A Christmas Wish for the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  ‘We’ll see,’ Helen said, equally confident.

  There was another explosion and they were quiet for a moment.

  ‘On a completely different topic,’ Helen said, ‘now that we’re both down here and being so honest and open with each other, I think it would be the perfect opportunity to talk about the elephant in the room.’

  Miriam looked round the small, dark basement.

  ‘What elephant?’ she laughed. ‘I don’t see any elephant.’

  They both jerked automatically on hearing another explosion.

  ‘Although it sounds like there’s a few stomping round out there.’ Miriam looked up at the basement ceiling.

  ‘The elephant being Father,’ Helen said. ‘And the fact that it is now totally ridiculous that you won’t allow him to come back here.’ Helen thought of Gloria and Hope. If her father was back home, he’d be with them now, making sure they were both safe. ‘I really think you have made your point – that you have made everyone suffer enough.’

  ‘Pfft!’ Miriam almost choked on her gin. ‘Suffer enough? They’re not suffering. Your father’s doing what he loves – only over the border – and I hardly think his bit on the side and his bastard are suffering. They’ve got a cosy little flat. She’s got a job which, by all accounts, is a decent wage, especially as she’s only got two mouths to feed. And she’s got shot of that husband of hers, although I think she was foolish to divorce him. Chances are he’ll die out there in the Arctic and if he does, she will have missed out on a nice payout.’

  ‘God, Mother, have you not a shred of humanity in you?’

  ‘I have humanity for those who deserve it,’ she said.

  There was another muffled explosion.

  Helen took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s wrong to keep a father from his daughter, and I don’t just mean Hope – I’m talking about myself. I don’t think you’ve ever once considered what it’s been like for me not having Dad here.’

  Miriam tutted. ‘Oh, you’re a big girl now, Helen. I’m sure you’ll survive.’

  Her comments were followed by the sound of another bomb hitting the town.

  They were quiet for a while.

  ‘The point is, Mother,’ Helen said, deciding to change track. She hadn’t really believed a call on her mother’s empathy would work; she should have known, you can’t play on something that doesn’t exist. ‘Even if you don’t care about anyone’s suffering other than your own, I still believe you need to allow Father to come back home – while you can still control the situation.’

  Miriam sat up. ‘What do you mean, “control the situation”?’

  ‘What I mean, Mother, is that the time might come when Angie’s mam leaves her husband and takes up with her young chap, and when Dorothy’s mother comes clean about her bigamy and works out some kind of a deal with the town’s magistrates. She’s got money – and “standing”. I can’t see her being hauled in front of the courts, or worse still, put in jail. And as for Martha, well, I’m getting to know her a little more of late, and I don’t think she would really give two hoots who knows what about the woman who gave birth to her.’ Helen was pleased with the plausibility of her argument. She was even convincing herself. ‘Use your head, Mother. People are going to start to wonder and ask why it is that Father is in Scotland while his family and workplace are here.’ Helen stared at her mother through the flickering darkness. ‘I’m sure you could come to some arrangement with Dad whereby he keeps his relationship with Gloria under wraps for a while. Do it gradually so it doesn’t cause a stir.’

  Miriam looked at her daughter and smiled.

  ‘Oh Helen, you really have no idea, do you?’

  Helen saw the coldness in her mother’s eyes – and something else that she couldn’t quite decipher.

  ‘This isn’t just about making your father suffer, or that woman and her brat. Or because I don’t want the scandal or the humiliation. This is about me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him in this town, never mind in his house, or working down the road. I’d banish him to the Outer Hebrides if I could, never mind just Glasgow. This is about me,’ Miriam repeated.

  ‘I don’t want to ever set eyes on your father ever again as long as I’m still drawing breath,’ she hissed.

  And that’s when Helen realised what she had seen in her mother’s cold blue eyes.

  Hurt.

  And it was a hurt that cut deep.

  ‘The Germans couldn’t have wished for a better night for it,’ Dr Eris said, looking at the full moon. She was standing with Dr Parker, staring at the glowing skies blanketing Sunderland town. The teardrops of orange flares would have seemed almost pretty as they sailed down onto the town like a snow flurry, had they not been followed by Hitler’s harbingers of death. There had been countless explosions and from where they were standing it looked as though the whole town was on fire.

