Christmas with the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

‘Well, not for the foreseeable anyway. Polly can be incredibly stubborn. And she’s hurt … And young.’

  Rosie nodded sadly.

  ‘Do you think there’s anything we can do?’ Rosie took a biscuit from the plate on the coffee table and gave it to Hope, who immediately dropped it on the carpet.

  ‘You’ve got to do something,’ Charlotte demanded as she picked up the biscuit, pretended to eat it and then handed it back to Hope.

  ‘I reckon we play it by ear,’ Gloria said. ‘See what she’s like on Monday. Try and get her to see sense.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Rosie said. ‘Or perhaps Polly’s actually making the right decision?’

  Gloria and Charlotte looked at Rosie, more than a little surprised.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rosie said thoughtfully, ‘she’s protecting herself. I mean, just imagine if they got married as planned. Then Tommy leaves. There’s a good chance Polly will find herself pregnant, and if the worst, but not exactly unexpected, happens and Tommy doesn’t come back – well, then Polly’s stuck at home, bringing a child up on her own.’

  She paused.

  ‘Just like her own mother did. With barely two pennies to rub together. And it’s not as if she’ll be able to keep working if she has a baby.’

  Another pause.

  ‘And let’s face it, she’s unlikely to find a decent bloke to take her and a child on.’

  Gloria and Charlotte looked at Rosie, slightly horrified.

  ‘What about true love?’ Charlotte argued. ‘And even if she did have a child, at least it will have had a mam and dad who loved each other. And the child would grow up knowing her father was a hero.’

  Rosie didn’t say anything. Instead, she bent down and picked up Hope.

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ she said gently. ‘I think we need to clean you up.’

  Gloria watched Rosie with her little girl. She had often thought it unusual that Rosie hadn’t fallen pregnant with Peter.

  Was that because she too hadn’t wanted to be left on her own with a baby to bring up?

  Or was it something else?

  ‘So, come on then, Ange, spit it out.’ Dorothy looked at her best friend as they walked down Fawcett Street.

  ‘Wot do yer mean “spit it out”?’

  The two women were walking back from Meng’s Restaurant. It was meant to be a treat after they’d both fulfilled their Sunday obligations of visiting their respective families – as well as an attempt at cheering themselves up after yesterday’s bombshell. It hadn’t hit the mark on either score.

  ‘Well,’ Dorothy said, with more than a hint of exasperation, ‘you’ve hardly uttered a word about the Polly and Tommy debacle.’ They came to a stop to let an old couple walk past, before turning left onto Borough Road. ‘I’ve been wittering on about poor Polly and—’

  ‘And about Tommy,’ Angie butted in. ‘And how awful he is to do something like this … Polly’s been through enough … he should have thought about her feelings …’ Angie let her voice trail off.

  They both shielded their faces as a gust of ice-cold wind blew dust at them.

  ‘Well,’ Angie said, ‘I personally feel like shaking Polly.’

  Dorothy looked at her friend, aghast.

  ‘But she’s our friend,’ she said. ‘And that means we all stick together.’

  ‘But it doesn’t mean we have to agree with each other, does it?’

  They walked along Borough Road.

  ‘I think Polly’s mad not to marry Tommy.’

  ‘But he’s broken her heart – again,’ Dorothy argued.

  ‘It’s not as if he meant to,’ Angie hit back.

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘He’s gannin back to war. Not off with another woman.’

  ‘That may well be,’ Dorothy countered, ‘but he’s already done his bit. Like Polly said, he’s not exactly in the best of health. He’s obviously twisted Dr Parker’s arm to give him the go-ahead. He doesn’t have to go. He’s already done this once before with Polly when he could have stayed on as reserved occupation. God, Ange, think about it. There’s a good chance he won’t come back this time.’

  They both looked to their left as they passed Gloria’s flat.

  ‘She’s gone to Rosie’s,’ Dorothy said, reading her friend’s mind. ‘Gone to tell her the news.’

  The two turned left up Foyle Street.

  Suddenly Angie quickened her pace.

