Secrets of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  DS Miller’s advice to think about somewhere Pearl used to go to as a child kept stabbing away at Bel, but, try as she might, she couldn’t think of anywhere.

  ‘I just can’t remember anything Ma’s said about her own growing up … never mind any places she used to go to.’ Bel spoke her thoughts out loud as they walked along Church Street East and passed the huge Trinity Church.

  Maisie looked at Bel’s worried face but didn’t say anything. It was getting late. It had been pitch black for hours now. And the more places they went to, the more she learnt about her mother, and of the life she’d led – without any words being spoken. Maisie realised she was learning the hard way that the image she’d manufactured of her mother over the years was very, very wrong.

  The words her mother had spoken to her in the snug kept coming back to her: ‘The day I gave birth to you was the best day in my entire life – and also the worst … When they took you from me I thought I would die right there … I didn’t think it was possible to love another human being the way I loved you …’

  And, worst of all, she kept seeing her mother’s distorted, pitiful face as she had told her that she had loved her.

  Maisie realised now that her mother had meant it. Yesterday those words had gone over her head, been swatted away, spat at, and dismissed. Now she couldn’t stop thinking about them. And the more she remembered them, the more wretched and guilty she felt. Now those feelings of guilt had overtaken those of anger towards her mother. And guilt was not something Maisie often felt.

  And she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  For the first time ever, she felt the need to talk to her mother – and not simply to scream and shout at her.

  She just hoped to God that she’d get the chance.

  Chapter Fifty

  When Pearl had walked out of the wedding reception, she’d had no intention of going back. Either to the pub, or to the Elliots’, or to either of her daughters. She was not wanted anywhere, or by anyone. She could have lived with that – had lived with that all of her life. But what she could not live with was the pure hatred she had seen in her elder daughter’s eyes.

  As she had wandered from pub to pub after leaving the party it didn’t matter how much she drank, she still couldn’t escape her thoughts and feelings. She kept rerunning the moment she had seen Maisie standing in the middle of the Tatham, how she hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from Maisie’s face.

  When she had come around in the snug and had again looked into her daughter’s eyes, she had been filled with an overwhelming sense of euphoria.

  The daughter she had given up had come back to her.

  There hadn’t been a day since she had handed her baby girl over to Evelina when she hadn’t wondered what she was doing now, where she was. Had she met someone and got married? Had children of her own?

  When she had staggered out of Norfolk House last night she had drunk enough to sink a ship, yet the devastation she felt – knowing that her daughter hated her – had not eased off. It didn’t matter how much she drank, she just couldn’t get rid of the image of Maisie as she had spoken to her. She could have stomached her daughter’s anger, but not the deeply embedded hatred that emanated from every fibre of her daughter’s being.

  Pearl’s recall of the words she had exchanged in the snug with Maisie kept swimming about in her head, and out of the chaos swirling around in her inebriated mind came clarity.

  She had vague recollections of some of the bars and taverns she had drunk in over the past twenty-four hours. Last night she had passed out somewhere along Norfolk Street and had woken a few hours later in the shelter of a doorway, covered in an old blanket that someone must have put on her while she slept. Those few hours of oblivion had been blissful. And when she had woken up and been thrown back into the real world – back into the reality that was her life – she knew what she wanted.

  She wanted peace – and she was going to get it.

  She had no recollection of how she had got here – but here she was.

  And it was exactly where she wanted to be.

  As Pearl made her way down the grass embankment, the wind from the sea air pierced right through her velvet dress, which was now dirty, and torn. Ruined beyond repair. A sad reflection of the woman who was wearing it.

  She understood so much now – how over the years she had tried to plug the emptiness with alcohol and men, but it had been futile. She knew it now.

  As Pearl reached the bottom of the hill and her feet found the cold stone pebbles, she looked down at the dress, and thought about how it had brought her so much happiness – how it had made her feel special. Again the tears came. Never in her life had she cried so much. Her eyes felt itchy and swollen. Her lovely dress. Little Katie would be distraught. All that hard work, only to be ruined. But that was Pearl, wasn’t it? Anything good that came along she spoilt.

  Or gave away.

  Well, now it was time for all that to stop.

  As she walked across the pebbled beach, her eyes automatically looked for coal. The tide was going out, and her befuddled mind idly wondered if there had been good pickings today.

  But when she looked further down the beach and saw it had been sectioned off with barbed wire she was reminded that she was not a young girl collecting sea coal, but a grown woman living through another world war.

  The icy water washed over her dirty, bare feet and a shiver ran through her skinny body. She knew it wouldn’t take long – the cold would get to her first, before the salt water had time to fill her lungs.

  Soon it would all be over, and she could forget everything. The hurt and heartache she had carried around with her for her entire life would end.

  She could escape – and, this time, for good.

  Bel and Maisie had started walking down Commercial Road, heading for another pub that Pearl might, or might not, have frequented, and Maisie started to ramble on, as she tended to do when she was nervous or scared.

  As Bel shone the little torch they had to help them find their way in the blackout, Maisie spoke her thoughts aloud.

  ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What life was like back then?’

