Secrets of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  ‘From the little I know I think it’s just a case of wait and see,’ Rosie said, pushing Gloria’s cup towards her. Gloria took a sip, but didn’t put the cup down, instead keeping it suspended just inches away from her mouth. Her eyes looked lost and forlorn, but, unlike Miriam’s, her eyes were dry. There were no tears.

  Although Rosie had never seen Jack and Gloria together as a couple as their love affair had been clandestine (no one, not even any of the women welders, had known they were seeing each other – let alone had become lovers – until after Jack had left for America), but all the same, Rosie could tell they’d make a good couple; she’d seen them chatting in the yard on a number of occasions and it was obvious how at ease and happy they were in each other’s company.

  But Jack and Miriam as husband and wife? They were an odd mix. Like chalk and cheese, but not in a good way. Not in an ‘opposites attract’ way. Jack was a nice bloke, whereas Miriam was not a nice woman. And their daughter Helen was most definitely not a nice girl. Rosie leant back in her metal chair and the two women sat in silence and tried their best to digest the news they had been given this last hour.

  ‘At least he’s alive,’ Rosie ventured.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Gloria muttered, still staring ahead, her cup in hand. ‘There is that … God, this is the last thing I expected. I should really be thanking my lucky stars that he’s not dead – but being in a coma doesn’t really feel like he’s actually alive. Does it?’

  Rosie nodded her agreement. ‘I know.’

  ‘Either of you two need a top-up there?’ a harsh, but friendly, heavily accented voice shouted over. It was Muriel, one of the older women, who worked in the canteen.

  ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Rosie shouted back over. She looked at Gloria, who had put her teacup down but had not drunk more than a sip.

  ‘You heard anything from Vinnie lately?’ Rosie asked. It was an often repeated enquiry. That man was trouble. And his temper was dangerous. She had seen for herself the marks left by his fists on her workmate’s face, and the bruises round her neck where he had tried to squeeze the living daylights out of her. It made her blood well and truly boil. After the last episode, when Gloria had come into work with a black eye and a mouth so bruised and puffed up she could hardly talk, Rosie had been livid and determined to put a stop to him – although she’d had to admit she was at a loss to know exactly what to do.

  Gloria herself had got a legal letter drafted at the end of last year threatening him with the law if he was violent towards her again, and that had worked for a while, but it had proved to be just a temporary solution to the problem.

  Rosie had gone as far as discussing the problem with Peter who, she could tell, had been equally horrified that a man could be so violent to a woman, let alone his own wife. A week or so later they had heard through one of the caulkers, whose girlfriend worked with Vinnie at the ropery, that he had apparently been mugged and given a good going over. It had seemed too much of a coincidence that he’d been given a bashing so soon after he had done the same to Gloria. Rosie had tentatively broached the subject with Peter, but he had remained straight-faced, and she hadn’t known how to interpret the words he used on hearing the news. ‘Divine intervention,’ he had said. A perfectly innocent comment – or one infused with irony? She still wasn’t sure.

  ‘Funny you should ask about Vinnie,’ Gloria said, distractedly, ‘but he turned up last night. Shortly after Dorothy left … she came round to give Hope a two-week-old birthday present …’ Gloria’s mind was wandering.

  ‘What did he want?’ Rosie pursued. She was worried. It had been months since he had seen Gloria. Why turn up now?

  ‘Oh, he said he wanted to see the baby,’ Gloria mumbled, looking out the canteen window at a pair of young lads – one heating rivets with a big pair of tongs and then throwing them to his mate. It was like some strange game of catch, only played with a red hot metal bolt.

  ‘And did he – see the baby?’ Rosie asked, taking hold of Gloria’s hand and trying to draw her attention back to the here and now. She looked miles away. Totally lost in thought.

  Gloria turned her focus back to Rosie.

