Victory for the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  Shutting the door behind him, Sergeant Searle walked over to the Major, saluted and held out an envelope to his superior officer.

  ‘Update, Commander, on Circuit White Light.’

  Major de Wesselow tensed. Taking the proffered message, he put on his spectacles and sat down.

  His face remained expressionless as he read:

  Circuit White Light. Disbanded due to enemy infiltration. Five members captured. Whereabouts as yet unknown.

  One killed. As yet identity unknown.

  Two escapees. Believed to have made it to the unoccupied zone. Again, no information available regarding identities.

  The Major looked up at Sergeant Searle, his arms straight by his sides, at attention, awaiting his orders.

  ‘As soon as we have names, I want to be informed. Night or day. Then you can inform next of kin.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Sergeant Searle saluted, then turned and left the room.

  Neither man needed to say more. Both hearts were heavy. And seemed to be getting heavier with each passing week.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The front door slammed shut.

  ‘Isabelle!’

  Bel stopped what she was doing, surprised to hear that her ma was back home so early. She normally kept out of the way between her afternoon and evening shifts at the pub.

  ‘I’m in the scullery, Ma!’ she shouted back.

  Bel could hear her mother’s footsteps down the hallway and then saw her appear at the doorway to the kitchen. Tramp and Pup went to greet her, but she ignored them as they sniffed around her feet and wagged their tails in expectation of either food or love.

  Bel took her hands out of the sink where she was peeling potatoes for the hotpot Agnes was going to make when she got back from Beryl’s. Aggie’s nursery had more or less moved permanently next door. Beryl had said it made sense as Iris and Audrey were now working full time, which meant the house was empty during the day – whereas there were people coming and going all the time at Agnes’s, and they had been taking in so much washing of late that everywhere you moved there were piles of laundry.

  ‘You’re back early?’ Bel dried her hands and walked into the kitchen, causing Tramp and Pup to try their chances with her.

  ‘Aye, I am.’ Pearl did not move from the doorway.

  Bel stared at her ma, who, she thought, seemed uncannily subdued.

  ‘You all right there, Ma? Did you want something?’ Bel reckoned she was on the beg as normally she would have simply snuck off to her room, changed quickly and gone back out without anyone being any the wiser. Bel went to check on Hope, who was starting to get restless in her cot. When she looked back, she caught her ma looking at her watch.

  ‘You waiting for someone?’

  Pearl ignored the question, and instead told her daughter, ‘Me and you’s going for a walk.’

  Bel was in the middle of picking up Hope; she stopped dead and stared at her mother, a puzzled expression on her face.

  ‘Are we now?’ Bel laughed a little incredulously. ‘“Me and you” going for a walk?’

  ‘Aye. And no bairns.’ Pearl looked at Hope and then out the kitchen window at Lucille, who was playing hopscotch in the backyard.

  As if sensing she was being watched, Lucille looked up from the number ten square she had just hopped onto and saw her nana through the window. She immediately abandoned her game, and seconds later was bustling through the back door.

  ‘Nana!’ she shouted. ‘Hopscotch!’

  Pearl laughed, which, in turn, started off her smoker’s cough. ‘I’m too auld for all that kind of malarkey, pet. Anyways,’ she told her granddaughter, ‘me and yer mam’s gannin’ out fer a walk.’

  ‘Me come too!’ Lucille demanded.

  ‘Sorry, pet, not today. Another time. Yer nana needs to have a good chatter to yer mammy.’

  Bel looked at her ma and that was when the penny dropped. And as it did so, butterflies started fluttering around in her stomach. She took Hope into the scullery and started to fill her bottle. The house felt quiet; the air tense and full of expectation.

  The stillness was broken by the sound of the front door clashing open.

  ‘About bloody time as well!’ Pearl exclaimed as soon as Polly and Gloria appeared. They both stood and gawped at an unusually serious-looking Pearl. Polly could feel her hackles rise – an effect Pearl regularly had on her.

