Courage of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  Gloria got up and took Hope.

  ‘Come and sit down, Helen. You’ve gone as red as a beetroot.’

  Helen sat down in the armchair but leant forward, her back rigid, her hands clasped as though she wanted to strangle someone.

  ‘Tell me,’ Gloria asked. ‘What postbox?’

  ‘Mum got a little postbox put up just outside the front door. Said she was sick of the new postwoman ramming mail through the letter box as if she was stuffing a chicken … I thought it was just Mum being Mum. I didn’t even think … Didn’t even think to ask for a key … God, I should have guessed.’ Helen was shaking her head.

  ‘What? You think Miriam’s been taking yer dad’s letters?’ Now it was Gloria’s turn to sound completely stupefied.

  ‘I don’t think,’ Helen said. ‘I know!’

  Helen’s mind scanned the past six months, how her mother had often complained about the new postwoman’s timekeeping. She had thought it was just her mother’s way – to moan about any kind of service, be it from a restaurant, a shop or, in this case, the GPO.

  Helen stood up.

  ‘Sorry, Gloria, I’m going to have to go.’ She stepped over to where Gloria was sitting with Hope and bent down to give her little sister a kiss on the cheek.

  Gloria opened her mouth to object, but Helen was already picking up her handbag and gas mask by the front door.

  ‘Can I ask you a favour?’ Helen said.

  ‘Course you can.’ Gloria stood up carefully so as not to wake Hope, who was now fast asleep.

  ‘Tell Dad I’ve not been getting his letters, but please tell him not to pick up the phone and have a rant at Mum.’ Gloria nodded. Helen clearly knew her dad well, as that would be the first thing he would want to do on finding out what Miriam had done.

  ‘I want to deal with this my way.’ She took a deep breath and opened the front door. ‘And, if it’s all right with you, can you ask him to send his letters here from now on?’

  ‘Of course,’ Gloria said. She wanted to say so much more, but she could see that there was no stopping Helen. ‘Drop by in a few days. I’ll try and speak to yer dad tomorrow, get him to send a letter straight away.’

  Suddenly, as Helen started to make her way up the steps, a thought occurred to Gloria.

  ‘Yer don’t want to give him a call yerself, do you? He’d be over the moon to hear from yer?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. He’d know something was wrong.’ She instinctively smoothed down her dress. She wasn’t showing, but it wouldn’t be long before she was.

  ‘He’s going to have to know.’ Gloria kept her voice soft.

  ‘I know,’ Helen said, ‘but not yet. I just need some more time.’

  And with that she turned and left.

  Gloria heard the sound of Helen’s high heels on the pavement as she hurried down the street.

  Chapter Six

  As soon as Helen reached the top of the steps she immediately turned right and started striding along the busy Borough Road. If she hadn’t felt so nauseous, she would have run, in spite of her two-inch-high Mary-Jane shoes.

  How could you?! How could you do something like this?! She wanted to scream at her mother – would, in fact, scream at her mother when she reached the Grand.

  Turning right into Frederick Street, Helen continued her march. By the time she had reached St Thomas’s Street, though, her energy levels were depleted and she had to stop and steady herself against an iron railing.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ The question came from an elderly, well-dressed gentleman who had been walking behind. He gently rested a hand on her back. Helen straightened and swallowed air as she found this stopped the dry retching and sometimes, but not always, prevented her from actually being sick.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Helen’s words were clipped, causing the man to remove his hand and carry on his way.

  Helen stood for a moment and waited for the nausea to pass. Looking across to the other side of the street, with its plush three-storey terraces that housed both families and businesses, she spotted the gleaming bronze plaque of the doctor’s surgery she had visited a week ago.

  She forced herself to carry on walking, away from the memory of that afternoon, away from the vivid recall of those twenty minutes she had spent in the doctor’s consultation room. Minutes that had forever altered the course of her life.

  She picked up her pace but knew it was pointless. She would never forget.

