Christmas with the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  As soon as he’d done so, Percival started pushing the wheelchair around the bed.

  ‘Give it here,’ Polly whispered, grabbing both handles.

  As the two young lovers made their escape, Percival shoved some pillows under the covers of Tommy’s empty bed and drew the curtain, just in time to see the matron turning away from Shorty.

  ‘Tommy wanted a bit of privacy,’ Percival said, nodding over to the curtained-off bed. He hobbled on his plastered leg back to his own bed, which was now devoid of pillows.

  Matron was just heading over to check on Tommy when one of the other lads, who had one of his legs resting in the harness of a pulley, called her over.

  She couldn’t help thinking they all seemed very demanding this evening.

  ‘Honestly, I can push myself.’ Tommy looked up at Polly. It hurt every fibre of his being to be so weak, which only added to his determination that he would not be like this for long.

  ‘That may well be,’ Polly said, looking over her shoulder anxiously, ‘but I can get us out of this “joint” faster.’

  True to her word, she got them to the main entrance at breakneck speed.

  An elderly gentleman saluted as he held open the main doors for them. Tommy returned the old man’s address.

  Once out in the fresh air, Polly carefully pushed the wheelchair down the ramp and onto the shale pathway.

  ‘Made it!’ she declared.

  ‘Now, I can take it from here.’ Tommy put his hands on the wheels and pushed down hard, but the gravel was damp. The wheelchair only moved a few inches forward.

  ‘Let me,’ Polly said. ‘Just until we get around the corner.’

  When they had made it a few hundred yards away from the main entrance, Polly stopped next to one of the wooden benches. It was dark, but they could just about see where they were.

  Tommy looked up at the starry night and for a second was back on the lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic. He wiped the thought from his mind.

  ‘What a wreck.’ He tried to make the words sound jovial, but he couldn’t hide the sense of wretchedness he felt at his present situation. ‘I thought I might be able to at least push myself in this damn thing.’

  Polly caught his look of frustration in the light of the half-moon.

  ‘Tommy, it’s only Monday. On Saturday you could hardly sit up in bed, never mind get yourself into a wheelchair.’

  ‘I know, but I had a great plan for this evening,’ he said, causing Polly to chuckle.

  ‘Do tell me,’ she smiled. ‘I’m intrigued.’

  ‘Well, it’s been three whole torturous days now since I have had you back in my life,’ he said. ‘And during that whole time, I’ve not once had you to myself.’

  Polly chuckled again.

  ‘I know. Every time I hold your hand, I can almost hear the matron tutting in her head. I’m sure she would ban any kind of physical contact if she could.’

  ‘I think she missed her calling as a chaperone,’ Tommy joked.

  ‘Every time I’ve given you a kiss goodbye, I’ve felt her beady eye on us.’

  ‘As well as just about every soldier on the ward,’ Tommy added.

  They were quiet for a moment as a young airman on crutches passed with his sweetheart.

  ‘Which was why I wanted to be alone with you, just for a little while.’ Tommy looked at Polly. He had dreamed of the day when he would take her in his arms and press her body against his own and kiss her.

  ‘I so want to kiss you. Properly,’ Tommy confessed. ‘But I’m damned if the first time I do so is from the confines of a wheelchair.’ His voice was deadly serious, causing Polly to laugh.

  ‘So, does this mean I have to wait until you’re well enough to do away with the chair before I get to kiss my future husband properly?’ A smile played on her lips.

  ‘I just …’ Tommy hesitated, finding it hard to talk so intimately. ‘I just wanted to be able to at least stand and hold you in my arms.’

  Polly was quiet. She understood. She could see how much it pained Tommy to be so incapacitated.

  ‘Do you remember that time when we danced by the riverside? We’d both been working late, and we were saying we hadn’t even been to a dance together or really on a proper date.’

  Tommy nodded.

  ‘And you told me that we were going to have a “Make Do and Mend” date.’

  Tommy had thought of that night many times while he was away.