  ‘Who’s that gannin into our flat?’ She flashed a look of concern at Dorothy. ‘Mrs Lavender never has visitors.’

  Dorothy saw the back of a man trying the front door to the flats.

  ‘Better not be anyone trying to rob us!’ Angie barked.

  Dorothy hurried to keep up. She’d never known Angie to be in such a mood. God help the bloke if he was a burglar.

  ‘Oi!’ Angie shouted out.

  A young man with short strawberry-blond hair turned round.

  As he did so, the main door to the flats opened and Mrs Lavender appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Wot yer deeing?’ Angie demanded, having reached the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Oh … umm …’ stuttered the young man. He looked at Mrs Lavender and gave her a quick smile, before turning his attention back to the woman on the street. She looked as though she wanted to lynch him.

  ‘I’m—’ he started to explain.

  Mrs Lavender shuffled forward.

  ‘This is Quentin, girls.’ She gestured to Angie and Dorothy to come up. ‘Our neighbour,’ she said. ‘You know, the one I told you about.’

  ‘Oh, Quentin!’ Dorothy walked past Angie, throwing her a thunderous look. ‘How lovely to meet you at long last.’ She hurried up the stairs and stuck her hand out.

  Mrs Lavender turned and hobbled back into the main hallway, holding open the large black oak door.

  ‘Come in. Get out of the cold.’

  Quentin and Dorothy followed Mrs Lavender’s orders and stepped into the tiled hallway. Mrs Lavender’s flat door was open and the smell of fresh bread told them the old woman had been baking.

  ‘Come on, Angela,’ Mrs Lavender beckoned with a bony hand that still had traces of flour on it.

  The look on Angie’s face still showed signs of suspicion.

  ‘He won’t bite,’ the old woman laughed.

  ‘Hello there.’ Quentin stuck out his hand. ‘Quentin Foxton-Clarke. Pleased to meet you.’

  Angie took hold of it with a slight reticence.

  ‘Thought yer were robbing the place,’ she said.

  Quentin laughed a little self-consciously.

  ‘My fault,’ he said. ‘Always forgetting my keys. Thank goodness for my – or rather our – lovely neighbour here.’ He turned briefly to Mrs Lavender before diverting his attention back to Angie. ‘Otherwise I might well have to break into my own home.’

  Dorothy looked at her friend and their new neighbour. They were both blushing a little. Either that or there had been a sudden change in temperature.

  There was a moment’s awkward silence.

  ‘I’ll get your keys, Quentin,’ Mrs Lavender said. ‘Will you be about for Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, I will indeed, Mrs Kwiatkowski,’ Quentin told the back of the old woman as she shuffled off into her flat.

  She smiled. He was the only person she knew now who could say her name, never mind pronounce it properly.

  ‘Well, we can’t stand about yakking,’ Angie said, making a move for the stairs.

  ‘No, no, of course not. Well, lovely to meet you,’ he said, eyes still trained on Angie. ‘Both of you,’ he added quickly, throwing Dorothy a slightly apologetic look.

  ‘Oh, and good to know Mrs Kwiatkowski has someone looking out for her.’

  Dorothy watched as her friend forced a smile and Quentin half raised a hand hesitantly in the air to bid them farewell.

  ‘I just don’t understand why Polly won’t marry him,’ Martha said, spooning out the roast potatoes.

  She was at the kitchen table with her
mam and dad. They’d just sat down to eat their Sunday dinner.

  ‘I think she should support Tommy,’ Martha said, sitting back while her mother piled peas onto her plate.

  Mrs Perkins looked at their daughter. She knew why Martha felt so strongly about Polly’s reaction to Tommy’s news. Since the air raid at Tatham Street she’d had quite a few heated discussions about Martha continuing to work as an ARP warden – with both her husband and with Martha herself.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with our daughter,’ Mr Perkins said. He was standing, carving the rather meagre joint of pork that had been placed in the middle of the table. ‘The lad obviously wants to do his bit and we should all support him in that – especially his future wife.’

  Mrs Perkins looked at her husband. She took a spoonful of mash and dumped it on his plate.

