Triumph of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  Rosie was glad she’d had the sense to go there after the lunchtime klaxon had sounded out, as the noise of the yard had died down enough for speech to be possible.

  Tapping Jack on the shoulder, she’d explained that she was here to apply for the position of apprentice welder. Jack had laughed good-naturedly, saying he didn’t realise that there was such a position available at present.

  Rosie had persevered, spoken quickly and confidently, knowing she’d only get the one shot, and told him that she wouldn’t need much training as she already knew how to weld, but they’d only have to pay her an apprentice’s wage.

  Jack had taken her up to the administration building and Rosie had noticed that none of the men in the yard heckled her. Walking into the main office, she’d immediately spotted a stunning-looking woman with long, perfectly coiffured black hair sitting at one of the desks. She had felt the hostility as soon as the young woman clapped eyes on her. Not that Rosie gave two hoots. She wasn’t here to be liked. She wanted – needed – a job.

  Jack had left the door of his office open, as well as all the blinds, making Rosie feel more at ease as she explained why she would be a good asset to the yard in spite of her gender. Her father, who had worked at Whitburn colliery, had taught her how to weld.

  Later, it occurred to her that she hadn’t once lied to Jack. There hadn’t been any need. She had been honest about her mam and dad, how they had died in a car accident, and Jack said he had read about it in the Echo and offered her his condolences.

  He’d left the office for about five minutes, telling her he needed to discuss it with his boss – a man called Harold.

  Rosie felt like hugging him when he’d returned and offered her an apprenticeship.

  It wasn’t until Rosie had been at the yard for a little while and had begun to be accepted that she’d learnt that Jack was married to the daughter of one of the town’s most important businessmen and revered philanthropists, Mr Havelock. And that the glamorous woman with the steely glare was, in fact, Jack’s daughter.

  Rosie loved her new place of work. She loved the discipline, the exact timing of the shifts signalled by the blaring of the horn, and the way, despite the apparent chaos of the yard, there was an order and logic to everything that happened. She was fascinated by the whole process of how a ship was built, from the ceremony of the laying of the keel all the way through to the actual launch.

  She would often talk to her mam and dad in her head, or sometimes out loud if she was on her own, and she would regale them with what had happened that day at work.

  She explained how a ship gradually rose up from the dark depths of the dry basin and morphed into a huge Moby Dick, how its skeleton of enormous, rib-like iron girders was fleshed out with giant sheets of metal.

  ‘It’s incredible,’ she’d tell them both, lying in her bed, her whole body aching with the physical demand of her job.

  The love for her new job was a bonus – one she hadn’t expected – but most of all, she was just relieved she had found work and was able to survive.

  Now she just had to work out how she was going to keep Charlotte at Runcorn.

  Judging by the letters she was getting from her sister, Charlie was settling in. The school seemed to keep its pupils busy morning, noon and night, with back-to-back lessons, sport and homework.

  Rosie, in turn, wrote letters that were full of encouragement, telling her how proud their mam and dad would be if they could see her now, which, Rosie made a point of stressing, she was sure they could. She hoped that Charlotte would feel as though they were still about, keeping an eye on her.

  Knowing that it was important to Charlie to still feel connected to her sister and where she came from, she would tell her about her work in the shipyard and anything else of interest.

  As time wore on, Rosie continued to rack her brains about how she was going to find the money for Charlotte’s fees once the ‘rainy day’ money was all used up. The answer, ironically, came when Rosie started to suffer terrible pain around the time of her monthlies. After what Raymond had done to her, she’d been relieved to get her period, but when the months wore on and the pain and bleeding became worse, she’d started to worry, especially when she had to take a few days off sick. Fearful it would cause her to lose her job, she sought the aid of a medical practitioner, who, thankfully, was able to give her the help she needed. The final bill, however, was far more than she could afford and it was agreed that Rosie could pay the doctor back in weekly instalments.

