Triumph of the Shipyard Girls

by Nancy Revell

  George had told her what Peter had not been able to: that he had been enlisted into ‘Churchill’s secret army’, the Special Operations Executive. Peter’s ability to speak French like a native, thanks to his mother’s refusal to speak English, had led to him being tasked with carrying out covert missions behind enemy lines.

  ‘Pray, tell us more, darling.’ Lily looked at Charlotte and gave her a sly wink. ‘I’m sure if it was in the Telegraph it’ll be scintillating.’ She made a show of yawning and tapping her mouth gently with the palm of her hand – a hand, Charlotte noticed, that had even more jewellery on it than normal.

  ‘Well, as you are so eager to hear,’ George said, ‘I shall continue.’ He focused his gaze on Rosie. ‘It would seem that the prime minister of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, and the Minister of Justice, Joseph Barthélemy, have formally created something called the STO – the Service du travail obligatoire.’

  ‘Compulsory Work Service,’ Charlotte translated through a mouthful of ham sandwich.

  ‘Now that, my dear, is the reward for working every hour God sends.’

  Rosie shot Lily a warning look.

  ‘If I were you,’ Lily continued regardless, ‘I’d feel very proud of myself for producing such an educated enfant.’

  Charlotte caught the look between the two women, but couldn’t interpret it.

  ‘The Compulsory Work Service,’ George continued, ‘is a way of conscripting and deporting thousands – probably tens of thousands – of French workers to Nazi Germany to help its war effort.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Rosie said.

  ‘I suppose it is, my dear,’ George said. ‘But it could be viewed from various perspectives. Of course, any kind of forced labour is despicable, but it also shows that Hitler is short of manpower at home. And as the Telegraph pointed out today in one of its commentaries, the increase in forced labour is because Hitler has had to enlist more soldiers for the war on the Eastern Front.’

  Knowing that Rosie would be wondering how all this affected Peter, he added, ‘The knock-on effect will undoubtedly be that more and more Frenchmen will be going into hiding to evade service and many of those will join ranks with the French Resistance.’

  Rosie felt a surge of hope. So, this was good news for operatives like Peter.

  ‘Dear me, George, we’ve come here for a little frivolity, not to be depressed with the state of my adopted homeland.’ Lily got out her fan from her handbag and snapped it open like a professional flamenco dancer.

  ‘So,’ Kate said, looking at George puffing away on his cigar, ‘when do I get to design a new wedding dress for your future wife?’

  George coughed. ‘Kate, my dear, when have I ever been the one to make such decisions? I would get married tomorrow if I had my own way, but my future wife here has her own ideas, which, I’m sure, will come as no surprise to you.’ He put his teacup back on the saucer. ‘I’ve just put myself on standby. When I get the signal I’ll be there, at the registry office, spick and span, with a thick rose-gold band to hand.’

  ‘I’ll know when the time is right,’ Lily said, pushing her plate to the side and pulling out her packet of Gauloises. ‘I’m still very partial to a winter wedding, although I don’t think we could ever match Tommy and Polly’s rather magical day.’

  She paused.

  Then her face lit up.

  ‘I’ve just had an idea! Perhaps we could get married on New Year’s Eve? Now that really would be a rather huge and spectacular wedding, wouldn’t it?’

  Everyone laughed when George groaned.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ashbrooke, Sunderland

  1938

  ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ Rosie looked up at the huge, overhanging elm trees as she strolled through Ashbrooke on her way to Lily’s. This part of town was so affluent, so different to where she worked during the day.

  ‘You’ll make sure she doesn’t get too lonely, won’t you?’ Rosie walked slowly, breathing in the clear air. ‘I don’t know what it is, I just feel she needs you to keep an extra-special eye on her at the moment.’

  Before she’d left her bedsit this evening, the landlord had given her a letter from Charlotte. She’d read it quickly while getting ready for Lily’s and had immediately picked up on something. Was it an underlying sadness? Was she lonely?

  Rosie always asked Charlie if she was all right, trying to put it in such a way that her sister could be honest and tell her if there was anything wrong, but it was hard. Especially as they were so far apart.

