The Shipyard Girls on the Home Front Read online

  ‘I know it’s a bit late, but Happy New Year,’ he said.

  ‘Only two weeks late,’ Helen laughed, enjoying the feel of his body close to hers, fleeting though it might be. ‘And Happy New Year to you too.’

  Dr Parker pulled out her chair.

  ‘Forever the gentleman,’ she said, smiling up at him as she sat down.

  If only he hadn’t always been a such a gentleman.

  Helen had thought about this a lot lately and was sure that John had desired her but had been too principled to make a move on her, knowing he would never want them to be serious. As her dear mama had reminded her many times this past year, she was ‘soiled goods’. Men like John – a surgeon no less – did not want second-hand goods. Not as a wife, anyway. And now John was with Dr Eris – had been courting her for more than eight months – he would never stray. John was not the kind to play away from home. And besides, Claire was a very attractive woman. Bel had commented that she reminded her of Katharine Hepburn, and Helen had been forced to agree.

  Dr Parker poured the tea and looked at Helen; her emerald eyes never failed to mesmerise him. ‘Why do I sense you have lots to tell me?’ he asked.

  Helen smiled and took her tea. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  Dr Parker laughed. ‘It’s good to see you happy.’ He wondered whether Helen’s sparkle was down to Matthew Royce. The pair had been pictured in the Sunderland Echo again, at a charity do at the museum, looking, as always, like some Hollywood couple. He’d tried not to dislike the bloke. But it was hard. He was a typical lady’s man.

  Helen took a sip of her tea and quickly looked around the cafeteria, making sure there was no one she recognised – or, rather, that Dr Eris wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. She hoped John hadn’t mentioned they were meeting up; if he had, she’d bet her boots she’d turn up to check up on them.

  ‘It’s Father,’ she said, leaning in so that those on the table next to her couldn’t hear. ‘He’s back!’

  ‘What? Back from the Clyde?’

  Helen nodded and took a sip of tea.

  ‘Well, that is news,’ he said, a perplexed look on his face. ‘How’s he managed that? I thought your mother had him over a barrel?’ John knew all about the secrets of the women welders, and how Miriam had been using those secrets to keep Jack in exile. John looked into Helen’s twinkling eyes. ‘Or should I say, how did you manage that? I’m guessing it was you who orchestrated his return.’ John knew that ever since Helen’s father had been banished over the border, she had been plotting and planning to try and get him home again.

  Helen put her cup back on the saucer. ‘Actually, it wasn’t me. Although I like to think I did help a little. But no, all the credit really has to go to Bel – and Pearl.’

  ‘Pearl?’ John did not attempt to hold back his incredulity.

  Helen chuckled. ‘Yes, Pearl.’

  And with that she proceeded to regale John with the compelling events of Christmas Day and how the drama played out in her grandfather’s dining room had led to Jack’s return – as well as to the discovery that not only was her grandmother alive, but she was just down the road in the asylum.

  ‘She’s here – in Ryhope – in the asylum?’ John was gobsmacked.

  ‘She is indeed,’ Helen said, enjoying telling a story that for once had a happy ending.

  ‘But I would have thought I’d have known – would have heard her name mentioned. Henrietta Havelock is not a name you’d forget.’

  ‘That’s because she’s been living under an assumed name for over two decades …’

  Helen paused. ‘My dear grandmama is now known as Miss Henrietta Girling.’

  ‘Miss Girling?’ John repeated.

  Helen nodded.

  ‘But that’s one of Claire’s patients.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said, eyes wide. ‘Talk about coincidence.’

  She watched as John combed his mop of sandy-coloured hair back with his fingers.

  ‘Does Claire know? I’m sure she would have said something if she did.’ He paused. ‘Or perhaps not. Patient confidentiality and all that.’

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Helen said. ‘No one knows. No one can know. As far as Claire’s aware, Grandmother is some mad spinster who’s been here for as long as anyone can remember. Part of the furniture. I think the technical word for it is “institutionalised”. Claire thinks Mother is some distant great-aunty.’

  ‘What? Miriam visits her here?’