  ‘I didn’t know we were expected back for anything?’ Polly said as she and Gloria walked down the hallway, edging round the Silver Cross and then past Pearl, who had moved out of the doorway to let them through to the kitchen. Just then Bel came out of the scullery with Hope in her arms.

  ‘There we go,’ she said, waving a freshly made-up bottle of milk at Gloria. ‘One bottle and one happy little baby girl. In fact,’ she said as she handed Hope over, ‘she was just telling me how much she was dying to see her mammy.’ Hope gurgled as if agreeing with Bel.

  ‘Ah, thanks, Bel. Have I told you you’re a real star?’ Gloria said, looking down at Hope all wrapped up and ready for the journey back home.

  Bel smiled. ‘Just a few dozen times.’

  ‘So, Pearl,’ Polly had her hands on her hips, ‘what’s all this it’s “about bloody time”?’

  Pearl bobbed down to fetch her handbag from under the kitchen table, ignoring Polly’s question.

  ‘Ma wants me and her to go on a little walk,’ Bel answered instead, her eyebrows arching and her big blue eyes widening as she looked from Polly to Gloria. They both returned similarly perplexed looks.

  ‘I can see yer all making faces,’ Pearl said, her head swinging back up, her hand clasped around her handbag. ‘I’ve told yer before – eyes in the back o’ ma head.’

  ‘Well, I’d better get myself off,’ Gloria said, aware of the strained atmosphere.

  ‘Let me see you out,’ Bel said, as she slipped through to the hallway and opened the front door while Gloria got Hope settled in her pram.

  ‘Thanks again, Bel,’ Gloria said as she bumped the Silver Cross down the front step. ‘See ya tomorrow.’

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ Bel said, but just as she was about to shut the door, she spotted Maisie hurrying down the street.

  ‘Maisie!’ Bel said, surprised. ‘Everything all right?’

  Maisie gave her a light kiss on both cheeks. ‘Can I not come and see my gorgeous little niece when I fancy?’ As if on cue, Lucille, who had heard her aunty’s distinctively genteel-sounding voice from the kitchen, came running down the hallway.

  ‘’Aisiee!’ she cried out excitedly as Maisie bent down and hauled her up into the air. ‘Gosh, this little girl seems to be getting bigger by the day!’ she exclaimed, giving Lucille a tickle and making her squeal even louder.

  Bel watched as Maisie walked down the hallway and into the kitchen with Lucille on her hip, chatting away to her little niece. Following her, Bel felt a sudden nervousness. She was pretty sure why her ma wanted to go out – and it looked like a degree of forethought had gone into it, since Maisie had clearly been asked to act as babysitter.

  Five minutes later, Maisie had got Lucille ready and the pair headed off up to the town. Bel shouted to Maisie not to spoil Lucille, but her sister and her daughter pretended not to hear.

  Bel grabbed her gas mask as well as Pearl’s, since her mother was doing her usual last-minute search for fags. After going upstairs to her room she found a spare packet she had stashed away, and finally they both left for their ‘walk’.

  Polly stood on the front doorstep and waved them both off. She had a good idea what was going on, and just hoped, for her sister-in-law’s sake, it all went well.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Pearl hadn’t realised she was with child until she was well into her pregnancy. She bled lightly on and off for months after the rape and had actually felt relieved, believing that she was having her monthlies. It wasn’t until she went to see the old woman, thinking she had something bad growing inside her belly, that she was told
she was with child. She would never forget her disbelief – had actually refused to believe it for a while afterwards. Until, that was, she felt the baby move. Only then did she finally accept that she was in the family way.

  Over the next few months she worked like a Trojan, doing any kind of labouring work she could find, keeping her bump well concealed, which hadn’t been too hard as she was not particularly big. Not like when she had blossomed with baby Maisie and the girls at the maternity home had joked she was as wide as she was tall and that if they pushed her over she’d just roll away.