  After a hundred yards or so another wave of queasiness forced Helen to stop again. She took in a deep gulp of air. She could feel her heart beating fast and her legs felt shaky. A wave of anger rose up along with the bile that had reached the back of her throat.

  If her mother had not intercepted her father’s letters, she doubted very much she’d be in the hellish predicament in which she now found herself. She would have known that her father had not forsaken her for his new family – that he did still love her.

  And if she had known that, if she had been in contact with him, perhaps even gone and visited him in Glasgow, then there was a good chance she would not have become involved with Theodore.

  The reason she had flung herself so readily into Theo’s arms was because of her father’s perceived rejection of her. She had been so desperate for love. So desperate to escape her reality and leave behind everything she had ever known. Theo being Theo, had, of course, seen her neediness – her vulnerability – and taken full advantage of it.

  In many ways, just like her mother had.

  Both had only been concerned with their own needs.

  Neither had given two hoots about her.

  Well, no more, Helen told herself. No one would ever do that to her again. As long as she drew breath.

  As Helen reached Bridge Street, she stopped. She would have loved more than anything to have continued to stomp the few hundred yards to the Grand, to march through the foyer and up the first flight of stairs to where she knew her mother would be. But Helen knew she couldn’t. Not there, in such a public place. She couldn’t risk others hearing and knowing her business. She still had her self-respect, if nothing else.

  Having made her decision, Helen felt herself deflate as exhaustion took over.

  Seeing a tram squeal to a stop a few yards up the road, she dredged up her last bit of energy and hurried to catch it.

  It had become a habit since she had been forced to use public transport to go up to the top deck and look out at the Wear and observe the general hubbub of street life, but this evening she simply didn’t have it in her so she grabbed the first empty seat she saw. It was next to a woman about her mother’s age, who kept turning around to chat to her daughter and granddaughter in the seats behind. The happy family unit annoyed Helen instantly and she got up and moved to the back of the tram, next to an old man who smelled of stale sweat and tobacco. It was the lesser of two evils.

  Why couldn’t she have a mother like the one she could still see at the front of the tram?

  What normal mother, Helen kept asking herself, tries to keep a father and daughter apart?

  As the tram trundled along Dame Dorothy Street, she reran the awful scene in the Grand, where she had gone after finding out that not only was she pregnant, but that Theodore was married. But instead of being there for her in her hour of need, her mother had reviled and rejected her – had even slapped her in the face.

  Still, Helen mused bitterly, she really shouldn’t have been so surprised by her mother’s reaction. She had always been completely self-centred – devoid of any kind of love for anyone other than herself.

  As the tram slowed to a stop, Helen got off and walked the few hundred yards along the perimeter of Roker Park to her home on the corner of Park Avenue. It was a lovely evening, but all Helen wanted to do was get home and fall into bed.

  When Helen walked through the gate and saw the postbox at the bottom of the stone steps, she could have happily taken a sledgehammer to it – had she had the strength.

&n
bsp; She should have guessed. She should have thought it odd that her mother had, all of a sudden, become obsessed with the post. Helen wished, more than anything, that she hadn’t been so ready to believe her mother’s lies – that she’d had more faith in her father and hadn’t been so quick to believe that all he was bothered about was his lover and his new baby daughter.

  Putting the key in the front door and stepping onto the terracotta-tiled floor, Helen knew that her pregnancy was going to be the talk of the town. Jack Crawford’s daughter – Mr Havelock’s granddaughter – with a bun in the oven and no ring on her finger.

  And when that happened, her father really would not want to see her.

  What a mess.

  Chapter Seven

  Bel and Polly stood in the hallway.

  ‘If you can’t sleep, or you wake up in the middle of the night and want a bit of company, just come up and get me. All right?’ Bel told Polly as she gave her a big hug. She wished, more than anything, that she could somehow lessen her best friend’s heartache, but she knew she couldn’t. No one could.

  ‘I know nothing anyone says is going to make you feel any better, so I’m not going to say anything, other than I’m here for you – night or day. Especially night.’ Bel knew more than most that grief always struck the hardest when you were at your weakest and when you were most alone – usually around three o’clock in the morning. She had called it her ‘haunting hour’ when she had been in the throes of a deep and very angry depression after being given the news that her husband, Teddy, had been killed in action.

