Secrets of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  ‘That’s all well and good, Ma,’ Bel said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can get bladdered, you know.’ Bel was suddenly hit by an awful and embarrassing image of her mother, slurring and staggering about, as was her way when she had too much. Fortunately, since she had shown up out of the blue back in February after Teddy had been killed, she seemed to be better at knowing her limits, or at least, if she was away with the mixer, she was more adept at hiding it.

  ‘Ah, dinnit worry, petal. I’ll be as good as gold, cross my heart and hope to die and all of that.’ She let out another cackle that morphed into a cough.

  ‘Sounds like you need another fag, Ma. You’ve not had one for at least, ooh, ten minutes?’ Bel verbally prodded her ma, but nothing was going to get the better of Pearl’s obvious good mood and unusually high spirits.

  Bel had a sneaking suspicion that her mother’s growing excitement for her wedding had gained momentum after Kate had very kindly offered to alter her dress. Why anyone would want to do her ma any favours Bel had no idea, especially as Pearl had initially been so rude, but Kate had seemed to take to her mum and, strangely enough, her mum seemed to have taken to ‘her Katie’, as she now called her.

  ‘Aye, I think you might be right there, Isabelle,’ Pearl said, purposely ignoring her daughter’s incendiary comments, and instead pulling her bag up from under the kitchen table and rummaging around for her packet of Winston’s. ‘I’ll just go and have a smoke and check that Ronald’s all set for the big day.’ And with that Pearl hurried out the back door, and after pausing to spark up her cigarette, she could be heard clomping down the backyard and out the back gate. Bel had given up telling her mother that Ronald wasn’t allowed at family dos and get-togethers as Pearl always ignored her and did what she wanted anyway. Besides, Joe and Arthur appeared to enjoy the man’s company. He seemed an all right bloke, which made Bel wonder why he seemed so enamoured of her mother. Bel knew her ma, and although Pearl might like the bloke, she was sure her affection for him was more to do with his limitless supply of cigarettes and whisky.

  ‘Well, I would never have thought I’d see the day,’ Agnes said as she hurried over to the range, wearing her oven gloves and pulling out another loaf from the stove. ‘Your ma seems genuinely excited about your wedding. I would have bet money on her being more of a hindrance than a help.’

  ‘I know,’ Bel agreed, as she heaved the wicker laundry basket on to the large wooden kitchen table.

  ‘Not like––’ Bel stopped herself mid-sentence. She had been going to say how different Pearl had been when she had got married to Teddy, and that they hadn’t even been certain she was actually going to show up, never mind be sober. Yet it wasn’t these thoughts that caused Bel to suck back her words, but the feeling of guilt she had about Teddy. This wedding was going to be completely different to her first wedding day – in all ways – but she still couldn’t stop herself thinking about it, or Teddy.

  Agnes looked at Bel, and knew what she was thinking – and feeling. She herself had not been able to suppress thoughts about Bel’s first marriage, to her other son, and because of that she knew Bel would be finding it hard to deal with her own conflicting emotions about her love for her dead husband and the love she hadn’t been able to deny for his twin brother.

  ‘Bel,’ she said, putting the hot loaf on to the side in the scullery and coming back into the kitchen. She took hold of Bel’s hands as she sat down on the kitchen chair, making her daughter-in-law follow suit. She continued to hold her hands in her own as she spoke.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to say this to you for a while now, but there hasn’t seemed to be the right time, so I’m just going to say it now.’

  Bel looked at Agnes and could see a sorrow in her eyes that seemed to reflect her own.

  ‘It is only natural you’re going to think about our Teddy,’ Agnes said, forcing herself to hold back the tears which still seemed to come freely whenever she spoke about her son. ‘He’ll always be a part of your life. You have Lucille, after all. And there’s a part of you that will never stop loving him, or thinking about him.’

  Bel could feel her emotions forge their way to the surface, and her blue eyes immediately filled with tears.

  ‘Oh, Agnes,’ Bel’s voice quavered, ‘I swear you can read my mind.’