  ‘And I asked you if you could hear an orchestra,’ Polly said.

  ‘Yes,’ Tommy laughed. ‘You said you thought it was playing the waltz, and I had no idea what a waltz sounded like, but I knew it was the kind of dance that was slow and I’d get to hold you.’

  ‘And you said to me in the best King’s English you could muster, “Would the lady care to dance?”’

  For a moment they were both lost in the memory of what seemed like a totally different lifetime.

  ‘Well,’ Polly said. ‘I think you should close your eyes and pretend you are there now.’

  Tommy closed his eyes.

  ‘And I want you to imagine that we’re dancing by the river and you’re holding me in your arms.’

  Tommy could feel Polly’s breath on his face. He could smell her freshly laundered clothes.

  ‘And now that we’re dancing …’ Polly leant towards Tommy, her thick brown hair falling forward and touching the side of his face, ‘ … and you are holding me in your arms …’ she touched the side of Tommy’s face ‘ … you kiss me.’ She whispered the words. Then kissed Tommy slowly.

  Feeling the sensuousness of her lips on his own, Tommy responded, losing himself in her touch, her smell, her taste.

  They were lips he could kiss for ever and a day.

  Finally they were able to feel the love and passion they had for each other. A love that had not dwindled in the time they had been apart, but grown. Their fervour for each other even greater due to their doubts that this moment would ever come.

  Dr Parker walked slowly along the windowless white corridors.

  He’d walked up and down these corridors so many times he could do it blindfolded, if necessary.

  A few minutes earlier Mrs Rosendale had come bursting into his office in such a flurry he’d imagined there must be an emergency on the ward. When she had breathlessly explained to him that Tommy had ‘escaped’ from the ward without permission in a wheelchair and with his fiancée, he had suppressed a chuckle. And another when she had related the misdemeanours of Percival, Shorty and Private Jones. All three of them had, rather cunningly, Dr Parker thought, orchestrated the breakout.

  He had reassured Mrs Rosendale that he would recapture AWOL Watts and bring him back immediately.

  Dr Parker idled as he headed towards the hospital’s main entrance, wanting to give the two of them a little time together – but not so much that the cold autumnal air would be detrimental to the already precarious health of his patient. Tommy was still far from well and needed to be kept warm. With lots of rest and recuperation. Mrs Rosendale was already beside herself that Tommy was refusing any more medication. Dr Parker knew Tommy was still in considerable pain. He had been on morphine for quite some time. Ideally, he should gradually have been given lesser amounts so as to lessen the side effects of withdrawal. He had talked to Tommy about all of this, but he had been insistent. He wanted to get back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible.

  As Dr Parker reached the main entrance, his thoughts, as they were wont to do, defaulted back to Helen. They’d spoken the morning after the air raid, when she had rung him at work.

  As always with Helen, he could have chatted all day long. They’d had to break off their conversation when he’d heard his name called over the tannoy. She had asked about Tommy and he’d thought he’d caught a hint of embarrassment.

  Realising just how much Helen still loved Tommy cut deep, as did the knowledge that his own love for Helen was doomed to be unrequited. They were friends. Good friends. God, he had been w
ith her throughout her pregnancy and the trauma of her miscarriage. But they could never be anything more.

  Helen created such a paradox of feelings within him. She was like an anaesthetic against the true awfulness of what his senses were assaulted with every day. She was his balm against the horrors of war’s cast-offs.

  She also, however, brought pain.

  A terrible ache of longing that he was sure would never lift.

  Walking out into the fresh but cold October night, it took Dr Parker a few moments to adjust to the darkness. Turning left, he walked for a hundred yards before he stopped on seeing the two young lovers. They were sharing the tenderest of kisses.

  Dr Parker couldn’t help but feel envious.

  Why, oh why, did he have to fall so heavily in love with a woman whose heart belonged to another?

  He started walking down the gravel pathway, coughing politely.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Four days later

  Thursday 22 October

  ‘Christmas? They’re getting married at Christmas?’ Dorothy’s voice was verging on hysterical.