  Helen nodded. ‘Only occasionally, although she won’t be about for a while as she’s scarpered off to Scotland to my aunty Margaret’s.’

  John sat back and blew out air. ‘Dear me. This really is shocking.’

  ‘Henrietta’s actually why I’m here today,’ Helen said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. ‘Apart from to see you, of course.’

  John let out a bark of laughter. ‘And there was me thinking you’d made the trip all the way over here just to see me.’

  Helen gave John a look he couldn’t read. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I thought this would be a great way for us to bob in with each other, stay friends, like you said after Artie’s christening. Whenever I’m here visiting Grandmama, I can grab you for a quick cuppa. That’s if you’re free, of course.’

  John smiled. ‘I think that’s a great idea. And if you ring beforehand, I can make sure I am free.’ He paused. ‘I meant what I said. About our friendship. About us having something special.’ As he took in her beautiful face and bewitching eyes, framed by loose curls of glossy black hair, he wondered if she’d known how he’d felt. How in love he had been with her.

  If she had, she’d never let on.

  ‘I have to ask you, though,’ Helen said, her face becoming sombre, ‘if you can keep everything I’ve told you – in particular about Henrietta – from Claire. It’s not that I don’t trust her,’ she lied, ‘it’s just that if it gets out, Grandfather has made it perfectly clear that he will run amok. He will make sure all the women’s secrets are trumpeted from the treetops – he’ll destroy Bel and Pearl and anyone they’re close to.’

  Dr Parker nodded. Of that, he had no doubt. He knew Charles Havelock.

  Helen looked up at the clock. She had another half-hour until visiting time over at the asylum.

  ‘Have you got time for another cuppa?’ she asked.

  Dr Parker smiled. He’d made sure he wasn’t to be disturbed unless it was an emergency. ‘I certainly have.’ He narrowed his eyes at Helen. ‘Why do I think that you haven’t told me everything?’

  Helen poured them each another cup from the pot and added milk.

  ‘You know me so well,’ she said, with a mischievous smile.

  She took a sip of her tea.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know Bel’s sister, Maisie?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Parker. He had met Maisie several times at various functions Helen had taken him to in the past.

  ‘Well,’ Helen leant forward, her teacup cradled in her hands, ‘you wouldn’t guess in a million years what she does for a living …’ She paused. ‘And who her boss is …’

  Rosie had just about caught up with the bookkeeping and was now in desperate need of a nice cup of tea. She got up from her desk in the bordello’s front reception room, which had been converted into an office, and stretched her arms high. They felt stiff from the overhead welds she had been doing all day. Her whole body felt physically shattered, and now, after hours of doing the books, she felt mentally exhausted as well. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Since the start of the New Year, work at Thompson’s had been full on. Then again, when wasn’t it. But at least they were on schedule for launching Empire Pitt at the end of the month. As it was Saturday, she and her squad had just worked a half shift, although it had been an unrelenting and hard half shift – was, in reality, a three-quarter shift, as they’d worked through till half-past one and had only had a short lunch break. After Dorothy, Angie, Martha and Gloria had left, and she’d had a chat with Jimmy, the
head riveter, about preparing to start work on the first of the commissioned LCTs, she’d nipped up to have a word with Helen, but she had left on time for a change, leaving Marie-Anne to finish up for the day. Rosie had stuck her head round the main door to see Helen’s personal assistant commandeering the room, telling all the clerical staff to make sure their work areas were spotless and they had everything prepared and ready to go for Monday morning, when they would all be in at nine o’clock sharp. Not for the first time, Rosie had thought Marie-Anne would have fared well in the ATS.

  Hurrying home, Rosie had bathed and changed into her favourite cream-coloured slacks and cashmere V-neck, before making her way up the long, steep stretch of Tunstall Vale to West Lawn, where she had done a solid few hours on the accounts.

  She had to admit, it felt good to be able to come to the bordello without having to worry about Charlotte. Much as she loved her younger sister, Rosie was glad she was away for the day, visiting her friend Marjorie. The two had been best buddies when they were at boarding school in Harrogate and had remained close after leaving.

