A Christmas Wish for the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  ‘Georgina?’ Rosie grabbed Charlotte’s arm, checked for traffic and hurried across the road.

  Turning round and seeing who was calling her name, Georgina’s face broke into a sad smile.

  ‘Rosie … Charlie!’

  She walked over to them, pushing her boxed-up gas mask and slinging her camera over her shoulder.

  She hugged them both.

  ‘Isn’t it awful?’ She looked over at the mound of rubble and the remaining shells of houses that were still standing. These were the homes that Rosie had passed most days when she had lived in a bedsit further down the road in Cowan Terrace.

  ‘It is,’ Rosie agreed.

  ‘Six dead,’ Georgina said, tears in her eyes. ‘More than a dozen injured.’

  ‘Charlie, this is my old friend I told you about?’

  ‘The one who knew Mam?’ Charlotte looked at her sister and then at Georgina.

  ‘That’s right,’ Georgina said with a smile. ‘Our mams used to meet for coffee. She used to mention you. Said you were a right terror.’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘Are you a photographer?’ she asked, looking down at the small camera that was hanging from a strap round her neck.

  Georgina held up her little Brownie ‘No, no, I guess it’s more of a hobby. It might seem a little morbid, but I just felt that I had to capture the dreadfulness of all this death and destruction. I don’t know why.’

  ‘So that we’ll never forget,’ Charlotte said.

  Georgina looked at Rosie’s little sister and gave her the saddest of smiles.

  ‘Perhaps that’s it, Charlie. Perhaps that’s why.’

  They all stared for a moment at the smouldering ruins. A young woman and her son were picking through bricks and mortar. A plume of smoke from one of the fires that had sprung up from the ruins and which firefighters had yet to extinguish billowed around them.

  ‘One of the wardens I was talking to said it was bad all over,’ Georgina said, glancing across at Rosie.

  ‘I know. My neighbour’s husband was just coming back when we were leaving. He said there’d been three communal shelters hit.’

  ‘Three?’ Georgina asked, shocked.

  Rosie nodded solemnly. ‘Bromarsh, Bonnersfield and Lodge Terrace. Sounds like quite a few didn’t make it out.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We’d better get off.’

  ‘You taking Charlie to work?’ Georgina asked.

  ‘Just until school starts,’ Rosie said.

  ‘That seems a bit of a haul,’ Georgina said. ‘You’ll be turning around and coming back as soon as you make it there.’

  Neither Rosie nor Charlotte said anything.

  ‘Why don’t you stay with me, Charlie, until it’s time to go? You can take a few photos if you like?’

  Charlotte’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Can I?’

  Rosie looked at Georgina. ‘Are you sure? You not got any books to balance or accounts to audit?’

  Georgina felt her cheeks flush and hoped it wasn’t noticeable. She had lied about what she did for a living. She’d had no choice. There was no way Rosie, or any of her squad, could know what kind of work she really did.

  ‘No,’ Georgina said, shaking her head, ‘bookkeeping jobs are pretty scant at the moment.’ She looked at Charlotte and smiled. ‘Anyway, it’ll be nice to have some company.’

  Rosie mouthed ‘Thank you’, making sure her sister couldn’t see, before asking, ‘Why don’t you come round to ours for some tea? I should be back by half six.’

  ‘She can come earlier,’ Charlotte suggested. ‘Can’t she?’ She gave Rosie a pleading look. ‘I’ll be there. We could go and get some fish and chips for when you get back?’

  Rosie looked at Georgina.

  ‘Sounds like a perfect plan,’ Georgina agreed. ‘I can meet you after school if you want, Charlie? Help you with any homework?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Charlotte was over the moon.

  As was Rosie.

  Gloria had the receiver jammed between her shoulder and her ear. Hope had her legs wrapped around her mammy’s waist and her hands clasped around her neck. Her head kept bobbing forwards as she lapsed back into the land of Nod. Gloria tried to turn away from the impatient glares, but it was hard to move. There was barely room to breathe. The telephone box, she thought, had been appropriately named.

  ‘Yes, Jack, we’re both fine,’ Gloria reassured. She looked through the glass panel, her vision marred by the criss-cross of anti-blast tape. The queue was getting longer. Everyone was wanting to do exactly what she was doing now and, by the looks of it, feeling the same – tired and impatient.