  Just as she was leaving, the doctor called her back and scribbled the name and address of a woman who, he said, might be able to provide Rosie with some part-time work that was surprisingly well paid.

  ‘If you do go,’ the GP said, ‘make sure you use the back entrance.’

  A mix of curiosity and desperation led Rosie to the three-storey Victorian house on West Lawn.

  She had faltered on seeing a red light peeking out from the curtain drawn across a large sash window overlooking the backyard, but something propelled her on.

  Something made her knock on the door.

  She’d nearly turned and walked off when no one answered straight away. But she didn’t.

  When the door finally opened, she was hit by a waft of perfume and cigar smoke, mixed with the sound of laughter and a gramophone record playing something that Rosie thought sounded rather beautiful.

  Her vision, however, was monopolised by an eccentric-looking woman with an unruly bird’s nest of orange hair piled high, a bosom barely concealed by a corset dress that looked as though it came from a different era, and an accent Rosie guessed to be French.

  The woman ushered her in.

  ‘Ah, ma chère, entrez, entrez! Come in out of the cold!’

  Within the month Rosie had paid her doctor’s bill in full.

  She often saw the GP at the place Lily liked to refer to as her ‘bordello’. He was always polite and tipped his hat whenever he saw Rosie, but he never requested her services. Lily, who she now knew to be pure-bred cockney, explained that he never saw the girls he treated.

  It didn’t take long for Rosie to adapt to her new existence and learn how to divide her life in two. There was her life at Thompson’s and her life at Lily’s. The two were as different as black and white. As night and day. But somehow her transition from one to the other felt seamless.

  When she went up to one of the rooms on the first floor with a new client, she told herself that she was in control. She was agreeing to what they were about to do. Most importantly, she was being paid handsomely for it. It was a business transaction. A trade.

  It helped enormously that Lily had a set of stringent house rules that she made no bones about enforcing. None of her ‘girls’ did anything they didn’t want to – and if they felt threatened or at risk, there was a bell they could pull that would sound out in the kitchen downstairs and within minutes help would be at hand.

  Rosie, though, knew she would never have been able to do this kind of work had her uncle not done what he’d done. But that cursed night, she’d learnt how to flick a switch in her head – and it was that switch she would flick whenever she was doing what she called her ‘second job’.

  And after a while, that is exactly what it became. A job. A way of earning money to keep Charlotte at Runcorn.

  But most of all, enough money to keep her sister safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Friday 19 February

  ‘Come in, Georgina.’ Helen waved her in. ‘I can’t believe it’s been two weeks already.’ She shut the office door, took Georgina’s coat and hung it up on the coat stand.

  ‘Did you go to see the launch today at Short’s?’

  ‘The Empire Friendship?’ Georgina said, going to take her seat.

  ‘That’s the one, although why they’ve named a cargo vessel Friendship in the middle of a war is beyond me.’

  ‘No, I didn’t get to see it,’ Georgina replied.

  ‘Of course you didn’t. Too bus
y working.’ Helen waved her hand at the chair in front of her desk.

  ‘Before I forget,’ she said, pulling out a Pall Mall, ‘if Rosie asks why you’re here again, I think it would be best to say that we have come to a compromise and that although you are clearly overqualified for a simple clerical job, you are going to do some part-time work for me, which you’re doing at home. Agreed?’

  ‘Perhaps, if it comes up in conversation,’ Georgina said, taking her seat, ‘I can say that I’m helping with the annual audit and can work faster and more efficiently at home.’

  ‘Yes, good idea,’ Helen said, settling herself in her chair behind the desk.

  She lit a cigarette.

  ‘I didn’t realise you and Rosie knew each other?’

  Georgina nodded.

  ‘Our mothers used to be friends.’

  Helen waited for more details, but none were forthcoming. She knew not to push. It wouldn’t have been professional. Still, the fact that Rosie’s and Georgina’s mothers had been close cemented Helen’s belief that Georgina had kept something back about Rosie’s private life. One day she’d find out what it was. For the moment, though, she had enough secrets of her own to uncover.