  ‘Yes, but his future wife is clearly worried sick about the person she loves and doesn’t want to see him come to any harm. Especially when he has already had a close brush with death.’

  ‘That may well be,’ Mr Perkins countered, ‘but you can’t stop someone when their heart’s set on something.’

  ‘I agree,’ Martha said as her father shared out the slices of pork. ‘You’ve got to support someone if they really want to do something.’

  Mrs Perkins looked at her daughter. Her incredibly brave and strong daughter. And then at her husband, who adored Martha – and had done from the day she had been handed to them.

  Like Polly, Mrs Perkins also knew that she was not going to get her own way.

  Martha may have escaped death by a hair’s breadth, but it had not deterred her from doing her ARP work.

  She was just thankful that, these past two months, the town had been given a reprieve from any more air raid attacks, which meant Martha had been given a rest from risking her own life trying to save the lives of others.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Monday 14 December

  The mood on Monday morning could only be described as maudlin.

  No one even tried to pretend to be happy.

  During their short mid-morning tea break, none of them had said much. The conversation had been forced. They’d all had a communal moan about the bitterly cold weather and looked up at the grey clouds hanging heavy and low.

  At lunchtime they’d all made their way to the canteen. Standing in the queue, they had not indulged in their usual discussion about what to eat. Even Muriel had forced herself to keep shtum, refraining from asking any probing questions about the ill-fated lovers.

  It wasn’t until they’d all finished their lunch that there was an attempt at conversation.

  It was hard not to talk about the elephant in the room.

  It was hard to know exactly what to talk about.

  Lily and George’s wedding was clearly out of bounds. Even any mention of Christmas seemed inappropriate.

  This was the first time since they had all become friends that there’d been an awkwardness between them.

  Gloria struggled to hold her tongue. She desperately wanted to take Polly aside and tell her that she thought she was making a terrible mistake, but instinct told her to hold back.

  It was Angie, surprisingly, who took the plunge into uncharted waters and, much to Dorothy’s horror, started talking about what a great job ‘our boys’ were doing out in North Africa. Martha had been quick to agree.

  Dorothy just as quickly changed the subject. There was no doubting her alliance.

  On the way back to Brutus, Rosie spoke quietly to Polly and told her that if she wanted time off, she just had to ask.

  It was clear; the squad was split.

  Later that evening when Helen went to see Hope, as she did most Monday evenings, she and Gloria talked about what – if anything – they could do to resolve what they believed amounted to a stand-off between Polly and Tommy.

  ‘Perhaps a meeting between the two could be orchestrated,’ Helen suggested as she got Hope ready for bed. She’d bought her little sister the cutest nightie from Risdon’s.

  ‘That’s not such a bad idea,’ Gloria shouted through from the little kitchenette. ‘Worth a try. Any port in a storm ’n all that.’

  ‘Arms up,’ Helen said as she slipped the thick floral cotton nightie over Hope’s head and tucked her into her cot.

  As she read Hope her bedtime story, her mind started to stray.

  She wondered what had happened to the lovely lemon-coloured romper suit she’d bought for her unborn baby. The one that had been left in the café during the panic to get her to the hospital when she was having her miscarriage.

  Again, her mind wandered unchecked to that awful day and she wondered whether or not her instinct had been right. Was the baby she had been carrying a girl?

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Tuesday 15 December

  Tuesday’s shift was grey and grinding. The skies were the colour of gunmetal and there were sporadic rumblings of thunder throughout the afternoon.

  The poets of the Romantic movement Charlotte was studying for her end-of-term exams would have claimed that nature was merely reflecting the sombre mood of Polly’s mindset, for it was clear that she had pulled up the drawbridge to her heart and surrounded it with impenetrable defences.

  As the day progressed, a tiny thread of hope started to weave its way around the squad as Gloria quietly mentioned Helen’s idea to each of the women whenever they were on their own.

  As soon as Polly had left at the end of the shift, Dorothy gathered everyone together. She was just about to speak when suddenly it started to hail.