  Agnes squeezed her daughter-in-law’s hands. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I do feel like I know you as well as if you were my own flesh and blood.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I would never want you – or any of us – to forget Teddy, or try to forget him. He’s in all our hearts and minds and always will be. But,’ she said, leaning towards Bel, ‘tomorrow is about you and Joe. I don’t want any tears, or any feelings of guilt. It’s to be a happy, joyful day. Your wedding is about love and life – there’s to be no room or time given over to any thoughts or feelings of sadness and death, do you hear me?’

  Bel nodded, tears now trickling down her face.

  ‘So,’ Agnes said, ‘those tears …’ she put her hand up to Bel’s face and wiped her cheek with her thumb, ‘are the last for now, you understand?’

  Bel nodded but started sobbing all the same. Agnes scraped her chair forward and put her arms around the young woman who had not only been like a daughter to her, but was about to become her daughter-in-law for the second time.

  ‘I know …’ Bel said between sobs, ‘I know you’re right … And I know Teddy would be happy for me and Lucille – and Joe. But sometimes I can’t help but feel battered down with guilt and grief.’

  Agnes listened, and continued to hold Bel until she had expended her tears and they were all out.

  ‘All right,’ she said, taking Bel by her shoulders and looking her straight in the eye. ‘That’s your lot. I mean it,’ and Bel nodded and wiped her face dry with her hands.

  They heard the front door open and close, and the familiar shuffle of Arthur as he made his way down the hallway and into the kitchen. As he entered the room he saw Bel’s tear-stained face and his gaze swung to Agnes, who gave him a sad smile.

  ‘Ah, Arthur,’ Bel said, turning to look at the old man. ‘You’ve caught us being all maudlin and weepy.’ But as soon as she saw what Arthur was holding in his hand, her face lit up.

  ‘Oh my goodness, Arthur. Are they what I think they are?’ Bel wiped her nose with the back of her hand as she looked at the wonderful array of flowers Arthur was clutching.

  ‘Aye, they most certainly are, pet,’ Arthur said. As Bel stood up, he handed her a large and very colourful bunch of wild flowers. ‘Albert and I thought we’d get you everything we could find and then you could use yer womanly ways to make it into a bouquet of yer choosing.’

  Arthur was clearly chuffed to pieces with Bel’s overjoyed reaction.

  ‘Where did you find them all?’ she asked, taking the flowers into the scullery and putting them straight into a big jar of water.

  ‘Well, Albert’s been growing a few flowers in his allotment, both intentionally and otherwise,’ he chuckled.

  ‘There may be a few weeds in there, but at least they’re pretty weeds …’ Albert paused as he eased himself down into the chair Bel had been sat on. ‘We got some of the flowers from having a good walk around the Town Moor – and the rest we got from swapping some of our home-grown veg with the florist in Villette Road.’

  ‘There’s loads here,’ Bel shouted over her shoulder, a smile now wide across her face. ‘There’ll be plenty left over for a little display to put in the pub.’ She came back into the kitchen carrying a large glass vase in which she had put the flowers. Carefully she put it on the table, then put her arms around Arthur and gave him a hug and a big kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Thank you, Arthur. They mean the world to me,’ Bel told him.

  Arthur blushed. ‘Now don’t go and embarrass an old man.’ He got up out of his chair. ‘It’s the very least I could do. A wedding gift of sorts.’

  ‘Actually, Arthur, there’s something I wanted to ask you,’ Bel said as Arthu
r made his way into the scullery to wash his hands.

  ‘Anything for you, pet,’ he answered, turning on the tap and scrubbing his gnarled hands of any remaining dirt and soil.

  ‘I know this isn’t a church wedding,’ Bel said, ‘but I wondered if you would give me away?’

  Arthur was taken aback. He turned off the tap and reached for the towel hanging from a hook in the wall.

  ‘Pet, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever asked me to do. I’d be honoured.’

  Seeing Arthur’s pale blue eyes start to shine and water ever so slightly, Agnes said sternly, ‘Now, I’m not having any more tears in this house tonight. There’s been enough of that already this evening. So Arthur, you go and get your suit, and we’ll give it a good shake out and a press.’