  ‘So,’ Helen said, reaching into her handbag, ‘I’ve done as you asked and brought some family photos.’

  Georgina shifted forward in her chair and craned her neck to look.

  ‘That’s my grandfather, Mr Charles Havelock, whom I’m sure you know,’ Helen informed her. ‘He must have been about fifty in this shot … and this is my grandmother, Henrietta.’

  Georgina stared at the photograph.

  ‘Did you know your grandmother at all?’ Georgina asked, as she pulled out her notebook and took the top off her pen.

  ‘No, not really. I was only a baby when she died. To be honest, no one really talked about her all that much when I was growing up. I always got the impression that she was a little odd. Peculiar. I remember Mother telling me once how she would call her staff “the cavalry” and gave them all nicknames. Usually characters from her favourite books.’

  They both looked at the photograph.

  ‘She does certainly look quite unusual,’ Georgina commented, staring at the bird-like woman wearing a huge tafetta skirt with a tiny waist. A knot of hair was piled up on her head, thick strands hanging loose around her narrow neck. ‘Very pretty, though.’

  They looked back down at the sepia photograph and scrutinised the woman’s heart-shaped face. There was something quite captivating about her, despite the garish make-up she was wearing.

  ‘What did she die of?’ Georgina asked, genuinely curious.

  ‘Good question,’ Helen said. ‘I’m not sure.’

  Georgina focused her attention back on the stern-looking Mr Havelock. She reckoned the photograph must have been taken about twenty-five, possibly thirty, years ago. You could just about see the man he would become. He still had his blond hair, although it was now more grey than blond and thinning. The eyes were the same, though.

  ‘And here’s one of my mother, Miriam, and her sister, my aunty Margaret, when they were about sixteen and seventeen. I think at the time they were at some finishing school over in Switzerland, so this must have been taken when they were back home for the holidays.’

  ‘Mmm, I see what you mean about the resemblance,’ Georgina said.

  Over the past two weeks, she had spent a few days watching Bel and had managed to get a photograph of her with her little Brownie. Bel had been walking around Mowbray Park with her daughter and Georgina had got a shot of her while pretending to take pictures of the bomb damage.

  ‘Well,’ Helen said, ‘I thought it would be a good idea to get photos from around the time Bel would have been conceived.’

  Georgina looked at two pretty but unsmiling blonde girls staring at the camera. If she put her photo of Bel next to them, the three of them could easily have been mistaken for sisters.

  ‘Is it all right for me to take them?’ Georgina said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Helen said, handing over the photos.

  Georgina put them in her handbag and sat up straight.

  ‘To recap, then … From what I’ve found out so far, I don’t think that your mother, your aunty Margaret or your grandmother could be Bel’s mother.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, but how can you be so sure?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Because I have managed to get hold of a copy of Bel’s birth certificate and it clearly states that Pearl Hardwick is her biological mother.’

  Georgina looked at her notes.

  ‘The date of birth being the sixth of January 1915. There is no name under the “Name and Surname of Father”. That space was left blank.’

  Helen took a drag on her cigarette, listening with rapt attention.

  ‘Is there any way she could have been handed over at birth?’ she asked. ‘The certificate forged?’

  ‘Highly improbable,’ Georgina said. ‘Anyone falsifying part of a birth certificate is liable for prosecution. Also, my father knew the superintendent who signed the certificate, and in his words, he was “whiter than white”. On top of which, it just doesn’t make sense that someone like Pearl would pretend a baby was hers, especially as she clearly did not benefit financially from it.’

  Helen stubbed out her cigarette.

  Georgina could see that she was disappointed, but not surprised.

  ‘So, what I now have to find out is who Isabelle Elliot’s father is.’ Georgina closed her notebook.