  ‘God, no! Over my dead body.’ As she uttered the words they looked at each other, imagining the scene: Vinnie stepping over Gloria’s lifeless body to get to the child he believed was his. Neither Gloria nor Rosie was in any doubt that if Vinnie was riled up enough – and inebriated enough – he would be capable of losing it so badly that he might indeed take a life. And there would be no question as to whose life that would be.

  ‘The problem is,’ Gloria continued, ‘I know this is just the start and there’ll be more visits. As long as he thinks the baby is his, he’s going to be determined to be a part of her life. Even if it’s just to cause me grief.’

  Gloria sighed heavily.

  ‘I was all set to come clean about who Hope’s real father was when she was born. That day here in the yard, when I held her in my arms and we were all bawling our eyes out –’ both women automatically smiled as they remembered the scene ‘– I vowed to myself,’ Gloria continued, her voice becoming thick with emotion, ‘that as soon as Jack was back – if he came back alive – I would tell him Hope was his. And that I would be open and honest about everything … Which, of course,’ Gloria added ominously, ‘meant telling Vinnie that the child was not his. That I had been with another man.’

  ‘Not that that should have mattered,’ Rosie jumped in. ‘I mean, he had been seeing – and sleeping with – that Sarah for a whole two years behind your back. And then you finally chuck him out and say “no” to any more beatings – and in a blink of an eye – or rather the time it took him to walk from the Ford estate to Grindon – he’s shacked up with his bit on the side.’

  Rosie felt herself getting annoyed at the injustice of it all. She knew no one would condemn Vinnie for moving in with his mistress, but God only knew what kind of vicious gossip Gloria would be subjected to if people found out she had borne a child by a man who was not her husband.

  ‘I know it’s wrong,’ Gloria added, ‘but it’s just the way it is – one rule for them and another for us. The thing is, I was more than willing to take the flak for it, to be looked at like I was some harlot –’ she looked at Rosie and wished she could have taken the words back.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean …’ Gloria apologised.

  Rosie immediately dismissed her comments with a wave of her hand, saying, ‘But now you really are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It wouldn’t be fair to declare that Hope is Jack’s – not with him being in a coma – and you cannot really tell Vinnie that the baby’s not his, because … God knows what would happen. It doesn’t bear thinking about. If you tell him, you have to have Jack by your side … I think at the moment,’ she continued, ‘you’ve only got one option – and that’s to keep mum.’

  Gloria looked back at her boss, her friend and her confidante, and smiled dejectedly.

  As they left the canteen and trudged back to the dry dock in silence, Rosie’s mind was swinging between thoughts of Jack lying in a coma, and Vinnie’s dark and threatening re-emergence. If only Jack and Vinnie could swap places. As it was, she would not like to be in Gloria’s shoes. Not for one moment.

  When they’d climbed down into the dry dock where the women were working this afternoon on a frigate that had been caught in a mine blast and had suffered serious, but not irreparable, damage to its underside, Rosie walked over to Angie and tapped her on the shoulder. Her weld had died on her and when she lifted her mask her face was full of angry frustration.

  ‘You’re holding your rod too far away from the plate. That’s why your arc keeps going out.’ As she spoke, Rosie bobbed down so she didn’t have to shout over the commotion of the yard. ‘And if you loop the lead around your arm it’ll take some of the weight off,’ she advised. Angie was still learning the ropes when it came to welding, but she was a quick learner and only ever needed telling something the once.

>   Angie nodded her understanding but didn’t bother to speak; she had learnt fairly soon after starting work at Thompson’s that talk was pretty pointless as the noise of the yard was simply too much to contend with.

  Sensing they had company, the women broke off from their welding and looked up to see that Rosie and Gloria had returned. Dorothy immediately pushed her helmet up and opened her mouth to speak, but before she had time to say anything, Rosie beat her to it.

  ‘The Admiral. After work!’ she shouted out, knowing that if the women couldn’t hear her they had probably lip-read her words, something they were getting quite adept at doing.

  Dorothy closed her mouth and looked over at Gloria with concern. The women pushed their helmets back down and worked steadily through until the end of the shift. They all guessed that there must be some news about Jack, and judging by both their workmates’ faces, it was not good.