  ‘Back when?’ Bel asked, irritated. Maisie had the really annoying habit of starting to speak about something, expecting you to know exactly what it was she was going on about.

  ‘Well, you know, back when they didn’t have electricity … it must have been so dark all the time … and bloody cold.’ Maisie was thinking of the little electric heater she had in her room at the bordello, and how she would give anything to be in front of it now. She felt frozen to the bone.

  ‘Gas, Maisie – God, you do talk a load of gibberish sometimes. People used gas – coal and gas,’ Bel said as they reached Hendon Grange.

  ‘Here we go again,’ Maisie said with dread. The pub looked no better than any of the other dives they’d been in today, but at least she was getting used to the remarks the men would make on seeing her in her fur coat.

  Opening the bar door, they walked into the warmth of the main bar. Bel saw the raging hot coal fire.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  ‘What’s wrong? You all right?’ Maisie asked. Bel looked even paler than normal. Almost ghostly white.

  ‘Coal … it’s the coal,’ Bel said.

  ‘Blimey, Bel, now who’s talking a load of “gibberish”?’

  Bel swung her head towards Maisie.

  ‘I know – I know where she is!’

  Maisie felt an instant flood of relief.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh God!’ Bel said. ‘Come on. I hope we’re not too late.’

  Maisie took one last look at the orange glow of the blazing open fire in the pub and wished she could have stood in front of it for just a few moments – but the look on Bel’s face said they didn’t have a minute to lose.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Hendon Beach, Sunderland

  As the water lapped around Pearl’s legs she felt the numbing cold
shoot up her limbs and into the rest of her body. Her feet were just about frozen and she knew it would not be long before the rest of her body felt the same.

  Her mind spun back like the swirling water around her fighting against the turning tide. For a brief moment she was just fourteen years old, picking coal from this very beach, and Maisie was growing in her swelling belly.

  She had wanted to tell Maisie about the confusion she had felt on finding out she was pregnant – how she knew that she would be disowned by her family – and shunned by society – not only because she’d had a child out of wedlock, but because of the colour of that child’s skin. Black and white didn’t mix. It wasn’t exactly accepted nowadays, but back then … Didn’t Maisie realise this? She hoped one day she would forgive her and understand that she had done what she had done for love.

  The freezing cold North Sea was now lapping around her scuffed knees where she had fallen when she tripped coming out of a pub by the docks.

  The sea seemed relatively calm today, and she let her fingers lightly touch the tops of the small ripples of waves.

  Then – just as a gust of wind caused her hair to swirl around her tear-stained face – Pearl thought she heard a voice in the distance behind her.

  ‘Ma!’

  Was she hearing things?

  She stood stock-still. There it was again.

  ‘Ma!’

  It was Isabelle.

  Poor Isabelle. She had such a lovely voice. Had always tried to speak properly. She had been desperate to better herself. Desperate to run away from her upbringing. And who could blame her? How Pearl wished she had been able to love her more. To have been a good mother. But she hadn’t. Not even half good.

  Well, at least Isabelle would be better off without her now.

  Pearl kept on pushing herself through the water, the waves still small but strong, knocking her a little off balance, causing her to stumble on the rocks and pebbles underfoot.

  ‘Mother! Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’

  This time the voice was not Isabelle’s.

  Pearl stopped dead still.

  It was Maisie.

  She was here.

  With Isabelle.

  And she was calling to her.

  Calling out for her mother.

  When Maisie saw her mother against the outline of the blackness that was the North Sea, her whole body flooded with sheer panic.

  What had she done?

  She had been so stupid. So selfish. She had wanted to make her mother suffer for giving her up. But not like this.

  Her mother was walking – or rather wading – towards death. And it was all her fault.

  She may have hated her mother all of her life, but she had never wished her dead. Above all, she had never wanted to be the cause of her death.

  A huge wash of guilt followed the wave of panic. This poor, pathetic woman wanted to end her life and it was all her fault.

  ‘Mother! Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’

  Maisie shouted as forcefully and as loudly as she could. She tore off her heavy fur coat and tossed it to the ground. As she did so her hat flew off and into the surrounding darkness of the night.

  As Maisie ran, pain shot through her as the sharp edges of rocks and pebbles stabbed into the soles of her feet. She slipped on some seaweed-covered stones, but her hands shot out in front of her as she went sprawling on to all fours. When she stood up Pearl had disappeared.

  ‘No!’ Maisie screamed out into the night’s air, flinging her body forward. Her feet hit shingles and she knew then she was near the water’s edge, but still she couldn’t see anything – only a moving expanse of dark, murky sea.

  Tears were running down her face. Her mind flooded with self-recrimination. Why had she been so bloody single-minded? So wrapped up in in her own pain and misery? Wanting everyone to pay for what life had done to her.

  Her body shuddered with fear as she frantically stared about her. Willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. To find her mother. The mother she had spent so long tracking down, and had then so heartlessly flung aside.

  Behind her she heard Bel shouting out for her ma. She sounded desperate and Maisie knew that she too could no longer see their mother.

  But then, all of sudden, her sister’s tone changed. ‘There!’ Bel screamed out. ‘There!’

  Maisie’s eyes scanned from left to right – and then she saw her.