  Charlotte had been very clingy since she’d found out the truth, but like Lily had said, she seemed happy and was doing really well at school – all good signs. And thankfully, the revelation that Lily was in fact a madam and her home a bordello had not seemed to perturb Charlotte at all. Her sister had made it clear she loved its splendour, and even more, the people in it. Lily, George, Maisie, Vivian and Kate had become Charlotte’s family – a dysfunctional and very peculiar family, but a happy one all the same.

  Walking out into the hallway, Rosie heard Maisie and Vivian chattering away upstairs as they got ready for the evening. Hearing Maisie’s soft southern accent and Vivian’s faux-American one always made her smile. Kate, she knew, would be at the Maison Nouvelle, her boutique-cum-seamstress-shop in the town centre, until well after six. Lily and George would be either out shopping, upstairs or in the scullery. They tended to go into the back parlour only when the bordello was open for business and there were clients to entertain.

  Pushing open the heavy oak door to the kitchen, Rosie saw that Lily and George were at the large wooden table in deep discussion. George, a veteran of the First War with an array of medals to prove it, was sitting, back straight, looking dapper as always in a dark blue suit, his hand placed on top of his ivory-handled walking stick. Lily had a heavily jewelled hand round a large brandy glass and was tapping ash from her Gauloise into a rather ugly red, white and blue ashtray that Charlotte had made in her pottery class, and which Lily viewed as a work of art.

  ‘You two seem serious,’ Rosie said.

  Her sudden appearance startled them both.

  ‘Ma chère!’ said Lily. ‘Come in. Wonderful to see you’ve lifted your head out of those wretched books.’

  ‘You’d soon be complaining if I didn’t do them,’ Rosie said, going over to put the kettle on. ‘So, come on, what are you two plotting and planning?’

  ‘We’re talking about the future,’ Lily said.

  ‘Really?’ Rosie was genuinely surprised. ‘That’s unusual. I thought you were all for living in the moment. In these uncertain times.’ She looked at George.

  ‘New Year always gets one thinking,’ George said, looking at Lily.

  ‘As well as that horrible, horrible man …’ Lily added, reaching for her fan, which she always kept close to hand.

  ‘You mean Charles Havelock?’ Rosie asked.

  George nodded and got out a cigar from his jacket pocket.

  ‘That explains the sombre faces. Go on,’ Rosie said. She was leaning against the Aga, waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘We were just discussing what would happen if he did report us to the authorities,’ Lily said, taking a deep drag on her cigarette and fanning herself.

  It had been Maisie’s refusal to grant Mr Havelock membership of the Gentlemen’s Club that had led to him finding out about the bordello and threatening to report them if Bel were to expose him. Lily and Maisie might well have coached Pearl on what to say when she went head to head with Charles Havelock – that they’d get off lightly with a mere slap on the wrists – but Lily knew that was the best-case scenario. If they got a particularly puritanical judge, they could all be looking at spending time behind bars.

  Hearing the kettle start to whistle, Rosie took it off the heat and poured steaming hot water into the teapot. ‘So, what were you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘Just ideas at the moment,’ George said. ‘You know, ways of pushing any spare cash into bona fide businesses. Perhaps expand the Gentlemen’s Club.’

  ‘As well as expand La Lumière Bleue,’ Lily chipped in. Lily’s London bordello was in the heart of Soho. ‘That place is as safe as houses – half the top brass at the Met go there.’

  ‘And,’ George continued, ‘I’ve always got half an eye out on any properties in which it might be worth investing.’

  Rosie took the teapot and placed it on the table.

  ‘More so at the moment,’ he added. ‘This war won’t last for ever. Thank goodness. It might even be over by the end of the year …’

  Lily rolled her eyes. ‘Enough war talk! I feel like I’m drowning in it.’

  Rosie poured herself a cup of tea. She was actually over the moon to hear Lily was thinking of going legit; it was something she had never thought she would even consider.

  ‘We’ll work something out,’ George said. ‘Just need to get the old brain percolating a few possibilities.’ He tapped the side of his head to make his point.

