Secrets of the Shipyard Girls Read online

  Gloria almost choked on her tea. ‘No … Hannah? … Really? I can’t believe she’d have her head turned by anyone.’

  ‘Well,’ Dorothy said, grabbing a biscuit from the plate, ‘it would appear so, or at least Ange and I think so.’

  Gloria chortled, ‘Oh, honestly, you two are terrible. Not everyone’s man-mad you know? I’m surprised either of you ever get any work done the way you’re constantly on the lookout for new talent. Hannah’s not like you two. The poor girl’s probably got a “sparkle in her eye”, as you put it, because she’s simply cock-a-hoop she’s not having to weld any more.’

  Dorothy sat back in her chair. ‘Well, there’s something up. Every time I see this Olly he’s practically glued to Hannah. He’s obviously got the glad eye for her.’

  ‘Mm.’ Gloria took a sip of tea and got up to check on baby Hope. ‘Well, if that is the case, and you and Ange are right, then you’d better make sure she’s all right. She’s far too young for any kind of shenanigans … And I don’t want you and Angie encouraging her. The next thing we know, she’ll have had her heart broken, or worse still, have gotten herself in the family way.’

  Dorothy spluttered with outraged laughter. ‘God, you’re a right one to talk! … Anyway, Glor, “that girl” is the same age as Ange and me. Hannah’s not far off nineteen. She’s a young woman not a child!’

  ‘That may well be,’ Gloria pursued her point, ‘but she’s different to you two. She’s had a different upbringing. And she’s so naïve. And on top of all of that, she hasn’t got anyone around her – apart from her aunty Rina, who, by the sounds of it, is a lovely woman, but she’s getting on a bit and she’s not very – how can I put it – worldly-wise?’

  All the women knew Hannah had had a sheltered upbringing in her native Prague; that her middle-class Jewish upbringing in Czechoslovakia couldn’t have been more different to being raised in an industrial, working-class town like Sunderland. The only reason she was over here, instead of sat at a desk studying Latin, or learning to play the piano, was that Hitler had decided Hannah’s homeland was to be a part of his Third Reich.

  ‘Hannah’s got us,’ Dorothy reassured her friend. ‘Anyway, don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her – and this lovelorn work colleague of hers.’ Dorothy stood up and noisily put down her teacup, causing Hope to stir. Dorothy smiled; she had succeeded in waking the baby.

  ‘Hurrah! She’s woken up … wants to see her fairy godmother,’ Dorothy said as she strode over and picked Hope up out of the cot, cradling her in her arms and cooing.

  Gloria shook her head at Dorothy as she pushed herself out of the sofa. Last week when Dorothy had popped in to see Hope, she’d used similar tactics to wake the baby.

  ‘Well now, seeing as we’re all up and awake I’ll make you some sarnies,’ Gloria said. ‘You must be starving. I know I’d be after a day’s work at the yard. Bring Hope into the kitchen and you can keep telling me all the news.’

  Gloria plodded into her little kitchen, which, as always, was spic and span. Since she had got shot of Vinnie, she had enjoyed keeping her newly built council house pristine and well ordered. There wasn’t room in her life for any more chaos.

  ‘So, Glor, have you made up your mind when you’re going to get this little one christened?’ Dorothy asked, following behind her with Hope cradled in her arms.

  Gloria sighed. Dorothy had asked her the same question last time she came round. She wasn’t quite sure whether it was because Dorothy genuinely thought her daughter should be baptised, or because it would be a good excuse for a bit of a social – and one where she would be the centre of attention.

  ‘Not yet,’ Gloria said, slapping two slices of white bread down on the wooden chopping board. ‘So, how’s everyone else doing?’

  ‘Well …’ Dorothy paused, looking down at Hope and pulling a funny face. The baby’s little clenched hands reached up and tried to grab at some imaginary object in front of her godmother’s face. ‘… Polly’s just got a letter from lover boy, so she’s all happy.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ Gloria said, genuinely pleased. Polly’s fiancé, Tommy Watts, who she’d met and fallen in love with when he was working as a dock diver at the yard, was now removing limpet mines from the bottom of Allied ships. Being on the list of reserved occupations, Tommy could have stayed at home, but he’d been determined ‘to do his bit’. Gloria couldn’t work out if he was a brave man, or a mad one. Probably both. But regardless, Polly adored the lad, and every time she got a letter from him she’d read it out to them all.