  ‘On the actual day?’ Polly asked, equally incredulous.

  Rosie laughed and looked around the table at the women’s shocked faces.

  ‘Yes, on Christmas Day. The twenty-fifth of December.’ Rosie took a sip of her tea. She was thankful the canteen was packed out and noisy so that no one could overhear their conversation. She still liked to keep all mention of Lily to a minimum.

  ‘But I thought she was having it on the nineteenth?’ Polly asked, blowing on a spoonful of stew to cool it down.

  ‘Well, it’s a rather long story, which I will try to keep short,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Yer make it as long as yer want, miss,’ Angie said in all earnestness. ‘We’re all ears.’

  Rosie looked at Polly, Bel, Dorothy, Angie, Martha and Hannah.

  ‘Well,’ she began, ‘Maisie and Vivian were out with a couple of naval officers.’ She looked at Bel. She hoped she’d made it sound like they’d been on legitimate dates as opposed to what Maisie liked to call ‘escorting’.

  ‘And it came out in conversation that the Grand had been told by the Ministry of War to expect a large influx of Admiralty and Royal Navy personnel in December.’

  ‘Because the hotel is a “billet”? Is that right?’ Hannah asked.

  Rosie nodded.

  ‘And when all of this was relayed to Lily …’ Rosie paused, thinking of the other evening when Maisie and Vivian had imparted the news to her. ‘Well, let’s just say the balloon went up.’

  ‘Because?’ Martha asked.

  ‘Because,’ Dorothy said, sighing dramatically, ‘it meant there’d be no room for Lily’s wedding reception.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Rosie said, topping up her tea from the pot in the middle of the table.

  ‘So, what did Lily do?’ Polly asked.

  Rosie chuckled.

  ‘She ordered George to get the car and they went straight to the Grand and demanded to see the manager.’

  ‘And what did he say?’ Bel asked. She had spent her wedding night at the Grand and had spotted the hotel’s very pompous-looking manager.

  ‘Apparently he was full of apologies. Said he had been going to contact them that very afternoon. To tell him of the unforeseen circumstances regarding their extra guests.’

  Rosie smiled.

  ‘Lily, of course, immediately realised she could use the situation to her advantage and continued to play holy war, demanding to know what he was intending to do about the matter.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘I think there were various options bandied about. Offers of compensation and the like. But when the manager told her that the hotel would be more or less back to normal by Christmas, Lily, being Lily, decided it would be a great idea to tie the knot on Christmas Day!’

  ‘That’s like my aunty Gwen,’ Angie chirped up. ‘They got married on Christmas Day.’

  ‘Why did they do that?’ Dorothy asked.

  ‘It was the only day of the year her ’n my uncle Bobby could get off.’

  Everyone looked at Angie, curious to hear more.

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘in those days the church always married people fer free on Christmas Day. Aunty Gwen always gans on about how she had a “penny wedding”. Course that was years ago. They’re both in their sixties now.’

  Everyone was listening intently.

  ‘Well, another interesting socio-economic fact from welder Angie Boulter.’

  Angie frowned at Dorothy.

  ‘English, Dor.’

  ‘I think Dorothy just means how people’s income affects what they do in life,’ Hannah explained.

  ‘Well, we’d better not tell Lily that, otherwise she’ll be changing the date again,’ Rosie said.

  ‘So, I’m guessing the registry office will be open?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Yes, the manager, Mr Pollard, I believe he’s called, rang the registrar there and then and got the date changed.’ Rosie chuckled. ‘According to George, he would have done handstands for Lily if she’d asked.’

  Rosie didn’t say anything to the women, but Lily had also negotiated a decent discount for the inconvenience and had accepted the offer of a goose and a large gammon joint for the wedding breakfast.

  ‘So,’ Dorothy looked at Polly, ‘I don’t suppose you and Tommy have settled on a date yet?’ She widened her eyes and looked around at the women. ‘Imagine – we might get two weddings in the space of two months.’