  ‘Thanks, Bel.’ Polly clung to her sister-in-law for a short while, before going into her bedroom and closing the door.

  She made it to the bed just as her body gave up and all her energy dissolved in one fell swoop.

  Grabbing the pillow, she pressed it against her face. It was all she could do to muffle her grief.

  Her whole body juddered as she silenced the sound of her heartbreak.

  Walking back into the kitchen, Bel was greeted by three tense and extremely sad faces. Agnes, Arthur and Joe were sitting around the kitchen table, their half-eaten suppers languishing on their plates. Even Tramp and Pup looked up at her with forlorn expressions from their spot by the hearth.

  ‘You’ll keep a good eye on her, pet, won’t yer?’ Arthur stood up and shuffled over to the sideboard, from where he retrieved a bottle of whisky. ‘You’ll tell us if there’s need fer worry?’ They all knew Arthur’s daughter had killed herself, unable to face life after her husband, Tommy’s father, had been killed in the First War. ‘Yer never knar what’s really gannin on inside of someone’s head.’

  ‘I will, Arthur.’ Bel forced a smile.

  Arthur put the bottle on the table and got out four glass tumblers.

  ‘Just put a splash in my cup,’ Agnes told Arthur as she went to top up the teapot.

  ‘Same for me too, please, Arthur,’ Bel said, pouring a little milk into her and Agnes’s cups.

  Arthur did as asked, before splashing good measures into two glasses and handing one to Joe.

  ‘Cheers, Arthur.’ Joe held up his glass, and waited for Agnes to add tea to the caramel-coloured swirl of milk and whisky.

  ‘May this war be won. And quickly,’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ Arthur nodded, taking a large gulp.

  No one needed to say anything, but it was Tommy they were really toasting. And the life they all believed had been lost.

  They sat quietly for a while.

  When Joe saw that Bel had finished her tea, he downed the rest of his Scotch.

  ‘Do yer fancy a little walk before I do my night shift?’ he asked.

  ‘That sounds nice,’ Bel said, pushing her chair back.

  Joe stood up and grabbed his walking stick.

  ‘See you all in a while,’ he said as Bel gave Arthur a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. She knew the old man didn’t like to be fussed over, but she felt for him. He and Tommy shared a special bond, closer even than most fathers and sons.

  Bel knew that his heart, along with Polly’s, must be breaking.

  ‘Mowbray Park?’ Joe suggested when they stepped out onto the pavement.

  Bel nodded, squinting against the evening sun that was still surprisingly radiant and hot.

  Joe took Bel’s hand as they walked down Tatham Street and turned left into Murton Street. The news that Tommy was missing had hit them all hard but in different ways. Joe’s thoughts had immediately gone to Teddy. There was not a day that went by when he didn’t think about his twin brother, although he had refused to mourn his death. War had given Joe a different perspective on life, and he’d been adamant that those who had murdered his brother would not have the added scalp of his grief.

  ‘You thinking about Ted?’ Joe asked Bel as they side-stepped an elderly woman who was on her hands and knees whitewashing her front doorstep.

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at Joe. ‘You?’

  Joe nodded.

  ‘Do you think Tommy’s dead?’ Bel asked.

  Again Joe nodded.

  ‘I reckon so.’

  Bel felt tears prick her eyes.

  When they reached the top of the street they turned the corner into Laura Street. Halfway down the road they both automatically looked to their right as they passed a house with a distinctive green door.

  ‘Remember?’ Joe asked.

  Bel nodded and smiled. It was the house where they had taken refuge in the middle of an air raid. They had been cooped up in the cupboard underneath the stairs for hours while the town’s Victoria Hall had been reduced to rubble just a few hundred yards up the road. As the bombs had devastated their town, Bel had opened up for the first time about the grief and the anger festering inside her about Teddy’s death. It was only then, after she had unburdened herself to her brother-in-law, that Bel had slowly started to climb out of the dank well of desolation that had held her captive. And as she had started to glimpse the light of life once again, her love for Joe had also blossomed.