  Chapter Six

  Borough Road, Sunderland

  Later on that evening, Rosie hurried out of her basement flat as quickly as she could in her new red leather peep-toe shoes. The weather was just on the turn. There was a nip in the air and the approach of autumn was making itself felt, even though it was still a good few weeks away. Most nights Rosie was happy to walk the mile from her flat to Ashbrooke, but tonight she was running late after going to the Admiral, and had decided to catch the bus.

  As Rosie hurried along the main road, she thought about her women welders and how supportive they had been of Gloria – all telling her not to worry and that Jack would surely come out of his coma. The expressions on their faces, though, belied what she knew they had really been thinking: the prognosis for Jack did not look good.

  The seriousness of the situation had been further forced home when Hannah had asked what ‘coma’ meant, and Polly had explained, ‘It’s when the body closes down and goes into a really deep sleep.’

  ‘Ah bezvědomí,’ Hannah had murmured the word in her home tongue, adding, ‘So, he might not wake?’

  The women had all looked into their drinks, apart from Dorothy, whose deep concern for Gloria was etched on her young, pretty face, as she had exclaimed, ‘Oh, but he will. He’s got to. I just know he will.’

  As Rosie continued to hurry along the road, she swung her head back hoping to see a bus or a tram. This evening, like most these days, she had a lot to do at Lily’s. She had started to do the bookkeeping and it was not easy, but it was necessary if she was to get to grips with how a business was run – even if that business wasn’t a legitimate one. And as Lily was now so busy schlepping up and down the country to London and back, more and more of the managerial side of the bordello was being left for Rosie to sort out, which meant she had to put in all the hours she could outside of her work at the yard. She didn’t mind, though. She was already seeing the financial benefits. The long hours were more than worth it; she had achieved what she had worked so hard to do, and the reason she had started working at Lily’s all those years ago: she had ensured that her little sister would never see the inside of a workhouse – or some godforsaken children’s home.

  As Rosie checked again behind her for a bus, her mind, as it was wont to do when she thought about Charlotte or the past, threw up an image of her uncle Raymond. Her body gave an involuntary shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. Rosie had accepted that she would never be able to erase her uncle from her consciousness, nor the night when she was just fifteen years old, just days after she and Charlotte had been orphaned when their mum and dad had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. The night her uncle had violated her. When she had been forced to allow him to defile her body in order for her younger sister, who was then just eight years old, to keep her innocence.

  Rosie knew she would never be able to get rid of the scars he had left her with – both the ones on her face and those you couldn’t see – but at least she was alive and he was dead.

  Finally he had got his comeuppance after nearly killing her just nine months previously by forcing her head over a live weld. If her women welders hadn’t come to her rescue, and her uncle hadn’t stumbled and fallen into the river, Rosie would not be here now.

  Rosie was well aware of the irony that it was due, in part, to her uncle that she was now in such a favourable financial situation, and that she was no longer working as an employee at the bordello but now part-owned it. Rosie knew her life had been cursed by her uncle but at least something positive had come out of his death, as she had been able to reclaim all the money she had been forced to hand over to him during the months he had been blackmailing her.

  As Rosie strode up the slight incline to the bus stop she pulled her belt tight around her waist and tucked the large collar of her trench coat across her neck to keep out the early evening chill. She was glad she was wearing her new cream slacks that her old schoolfriend Kate, who had recently become the bordello’s unofficial seamstress, had made for her. They were so comfortable and practical, and because they were now in vogue, she could get away with wearing them.

  Lily had told her that she did not agree with women wearing trousers, but she’d added that as Rosie had managed to look ladylike in hers, and not like one of those ‘butch women’, she would let it pass. Rosie had laughed out loud at the outrageousness of Lily’s comments, reminding her that they were now joint owners and if she wanted to wear a coal sack to work she would. Rosie chuckled to herself as she recalled how Lily had actually blanched at the thought.