  ‘Yes, it was a bad one, but nothing’s going to happen to me ’n yer little girl. We were out the door ’n into that shelter faster than a bolt of lightning.’ Gloria tried to sound jovial but didn’t succeed. She was shattered. She had been up half the night with the air raid, and on top of that Hope had developed a cough that had kept her up for the rest of it.

  ‘I’ll see if I can get her to say hello.’

  Gloria jigged Hope round so that she was on her hip.

  ‘Say hello to Daddy, sweetheart.’ Gloria held the speaker up to her daughter and nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Dadda,’ Hope said, her face creasing up with laughter as though this was some game, but the laughing soon turned into a coughing fit.

  Gloria put the receiver back to her ear.

  ‘Yes, she’s fine, Jack. Just a bit of a cold. It’s going around at the moment.’

  Hope continued to cough.

  Gloria caught sight of a man in the queue raising his wrist and prodding his finger at his watch.

  ‘I’d better go. Just wanted you to know we’re all right.’

  The pips went just as Jack was telling them both how much he loved them.

  Forty minutes later, having dropped Hope off at the Elliots’ and been crushed on the ferry across the Wear, Gloria stood with Rosie, Dorothy, Angie and Polly, looking at SS Denewood. Or rather, what they could still see of Denewood. Her top deck and funnel were visible, but most of her hull was submerged.

  ‘I think I’d feel like crying if I wasn’t so angry,’ Dorothy said.

  ‘You ’n me both,’ Gloria agreed.

  ‘They’ll be able to refloat her,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Aye, but it’s not just gonna be bullet holes we’ll be welding this time, will it?’ Angie said.

  ‘Helen said a parachute mine landed on her,’ Polly added. She had dropped off her bag in the office before going to see her old squad.

  ‘Hi everyone!’

  They looked behind to see Hannah and Olly approaching.

  ‘Martha’s not coming in today,’ Hannah told Rosie.

  ‘She all right?’ Gloria asked. Everyone was staring at Hannah.

  ‘Yes … she’s fine,’ she replied.

  ‘Martha’s been up all night,’ Olly said, pushing back his fair hair. ‘Mrs Perkins told us she’ll be back tomorrow, but she needs to rest today. She’s been at Lodge Terrace until the early hours of the morning.’

  They were all quiet, having heard the heartbreaking news about those who had died.

  ‘We’ll gan ’n see her after work,’ Angie said, looking at Dorothy, who nodded.

  ‘We’ll come too,’ said Hannah. ‘Come and get us before you leave.’

  ‘I heard there was damage to the drawing office?’ Rosie asked.

  Olly nodded.

  ‘And the platers’ shed,’ Hannah added.

  Polly sighed. ‘Looks like half the yard’s taken a bashing.’

  They all looked back at Denewood.

  ‘The Chinese Prince has also taken a hit,’ Rosie said.

  Everyone groaned.

  ‘All our hard work, just wiped out in the space of a bleedin’ hour!’ Angie’s voice was full of fury.

  ‘No, it hasn’t been,’ Rosie said, looking along the row of forlorn faces. ‘It’s just a temporary setback. Like Polly says, they’ll be able to refloat Denewood, and Chinese Prince wil
l probably just need a bit of a patch-up here and there. She’s still on the river, not under it. The damage can’t be that bad.’

  She inspected her squad.

  ‘We’re just going to carry on doing what we do, all right?’

  The women looked at Rosie as though she was their commander, which, in a way, she was.

  ‘All right,’ they all agreed, albeit rather wearily.

  ‘Terry’s just told me the last count at Lodge Terrace was thirteen dead, and at least ten badly hurt,’ Marie-Anne said as she sat down at her desk and fed paper into her typewriter.

  Bel shook her head.

  ‘There aren’t words,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I think it’s a disgrace,’ Marie-Anne said, clearly able to find the words. ‘My dad’s always saying he can never understand why they didn’t build all of the communal shelters underground.’ She started typing away on her Remington. ‘“Disaster waiting to happen”, he’s always said. And now that disaster has happened.’

