her wished she simply wouldn’t wake up. At least that would be an answer to her problem.

  Chapter Eight

  Vera’s Café, High Street East, Sunderland

  Wednesday 3 September 1941

  It had been exactly six days since Rosie had bumped into Peter on her way to work, and during that time every spare moment she had – when she was not either working or doing the books at the bordello – she was thinking about her meeting with Peter.

  As Rosie made her way up to Vera’s café halfway along High Street East, just up from the south dock, the threatening dark clouds started to drip and the air was filled with a thin sheen of spittle, hinting at heavier rain to come. Rosie barely noticed the greying skies, nor the fact that her bare face was now wet; her mind was totally focused on what she was about to do, what she had planned to say – and how she would say it. A surge of nerves and excitement suddenly rushed through her at the thought of seeing Peter, but she stopped them dead in their tracks and immediately reined them back in. She could not allow as much as a hairline fracture let her true feelings break through.

  Six weeks ago she had told Peter that she did not want to carry on their courtship – albeit their very chaste courtship, but still a courtship all the same. She realised she had tried to ignore what was happening, to pretend that she and the detective could simply be friends who met up every week for tea and a chat. Even when Peter had started to hold her hand and walk her home, Rosie had kept on lying to herself. But when he had tried to kiss her, she could no longer continue to live in her world of denial and she’d had to tell him straight that there was no future for them together, and that they could not continue to see each other.

  She would never forget the look of complete and utter shock – and worse, the look of heartbreak – on Peter’s face that day. She had fobbed him off with a muttered excuse, but she had not really offered up any kind of explanation. Instead, she had turned her back on him and disappeared into her flat.

  She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him until the other day. But this was a relatively small town; she should have realised it was likely they would meet again. She should have been more prepared.

  Well, Rosie said to herself as she walked towards the café, at least I am now.

  Rosie knew that they had crossed a line and, even if they wanted to, they could not step back over it. By his actions Peter had left no room for doubt as to what his intentions were: he wanted Rosie as more than just a friend. Much more. And what was even more frustrating was that she too also wanted more. She could no longer ignore the incredible pull of attraction she felt – something she had never felt for any man before in her life.

  That she had to have those feelings at this stage of her life – and for someone who worked for the local constabulary – was just so bloody typical. She’d always known it would be tricky to embark on a relationship with someone who was not, in some way, a part of the life she lived at the bordello – but it might have been viable. Stepping out with a copper, though, and one she knew was fervent about law and order, was, without a doubt, one hundred per cent impossible.

  Why hadn’t she nipped it in the bud at the start? She had been foolish in the extreme. If Peter had found out about the bordello, her whole stack of cards would have come tumbling down, destroying everyone else’s lives around her – as well as her own. She had been playing with fire and, in many ways, was lucky she had not got burnt. She was ashamed of herself not just for having put her own livelihood at risk, as well as that of Lily and all the girls, but most of all for jeopardising her sister’s future. Her life.

  One night, just before she
had called it a day with Peter, she had overheard Lily talking to George, expressing concerns about her continuing dalliance with the detective.

  ‘George,’ she’d said, ‘if Rosie’s copper finds out about her work here, it’ll be me and her who’ll be looking at a fine so big it’ll wipe us out financially, and we’ll be on the streets for sure – as will Rosie’s little sister. And that’s the “best case” scenario … If the law throws the book at us, there’s a good chance we could even end up in the slammer!’

  Rosie cringed as she recalled George’s reply: ‘Rosie would never risk everything – especially Charlotte’s future – for a man. That much I know.’

  But she nearly had – hadn’t she?

  Well, here she was now, paying the price for her sheer stupidity.

  As Rosie reached the glass-panelled front door of the café, she threw a quick glance through the large floor to ceiling windows that were starting to run with rivulets of rain, but they were masked by steam from the heat inside, making it impossible for her to tell whether Peter was already in there. Placing her hand on the wet brass handle and clicking the latch, she felt a wave of nervousness. She had gone over what she was going to say dozens of times throughout the day.

  She knew what she had to say – she just had to be convincing in the way that she said it. She had to get Peter out of her life for good. For all their sakes. After their meeting today she had to know that if they spotted each other again he would either pretend not to have seen her, or would simply walk the other way.

  As soon as she entered the hubbub of the café, Rosie saw Vera’s apple-shaped face look up from what appeared to be a brand new copper urn. The old woman’s eyes lit up, and her mouth looked about to break into a smile, but it was quickly pulled back lest she tarnish her reputation for being a cantankerous old mare.

  It had been two months since Vera had seen Rosie and her detective together; she had thought they were a couple, or at least two people on the verge of being a couple, but then one day Rosie simply hadn’t turned up, and the look on the copper’s face had spoken a thousand words.

  Now, here they were – back in the café.

  Vera nodded over to Rosie in acknowledgement of her arrival. She flicked up the tap on her new water dispenser and filled one of her brown ceramic teapots, secretly pleased that the day DS Miller had sat forlornly on his own had not been the end of their affair.

  Rosie smiled at Vera and then looked over to the corner table.

  When Rosie saw Peter, she took a sharp intake of breath. Why was her instant reaction to hurry over to him, touch his slightly weather-beaten face, and put her mouth to his?

  Rosie ripped the thought from her head and dropped her metal guard down firmly in place. She had done it often enough in the past when she needed to do something she didn’t want to. It was second nature to her.

  ‘Hello, Peter.’ Rosie tried to keep her voice pleasant but without a trace of intimacy in it.

