Christmas with the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  Chapter Five

  When Rosie arrived at the gates of Thompson’s with Charlotte in tow, Alfie couldn’t help but stare. The yard had a few lads who looked around the girl’s age, but they were usually apprentices, brought into the yard by their dads or older brothers. Working in the shipyards was a family affair. A male family affair.

  It looked like it was now also a family affair for the fairer sex.

  ‘Do you want me to put a good word in for you with Kate?’

  The question threw Alfie, as did the sternness of Rosie’s manner. She was usually friendly. Amicable.

  ‘Erm … Well … Yes, please,’ Alfie stuttered. He had a huge crush on Kate, which everyone, apart from Kate herself, seemed to know about.

  ‘Well then, you’ll give me a yard pass, no questions asked.’

  It took Alfie a moment to work out that Rosie needed the pass for the young girl who was with her, and another to realise the girl’s presence at the yard had not been authorised.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alfie said. He would probably have done just about anything to help win over Kate.

  A few minutes later Rosie and Charlotte were walking over the threshold of one of the biggest shipyards along the Wear.

  ‘Wow!’ Charlotte looked about her at the mass of metal and machinery – huge coils of chains, stacked-up sheets of steel, mammoth overhanging cranes – before her eyes found the overbearing hull of a half-finished frigate in the dry dock.

  ‘“Wow”?’ Rosie repeated. ‘Is that what you get after spending a small fortune on the best education money can buy? A simple “wow”?’

  Charlotte threw her sister a look and wrapped her grey mackintosh around her. It was cold and the wind was getting up. Rosie had been like this since the moment they’d woken up. Not that it had bothered Charlotte too much. Enduring the wrath of her sister was preferable by far to being hauled to the railway station and shoved onto a train back to Harrogate.

  ‘Well, I could say something in French or Latin—’ Charlotte stopped on seeing the glowering look her sister was giving her.

  Taking in her surroundings, Charlotte saw young boys about her own age dressed in dirty overalls, joking around, smoking rolled-up cigarettes and rubbing their hands over a brazier. They were standing in front of a huge building, the inside of which was piled high with sheets of metal.

  ‘It’s like a medieval metal city,’ Charlotte said, her eyes still scanning her new terrain.

  As another gust of wind caused her mac to flap open, she wished she’d worn something warmer.

  Rosie looked at her little sister, now realising that she was not so little. She had shot up this past year and the two of them were almost the same height.

  ‘Follow me,’ Rosie commanded.

  She had purposely got to the yard early, partly because she wanted Charlotte to experience the punishing hours that were demanded of those who worked there, and partly because, at this time of the day, it was relatively quiet and she would be able to give her a tour before the flood of workers descended at the start of the shift.

  For the next half an hour Rosie showed Charlotte just about every part of the shipyard, from the dry docks to the drawing office, from the platers’ shed to the frame benders’ building. She took her through the basics of how a ship was built, from the design to the laying of the keel, right through to the launch and the final fitting-out stage.

  Rosie ended her talk at her squad’s work area. Out of her team of five, it would probably only be Dorothy and Angie who turned up for work today.

  She guessed that Gloria’s leg would keep her off work for at least a week.

  Martha, she reckoned, would be back on Monday. She’d lay money on the group’s gentle giant convincing the doctors – and her parents – that she was fine.

  And as for Polly, she’d probably been up all night with Tommy and would be in no fit state to do anything other than sleep.

  ‘So, you all have your own helmets?’ Charlotte said, picking up a welding mask with the name ‘Martha’ emblazoned on it. It occurred to Charlotte that she hadn’t really asked her sister much about her workmates.

  ‘Yes.’ Rosie’s answer was curt.

  ‘So,’ Charlotte began tentatively, ‘when you were ill that time, with … what was it you called it … “arch eye”?’

  ‘Arc eye,’ Rosie corrected. She could feel herself tense.

  ‘So,’ Charlotte said again, ‘when you suffered this “arc eye” and you got all those burns and nearly blinded yourself, how did that happen?’