  ‘That’s going to be the hard part. Paternity is always hard to prove. Even when you have everyone’s cooperation. I’m going to concentrate on the men in the Havelock family, but I will still keep an open mind and look at other possibilities. I might find that her father is totally unconnected to your family and is some sailor boy from foreign lands—’

  ‘Like Bel’s sister,’ Helen mused.

  ‘Exactly,’ Georgina agreed.

  After seeing the photographs she now had in her bag, though, Georgina thought that would be unlikely. Very unlikely.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When Bel walked into the Tatham, she was glad to see it wasn’t busy. There were just a few locals having a quiet pint. Two elderly gents were playing dominoes. Another was sitting on his own, a half-drunk pint of bitter in front of him, his flat cap partially hiding his eyes. Bel knew the old man had a habit of falling asleep sitting up straight as a rod.

  ‘Well, it’s the daughter I hardly ever get to see these days.’ Pearl’s coarse voice sounded out across the pub. Her words were, as usual, purposely antagonistic, but they were also true. With Bel now working full-time at Thompson’s and Pearl pulling pints most nights, their paths barely crossed.

  ‘Hello, Bel. Lovely to see yer. What yer having?’ Bill asked, a smile, as always, on his face.

  ‘I’ll just have a lemonade, please, Bill,’ Bel said, looking up at the clock. ‘It’s a bit early for me to have anything stronger. And I’ve got my night class in an hour. Don’t want to go there stinking of booze, do I?’

  ‘No, definitely not,’ Bill agreed in earnest. ‘You’ve got learning to do. Need a clear head to remember what all them squiggles and lines mean.’

  ‘I do,’ Bel laughed. ‘It’s like learning another language. Thank goodness I’m only having to write it and not speak it.’

  Bel looked at Pearl, who was getting herself a shot of whisky from one of the optics lining the mirrored wall of the bar.

  ‘So,’ Pearl turned back to face Bel, ‘I’m no mind-reader, but I’m guessing this is not just a social call.’ She walked towards the end of the bar and lifted the hatch. ‘I’ve a feeling you want something. Come on, the snug’s empty at the moment. None of the auld grannies are in there yet.’

  Bill poured out Bel’s lemonade and handed it to her.

  ‘Thanks, Bill. You all right being left on your own for a little while?’

  ‘Course,’ Bill said. ‘I’m not exactly run off my feet, am I?’

>   Bel smiled, knowing that her ma would have happily left Bill to it even if he had been.

  When Bel walked into the snug, Pearl was already sitting down on one of the stools positioned by the fire. For the briefest moment Bel had an image of being here on her wedding day, after Maisie had dropped her bombshell that she was the daughter Pearl had given up as a baby, and her ma had done something Bel had never known her do before – faint. She’d gone down like a tree being felled and smashed her head on the floorboards. Some young lad from Joe’s Home Guard unit, she couldn’t remember his name, had picked her up and brought her in here.

  ‘Come on, spit it out.’ Pearl picked up the poker and stabbed the fire. ‘Yer’ve that look on yer face. Makes me feel uneasy.’

  Bel sat down on the stool next to her ma and took a sip of her lemonade, savouring it. Even now the cold fizzy drink still felt like a treat. She’d never tasted any kind of pop until she was about ten, when one of her ma’s blokes had bought her a small bottle with a straw in it and told her to stay on the front doorstep while he went inside with her mam. She’d sat there, slowly sipping the sugary nectar, with the sun on her face and feeling heavenly.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Bel said, looking at her ma. She’d never had any trouble pulling the men. She had been a good-looking woman. There was still a hint of attractiveness about her now – well, Bill and Ronald clearly thought so.

  ‘Go on then, out with it,’ Pearl said.

  Bel hesitated, suddenly unsure how to word her question.

  ‘I was just wondering … after you had Maisie, and then me, if you ever wanted to have more children?’

  Pearl looked at her daughter. So pretty. She only wished she didn’t look so much like him.

  ‘Is this ’cos yer can’t fall?’

  Bel took another sip of lemonade, wanting to feel that heavenly feeling of innocence from when she was ten years old.