  ‘I know,’ Dr Parker said, not attempting to disguise his anger.

  Dr Eris took his hand and squeezed it. They had talked quite a lot during the past week about the war and John had confessed to her that he felt frustrated that the Ministry of War had turned down his repeated requests to use his skills on the front line. She knew the ire she was hearing was partly caused by that, but also by the feeling of power-lessness that came hand in hand with every air raid.

  ‘Don’t be bitter,’ she said. ‘You’re saving lives here. And what’s more, you’re giving these men the hope of a future.’ Dr Eris had heard what a brilliant surgeon John was – how he had saved both lives and limbs, and that he was spending every spare minute he had researching advancements in prosthetics.

  ‘Do you know how many casualties are expected?’ Dr Eris asked.

  ‘No, we were just told to be on standby. We’re full to the brim, so I’ve given instructions to bring them here so they won’t have to worry about numbers.’

  ‘Dr Eris!’

  They both turned to see one of the nurses at the main entrance.

  ‘Coming, Nurse Howden!’ Dr Eris shouted back.

  She gently took hold of the lapels of Dr Parker’s white coat and kissed him on the lips. ‘Pop in for a cup of tea when you’ve patched everyone up, and don’t worry about the gossips. Let them have their fun.’ She looked into the distance at the sanguine skyline. ‘God only knows, we have to take it when we can.’

  Dr Parker nodded. He looked over at Nurse Howden, whose body language spoke her impatience.

  ‘You better go. I’ll see you later.’

  Looking back towards the town, Dr Parker’s thoughts naturally went to Helen.

  Providing she was in her basement, she’d be all right. And at this time of the morning she wouldn’t be anywhere else. Would she? All of a sudden, he felt a stab of jealousy that seemed to come out of nowhere.

  Perhaps that was why she hadn’t called him back. Too busy with someone else?

  He immediately reprimanded himself.

  How could he be jealous when he had just started seeing Claire?

  Noticing a vehicle’s headlights swing round off the main road and start up the long drive to the hospital’s entrance, Dr Parker flashed his torch to show them the way.

  When would he get it through his thick skull that he and Helen were simply friends?

  Chapter Thirteen

  The raid in the early hours of Monday morning lasted just under one hour and twenty minutes. The Heinkel bombers had first dropped flares, which, aided by an unusually bright full moon, had laid the town bare. They hit homes and factories, shops and shipyards, leaving scars that would remain on the landscape of the town for many years to come, and on the souls of those living there for ever.

  As soon as the all-clear sounded out, Martha was out of the front door. Mr and Mrs Perkins knew it was pointless trying to stop her. Wild horses wouldn’t prevent her from doing what she could to save lives. Seeing a fire engine heading down Villette Road, Martha followed it. In its wake came an ambulance, followed by an army truck that pulled over, its p
assenger door swinging open, signalling Martha to climb in.

  Passing a huge crater that looked at least thirty feet deep, the driver told Martha that was where a 1,000-kilo bomb had dropped, but amazingly no one had been hurt.

  A few minutes later the convoy arrived at the far end of Lodge Terrace, where a surface air raid shelter had once stood. Before the bombs had dropped, the communal shelter had been a substantial brick and concrete structure built to hold around forty people. Twenty-eight minutes after the sirens had sounded out and families had ensconced themselves inside, a 250-kilo bomb had hit. The walls had shattered, and the shelter had canted over to an angle of about fifteen degrees. Two women and a mother and her children had managed to scramble out and raise the alarm, but the rest of the men, women and children remained trapped inside.

  Martha, along with firefighters and other wardens, worked frantically to free those trapped, digging by the light of a nearby fire started by incendiaries. They lifted and heaved blocks of stone with their bare hands before some tools were scavenged from a garage down the road and used to aid their attempts at rescuing those inside.

  Shortly after Angie and Dorothy had got Mrs Kwiatkowski back to her flat, her phone rang.