  Everything about this pregnancy was different. Even her boobs didn’t get particularly big. A part of Pearl felt, or perhaps it was more a question of hoped, that this baby wouldn’t go full term – that all the pushing and pulling she did during her stints at the ropery or the glass factory would somehow prove too much for the little mite inside of her. But it wasn’t, and her baby was born just as it had been conceived – in the direst of circumstances. Pearl knew she had nearly died – was amazed she hadn’t when she saw the amount of blood she had lost. But somehow, regrettably, she did not.

  It took her weeks to name her second child – unlike with Maisie, whose name she had decided upon weeks, if not months, before her birth, knowing instinctively she was going to have a girl. This time she only did so when she went to register the birth, and only chose Isabelle when it was suggested to her by the clerk, who had become impatient at Pearl’s indecision.

  Pearl had considered having Isabelle adopted out, but after what she had gone through with Maisie she knew she couldn’t. The old fishwife who had sewn her up after Isabelle’s birth had told her she wouldn’t be having any more children. Perhaps that went some way towards her decision to keep her baby, she wasn’t quite sure.

  And so, aged just sixteen, Pearl became a single parent to an illegitimate baby girl. She never experienced the joy of motherhood, that feeling of falling in love she’d had after giving birth to Maisie, but worse still, in place of what should have been maternal happiness, was anger.

  Anger that a man had forced himself on her, and that she had now been forced to have his child.

  Anger that she had lost all control over her body, and also her life.

  Anger and hatred became her constant companions.

  Hatred for Charles. A monster who had taken what he wanted.

  And anger towards herself for being so bloody blind. For being oblivious to what had really been going on in that house in Glen Path. She had been so wrapped up in her grief over Maisie that she had not seen what was happening in front of her very eyes. She should have read the warning signs. The change in atmosphere whenever it was announced that the master was coming back home; Velma’s initial warnings to ‘keep out of the master’s way’, and her attempts during Charles’s visit at Easter to keep her downstairs.

  Of course, Pearl now realised bitterly, there was no dying aunt to whom little Annie had had to go and pay her last respects. Annie had obviously found herself prey to Charles’s perverted sexual needs when he had visited the previous Christmas. Had Pearl been the only person in the house not to realise that?

  The more Pearl kept replaying her time under Henrietta’s employ, the more her anger spread to the rest of the mistress’s ‘cavalry’. Why had no one warned her? And then, of course, there was the question of Henrietta’s culpability. Did she know what her husband was doing? She wondered if Henrietta had purposely chosen her because she knew of her husband’s predilection for young – very young – blonde girls. Or whether she was so off her rocker that she didn’t have any idea about what was happening under her own roof. Pearl recalled the mention of a previous maid who had got herself in the family way. Was that baby also Charles’s? Which begged the question, how many other bastards had he sired in the town during his lifetime? For Pearl was fairly sure she was not the first, and nor would she be the last, to be left with a permanent reminder of the violence that man enjoyed inflicting.

  Pearl would never know. What she did know, though, was that any chance she might have had for a normal life had now been destroyed. Who would want her with the encumbrance of a bastard child? Pearl might be a looker, but she was no catch.

  The ultimate nail in the coffin was the fact that even if she did manage to find a fella to love her and marry her, she would not then be able to give that man his own family. And as much as Pearl could be a pretty tough nut when necessary, she knew she could never be so cold and calculating as to lie and pretend that she could bear any future suitor a son or daughter.

  As Isabelle grew older, the more she looked like Charles. She had the same nose, the same pale skin, slim build and blonde, slightly curly hair. It was a constant reminder of that harrowing night. And to make matters worse, her daughter seemed to be different to the other youngsters around the doors. She was never quite sure whether Isabelle tried to speak better than her friends, or whether it just came naturally to her. Regardless, she never developed the strong local accent of their neighbours in the east end, nor did she really behave like them either. She was always a little distant, as if she didn’t belong, and the other children seemed to sense it too.

