Shipyard Girls at War, page 1
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Nancy Revell
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
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Dear Reader
History Notes
Copyright
About the Book
1941
It takes strength to work on the docks, but the war demands all hands on deck and the women are doing their best to fill the gap.
Rosie is flourishing in her role as head welder while still keeping her double life a secret. But a dashing detective is forcing her to choose between love and her duty.
Gloria is hiding her own little secret – one that if found out, could not only threaten her job, but her life.
And the shipyards are proving tougher than Polly ever imagined, while she waits for her man to return home safely.
Join the shipyard girls as they journey through the hardships of life, love and war.
About the Author
Nancy Revell is a writer and journalist under another name, and has worked for all the national newspapers, providing them with hard-hitting news stories and in-depth features. She has also worked for just about every woman’s magazine in the country, writing amazing and inspirational true life stories. Nancy has recently relocated back to her home town of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, with her husband, Paul, and their English bull mastiff, Rosie. They live just a short walk away from the beautiful award-winning beaches of Roker and Seaburn, within a mile of where the Shipyard Girls series is set. The subject is close to Nancy’s heart as she comes from a long line of shipbuilders, who were well known in the area.
Also available by Nancy Revell
The Shipyard Girls
To my husband Paul, with love
Acknowledgements
I have endeavoured to be as accurate as possible with the historical and geographical facts I have woven into Shipyard Girls at War and it is thanks to an array of organisations, publications, and individuals that I have been able to do this, including Sunderland Antiquarian Society, Sunderland Maritime Heritage, the Sunderland Echo, and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens.
A special thanks must go to Elena Notarianni who has been such a great wealth of information in relation to the town and the era in which the series is set, and has also put me in contact with some great women. Bridget Marley told me about her vividly-remembered childhood growing up while bombs rained down on the town, and Meg Hartford spoke to me about her much-loved Aunt Mattie who worked as a riveter in one of the Sunderland shipyards during the war.
I must also say a really big thank you to Jenny Geras for her invaluable editorial guidance, to my wonderful agent Diana Beaumont, of United Talent Agency, and, of course, to my mum and dad, Audrey and Syd Walton, and my husband Paul, who have given me such love, support and encouragement throughout.
Thank you.
‘Modo liceat vivere, est spes’ (‘While there’s life, there’s hope’)
‘Terence’, a playwright of North African descent (185–159 BC)
Prologue
MRS ISABELLE ELLIOT, 34 TATHAM STREET, SUNDERLAND, COUNTY DURHAM.
WE DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU YOUR HUSBAND PRIVATE EDWARD ELLIOT OF THE 7TH ARMOURED DIVISION OF THE BRITISH ARMY IS NOW REPORTED TO HAVE LOST HIS LIFE AS A RESULT OF MILITARY OPERATIONS ON 11 DECEMBER 1940.
THE BRITISH ARMY EXPRESS THEIR PROFOUND SYMPATHY.
LETTER CONFIRMING THIS TELEGRAM GIVING ALL AVAILABLE DETAILS FOLLOWS.
WAR SECRETARY OF STATE, WAR MINISTRY.
Chapter One
Friday 27 December 1940
Polly found Bel huddled up on the floor in the far corner of her bedroom.
Her arms were wrapped around her legs, which were pulled up tight to her chest. Her head was bowed down, with her forehead pressed against her knees. Her body, tucked up in a ball, was rhythmically rocking back and forth.
She wasn’t making a sound. Polly couldn’t even hear the resonance of her sister-in-law’s breathing. Instead the room was filled with the most mournful silence.
It was daylight outside, yet the blackout curtains had been pulled shut, as was the tradition when a close family member passed away, although in this case ‘passed away’ was too gentle a description for the life that had been so brutally taken. ‘Passing’ suggested the natural end of a life well lived; a life that had reached the stage where it was time to move on.
The life being mourned in the Elliot household, however, had not by any means been ready to move on. It had been snatched away. Robbed. Stolen. Like so many others during this past year. It was a wrongful death. An injustice that could never be righted.
In normal circumstances the closed curtains served the dual purpose of letting neighbours know a death had occurred, as well as keeping the inside of the home dark and cool, as the deceased’s body was usually kept there until the funeral took place.
In the Elliot household, though, the curtains had been drawn merely as a sign that the family was in mourning. There was no body to bury, as Teddy’s shrapnel-filled corpse had already been laid to rest in a foreign cemetery in a place none of the family had ever heard of: Sidi Barrani in Egypt – a town just a few miles away from where Teddy had been blasted to death by an enemy landmine less than three weeks previously.