  ‘You get it, Angela.’ She pointed a shaky finger at the black Bakelite. ‘I’ve a feeling it’ll be for you.’

  ‘Hello?’ Angie said, looking across at Dorothy, who was making a pot of tea.

  ‘Quentin!’

  Dorothy and Mrs Kwiatkowski looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘Yes, yes, we’re all fine,’ said Angie. ‘We’ve just got back to Mrs Kwiatkowski’s. Dor’s making us a brew.’

  She listened.

  ‘No, our street’s not been hit.’

  Another pause.

  ‘No, don’t worry, we’ll stay indoors.’ She looked over at Dorothy and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Anyway, what yer deeing up at this time?’ She glanced up at Mrs Kwiatkowski’s kitchen clock. ‘It’s quarter-past four in the morning, yer knar?’

  She listened intently.

  ‘Oh, I see, all right then, see yer next week.’

  She put the phone down just as Dorothy was putting a cup of tea into Mrs Kwiatkowski’s hands.

  ‘How’s lover boy?’ Dorothy asked.

  ‘I wish yer would stop calling him that, Dor, it’s starting to really get on my wick.’ She glowered at Dorothy who was adding a heaped spoon of sugar into Mrs Kwiatkowski’s tea.

  ‘He wanted to know if we were all OK.’ She cocked her head over at Mrs Kwiatkowski, whose hands were still shaking slightly.

  ‘Mmm,’ Dorothy said, taking the old woman her cup.

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ Mrs Kwiatkowski said. ‘That boy works too hard,’ she suddenly declared, before taking a sip of her tea.

  ‘How did he know about the raid?’ Dorothy asked, putting the tea cosy on the kettle and the milk back into the little refrigerator.

  ‘Said he was working late,’ Angie said, picking up both of their gas masks, ‘and that it came “down the wires”.’

  Dorothy gave another ‘Mmm,’ before bobbing down next to their elderly neighbour. ‘We’ll come and check on you in about half an hour, all right?’

  ‘Be careful. The pair of you!’ Mrs Kwiatkowski raised her voice.

  ‘We will,’ Angie reassured.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ Dorothy said, as they hurried out the flat.

  Five minutes after heading back up to their own flat, they’d changed into their work overalls and were clomping across the cobbles to check that Gloria’s flat was still standing, and then along to Tatham Street, which, they were relieved to see, had also escaped the bombs. Walking into the town centre, Dorothy made a joke that it was a good job the museum hadn’t been hit as Angie would still get to meet the ‘old masters’, but her attempt at humour fell on deaf ears.

  As they turned the corner into Fawcett Street, they saw that a bomb had been dropped into the empty shell of the already blitzed Binns – once the town’s most exclusive store. Dorothy looked at where she had once worked as a sales assistant in the china department. The world they now inhabited couldn’t be any more different.

  Stopping an exhausted-looking fire warden heading towards Holmeside, Dorothy asked which streets had been hit. Feeling reassured that the rest of those they knew and loved were all right, they headed back home, where they found Mrs Kwiatkowski fast asleep in her chair, still clutching her cup of tea.

  Relieved the air raid was over, everyone hurried back to Tatham Street, all apart from Pearl, who idled behind, making the excuse that she wanted to have a fag and get some fresh air, which Bel told her was a complete contradiction in terms.

  As she watched her daughter walk on ahead with Agnes on one side and Joe carrying Lucille on the other, Pearl once again thought about the conversation she had overheard the other night between her daughter and Agnes – and, again, about her recent discovery that Henrietta was not only still alive, but incarcerated in the local nuthouse.

  She wondered, not for the first time, about Henrietta’s real reason for giving her a job when it had been made clear by Eddy the butler that none were available. He’d made a point of telling Henrietta that they had just replaced the last girl who had got herself in the family way and already had more staff than they needed. Had it simply been because a pitiful-looking Pearl had reminded Henrietta of her own daughters, or her beloved Hans Christian Andersen character – or was it something more sinister? Had Henrietta known about everything that had happened to her after stepping over the polished-brass threshold of the house on Glen Path? Or had she been oblivious to it all?