  She tried to love her daughter, tried to be like other mothers, but it was no good. No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn’t do it. And the more she tried, and the more she failed, the more of an outsider she felt. After a while, feeling like an outsider led to her being an outsider. Drink and men became her escape, and that escape became her life.

  For the first five years of Isabelle’s life, Pearl found it hard to settle, and so she dragged her daughter around with her, never staying in the same bedsit or tenement for long. When problems came, she ran – just like she had that fateful night. It was only when she moved to a room in Back Tatham Street – and Agnes ended up taking Bel under her wing – that Pearl decided to stay put.

  Bel had often questioned Pearl about her father, but had eventually stopped. Perhaps she just got tired of hearing the same answer. The same lie. Perhaps it was no longer important once she had found a new, better family in the Elliots. Who knew? All Pearl was aware of was that it was a relief. Finally, she could leave the past dead and buried.

  Until now.

  Now, the past was nipping at her heels, and she had no other option but to turn around and face it.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  ‘So, Ma, are you going to tell me where we’re going? Or is it a mystery?’ Bel tried to inject some humour into her voice as they turned right down Tatham Street. Pearl huffed by way of reply. They had left at what was probably the busiest time of the day, when the shipyards had just sounded out the end of the day’s shift and hundreds of workers were hurrying either straight home or to their local for a quick pint before their tea. As they battled against the tide of those going into town, or were pushed forward by the current of those heading towards Hendon, Pearl was glad of the crush of people for it meant there was no opportunity to talk. That would come later.

  As they started down Suffolk Street, Pearl glanced across at her daughter. She had not had the easiest of lives, but she had managed to remain relatively unscarred by the hardships she’d had to endure.

  It angered Pearl that she herself was now going to be the one to inflict a wound on her daughter that she knew would mark her for ever.

  ‘Villette Road!’ Pearl shouted across to Bel, who had become separated from her in the mob of workers. Bel nodded across to her ma as she stepped onto the road to let an old woman pass, her shoulders stooped with the weight of two bags of groceries. Once they were halfway up the street, the crowds started to disperse and a relative quietness descended. All the shops along both sides of the street had shut up for the day, and as it was now teatime, there were no children about.

  ‘Hold yer horses a moment,’ Pearl said, as she stepped to the side of the pavement to light a cigarette.

  ‘I hate coming out at this time,’ Bel said, taking a big breath and forcing herself to relax.

  P
earl puffed on her cigarette to get it going and looked at her daughter through a fog of smoke. Isabelle’s attention, she noticed, had been drawn to a heavily pregnant woman pushing a pram down the other side of the street.

  ‘You’ve not managed to fall yet then?’ Pearl said. Following Isabelle’s wedding to Joe they had all assumed it wouldn’t be long before the happy couple were announcing that she was expecting. But looking at Isabelle now, still slim as a pin, this was clearly not the case.

  Bel glanced across at her mother.

  ‘No,’ she said simply.

  Neither woman spoke. Instead, mother and daughter walked in silence, past the Barley Mow Park and then across the wide breadth of the Ryhope Road. As they reached the first mansion in the long row of huge detached homes that made up The Cedars, Bel felt a nervous excitement.

  So, she had been right after all! It was as she had thought. The answer to the puzzle of her paternity was right here, in one of these houses overlooking Backhouse Park. It had been here all along, her whole life, right on her doorstep. Bel kept up with her mother as they walked shoulder to shoulder at a steady pace along the wide pathway.

  Sneaking a look at her ma, Bel saw that her face had gone deathly serious.

  As they passed house after house Bel thought about the lifetime of wondering and wanting to know the truth about her father. These past few months it had become nothing short of an obsession. And now, finally, she was going to find out the truth.

  As they passed the house where the harried mother and her three daughters lived, Bel stared. She had been shocked when Polly had told her this was Dorothy’s home, that the dark-haired woman who had answered the door and the three energetic girls who had joined her were, in fact, Dorothy’s mother and sisters.