  ‘I know, I worry too much.’ Rosie continued her imaginary conversation, second-guessing what her mam and dad would say. ‘It sounds like she’s got a nice friend called Marjorie … Mind you, the poor thing doesn’t sound in the best health. Charlie says she’s got something called asthma. A problem with her breathing.’ Rosie looked at a robin perched in the bushes of one of the perfectly manicured front gardens she was walking past.

  ‘I’d let her come back here,’ Rosie said, turning down the back lane that ran parallel to West Lawn, ‘I know it’d be good for her to come back occasionally, perhaps even have a trip to Whitburn, but it doesn’t feel safe.’ Rosie knew her mam and dad would understand. She just wished Charlie could too. She had gone on and on when she’d first started at Runcorn, asking, no, begging Rosie to let her come home – just for a few days. She’d given in the once but had spent the whole time on tenterhooks, waiting, fearful that Raymond would suddenly appear out of nowhere.

  Clicking open the latch on the back gate and walking down the narrow path to the back door, Rosie knocked the required three times. She waited a moment while the shutter to the spyhole opened and closed.

  ‘Ma chère!’ Lily’s welcome put an end to Rosie’s one-sided conversation. ‘A word, ma chérie, before the travaille.’ She waved Rosie into the kitchen.

  ‘Come, come, sit down. There’s a pot of tea stewing.’ Lily went over to the armoire and poured herself a glass of cognac. She knew Rosie rarely drank and if she ever did it would be at the end of the evening.

  ‘I want to offer you the role of “head girl”,’ Lily said, getting out her cigarettes and lighting one. ‘You know that Lucinda has nabbed herself a man and has this week run off into the sunset to get married – and have copious amounts of children, no doubt.’

  Rosie smiled. Lily loved to dramatise. Lucinda had got engaged months ago and had given Lily plenty of notice.

  ‘Well, now that my lovely Lucinda has jumped ship, I need another captain – or captainness, if there is such a thing.’

  ‘I think it’s simply captain,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Well, I’d like you to take the reins – or the steering wheel – or whatever it is that drives a ship.’

  ‘The helm. You want me to take the helm – to steer the ship,’ Rosie said, suppressing a smile; for someone who lived in ‘the biggest shipbuilding town in the world’, Lily knew next to nothing about ships.

  ‘Exactly,’ Lily said. ‘I want you to take the helm of this most wondrous establishment.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Rosie said, ‘it will depend on what kind of incentive I can expect.’

  Lily clapped her hands in glee.

  ‘That’s what I love about you, Rosie, you’re a born businesswoman. I was only saying so to George the other day.’

  Rosie knew George had been a patron of the bordello for a good few years, though she hadn’t known him to go with any of the girls. He seemed to spend his time playing the piano and chatting with Lily and the rest of the clients.

  ‘Anyway, I digress,’ Lily said, waving her hand. ‘You will indeed be given a twenty-five per cent rise on all your earnings.’ It was a smart move. One that would be mutually beneficial: Rosie would be inclined to take on more clients, which, in turn, would bolster the bordello’s coffers.

  ‘Do we have a deal?’ Lily stretched out her hand.

  ‘We do,’ Rosie said as the two women shook on it.

  ‘Now,’ Lily said, ‘your
first task will be to welcome a new girl to the flock. She’s just tipped up from Liverpool – somewhere called the Wirral. Anyway, she’s going to need the benefit of your expertise and advice.

  ‘And I want you to encourage her to give herself a little bit of a makeover. I’ll stump up the money. Tell her not to worry about that.’

  Rosie finished her tea and stood up.

  ‘What’s the girl’s name?’

  ‘Vivian,’ Lily said. ‘Go easy on her, though.’ She again waved her arm around. ‘She’s not accustomed to all this.’

  Just like I wasn’t, Rosie thought.

  How life can change in such a short time.

  Rosie’s musing proved spot on when, six months later, Vivian had transformed herself from Minnie Mouse to a full-blown Mae West. She had taken Lily’s advice – and money – and given herself one hell of a makeover.