  ‘Well, keep me in the loop, won’t you?’ Rosie said. ‘You know me, I’m all for being “bona fide”. And if I can do anything, you must say.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ Lily said, stubbing out her cigarette.

  ‘And talking about make everything legal – have you two finally decided when you are going to tie the knot?’ Rosie arched an eyebrow.

  ‘Not yet, ma chère,’ Lily said, glancing at George. ‘But don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know. Now, tell us about our favourite girl. How’s she doing?’

  Rosie smiled. Lily adored Charlotte. As much as Charlotte adored Lily.

  ‘Charlotte is presently whooping it up with Marjorie in Newcastle,’ Rosie said.

  Lily laughed. ‘Oh, ma chère, much as I think Marjorie is a lovely girl, I can’t see her being one for whooping it up. At least you know Charlotte will be keeping on the straight and narrow when she’s with her friend from the Tyne.’

  Rosie took a sip of tea and smiled.

  ‘It’s a shame Charlotte can’t come here after school,’ Lily said tentatively. An agreement had been made that Charlotte could come and have breakfast with Lily before she went to school, but other than that the house was out of bounds. ‘It would make life easier for you, so long as she stayed in the kitchen or in your office, of course.’

  Rosie sighed. ‘Don’t you start. Charlie’s already giving me enough earache about coming here as it is.’

  Rosie wondered, though, if perhaps the reason Lily was nudging towards legitimacy, something she had always railed against, was Charlotte. This wasn’t the first time the bordello had been threatened with exposure, but it was the first time since Charlotte’s return. Was Lily fearful of the effect it would have on her new charge if the bordello and those in it were ever exposed? Did Lily really want this wonderful house to be a proper home that Charlotte could consider her own and where she could come and go as she pleased?

  Chapter Seven

  Friday 28 January

  A freezing fog had enveloped the shipyard, but it had lifted as the day had worn on. It’s absence, however, seemed to make the bitterly cold air even more biting. Rosie looked up at Empire Pitt, waiting to be sent down the ways. The launch couldn’t come quickly enough for her. She was itching to get started on the LCTs they had been commissioned to build.

  Normally, work enabled her to switch off from her worries about Peter as there was always so much to do. Compartmentalising her life was
one of her survival techniques. She had done it when she had first started working at Lily’s – keeping the work she did at the bordello separate in her mind from her work at Thompson’s. It was now a well-honed skill, which had helped her get through life. But since hearing about the planned invasion of France and being told by Helen earlier on in the month that they would be building the actual vessels that would take troops and tanks across the Channel, her work and her worries about Peter had merged. How could she push thoughts of him away when she was helping to build the ships that would help liberate France? And why would she want to? Work might no longer afford her a way of switching off from her anxieties about the man she loved, but it gave her an enormous sense of purpose – even more than she’d already had. It made her feel closer to Peter; they were in this together, fighting shoulder to shoulder – metaphorically speaking, anyway.

  She had sensed George and Lily’s reticence in speaking about the war, or rather, about anything to do with France, since they’d seen her outpouring of relief and tears when Toby had told her Peter was alive. She’d guessed they were trying to spare her more heartache, but she had sat them down yesterday and told them that she was done with running away from her fears. It was no longer possible. And in some ways, it was liberating. There was to be no more compartmentalising. ‘This is my way of helping Peter,’ she had told them both. For the first time in ages, she’d told them, she felt hopeful. ‘If France is liberated, that means Peter’s work will be done and he can come home.’

  And just this lunchtime, when they’d been going over the latest news stories and Dorothy had read out an article on the Allied troops’ ongoing assault on Anzio in Italy, which, if successful, would lead to the eventual capture of Rome, and about the Red Army reclaiming Leningrad, she’d felt it was further evidence that they were pushing towards victory.

  Rosie looked at her squad shuffling about in the cold, waiting for the launch to get going. They’d worked hard to get Empire Pitt ready. She just hoped they hadn’t burned themselves out. She needed them to be strong and give everything they had these next few months. No one knew for definite when the invasion would happen, but it was looking likely to be sometime in the late spring, early summer.