  Rosie looked at Charlotte. At the time, Charlotte had only been twelve and she’d told her it was an accident at work. She wanted one day to tell her the truth about what had really happened that day two years ago, but not now.

  ‘Here they are!’ Rosie raised her hand and waved over to two women who were linking arms as they walked across the yard.

  Charlotte guessed they were around twenty. They were wearing men’s boots and overalls, their hair was up and in turbans, and they were marching across the yard as if they owned the place. She was instantly intrigued.

  ‘Oh. My. God!’ Dorothy shouted out as soon as she clapped eyes on Charlotte. She let go of Angie’s arm and strode over.

  ‘Would I be right in saying that you are the infamous Charlotte?’ Dorothy inspected the young girl in front of her, arms akimbo.

  ‘You would be,’ Rosie butted in, giving Dorothy a look that told her to tread carefully.

  ‘What yer deeing here?’ Angie was staring at Charlotte. ‘Yer big sister never allowed yer to come back here.’ Angie looked at Rosie. ‘Did yer, miss?’

  ‘No, I certainly didn’t,’ Rosie confirmed.

  Charlotte was looking slightly gobsmacked, her eyes flitting from Dorothy to Angie, and then to her sister, who she couldn’t believe had just been called ‘miss’.

  ‘But now that she’s here,’ Rosie gave her sister another schoolmarmish glower, ‘I thought she might as well see how she finds working in a shipyard.’

  Charlotte gave her sister a slightly apprehensive look. She had never said anything about working at Thompson’s.

  ‘Ha!’ Dorothy laughed. ‘So, you’ll be heading back to Harrogate tomorrow then?’

  Charlotte didn’t say anything to the pretty, dark-haired young woman, but shook her head.

  ‘Well, dinnit be giving yer big sister any hassle!’ Angie ordered. The look she was giving Charlotte spoke volumes.

  ‘Come on then, Charlie. Let’s go and find Miss Crawford. See if she’s prepared to take you on.’ Turning her attention back to Dorothy and Angie, Rosie looked up at the frigate docked in the dry basin.

  ‘As there’s just the three of us today, I think we’ll team up with Terry’s lot.’

  ‘Aye, miss, we’ll see yer up there,’ Angie said solemnly.

  ‘Yes, Rosie, we’ll tell Terry you’ll be joining us a little later.’

  ‘They seem a right pair.’

  Charlotte finally found her voice as she and Rosie walked across the yard, passing groups of workers, flat caps on their heads, fags hanging from their mouths.

  ‘Bloody hard workers, the pair of them,’ Rosie said. ‘And they didn’t exactly pick the soft option when it came to doing war work.’

  ‘Why did they?’ Charlotte asked, genuinely interested. Neither women looked well built. In fact, they both looked more suited to waitressing or working in a shop than welding ships.

  ‘You’ll have to ask them that yourself,’ Rosie said.

  Charlotte was just about to ask another question when the klaxon blared out the start of the working day. She jumped, startled by the horn for the first time. Rosie had to suppress a chuckle.

  As they neared the admin offices, Charlotte tugged Rosie’s arm. She shouted, but not loud enough for Rosie to hear.

  Rosie leant towards her sister and put her hand to her ear.

  ‘Toilet?’ Charlotte shouted again.

  Rosie nodded, turned away from the admin offices an
d walked over to a row of prefab buildings to the right.

  Pointing at the outdoor lavatory, she watched as her sister carefully opened the door to look inside. The women’s washroom was dark and cold, consisting of two toilets and a single wash basin. Charlotte gave Rosie a look of uncertainty. Rosie stabbed a finger at an imaginary watch on her wrist and as Charlotte went in, Rosie banged hard on the corrugated-iron frontage.

  Like most of the female workers who used the facilities, Charlotte didn’t hang about and was out within minutes, shaking her hands dry.

  When they reached the admin building and the door closed behind them, making conversation possible, Charlotte asked, ‘Why did you bang on the toilet when I went in?’

  ‘To get rid of any unwanted visitors,’ Rosie said, leading the way up the stairs to the first floor.

  It took a few moments for the penny to drop.

  ‘Like mice?’ Charlotte asked.