  ‘Admiral?’ she shouted out, grabbing her bag and boxed gas mask and holding them above her head.

  The women’s scrunched-up faces showed their acquiescence as bullets of ice bounced off them.

  En route, Martha dropped by the drawing office to get Hannah and Olly.

  Rosie went to the admin offices to fetch Bel and Marie-Anne. Her intention had been to invite Helen as well – after all, the idea they were about to discuss was hers – but when she got there, Helen was holed up in her office with Mr Havelock and Harold. Rosie could just about see Helen’s expression through the haze of her grandfather’s cigar smoke. She did not look happy.

  Within fifteen minutes of the klaxon sounding out, the troops had been rallied and were sitting round the table in the far corner of the pub.

  ‘So, the basic plan is to get Polly and Tommy together and hope to God they manage to sort themselves out,’ Dorothy summarised. She took a sip of her port and lemonade, happy that the squad’s differences in opinion were being overshadowed by their joint desire to reunite the star-crossed lovers.

  ‘Hopefully, in time for them to get married,’ Bel said. She still couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, accept that the wedding wasn’t going ahead. She’d heard from Maud and Mavis, who ran the sweet shop, that the final banns had still been read, despite Polly’s visit to the vicar on Saturday night.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Marie-Anne chipped in. She, too, had been gutted at the sudden turn of events.

  ‘Yes, fingers crossed,’ Gloria said.

  Hannah clapped her hands and looked at Olly.

  ‘Doufejme,’ he said in Czech.

  ‘“Hopefully”,’ Hannah translated, smiling at Olly.

  ‘We’re going to have to work quickly, though,’ Rosie stressed.

  ‘Yes,’ Martha agreed. ‘We’ve only got three days.’

  ‘It’s cutting it fine, but it’s not impossible,’ Dorothy said with confidence.

  ‘So, how we ganna make it happen?’ Angie looked round the table, the question etched onto her face.

  It took an hour and another round of drinks, but they got there in the end.

  ‘Thanks for helping out with my unit,’ Major Black said as Tommy pushed the wheelchair up the ramp to the top of the steps and let them both into the flat.

  ‘I think it’s more the other way round,’ Tommy said. ‘They’re helping me.’

  He went into the lounge and
put on the fire.

  ‘I feel so much fitter already.’

  The Major looked at Tommy and wasn’t totally convinced he was ready to go back to Gibraltar. Tommy had been teaching his men and training alongside them for the past few days and every night had more or less collapsed exhausted into bed within an hour of getting back to the flat.

  ‘Aye,’ the Major said, wheeling himself over to the sideboard. ‘There’s benefits both ways.’

  He held the decanter up at Tommy, but he shook his head.

  ‘What you’re teaching my lads is invaluable,’ said the Major, pouring himself a Scotch. ‘And at the same time, you’re getting your levels of fitness up before you go back out there.’

  He turned and looked at Tommy.

  ‘Which they need to be.’

  He swallowed a mouthful of single malt.

  ‘You’ll be no good to anyone if you’re not up to it and get ill.’

  The Major thought Tommy was rushing things and had told him so. He had also told Tommy that if he’d been in his shoes, he would have married his sweetheart first, and only then told her he was going back.

  Tommy went into the kitchen and switched on the oven. He got the steak and kidney pie that Agnes had sent round yesterday and put it on the top shelf. Beryl had brought it round and told him that they were ‘all hoping Polly came to her senses’.

  Tommy appreciated that others cared and supported him in his decision. But he also knew chances were that Polly would rail against any interference. It might even make her dig her heels in more.

  Tommy made himself a cup of tea and went back into the lounge while the pie heated up.

  ‘I’ve got another favour to ask,’ Tommy said, taking a sip of his tea and looking over to the Major. ‘I promise this’ll be the last one.’ He gave a slightly apologetic half-smile.

  ‘Ask away, lad,’ the Major said.

  ‘Can you make contact with Commander Bridgman? See if I can have a chat with him about heading back out there?’

  The Major took a sip of whisky. He was quiet for a moment while he savoured the burn trickling down his throat.