He had been one of the first casualties to die at the start of Operation Compass, the first large-scale military action in the Desert War following the Italian invasion of Egypt, which, despite being hailed a success, had resulted in the loss of 624 British soldiers.
Teddy Elliot, aged twenty-six, formerly a shipyard worker from Sunderland, County Durham, had been one of those 624 fatalities.
As Polly edged her way into Bel’s bedroom, a few rays of sunlight splintered through the gaps in the blackened cloth, illuminating the outline of her sister-in-law. As Polly’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she recoiled at the sight of her friend. Her brother’s wife. Now her brother’s widow. Bel looked almost feral, and for the briefest of moments Polly felt fearful of this young woman she had known and loved for almost her entire life. She hesitated before making her way across the room, almost tiptoeing out of respect for the quietness.
She then slowly crouched down.
‘Bel,’ she said in an almost whisper. ‘Bel …’
She stretched out her hand, still dirty from a hard day’s work, and touched Bel’s crown of thick blonde hair.
The rocking continued.
‘Bel … look at me,’ Polly gently coaxed.
The rocking went on, but the head moved, and Bel slowly showed her face.
Her skin was a ghostly shade of milky white, and the dried outline of mascara-laced tears had painted grey, salty streaks down her cheeks.
Bel had been like this all day, and probably all night too.
The previous day, after receiving the telegram telling them of Teddy’s death, Bel had taken to her bed, or so Polly and her mum Agnes had presumed when they had watched her shocked figure disappear into her room on the ground floor of the mid-terrace house they all shared in the town’s east end.
Shortly afterwards, Polly had also sought solace in her own room, and Agnes, who had managed to hold herself in check in front of her daughter and daughter-in-law had, once on her own, wept bitter tears, until the early morning light showed her another day had begun; still shrouded in a veil of disbelief that her worst fears had become reality and that one of her sons had gone for ever, she had gone to wake Polly and told her to get ready and go to work. Agnes knew that by trying to keep some semblance of normality and routine, it would help her daughter deal with the loss of her beloved brother the best way she could. She knew that Polly needed to be active and, moreover, feel that she was somehow fighting back; by going to work and repairing and building ships for war, she was helping to defeat the enemy that had taken her brother from her.
Her daughter-in-law, on the other hand, needed to stay at home. Agnes knew Bel as though she was her own flesh and blood, and realised she would not be in any fit state to even leave the house, never mind go to work. Bel needed to rest, to take time to grieve for the only man she had ever loved – who she had adored ever since she’d been a small child. Entering Bel’s bedroom that morning, she was glad she had had the foresight to send Bel’s daughter, Lucille, to stay the night with their neighbour Beryl, for she was greeted with the heart-wrenching sight of her daughter-in-law rocking silently to and fro in the corner of her room. Agnes guessed Bel had been like that all night, as her bed was untouched, but she knew everyone needed to mourn in their own way, and so she had left her there. Agnes had also lost her husband Harry, at around the same age as Bel, at the end of the First World War; she knew only too well the searing pain her son’s wife was going through – and would continue to go through for a long time to come.
When Polly had returned from work later that day, though, and Bel still had not surfaced, Agnes had told her daughter ‘enough was enough’ – it was time for Bel to emerge from her self-imposed cocoon. So Polly was carrying out her mother’s wishes.
Now, as she stood looking at Bel, she felt a chill run down her spine, for the woman she loved dearly was staring back at her with what could only be described as dead eyes. There seemed to be no light or life behind the enlarged black pupils now gazing up at her.
This, Polly realised, was what grief looked like in its purest form. It was as though the death Bel was grieving had somehow pervaded her very being, and in doing so had also taken a part of her own life from her.
Polly braced herself.
‘Bel, come with me … Give me your hand,’ she said gently, taking both of Bel’s cold, clenched hands in her own and pulling her up.
Polly was thankful this person she had known since they were small children playing on these very streets on the other side of the blacked-out windows did not fight her guidance.
As Bel stood unsteadily on her feet, Polly put her arm around her slim frame, and as she did so she was struck by how aged and fragile Bel felt. She was only twenty-four but seemed decades older.
Polly helped her newly widowed sister-in-law out of the bedroom and down the hallway, before guiding her into the kitchen. A fire crackled and spat as it blazed angrily in the lead range, and a pot of hot tea stood steaming on top of the big wooden table.
‘Come. Sit down, Bel,’ Agnes told her daughter-in-law. ‘Drink some tea. You have to be brave. You have to be strong. Your daughter needs you.’
And with that Bel sat, and with shaking hands picked up a cup of tea and forced herself to take a sip. Forced herself to live. If not for her own sake, then for the sake of her daughter. Her beautiful child who was like her daddy in so many ways. A daddy she would never see again. Never get to know. Never be loved by. Nor love herself.