  The light from the half-crest of a moon glanced across the glass beading on Pearl’s velvet dress and for a split second it glinted and shone out through the darkness.

  Maisie sprinted into the water, swinging her arms to push herself forward as fast as she could. Pearl was not that far away. The darkness of the night had tricked them – its cruel sleight of hand had cloaked their mother from them, making her invisible for a moment. Pearl stood as still as a statue, her face white but dirty with grime and the remnants of old make-up.

  ‘Maisie.’ Pearl’s voice sounded feeble.

  ‘Maisie,’ she repeated. Her daughter had no idea just how much her mother loved saying that name out loud.

  ‘Ma, it’s Maisie and Isabelle. Come here, Ma!’

  Maisie knew she just needed to keep her mother engaged. Pearl looked like she wasn’t all there – probably wasn’t, with the amount Maisie could only guess that she’d consumed since she had seen her yesterday evening. Maisie felt the bitter cold water shock every nerve in her body as she stretched towards her mother, whose skinny body was being pushed about by the currents caused by the turning tide.

  ‘Ma!’ She had almost reached Pearl now, but Maisie could see her mother was about to go under. She looked finished. Pearl locked eyes with Maisie and smiled.

  Maisie thought her mother looked content – at peace, almost.

  And then, as if the sea itself was swallowing her up, Pearl was gone.

  ‘No!’ Maisie’s voice bellowed out; her voice so loud even Neptune himself must have heard. She propelled her body forward, forcing her legs through the grey water with the last ounce of energy she had left.

  Maisie just reached her mother before she went under. Grabbing hold of Pearl’s bare arms, she pulled her mother back up out of the water, and enveloped her in her own slender arms, hugging her hard.

  ‘What are you doing? You madwoman,’ Maisie was half laughing, half crying. The relief at having made it to her mother in time was overwhelming.

  Since she had been a child she had dreamed of the time when her mother would come and find her, take her in her arms, and cuddle her. As she had grown up that dream had faded, and her hopes of her mother rescuing her from the wretchedness of her life had died. Her heart had hardened and become increasingly embittered.

  Now, after all those years, here she was – finally reunited with her mother. And it didn’t matter that she was frozen to the bone, soaking wet, and exhausted, she wanted to stay just as they were, for a moment at least.

  As Maisie held her mother tight, she knew the hopes and dreams of her youth could never be resurrected. She had waited all of her life to feel her mother’s arms around her, but she didn’t care that it was she who was now cuddling her mother. Nor did she care that it was she who was rescuing her mother from wretchedness and despair.

  None of that mattered.

  All that mattered was that she had found her mother.

  And that, thank God, she had not lost her again. And this time for good.

  The water washed against both their legs, their feet sinking a little into the sand and shingles as they continued to hold each other, Maisie listening to her mother as she repeated her name over and over.

  ‘Maisie … Maisie …’ Pearl’s voice was unusually soft and fragile. ‘Don’t you think it’s a lovely name, Maisie?’ Pearl asked, and her voice sounded tired but happy.

  ‘I chose your name, did you know that? I gave you your name. Did Evelina tell you?’

  Maisie had no idea what Pearl was talking about, or who Evelina was, but she knew her mother loved her
. These past few hours with Bel, out scouring the streets of the east end she’d had time to think and she’d had to admit to herself that she had been wrong. Her mother was not some hateful, heartless woman who had given her away like a child tossing aside a broken doll that was no longer desirable or of any use. She was not some two-dimensional uncaring bitch, but rather a woman who, it would seem, had led a chaotic, drink-addled, messed-up life.

  ‘Ah, Maisie,’ Pearl kept saying. ‘You were the most perfect little baby ever. I loved you. Really loved you. You must believe me.’ Her body sank into her daughter’s arms.

  Maisie held her mother. The water was now only up to their calves, having been drawn back by the receding tide and the pull of the moon.

  ‘I know,’ Maisie told her. ‘I know.’

  Mother and daughter stayed for a short while longer, standing in the half-light of the moon, in the shallow waters of the sea, simply holding each other.

  Salty tears trickling down both their faces.

  Standing on the beach, Bel shivered in the cold night air. She didn’t think she had felt so exhausted in her entire life, but none of that mattered because they had found their ma. And she was alive.

  As she saw Pearl and Maisie wade back on to the beach, she grabbed Maisie’s fur coat that had been flung on to the pebbles and hurried over to them. ‘Bloody Nora. You two are gonna catch your death.’ Bel held the thick fur coat out and Maisie reached out and took it.

  Pearl was hunched up, her body shaking and her head down. Maisie put the coat around her mother’s shoulders and then pulled it around her so she was cocooned. Pearl grabbed the lapels of the brown fur and pulled them to her neck.

  Bel and Maisie guided their mother across the stones and rocks and on to the grassy embankment.

  ‘Honestly, Ma,’ Bel said, looking at Maisie and giving her the beginnings of a smile, ‘you’ve pulled some stunts in the past, but this one takes the biscuit.’ As she spoke she pulled her thick woollen scarf off and handed it to Maisie, whose designer dress was dripping wet from the waist down; like her sister, she was looking the worse for wear.