  ‘Give them a chance,’ Martha guffawed. ‘Tommy’s only just got back. He’s not even out of hospital yet.’

  Martha was glad she herself was out of hospital and back at work. Back with her friends. Back to normality – even if she was still feeling a little shell-shocked.

  ‘Exactly!’ Polly agreed rather too enthusiastically.

  They all started getting ready to leave.

  ‘Well, at least you’ve got the money set aside for when you do decide to get hitched, eh?’ Rosie said.

  Polly looked at her blankly.

  ‘You know. Tommy’s pay. What’s it called again?’

  ‘His gratuity pay,’ Polly said.

  ‘That’s right. You told me that he’d been saving it for your wedding?’

  All of a sudden, Polly looked around as if she’d lost something.

  ‘Did you say Charlotte’s working in the kitchen today?’

  Her question had the desired effect. Everyone hurried over to the main counter, from where they could see into the back kitchen.

  Charlotte was standing with her back to them in front of a large stainless-steel sink.

  Angie put her thumb and forefinger in her mouth and let out an ear-splitting whistle.

  It did the trick.

  Charlotte spun round. Seeing the women, she lifted a handful of soapy suds and waved back.

  ‘She’s a good little worker that one.’ Muriel came over to see the women. ‘Doesn’t stand around gassing. Just gets on with it.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ Rosie said. She’d warned Charlotte about Muriel’s knack for squeezing information out of people and turning it into yard gossip.

  ‘So, how’s things going with Charlotte?’ Hannah asked as they left the canteen. ‘Is she going to stay or are you sending her back at the end of half-term?’

  Rosie grimaced.

  ‘I’ve told her that I understand that she’s homesick and that she can come back during the holidays and at half-term, but she has to go back to school.’

  ‘And did she agree?’

  ‘Not exactly, but it’s not up to her. She’s going back whether she wants to or not. I’m hoping that after a week working here, she’ll look more favourably on my suggestion and might even go willingly …’ Her voice trailed off as she looked around. ‘Ah, Martha … Helen’s asked if you could pop and see her after lunch.’

  Martha gave a puzzled look.

  ‘Nothing to worry about. Think she just want
s a quick chat. We’ll be over on Brutus when you’re done.’

  Rosie watched Martha plod over to the admin building. It was strange seeing her in a turban. She’d been given strict instructions by the doctor at the hospital to keep her wound covered up during the day, especially when she was at work.

  Dorothy and Angie looked at each other and then at Rosie and Polly.

  ‘What?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘It’s just strange – Helen. Us all being “friends” now.’

  ‘I know,’ Polly said. ‘Do you think she’s always been all right and we’ve all just demonised her? Or do you reckon she’s changed?’

  They were all quiet for a moment.

  ‘Probably a bit of both,’ Rosie said, just as the klaxon sounded out the start of the afternoon shift.

  Helen was sitting at her desk, the receiver of the black Bakelite phone jammed into the crook of her neck as she topped up her tea.

  ‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘And did you read The Times today? Did you read what Mr bloody Bevin said in the House of Commons?’

  She listened for a moment.

  ‘Well, let me tell you, I’m seething mad, as I’m sure every shipyard worker in Sunderland would be if they knew about it.’

  Helen took hold of the receiver as she reached over her desk to get her Pall Malls.

  ‘He made a big song and dance praising the shipyards on the Tyne and the Clyde.’

  She paused for dramatic effect.

  ‘But not a single mention about the yards on the Wear. Yards, I hasten to add, that have not been out on strike over some triviality.’ Helen was building momentum. ‘Yards which have been – and still are – making far more merchant ships than the Tyne.’

  She quickly lit her cigarette.

  ‘And is Mr bloody Bevin’s memory as bad as his general knowledge? Forgetting that it was this very shipyard that designed the Liberty ship and showed the American yards how it’s done!’

  Helen cut short her rant, having just noticed that Martha was standing in the doorway of her office, looking like she was about to get six of the best.