  Bel shot Marie-Anne a look and fed into her own typewriter sheets of both plain and carbon paper.

  ‘They would have been better staying at home,’ Marie-Anne added.

  Bel started to type, but stopped. She gave Marie-Anne a black look.

  ‘Well, what about the three people killed in the Bromarsh shelter – and the family of five who didn’t make it out of the one in Bonnersfield? They were both below ground,’ she said testily before starting to bash away on her typewriter.

  After a pause she stopped typing and stood up. ‘Do you want a cuppa?’

  Marie-Anne nodded.

  Bel turned to walk away but stopped and turned back to look at Marie-Anne.

  ‘The thing is, Marie-Anne, it’s all right you and your dad spouting off about whether it was a good idea to build shelters above ground, but that’s not the point. It’s Jerry’s fault – no one else’s.’

  Bel turned on her heel and stomped over to the little kitchenette.

  Marie-Anne hoped no one else was there – the mood Bel was in she’d pick a fight with a feather. They were all upset about the bombings, but she felt Bel’s bad mood wasn’t just about the air raid. If she had to take a bet, she’d say it had to do with her monthlies – and the fact she was still getting them. She’d married Joe a year and a half ago and her stomach was still as flat as a pancake.

  When Harold told Helen that two bombs and a load of fire-pots had landed in Ryhope Colliery, she breathed a sigh of relief that both the asylum and the hospital had escaped unscathed. She was saddened to hear a sixty-year-old fire watcher had been killed, but knew that if the hospitals were unharmed then John would be too.

  It still didn’t stop her from wanting to call him. She was just about to pick up the phone – John, she argued, was still her friend, after all – when it rang.

  ‘Miss Crawford? Miss Helen Crawford?’

  ‘Yes, this is Miss Crawford speaking, although if you had let me answer the phone properly in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to ask.’

  Her ill humour was met by a hoot of laughter down the phone.

  ‘Ah, Miss Crawford! Lovely to hear your dulcet tones. It’s Matthew Royce speaking.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Royce. How can I help you?’

  ‘Well, there’s been a bit of a shout-out to all the local businessmen and –’ he added quickly ‘– businesswomen to attend this evening’s variety performance at the Empire Theatre. The old gal got a bit of a battering last night but not enough to keep her down. Or rather, to keep the curtain down. The manager has just rung to ask if I can give him a hand in getting bums on seats – show Jerry we won’t be beaten. Send out a clear message, you know – the show must go on and all of that.’ There was a moment’s silence before Helen spoke.

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Seven for pre-show drinks. Seven thirty curtains up.’

  Helen hung up, leaving Matthew listening to the disconnect tone, a smile on his face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  For the rest of the week Rosie’s squad and just about every other man and woman in the town’s nine shipyards worked until they dropped, their hearts growing heavier as the number of those killed in the bombing climbed. The final count told of eighty-three dead, with a hundred and nine injured.

  Hearing about the children who had been killed – and the sight of several small coffins being transported to church in the traditional black horse-drawn carriages – caused even the most hardened of hearts to break. But if Hitler thought he could beat into submission the people who lived and worked in the biggest shipbuilding town in the world, he was wrong. If anything, the deaths of the innocents simply made the townsfolk’s determination stronger still, their resolution that they would not be beaten even greater. The whole town pulled together, helping in whatever way they could. Workers toiled round the clock to reconnect electricity and gas supplies, as well as repair damaged sewers and water supplies. As three and a half thousand people had been made homeless, rest centres were set up to give them temporary shelter at least; mobile canteens and a dozen emergency feeding centres were also put into operation.

  A number of schools, churches, chapels, theatres, cinemas, shops and businesses were closed until repair work could be carried out.

  Two mortuaries were opened to deal with the dead.

  Shipbuilders in the south docks worked flat out to repair the two ships that had been hit, and workers at the North Eastern Marine Engineering plant repaired the Hudson and Hendon docks.

  As Rosie had forecast, the Chinese Prince hadn’t been too badly damaged. When they had done what they could, they moved on to help with Denewood. Riveters, platers and welders worked together to get her back on her feet and ready for her sea trials. It freed up the other welders to work on Caxton, a screw steamer that had mercifully escaped with barely a scratch and was scheduled to be launched the following week.