As if realising she had become the focus of the women’s attention, little Lucille, who was lying curled up in her blanket-strewn cot, stirred from an afternoon slumber that had been aided by the sombre quietness of the house. Polly went and picked up her two-and-a-half-year-old niece and sat her on her knee.
There was no chatter amongst the three women as they sat in quietness and moved cups to their mouths. Instead they simply thought their own thoughts and felt their own terrible sadness.
Agnes for the loss of a son.
Polly for her big brother.
And Bel for the love of her life.
A love she felt she could not live without but knew she had to, if only for the sleepy child snuggled up opposite her in her aunty’s lap.
Chapter Two
One month later, January 1941
‘What’s that young lad doing?’ Dorothy asked the shipyard’s head welder, Rosie Thornton, as she watched a boy who looked barely a day over fourteen clamber between a line of huge wooden blocks. They had been laid down in a long line and resembled the vertebrae of a steel spine running along the bottom of one of the yard’s dry docks.
‘It’s part of the shipbuilding tradition,’ Rosie started to explain as she shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare. In this light you could clearly see the small splashes of scars scattered across her otherwise very attractive face. Dorothy thought she would have personally tried to cover them up with a thin layer of foundation or powder, but her boss did not seem to care.
As Rosie talked she wiped a tear away, her overly sensitive eyes struggling to cope with the early morning show of sun. Today, like most days that had greeted the New Year, it was bitterly cold, and there were patches of ice on the yard’s greasy, concrete surface, but, as if in celebration of the day’s events, the sun had come out for a short spell. It seemed appropriate that the ceremonial laying of the ship’s keel should have a blast of sunshine. It was a good omen.
‘Haven’t you learnt anything since you’ve been working here?’ Gloria ribbed her workmate. By way of reply, Dorothy stuck her tongue out at the woman she loved to hate and who seemed to love to hate her back in equal measure.
Gloria rolled her eyes at Dorothy’s juvenile gesture and continued. ‘The yard’s youngest apprentice has to put a coin down on one of the wooden blocks that go under the keel to bring the ship luck … and for those of you who still don’t know,’ she added sarcastically, ‘the keel is the long wooden thing that runs from the bow to the stern – that’s the front to the—’
‘All right,’ Dorothy interrupted, ‘I may be stupid, but I’m not that stupid!’
Rosie sighed. Ever since they’d started at the yard, Gloria and Dorothy had been incapable of saying anything nice to each other, even though, strangely enough, she knew they didn’t actually dislike each other. Far from it.
‘The day that woman utters a civil word to me is the day I start to worry,’ Dorothy muttered to her friend, Angie, who was standing close by, scrutinising the events of the ceremonial laying of the keel being played out in the depths of the dry dock just yards away from the edge of the River Wear.
As usual, whenever there was a break, Angie would climb out of the square metal cabin of the massive crane she spent her day operating, and go and find Dorothy. The pair of them had become inseparable these past few months after they had bonded over a two-timing philandering riveter called Eddie who had been dating them both behind their backs.
‘The laying of the keel,’ Rosie continued, eager to stop any more squabbling, ‘is a tradition that dates way back to when ships were built out of wood. It’s one of the four specially celebrated events in the life of a ship, the others being launching, commissioning, and decommissioning. And, like Gloria said, the coin is meant to bring luck to the ship while it’s being constructed, and then later on to the captain and crew.’
‘Rosie make a good teacher, no?’ Hannah said with only the slightest hint of a foreign accent as she nudged her fellow welder Martha, who had been renamed ‘Big Martha’ by the yard’s mainly male workforce. It was a nickname that was also a play on words, as the town’s massive anti-aircraft gun had been christened Big Bertha due to its formidable size.
Martha did not seem to mind the fact that her name had been given a prefix. She had told Hannah and the other women as much when they had asked her if her new moniker bothered her and she had simply told them, ‘but it’s true’. And, to be fair, it was a pretty appropriate description of Martha, as there was no denying she was certainly big; in fact, it wouldn’t have been too much of a push to call her a giant. She certainly fitted the description of a ‘gentle giant’, as she had an incredibly quiet and unthreatening nature in contrast to her huge bulk.
When Martha had first started at the shipyard as a novice welder, it had taken the women a while to get to know her as she had hardly spoken a word. What they hadn’t realised then was that Martha had hardly spoken many words at all in her entire life, never mind at her new place of work. Since she had settled in at the yard she had become far more verbose, although she was still a million miles away from being a chatterbox.