  Peter stood up at her arrival. He had already taken his trilby off, otherwise he would have removed it on seeing her. After Rosie pulled out her chair and sat down, he followed suit. As if timed to perfection, Vera arrived at their table and unceremoniously plonked the tin tray down between the two of them and proceeded to offload cups and saucers and a pot of brewed tea. She had also cut them two slices of the Victoria sponge that she had just made that morning and put them on separate plates. She placed a fork next to each.

  ‘Thank you, Vera,’ Peter said with a genuine smile.

  Rosie looked at the old woman and added her thanks, then Vera grunted her response and shuffled off with her tin tray dangling by her side.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me ordering the cake,’ Peter said. ‘I thought it looked too good to pass up on.’

  Rosie smiled, although eating was the last thing she felt like doing. She took hold of the pot and with a steady hand poured out their tea.

  ‘Peter,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about why I am here.’

  ‘I know …’ Peter butted in, picking up the little white jug and pouring a splash of milk into each of their cups. He couldn’t help but look at Rosie now, in her dirty work overalls, her hair bundled up in a bright red headscarf. She didn’t have a scrap of make-up on – unlike the other night – and he could clearly see the dozens of scars on her face.

  ‘And I do appreciate you taking the time to talk to me …’ he stopped, again at a loss for words, ‘well … about what happened that day.’

  Rosie looked at Peter and was hit by the image of when he had pulled her close and tried to kiss her. She had relived that moment many times in her imagination and each time it had not ended with her rebuttal of his advance. Quite the reverse.

  ‘I guess I just don’t understand why …’ another pause – ‘well, why an earth we are not sitting here as a courting couple? I honestly thought that we both felt the same …’

  Rosie looked at his handsome face and knew she had to let him have his say.

  ‘I wondered if perhaps it was my age? I know there’s a bit of an age gap …’ He caught Rosie shaking her head from side to side. Encouraged, he carried on with his entreaty.

  ‘I want you to know that I don’t consider myself too old for a family.’ As he spoke, the image of Rosie holding Gloria’s baby on the day of the air raid rushed to the forefront of his mind.

  ‘I want you to know,’ DS Miller continued, driven on by her silence, ‘that I was – that I am serious about us – that I would never have tried to –’ he dropped his voice so the old couple behind them could not hear, ‘– kiss you, had I not been entirely serious. I want you to know that I have not so much as touched another woman since my wife died six years ago. Haven’t wanted to. Have never met anyone I wanted to even go for a cup of tea with. Until you.’

  Rosie felt her heart break. Wished she had stopped him talking so the words would not be indelibly imprinted on her consciousness. What she would give to be with this man. His words were true and full of love. A love she so wanted. But a love she could never allow herself to have.

  She forced air into her lungs. She knew it was time for her speech. For her lies.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Peter,’ she began, pushing down her feelings and replacing them with the most sincere but unemotional face she could muster. ‘That is such a lovely thing to hear. And I know you mean what you said. That you are an honest and good man. And I have so much respect for you and how you conduct your life …’

  There was a pause. Neither of them had so much as sipped their tea, never mind had a bite of Vera’s fresh Victoria sponge.

  ‘Why,’ Peter broke in, ‘do I sense that there is one almighty “but” about to come …’

  Rosie forced a smile.

  ‘But,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid I really do not feel the same way for you as you do for me.’ She hoped she sounded convincing.

  ‘I’ll be honest, Peter,’ she added, quickly. She needed him to believe her. ‘To start with I did feel an awful lot for you. I myself also thought that I would like to be with you, but – I’m sorry, but it is a “but”.’ Rosie could feel herself getting muddled. Her words weren’t coming out the way they should. She took another deep breath.

  ‘What I’m trying to say in the nicest possible way, Peter, is that I made a mistake, or rather I changed my mind, which sounds awfully fickle, and I don’t mean to be – I’m not a fickle person. It’s just that I thought I had feelings for you – but I’m afraid I don’t.’

  There. She had said it. Please God let her have been convincing.

  Rosie looked at Peter. He seemed at a loss for words.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, I guess I have to thank you for your honesty. Brutal though it may be.’ He gave a sad laugh. ‘There’s not anyone else on the scene, is there?’ he asked. He had to know. ‘It was just the other night when I bumped into you and you looked so dressed-up … so gorgeous … I couldn’t help but wonder …’ He didn’t need to say any more, R
osie was already shaking her head.

  ‘No, no, of course not. I would have said if there was.’ Peter looked at Rosie as she spoke and thought they were the first words she had said in all the time they had been sitting there that sounded true.

  Why did he not feel she was being genuine?

  ‘So, it really is because your feelings have changed? I just thought––’ he stopped himself from saying any more.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I really am,’ Rosie said, trying her hardest to sound credible. She cursed herself for being such a bad liar.

  Peter looked at Rosie. What more could he say? She had told him straight. She did not want him. It was as simple as that. He couldn’t exactly argue that she was wrong, and that her feelings were wrong – and that she did, in fact, feel something for him. How could he tell her that? It was absurd. ‘I guess …’ he started again, ‘… that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to simply stay friends?’ He hated himself for saying it. He felt as if he was begging, but he couldn’t stop himself. If that was the only way he was going to be able to keep seeing the woman he had fallen in love with, he would take it.

  Rosie shook her head. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, for either of us, do you?’

  Of course, Peter knew it would not be possible. That it would end in disaster and yet more disappointment. Logically he knew you couldn’t be friends with someone if you knew that other person was in love with you.

  And he was in love. There was no other way round it.

  ‘Of course not. You’re right. It wouldn’t be at all practicable,’ he forced himself to agree.