  In Tatham Street, Agnes and Beryl were taking in even more children for those mothers who needed, and wanted, to do overtime. The two adjoining houses were bursting at the seams. Agnes surprised everyone who knew her by getting her husband Harry’s First War Military Medal out of her bedside cabinet and putting it on display on the mantelpiece, next to the framed photograph of Teddy in his Desert Rat uniform. She even let the children who turned her house into bedlam between the hours of eight and five hold it and rub it in their hands.

  Meanwhile, Joe and his Home Guard unit were working round the clock to help any which way they could; Vera and Rina were filling up workers’ flasks for free to show their support; Mr and Mrs Perkins invited Dorothy and Angie back for a meal every day, knowing they wouldn’t have the energy to cook themselves anything decent when they got in from the ten-hour shifts they were pulling; and Kate had hung a notice in the window of the Maison Nouvelle telling those in need of clothing to come and see her. She put all her paid-for orders on hold, so that those who had been bombed out could at least clothe themselves and their children. As demand outstripped her supply, she asked her more affluent customers to donate any unwanted items. Helen dropped off two boxes of clothes, as well as suits and shirts her father had left behind, plus a few of her mother’s skirts and blouses that she knew Miriam wouldn’t miss.

  Despite the madness of work and the long hours, Helen still found herself thinking of John. A few times she picked up the phone to call him but stopped herself.

  ‘If he wanted to speak to me, or see me, he’d call,’ she told Bel. ‘It’s obvious he’s too busy with Claire to spare me the time.’

  ‘And work – he’ll be busy with work,’ Bel countered. Everyone knew all the hospitals were run off their feet.

  ‘No,’ Helen waved away Bel’s argument, ‘it’s like the good Dr Eris said that awful afternoon outside the asylum: “You know what it’s like at the start, you just want to be with each other every minute of every day”. Those who are just friends have to take a back seat.’

  ‘But it’s like you said,’ Bel reminded Helen, ‘that’s only until th
e “shine’s worn off”.’

  ‘Ha!’ Helen laughed bitterly. ‘I only said that to be a cow. Make her paranoid.’

  ‘You’re not going to fight for him then?’ Bel asked.

  Helen shook her head. ‘No, it’d be a fight I could never win.’

  Bel looked at Helen. She was surprised how defeatist she was being. When Helen had wanted Tommy, she’d gone all out to get him. Talk about dirty tricks. Helen had thrown the lot into the pot to get Tommy. Lies, manipulation – she’d even spread false rumours that Polly had gone off with some plater. Bel was only just getting to know Helen, but still, she thought, she had changed a lot these past few years. Mind you, hadn’t they all?

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t give up,’ Bel said. ‘Not if you love him, which I think you do?’

  Helen sighed.

  ‘I wish I didn’t. No one tells you how much love can hurt.’

  The women tried to keep up their ‘lessons’ in current affairs, although it was generally only Polly who remembered to buy a national newspaper, usually the Daily Mirror as it had always been Arthur’s favourite. Marie-Anne brought in the Sunderland Echo to keep abreast of events closer to home and had been particularly excited to see a photograph of Helen with Mr Royce Jnr at the Empire on Monday evening; she’d immediately rung Dahlia, who used the conversation as an opportunity to quiz Marie-Anne about Miss Crawford’s commitments over the next few weeks.

  They weren’t the only ones to see the photo and the article. Dr Eris had also seen it and made sure that a copy of the paper, open at the pertinent page, found its way into the staffroom over at the Ryhope.

  Mr Havelock and Miriam were also taking up column inches – much to Bel’s annoyance. Both impeccably dressed, they were pictured handing over a cheque to the children’s hospital in town, which had been damaged in the recent raids.

  When Polly read out an article reporting that the government was now allowing church bells to be rung for any purpose, the women’s reaction was lukewarm. The bells had initially been silenced so that they could act as an alarm should the country be invaded. Everyone should have been joyful – the government clearly no longer feared a German invasion. But the news didn’t bring quite the reaction that it might have done as, with the number of funerals taking place across the borough, the bells seemed more like death knells.