  Arthur obeyed orders, but as he made his way up the stairs to fetch his morning suit from his room, he couldn’t stave off the few sad tears that pricked the backs of his eyes as he recalled giving his own daughter away many years ago, and how, three years later, he was following her coffin down the very same aisle, in the very same church.

  Reaching the top step, Arthur tried to push his own ‘maudlin’ thoughts away, but as he opened his bedroom door and went over to his small wardrobe, he realised that this was the first time he had actually felt sadness – rather than anger – when he’d thought about his daughter. About her death. About the taking of her own life after her husband’s life had been snatched away from her in the final few weeks of the First World War.

  His anger had told him she had been thinking only about herself, and not the child she’d made; a child she’d had a duty to stay around and care for. In his mind, leaving his grandson to grow up without a mother’s love had been unforgivable.

  As he pulled out his suit and turned to go back out of the room, Arthur suddenly felt tired with the burden of that anger and resentment. Perhaps now, he thought, it was finally time to forgive.

  Perhaps now it was time to let go and feel the sadness his anger had been keeping at bay for so long.

  On his way back down the stairs with his old, slightly faded suit that was frayed at the cuffs, he heard a loud knock on the front door, followed by the sound of it swinging open and Beryl’s voice sounding out.

  ‘Only me,’ she hollered down the hall. ‘Just returning this little girl.’

  By the time Arthur walked back into the kitchen with his suit, it was mayhem. Lucille was running around chasing the dogs; Bel was chastising her daughter to ‘calm down’ while setting up the ironing board; and Beryl, he could hear, was in the scullery chatting to Agnes about the cake. Arthur knew that Beryl had made a two-tier fruit cake, and that Maud and Mavis, who ran the sweet shop across the road, were busy doing their best to decorate it. Beryl had been determined that the cake topping was not going to be a cardboard cover lookalike, and she had persuaded just about everyone she knew to give up their sweet rations so that Bel and Joe would have the best iced and decorated wedding cake possible – in spite of wartime restrictions.

  ‘I’m home!’ Polly’s voice could just about be heard over the excitement and chatter in the kitchen.

  ‘You’re late,’ Bel said, putting the iron down on the side of the board to give her sister-in-law a quick hug.

  ‘No rest for the wicked,’ Polly said, distractedly, as she looked around at the chaos. ‘Right, what can I do to help?’ she asked Bel.

  Bel pressed down hard on Arthur’s suit, causing a cloud of steam to fill the room.

  ‘You couldn’t try and get this little monster calmed down and in bed, could you?’ Bel grimaced as she threw a look over to Lucille who was carrying the pup in both her hands and practically dragging the poor thing backwards towards its bedding, which was made up of a few old cushions and lined with an old yellow pinafore dress that had once belonged to Lucille.

  Polly chuckled. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  By half past nine, a modicum of calm had descended on the Elliot household. Lucille had been cajoled into bed but Polly had had to read two storybooks before her niece finally dropped off. Arthur was half snoozing in the wooden armchair by the fire, his wireless quietly playing next to him. Agnes had finished making enough sandwiches to feed an army, and Polly had surprised them all by creating a rather beautiful wild flower bouquet with Arthur and Albert’s foraging, as well as half a dozen small but sweet buttonholes made from lilac and cream coloured freesias.

  The kitchen now resembled a dry cleaner’s with Arthur’s suit, Joe’s army uniform, Agnes’s little black dress, and the only decent skirt Polly possessed, hanging from the picture rails on the walls.

  ‘And last but not least,’ Bel said, putting a pretty little lemon-coloured dress on to a clothes hanger and reaching up to hook it to the curtain pole, ‘… is Lucille’s new dress.’

  ‘It’s a good job you didn’t show that to her tonight,’ Polly said, ‘she’d be so excited, I’d still be in there now, trying to get her to sleep.’

  Everyone chuckled. Much as Lucille had been ecstatic when they had all come back that day and found Tramp had had her puppies, she had not been best pleased the dog had chosen her favourite frock to have them on. Bel had persuaded her daughter that the dress was past redemption and had been getting too small for her anyway, and had promised she would find her another.