  As she hurried towards the bus stop, the number seven drove straight past her. ‘Damn!’ she cursed out loud.

  As she did so, she saw the dark outline of a figure that had been walking along the unlit street just ahead of her, suddenly turn around. Rosie stopped dead in her tracks when she saw who it was.

  ‘Peter!’ she said, her shock and surprise audible.

  ‘Rosie!’ DS Miller also sounded taken aback.

  There was a moment’s awkward silence.

  ‘How are you keeping?’ the detective asked. His voice sounded unsure and faltering. It had been over a month since Rosie told him she no longer wanted to see him, and not a day had gone by when he had not spent a good part of it thinking about her. His work with the Dock Police and for the town’s civil defence might be time-consuming, but it was quite boring – which meant he’d had too much time to stew over why their courtship had ended so abruptly. The hours he had spent mulling it over, however, had not resulted in any kind of answer.

  ‘Yes, I’m well, thank you, Peter.’ Rosie could feel her face flush red. Her heart had suddenly started to beat like a drum and was causing her to sound a little breathless.

  ‘And, yourself?’ Rosie asked, self-consciously pulling her coat tightly around her. Peter had never seen her in anything but her work overalls, and she suddenly worried that he would notice she was dressed up and wonder where she was going. She should have known better, though. Peter was a detective, after all. She followed his gaze as he looked down at her red shoes.

  ‘Yes, yes, all good,’ DS Miller said, a little distractedly. The way Rosie was done up had caught him off guard. Where was she going?

  ‘I see you’re off up the town,’ he went on, dragging his gaze away from her footwear and finding himself looking into her made-up face. Her hair also looked different. Rosie was now sporting a short, thick bob. And she was wearing perfume, too.

  ‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Rosie mumbled. She had never been a great liar and her mind had frozen. She couldn’t think quickly enough to make something up, so she offered no explanation.

  A wave of jealousy hit DS Miller as the possibility struck him that she was going on a date – with another man. If she wasn’t, why not tell him where she was going?

  ‘Rosie,’ he started, ‘I’ve wanted to see you since that day …’

  Rosie looked down the road, hoping another bus would come along and save her.

  ‘I really wanted to chat to you. Talk about why you said what you said.’

  Another pause.

/>   ‘I still can’t understand why?’ DS Miller was trying hard to keep any sign of desperation out of his voice. This wasn’t going the way he had wanted. ‘I honestly thought there was something between the two of us.’ He could sense he was losing her, knew she just wanted to get on her way.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ Rosie began. ‘I just … can’t.’ She was at a loss for words.

  ‘Please, Rosie …’ DS Miller couldn’t stop himself, ‘… meet me at Vera’s on Wednesday? Let’s talk about this properly. Over a cup of tea … I think we owe it to each other.’

  At the mention of Vera’s, he saw a flicker of emotion cross Rosie’s face. He could see her shoulders drop a little, and her face soften. He was surprised at how well the make-up hid the tiny scars scattered across her face. She had told him on the day he had first met her – when he had gone to inform her about her uncle’s untimely demise – that the burns were the result of ‘a weld gone wrong’.

  Every minute of their first meeting was still fresh in his memory; how she had touched her face self-consciously as she explained to him that she was a welder at Thompson’s and that she’d had ‘a bit of an accident’. Was it then that he had fallen for her? She was like no other woman he had ever met.

  DS Miller took a deep breath.

  ‘Please?’ he implored, gently taking hold of Rosie’s hand. To his joy, Rosie did not pull away. Instead he felt her fingers touching the rough skin on his hands. It took all of his willpower to stop himself pulling her towards him and kissing her. But, of course, he could not – not after what had happened last time. It would be the worst thing he could do. He had scared her off then. He couldn’t make the same mistake again.

  Just then he saw Rosie divert her attention from him. She was looking behind him. He swung his head around to see a bus chugging its way up the gently sloping road, its beam dimmed and headlights covered by what looked like huge plastic eyelids, as required by the government’s blackout regulations.