  ‘He still based in Gibraltar?’ Gloria asked.

  Dorothy nodded. ‘Polly says she can’t see him being moved anywhere else. They can’t risk losing the Rock. If they do they’ll lose control of all shipping in and out of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Then we really will be done for.’

  Any talk of the Atlantic or the war being waged on the sea made Gloria anxious. Thoughts of her own two boys, who were also in the Royal Navy, pushed themselves to the fore, as well as her increasingly desperate worries about Jack. It had now been three weeks since his ship had gone down and still there’d been no word as to whether or not he had been one of the lucky few to survive.

  Gloria forced her mind back to Thompson’s and their squad of women welders. ‘And Rosie?’ Gloria asked. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘Mm,’ Dorothy mused, ‘she seems all right … although you know Rosie, it’s always hard to tell. She’s such a closed book.’

  Gloria opened up a can of spam. ‘Mm, she’s a deep one is Rosie.’

  ‘I know,’ Dorothy said as Hope managed to grab a strand of her shoulder-length thick black hair and yank it with surprising force. ‘I thought she might have opened up a bit more after that trouble with her uncle …’ Dorothy gently tugged her hair free from Hope’s determined grasp. ‘Especially after she told us about her other work.’ Dorothy spoke the words quietly as if they were in danger of being overheard.

  Gloria sliced the spam up and layered in on to the thickly buttered slices of bread. Neither woman had to say anything. Nor wanted to. After that awful night last year when Rosie had nearly been killed by her uncle in the shipyard, they’d learnt about Rosie’s ‘other job’ – her night-time work at a place called Lily’s bordello in a posh area of the town just next to the Ashbrooke cricket club. Rosie had worked there for years, although after the night she’d almost died she’d stopped working as one of the girls and, by the sounds of it, was now practically running the place.

  ‘She’s not mentioned anything more about that copper she seemed to be getting friendly with? What’s his name … DS Miller? God … memory like a sieve … Can’t remember his first name …’

  Gloria knew that Rosie had felt more than friendship towards the detective; knew that they had been meeting at a little café called Vera’s just up from the south dock.

  ‘Peter,’ Dorothy said, ‘DS Peter Miller … No, not a peek. I know for a fact she’s not seeing him every week like she used to. Shame. I thought he was quite scrummy – in an older man type of way.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just as well,’ Gloria said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if she could ever have a proper relationship with the bloke. If he ever found out about … you know … Lily’s place and what goes on there, it wouldn’t just be Rosie who would be up to her neck in it – but everyone working there. No,’ Gloria surmised, ‘Rosie’s a wise woman. She would know there would be too much at stake – “scrummy” or not,’ she said, cutting up Dorothy’s sandwich and putting it on a plate.

  ‘That may well be,’ Dorothy added. ‘But what if she’s fallen madly in love with Mr Scrummy Detective?’

  Gloria chuckled. ‘God, Dorothy, you go to see too many of those daft romantic films. I know Rosie, she’s got her head far too securely screwed on. Anyway, come on, let’s do a swap,’ she said, hauling Hope out of Dorothy’s arms. They went back into the lounge and between mouthfuls of sandwich Dorothy continued to tell Gloria all the latest.

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, how could I forget. You’d never believe Martha. She’s getting really chatty lately!’ Dorothy exclaimed. Gloria’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  ‘Well,’ Dorothy said, ‘“really chatty” might be a bit of an exaggeration, but she’s definitely talking a lot more than normal. I reckon it’s because Hannah’s not really about all that much. I know she’s missing her like mad – you know how close they were – but I think, in a way, she’s come out of her shell more since Hannah’s defected to “the other side”.’

  Gloria chuckled. There was definitely a division in the shipyard. A real ‘them and us’: Those who worked outside in all weathers, building the actual ships – and those who worked in the comfort and warmth of the offices.

  ‘Either that,’ Dorothy added, ‘or seeing little Hope being born has shocked her into speech!’

  Gloria laughed. Hope’s birth really had been blood, sweat and tears.