  Rosie laughed as she reached the top of the stairs and turned to look at her sister.

  ‘I wish!’

  Charlotte paled.

  As they walked into the main office they were hit by a blanket of warmth. Charlotte undid her mac and visibly relaxed. At least she was out of the wind and the cold. She had forgotten how raw the weather in the north-east was.

  Bel and Marie-Anne were sitting at their desks near the window. On seeing Rosie, they both jumped out of their chairs and hurried over.

  ‘Is this who I think it is?’ Bel asked, her voice soft and maternal.

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’ Rosie turned to her sister. ‘Charlie, this is Mrs Elliot, the administrative assistant, and this is Miss McCarthy, head of department and secretary to Miss Crawford, the yard manager.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Elliot, Miss McCarthy.’

  ‘You look as white as a sheet, Charlotte. Do you want a nice cup of tea?’ Bel asked.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Rosie jumped in, before her sister had a chance to open her mouth. ‘That’s kind of you to offer, Mrs Elliot, but we’ve come to see Miss Crawford.’ She looked over Bel’s shoulder to the yard manager’s office.

  It had gone through Rosie’s mind that Helen might have taken the day off after last night, but she’d immediately dismissed the idea. Helen had only been off sick once in all the years she’d been working at the yard and that was because she’d been rushed to hospital with a burst appendix.

  ‘Miss Crawford has just arrived,’ Anne-Marie said, falling into the role play. She couldn’t wait to have a good gossip with Bel. What a turn-up for the books!

  Rosie looked around and saw a chair on its own by the window.

  ‘Charlie, you sit there quietly while I go and have a word with Miss Crawford.’

  Charlotte did as she was told, while Bel and Marie-Anne forced themselves to keep straight faces and went back to their own desks.

  ‘Helen. I guessed you’d be in.’ Rosie stood in the office doorway. ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Come in, come in.’ Helen beckoned her over.

  Rosie shut the door behind her. She’d normally have left it open, but this was one conversation she did not want anyone earwigging in on.

  ‘You all right, after last night?’ Rosie asked, taking a seat in the chair in front of Helen’s desk.

  ‘Fine. Remarkably fine,’ Helen said.

  Rosie looked at Helen. She reckoned if she scraped off all the make-up Helen had piled on today, one very exhausted woman would be revealed. Mind you, she felt shattered herself. She too had hardly slept a wink, but for very different reasons.

  ‘And Hope was all right when you got her back to Gloria’s? No kind of delayed reaction?’

  ‘No, thank goodness,’ Helen said, getting up and pouring them both a cup of tea from the tray Marie-Anne had brought in. ‘She slept like a log and I couldn’t find any cuts or bruises on her, which I think is not far off a miracle.’ To be sure, though, Helen had moved Hope’s cot next to her own bed and had sat up most of the night watching her.

  ‘It has to be said …’ Rosie smiled her thanks as Helen put a cup of tea down on the desk for her ‘ … if it wasn’t for you and Martha, Gloria and Hope wouldn’t be alive.’

  Helen waved her hand, shooing Rosie’s words away.

  ‘Don’t. I can’t bear to even think about it. Makes me feel ill.’ She took a drink of her tea, pulled out a cigarette from her packet of Pall Malls and lit it. ‘I take it Gloria and Martha got to the Royal all right?’

  ‘Yes, although it was pretty mad up there. Lots of casualties being brought in.’

  ‘I’m going to visit them both this evening. Take Hope up to see Gloria,’ Helen said.

  ‘Actually,’ Rosie said, looking out a large window at the open-plan office beyond and seeing that Charlotte was, thankfully, sitting and behaving herself, ‘I’ve got a favour to ask you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Helen blew out smoke.

  ‘Well, can you see the young girl in the grey mac sitting in the chair next to the window?’

  Helen turned her head and blinked.

  ‘Dear me, where did she spring from? I didn’t see her come in.’

  Probably, Helen realised, because she’d been on the phone to John. She’d caught him before he went into theatre and they’d chatted for a good while about last night. She’d only just hung up seconds before Rosie had come to see her.

  ‘Well, the young girl presently looking like butter wouldn’t melt is my very naughty and wayward little sister, Charlotte.’