  Bel had been able to save up all her clothes coupons and had bought a lovely replica pinafore from Blacketts department store.

  ‘It really is adorable,’ Agnes said, pouring herself a cup of tea and easing her exhausted body down into the chair next to Polly. ‘She’s going to look pretty as a picture.’

  ‘Just like her ma!’

  Agnes, Polly and Bel turned around, and Arthur roused himself from his snooze, to see the groom-to-be, Joe, walk into the room.

  Bel blushed. Seeing Joe always had the same effect on her. She might live in the same house as him, and had known him all her life, but since they had fallen in love with each other, whenever she saw him she felt like a teenager.

  ‘Joe!’ she said, going over to give him a quick kiss, feeling her engagement ring self-consciously as she did so. She had worn it every day, only taking it off before she had her hands in a load of soapy suds.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Joe said, looking around in awe at the conversion the kitchen had undergone. ‘I’m only here to pick up my uniform and then I’ll be off to Major Black’s. I promise to abide by the traditions of marriage and not clap eyes on my bride from now on until the ceremony.’

  Bel got his uniform down and was just handing it over to him when the clock struck ten. At almost that exact moment, they heard the dreaded sound of the air raid siren start its long rising wail across the town.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Agnes said, putting her hand on her forehead in despair.

  ‘Bloody typical,’ Arthur murmured. ‘Jerry gets one sniff of a bit of fun and he has to try and blast it away.’ He pushed himself out of his chair. ‘I’ll get the little ’un up.’

  Bel looked around her at all the laundered and freshly pressed wedding attire, and then at the mound of freshly made sandwiches in the scullery that Agnes had covered with a sheet of greaseproof paper, and she clenched her hands into a fist.

  ‘You just dare land on this house – and I’ll, I’ll …’

  Joe took her fist and kissed it. ‘Come on, we can blaspheme as much as we want in the shelter.’

  Ten minutes later Joe was shepherding the Elliot household into the air raid shelter round the corner in Tavistock Place. He was just about to climb down the steps into the basement of the large mansion when he heard Pearl shouting his name in less than dulcet tones.

  ‘Joe, Joe!’ Pearl was breathless by the time she reached the open wooden trapdoor. Behind her followed Bill, the landlord, the two barmaids, and trailing behind them was Ronald, who Joe noticed was carrying Pearl’s bag. By the way his shoulder was sagging, the bag looked like it was weighed down with a ton of bricks.

  ‘Two bottles,’ Ronald whe
ezed. ‘She forced me to bring them in case the pub got bombed.’

  Joe had to suppress a smile.

  Even in a time of crisis his future mother-in-law was determined not to go short.

  For more than two hours now they had been in the cold, dank basement. It was virtually pitch black, apart from a few flickers of light given off by some candles that had been left there from the last air raid. Not that Joe minded the dark, as it meant he could hold Bel close to him and give her the occasional kiss that no one could see.

  They had heard the distant sound of bombs exploding, but Joe guessed that they were over the other side. Roker and Fulwell had really got a hammering this past year, punishment for being on the north side of the Wear and on the doorstep of most of the town’s shipyards, as well as its colliery. He would sacrifice their wedding tomorrow for the bombs not to have taken lives, but he doubted that would happen. The Luftwaffe might not be hitting their intended targets, but they had still managed to kill plenty of the townsfolk while trying.

  Joe looked over to check on Lucille and saw that she was cuddled up between her grandmothers, Pearl and Agnes – two women who couldn’t have been more different if they tried. They did, however, share common ground when it came to Lucille, as they both adored their little granddaughter, which was surprising in Pearl’s case as she had never shown any kind of motherliness in all the time he had known her – and he had known her for most of his life.

  But, if Pearl hadn’t been such an awful mother, Polly wouldn’t have found Bel alone and crying when they were little, having being abandoned by Pearl, who had disappeared with one of her fancy men and not come back. Bel wouldn’t then have been brought back to their home and taken into Agnes’s care. And he would not now have the love of his life wrapped in his arms.