  ‘Let’s walk up to the top of the park,’ Joe suggested.

  The adjoining Winter Gardens were a sorry sight, having been recently pockmarked with a forty-foot crater. The rest of the park, though, was still unspoilt and peaceful.

  ‘Why do I feel there’s a reason you wanted to go for a walk?’ Bel asked.

  Joe spotted a wooden bench and led them both to it.

  ‘You can read me like a book,’ he said. His words sounded jokey but his face looked serious.

  They sat down and Joe turned to Bel.

  ‘I feel there’s been something on yer mind this past week,’ he said gently. ‘Is there anything yer want to tell me? Anything yer want to talk about?’

  Bel sighed. ‘And you can also read me like a book.’

  ‘I just feel something’s bothering yer?’ Joe asked. ‘I wondered if it’s because yer’ve not managed to fall yet?’

  Bel squeezed Joe’s hand.

  ‘Well, there’s that.’ She looked at Joe’s big, rough hands. ‘It’s coming up to eight months since we got married …’ She didn’t need to say more.

  ‘Yer know,’ Joe said, turning his head to look at Bel, ‘I’m happy either way. I’d love to have a bab with yer, but it won’t be the end o’ the world if that never happens. I’ve got you ’n Lucille. I’m the luckiest man alive.’

  ‘I know,’ Bel said. ‘And I know I shouldn’t say this – I know that I should just be happy to have you and Lucille and the life we have, but it will feel like the end of the world to me if I can’t have any more children. I know that sounds selfish. Especially with what’s just happened to Polly … But there’s something inside of me that just craves another baby. I can’t help it.’

  Joe put his arm around Bel and pulled her close. ‘Yer know, I honestly think this is just a little glitch. And that this time next year yer’ll be as big as a barrel.’

  They both chuckled.

  ‘Oh, I hope so,’ Bel said.

  They both sat, mome
ntarily lost in their own thoughts, until a young mother walked past them, pushing a pram, a little parasol protecting her baby from the sun’s rays.

  ‘See, no escape,’ Bel laughed, and sat up so she was looking at Joe.

  ‘There was actually something I wanted to tell you,’ she said. ‘That’s been bothering me this past week. More than not falling pregnant.’

  ‘Go on,’ Joe encouraged.

  ‘You know how much I’ve been haranguing Ma to tell me about my real dad?’

  ‘Aye.’ Joe was now listening intently. He’d been out a lot this week with Major Black and the Home Guard, but he had noticed that Bel hadn’t been on Pearl’s back as much, if at all. In fact, the two had been almost nice to each other.

  ‘Well, when you were out last week, Ma came in from the pub between her shifts and said she wanted to go for a walk. Just the two of us. She had even arranged for Maisie to come and take Lucille up the town for a treat.’

  Joe nodded. ‘The new doll?’

  Bel nodded.

  ‘We walked all the way to Backhouse Park. We stopped outside one of the big posh houses.’ Bel paused. For a moment she was back there, walking along Glen Path, her ma fagging away, unusually nervous.

  Joe was looking intently at his wife. ‘And?’

  ‘And …’ Bel hesitated. ‘And that’s when Ma told me who my da was.’

  Joe could see Bel’s eyes had suddenly filled with what looked like anger.

  ‘Who?’ Joe asked.

  Bel decided to just come out and say it.

  ‘Charles Havelock.’

  ‘Mr Havelock? The Mr Havelock?’ Joe repeated.

  Bel nodded.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Joe’s face showed his confusion. ‘Did they have some sort of affair?’

  Bel didn’t answer.

  ‘God, last time I saw him at one of the ship launches he looked like he was on his last legs. He’s ancient. Must be twice yer ma’s age.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Bel said. ‘He is. Ma started work as a scullery maid for Mr and Mrs Havelock after she’d had Maisie and had her adopted out.’