  ‘Sounds like she’s opening up more. That’s good,’ Gloria said, and she meant it. She had a soft spot for Martha, who really was the epitome of a ‘gentle giant’, with more muscle on her huge frame than most men, yet possessing the quietest and mildest of natures.

  As Hope started to wriggle in her mother’s arms, Gloria chuckled, ‘I bet you she’s still not uttering a word to any of the blokes, though?’

  Dorothy laughed. ‘No, not that any of them mind. I think they all find her a bit scary, although they’d never for one minute admit that.’

  ‘And …’ Gloria said tentatively, ‘dare I ask if Helen’s been causing any more trouble?’

  Dorothy’s face dropped. They were all well aware that the yard’s acting manager Helen Crawford hated them. Her animosity was mainly due to the fact that she had not got what she’d so desperately wanted – Tommy Watts, and that he’d not only fallen for Polly, but had proposed to her. Since then Helen’s need for revenge had applied to them all, and she’d tried every trick in the book to break up their squad – and what’s more, had nearly succeeded. Over the course of the past six months she had repeatedly used her position at Thompson’s to push Martha across to the riveters, and make Hannah’s life unbearable by making her do some of the hardest welding jobs. When Helen had found out Gloria was pregnant, and that legally she could get rid of her at the drop of a hat, she had almost succeeded in her aim of systematically ripping apart their gang of all-women welders. It would have left Rosie with just Polly and Dorothy, giving Helen the green light to place the women in different squads at opposite ends of the yard.

  It had only been thanks to Rosie that they were all still together now. She had brought in the Union, who had stipulated that contractually Martha’s employment was as a welder – and not a riveter; she’d then orchestrated a job swap with Gloria and Angie, a crane operator.

  But, even though Helen had failed in breaking them up, that was not to say she had given up.

  ‘For once that horrible vindictive cow is not on our backs,’ Dorothy said, adding, ‘but that’s only because she’s not been at work these past couple of weeks. I’m guessing because of Jack …’ Dorothy let her voice tail off.

  Helen was Jack’s daughter, something everyone found quite hard to believe. The apple had truly fallen a long way away from the tree. Helen’s spoilt, self-obsessed nature could not have been more different from that of her father, and it was generally agreed by those who knew the family that Helen was the replica of her mother, Miriam. Still, it was her father Helen adored and she had pulled every string possible to get herself a job at Thompson’s as she had been determined to follow in his footsteps. Miriam, of course, was horrified that her beautiful daughter should go to work in the shipyards, but Helen had, as usual, got her own way and wangled herself a job in the administration offices, where, much to everyone’s surprise, she had made her mark. So, when Jack had gone off to America to educate the Yanks about the new Liberty ships which the yard’s owner Cyril Thompson had designed, Helen had been promoted to acting yard manager – and, in doing so, had become a deeply embedded thorn in the women’s sides.

  ‘Helen’s never off work,’ Gloria worried. ‘I wonder if that means they’ve heard something about Jack. No one’s said anything at work, have they?’

  Dorothy shook her head. ‘Sorry, Glor.’

  Gloria looked down at Hope and felt her heart start to beat faster. Since she had been told that Jack’s ship – the SS Tunisia – had been sunk somewhere off the coast of Ireland, she had been filled with a sense of terrible foreboding. Baby Hope had brought light and joy into her life, but that could not obliterate the worry and the dread she felt whenever she thought about Jack – a worry and dread that plagued her just about every minute of every day.

  When she had started work at the yard, she had done so to escape her unhappy and abusive marriage; all she had wanted was a respite from Vinnie. An escape. She had never expected to fall in love with Jack – for the second time in her life.

  Twenty years previously he had broken her heart when he’d dumped her and married Miriam. They had barely seen each other during that time. She had married Vinnie and had two boys. Jack and Miriam had had a daughter, Helen. But then Gloria had started work at Thompson’s. She had known he was yard manager there, but not that she would see so much of him. But she had, and it had been as if there was a magnet pulling them together. Their love had been reignited – a love that they realised had never really died, and they had become lovers. Jack had told her that his marriage to Miriam had never been a happy one and had been dead for many years. He’d been desperate for them both to come clean about their love for each other, especially as he now knew about Vinnie’s violence and how it had been, and still was, both brutal and frequent. But Gloria had told Jack to wait until after he had returned from America. Their new lives together would start after he came back.