  Thanks to her own increased wages, Rosie was now easily earning enough to keep Charlotte at Runcorn.

  She had also been given a promotion at Thompson’s and been made head welder on the proviso that she trained newcomers and apprentices. There had been murmurings that any kind of educational role was a woman’s job. Not that Rosie minded. It was a step up the ladder and more money.

  When war was declared ten months later, it made Rosie even more steadfast in her refusal to allow Charlotte to come home. Instead, she tried to increase the amount of times she visited Charlotte at the Rainers’, but it didn’t matter how often she went there, the goodbyes were still just as heartbreaking.

  Nothing much happened during the first few months of the war, but all that changed when in the summer of 1940 the first bombs were dropped and the Battle of Britain began. Everyone knew the town would be top of Hitler’s hit list because of the world-renowned shipyards lining the Wear, and, of course, the area’s thriving coal-mining industry. Rosie congratulated herself that was she keeping her sister safe not only from her uncle’s clutches, but also from the bombs that had started to rain down on the town.

  It was ironic that the first houses to be hit were the fishermen’s cottages.

  Reading about the attack and seeing the photographs of the damage they had caused to her old house left Rosie feeling as though her previous life had also been obliterated.

  She just wished that the same fate had befallen her uncle. She was sure, however, that he was very much alive and kicking. She had no proof as such; it was more a sense. A sense that told her it was just a matter of time before he’d be back.

  It was the reason she only ever stayed in her rented accommodation for six-month stretches.

  There’d be less chance he’d be able to track her down.

  Or so she hoped.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sunday 14 March

  ‘Georgina, come in, come in. I wasn’t sure if you’d be here with all these wretched air raids we’ve been getting. I hope no one you know has been affected?’

  ‘No, no one. Thank goodness,’ Georgina said, taking her pew in front of Helen’s desk. She looked to her right and was glad to see the tea tray in its usual place. She could do with a pick-me-up; like most people in the town these past couple of nights, she’d had little sleep.

  ‘I heard an AA shell fell in the grounds of the Children’s Hospital, and another in some poor woman’s front garden. Both exploded,’ she said as she watched Helen pouring their tea.

  ‘I know, a friend of mine works at the Ryhope.’ Helen handed Georgina her cup and saucer. ‘He said it was pandemonium there.’

  ‘Your friend a doctor?’ Georgina asked.

  Helen nodded.

  ‘They get the overspill. Only one dead. Thank God.’ She sighed heavily. ‘What times to live in when you’re actually thankful that there was only the one casualty.’

  Helen went to sit down at her desk with her own cup of tea, reaching down to her handbag for her cigarettes. ‘I don’t know, it makes my concerns about Bel’s parentage seem so insignificant.’ She lit a Pall Mall. ‘Maybe even a bit pathetic. I wonder if I should just forget it and put my time into something more constructive.’

  Georgina sat up and put her cup and saucer down. ‘Well, I think that’s the good thing about employing someone like me. You’re not having to waste any valuable time whatsoever … I do the time, as it were, and you can get on with what’s really important.’

  Georgina looked out the window at the empty office. It was Sunday. There were no office workers, and only a skeleton staff out in the yard, by the looks of it.

  ‘You can concentrate on running this place, getting the ships built,’ she continued to stress her point. ‘I hear you’re launching the Chinese Prince in the next week or so?’

  Helen’s face lit up with pride.

  ‘Yes, on the twenty-third. On schedule. She’s going to be taking troops as well as cargo across the Atlantic. Let’s hope Lady Luck’s on her side.’

  ‘Yes, she’ll need all the luck she can get, the rate Jerry is sinking ships …’ Georgina was relieved she’d steered Helen away from any thoughts of ending the investigation. She and her father were living on a shoestring – a very thin and frayed shoestring at that. ‘So, let me fill you in,’ she said, pulling out her notepad.

  ‘Well, first of all, I didn’t realise that your grandfather, Mr Havelock, had a younger brother?’

  ‘Gosh, yes, of course, I completely forgot about him! Dear me, memory like a sieve … I do believe he died before the start of the First War. Tuberculosis, I think. Grandfather’s not one for talking much about family. Never has been. It’s always work, work, work.’