  Now Helen really was intrigued.

  ‘Really?’ she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the fresh-faced teenager who was now taking off her coat. ‘I’ll be honest, Rosie. I had no idea you had a sister.’

  ‘I guess there’s no reason you would have known,’ Rosie said. ‘Especially as – until midnight last night – she didn’t live with me. Nor did she even live in the north-east.’

  Helen’s eyes widened. ‘Gosh, go on.’

  She looked at Charlotte, who was starting to wiggle about in her seat whilst carrying out an inspection of everything in her immediate vicinity.

  ‘Well,’ Rosie sighed, taking another sip of her tea. ‘You know that my parents died years ago?’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘Well, fortunately,’ Rosie continued, ‘my mam and dad left enough for Charlie to go to a boarding school in Harrogate.’

  ‘Not the Runcorn School for Girls?’ Helen suddenly asked.

  ‘That’s the one. Do you know it?’

  Helen let out a laugh that Rosie thought sounded a little bitter.

  ‘Oh, yes, my dear mother tried to force me to go there. Said it was “the best education money could buy”. In reality, I think it had more to do with getting shot of me.’

  It hurt Rosie to hear that someone like Miriam had said the same words she herself had said to Charlie.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Helen said, recalling her one and only visit to the school, which was miles away from anywhere, ‘Charlie’s decided she doesn’t want to be at the school any more.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Rosie said, ‘and her timing couldn’t have been any worse. Her train was delayed due to the air raid, so she only just got home before I did, at midnight.’

  ‘When it rains it pours,’ Helen said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘So, I’m guessing she just up and left – got on a train on her lonesome and came up here?’

  Rosie nodded.

  Helen let out a burst of laughter.

  ‘She’s got bottle! I’m surprised they’ve not sent out a search party for her.’ Helen looked up at the clock on the wall above the door. It had gone eight o’clock. ‘They’ll have realised she’s not in her bed by now.’

  ‘She left them a letter,’ Rosie sighed, ‘telling them that as it was half-term, she had returned home.’

  ‘Ah… so, tell me, where do I come into it all?’ Helen asked.

  Rosie took a deep breath. She’d spent until the early hours of the morning working out what she was going to do.

  ‘I was hoping
Charlie could work at the yard for the next week. You wouldn’t have to pay her. My theory is, if I make her realise how hard and mundane working for a living can be – especially unskilled or labouring work – she’ll feel she’s jumped from the frying pan right into the fire.’

  ‘And might then want to jump back into the frying pan?’ Helen couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice. If Charlie had packed her bags, made good her escape, walked the two miles she knew it was to the local railway station, got a train to York, then another up to Sunderland, only to arrive at her sister’s house at midnight, knowing she would get an earbashing at the very least, then Rosie was kidding herself if she believed her little sister would choose to return to the school of her own accord.

  ‘I thought if you could put her to work in admin and then we go from there. Perhaps get her out in the yard doing some sweeping up …’ Rosie let her voice trail off.

  ‘Tough work, but keep her away from anything that might be too dangerous?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Exactly!’ Rosie said, relieved. ‘The only other favour I have to ask,’ she added, ‘is that I don’t want her being mollycoddled, if you know what I mean? Perhaps if she could see the Helen we’ve always known?’

  Helen laughed again – loudly.

  ‘You want me to be a total bitch?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  This time they both burst out laughing.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Thanks so much.’ Polly clambered out of the ambulance and shut the door.

  ‘Yer welcome, pet,’ the old man said, looking at the young woman in her dirty overalls, her long curly hair all over the shop and her face in need of a good wash.

  He knew exactly why Dr Parker had wanted him to bring her back into town. It wasn’t just her appearance that was in a bit of a state; the girl was clearly not entirely with it.

  As Polly made her way up the front entrance of the Royal and along the corridor to casualty, she felt as though she knew the true meaning of being in seventh heaven.

  Pushing open the swing doors of the short-stay ward, she looked to her left and then to her right. And that’s when she saw them. In beds next to each other. Both sitting up with a cup of tea in their hands.