  But ever since hearing that his ship had been hit, Gloria had felt in a cruel limbo, her mind swinging between hope that Jack was alive – then back to mentally preparing herself for news of his death. It was driving her insane, and it was for this very reason that she was going back to work tomorrow. She couldn’t stand to be alone with her own thoughts a moment longer. She needed the distraction. And on top of everything else, she needed the money – not just to get by on, but also because she was determined to get a divorce. And in order to do that, she had to seek legal advice – and that kind of professional help didn’t come cheap.

  Her decision to return to work had been made that much easier when Polly told her that her sister-in-law, Bel, would be more than happy to look after baby Hope while Gloria was at work. When the war had really got going last summer, Polly’s mother, Agnes Elliot, had been determined to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort, and, after the government had stuck up posters emblazoned with the plea: ‘If you can’t go to the factory, help the neighbour who can’, she had transformed her home into a makeshift crèche, now known affectionately by those around the doors as ‘Aggie’s nursery’.

  Gloria knew Hope could not have been in better hands.

  ‘I hate to even utter that man’s name …’ Dorothy said with a look on her face as if she had eaten something rather unpleasant, ‘but have you heard anything from Vinnie?’

  Gloria shook her head.

  ‘Well, fingers crossed it stays that way,’ Dorothy said sternly.

  Half an hour later, after relaying more snippets of gossip doing the rounds in the yard, Dorothy said her farewells in a whirlwind of hugs and kisses, which Gloria allowed her to bestow on Hope, but which she herself rejected.

  ‘Dinnit be so soft and get yourself home,’ she berated her.

  ‘Home?’ Dorothy gasped in mock outrage. ‘It’s far too early to be going home, Glor! Ange and I are off up the town. Apparently there’s a load of RAF blokes out on the tiles – living it up before their next mission.’

  Gloria tutted her disapproval but couldn’t quite suppress a smile as she watched her workmate make her way down the path and out the front gate – her leather
hobnailed boots sounding out her departure, her long shiny black hair falling down the back of her dirty overalls.

  A few minutes later Gloria was settling herself down on the sofa so she could give Hope her evening bottle of milk when the doorbell rang. Thinking it was Dorothy and that she must have forgotten something, Gloria got up out of the comfort of the cushioned settee, and, with Hope cradled in her arms, went to open her front door.

  As soon as she did so, though, she immediately regretted it and tried to slam the door shut again – but it was too late. Vinnie had already jammed his steel toe capped boot in the doorway.

  Gloria cursed herself. Why hadn’t she put her safety latch on?

  It had never occurred to her that it could be Vinnie. Whenever he turned up, he either bashed on the door or pummelled it with his fists. She had never known him to use the bell.

  ‘Dinnit worry, Glor,’ Vinnie said, keeping his foot in the door, ‘I’m not ganna kick off.’

  Gloria’s hand instinctively went to shield Hope’s head – and her vision – from the sight of the man she both hated and feared, and who was now standing on her doorstep.

  ‘What you doing here?’ Gloria demanded, half turning away, protecting herself and her babe-in-arms from the man she had been married to for twenty long years – from the man who thought this bundle of innocence she now held in her arms was his.

  ‘What the hell do you think I’m here for? I want to see my bairn?’ he shouted, his face starting to contort with anger.

  Gloria swung her face round to look straight at Vinnie. Her mouth was set hard and her eyes daggered into him.

  ‘Ooh, if looks could kill …’ Vinnie’s face turned mocking.

  ‘I wish,’ spat Gloria. ‘You’re not wanted here, Vinnie. Not ever.’ Her words were said with complete conviction.

  For a second she had a flash of memory; of the pain she had felt as his bare knuckles had smashed on to the bridge of her nose. She could still recall the taste of metal as blood gushed from her nose and down her throat. Gloria had not heard a whisper from Vinnie since then, and she was sure that wasn’t because he’d all of a sudden developed a conscience, but because someone had warned him off. Someone, she was sure, had given him a dose of his own medicine, although she still had no idea who.