  Helen tapped her cigarette on the steel ashtray on her desk.

  ‘Neither is my mother, come to think of it, although she’s more play, play, play.’

  Georgina looked at Helen to discern whether her comments were meant to be humorous. They weren’t.

  ‘And we’ve never been one of those families that has a hoard of photographs cluttering up the place, gathering dust,’ Helen added, although she had not thought it unusual until now.

  She took a sip of her tea.

  ‘So, that would make this brother my great-uncle … God, you know I can’t even remember his name. Isn’t that terrible?’

  Georgina didn’t think it terrible, but she did think it odd. She knew all her relatives – alive and dead.

  ‘Alexander,’ Georgina said. ‘Master Alexander William Havelock.’

  ‘How interesting,’ Helen said, blowing out a stream of swirling grey smoke and patting back her victory rolls with her free hand.

  Georgina thought Helen looked a tad distracted.

  ‘Do you think it could be him?’ Helen turned to Georgina. ‘That Pearl and my great-uncle Alex had some great love affair – you know, from different sides of the track but hopelessly in love. Then he died and Bel was born?’

  Georgina tilted her head and nodded as though she was seriously considering what Helen had said could be a possibility. She had her own theories, however. Ones she’d keep to herself for now. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But I’ve still got a heck of a lot more research to do to see if I can connect Pearl to your great-uncle. Or anyone else in the family.’

  She waited for Helen to suggest the obvious – that the only other possible male person in the family was her grandfather.

  But she didn’t, and Georgina wasn’t going to offer up his name either. It was far easier to defame the dead than the living.

  ‘Well, that all sounds like great progress,’ Helen said.

  Georgina caught her looking at her watch.

  ‘So, if you’re happy for me to keep ploughing on?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Helen said, standing up.

  Georgina stood up but didn’t make to leave. God, those with money were always the same.

  Helen looked at Georgina before exclaiming, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Georgina – your retainer. Dear me, I’d forget my head today if it was loose.’

  She pulled out her top drawer and got out h
er chequebook, scrawling out the agreed amount and handing it over.

  ‘Thank you.’ Georgina put the part payment in her handbag, along with her notebook, and turned to leave.

  As she walked out of the office, she saw a rather handsome fair-haired man sitting in one of the chairs by the window. He was stroking the ginger cat, which was wrapping itself around his legs.

  As soon as he saw the two women he stood up.

  ‘John!’

  Georgina turned to see Helen’s face light up. Had the anticipation of this man’s arrival been the cause of Helen’s slightly distracted demeanour?

  ‘You should have said you were here,’ Helen reprimanded. ‘Rather than sitting out here on your tod.’

  ‘I managed to arrive a little earlier than expected,’ John said. ‘It’s actually nice to have a moment’s peace and quiet.’

  Helen laughed. ‘And to think you ended up getting it at a shipyard. Lucky it’s Sunday … Georgina, meet my friend John – Dr John Parker – a surgeon at the Ryhope Emergency Hospital.’

  Georgina put out her hand.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. His hand felt warm and gentle. She could see why Helen might be distracted.

  ‘And you too,’ Dr Parker said, putting his other hand on top of hers and giving it a rub. ‘My, you’ve got cold hands.’

  Georgina blushed before agreeing to meet with Helen again in a fortnight’s time.

  Dr Parker watched her leave.

  Helen’s Miss Marple was exactly as described.

  Half an hour later, Helen and John were sitting in the Victor Hotel public house, just a ten-minute walk up from the yard.

  ‘So, what’s the update?’ Dr Parker asked. He’d been amazed Helen had let him get the drinks in without any objection.

  ‘Well, I can’t believe I’m admitting this, you’ll think I’m such a scatterbrain, but I totally forgot my grandfather had a brother. Honestly, I felt a little bit embarrassed. I didn’t even know his name.’

  Dr Parker took a sip of his bitter. ‘Which was?’

  Helen starting fishing about in her bag. Because John had turned up earlier than expected, she’d not had a chance to put on her lipstick. It looked as though she might have left it at work.