  ‘Careful there, Mr Havelock.’ Eddy took the old man’s arm and helped him up the last few steps out of the cellar and into the main kitchen.

  ‘I’m fine!’ Mr Havelock grumbled. ‘You’re my butler, not my damned nurse!’

  Eddy had to bite his tongue. He was just about anything the master wanted him to be at any given moment in time.

  ‘Do you want a hot drink?’ Agatha asked as they all finally made it out of the cellar and into the kitchen. They all stood, taking a moment to get their breath back.

  Mr Havelock ignored the housekeeper and shuffled out of the kitchen, shouting over his shoulder, ‘I’ll have a brandy, Eddy. In the office. Quick as you like.’

  He was angry that he felt so tired and his body so stiff after being cramped up for the past hour and a half. Dropping down into the leather seat of his chair, he leant forward and snatched up the phone. Dialling a number that he knew off pat, he cleared his voice and waited, hoping that no one would answer. He cursed under his breath when he heard the click of the phone being picked up. The place was still standing.

  ‘Good morning, this is the Sunderland Borough Asylum, how can I help you?’ The elderly voice sounded tired but still completely professional.

  ‘Ah, Genevieve? Is that you?’ The old man pressed the receiver to his ear; lately even his damned hearing seemed to be failing him.

  ‘It is … Is this Mr Havelock?’

  ‘It is, Genevieve,’ Mr Havelock barked down the phone. ‘So glad to hear you’re all right and have survived this damnable raid. I’m praying that the asylum is still in one piece?’ There was still a shred of hope that part of the place might have taken a hit.

  He listened, clenching his hand in frustration.

  ‘Good, good. As long as everyone’s all right?’

  Hearing Eddy knock lightly on the office door, he bellowed across the room, ‘Come in!’

  He returned his attention to the handset. ‘My apologies, Genevieve. What were you just saying?’

  He listened, pointing to the spot on his desk where he wanted Eddy to put his large glass of brandy.

  ‘What? The colliery got hit?’ Mr Havelock again shouted down the phone.

  He looked up at Eddy, who was waiting to be dismissed. Mr Havelock shooed him away as one might dismiss a tire-some child.

  ‘Any casualties?’ Another bark.


  He listened.

  ‘Just the one? Still – one too many.’ He uttered the words expected in such a situation.

  ‘Well, Genevieve, call me when you get his name and I’ll make sure the poor chap’s family can give him a decent burial.’

  Mr Havelock listened as the old receptionist said what she knew would be expected in the light of such generosity, before hanging up.

  Sipping on his brandy, Mr Havelock looked down at his desk. Seeing the small business card embossed with the words The Ashbrooke Gentlemen’s Club, he allowed himself a smile. He had heard extremely positive feedback about the place. As most of his friends were either six foot under or incapable, with Dr Billingham in tow he wouldn’t have to patronise the place on his own.

  At least there was something to look forward to, even if Jerry couldn’t manage to drop a bomb on the one place that, if obliterated, would relieve him of a burden that had been dragging at his heels for what felt like an eternity.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘I could just go to Lily’s for breakfast and then go to school from there,’ Charlotte argued as they were walking up Tunstall Vale. They were passing the turn into West Lawn.

  ‘No, not without giving Lily notice. That’s not fair. Or good manners,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think Lily would mind,’ Charlotte persevered.

  Rosie sighed as they crossed the road and continued along the Cloisters. She doubted very much whether Lily would either.

  Turning left onto Stockton Road, Rosie wondered how best to deal with Charlotte’s insecurity. This morning when she had begged to come to work with her, she hadn’t had the heart to make her stay at home, even though it made no logical sense for her to trail all the way to Thompson’s, only to troop all the way back half an hour later.

  They both slowed their pace on seeing a huge mound of plaster, bricks and timber where there had once been a row of half a dozen houses in a smart residential area known as George’s Square. Standing next to a huge crater that must have been almost a hundred feet wide, there was a young woman taking photographs. She had her camera pointed at a tree near to the bomb site. A woman’s blouse and other clothing from one of the bombed houses had been blown high into the air and were hanging, fluttering forlornly in the breeze, from the branches.