Shipyard Girls at War, page 10
But, Polly mused, even though Pearl was a complete nightmare, it still didn’t excuse Bel’s behaviour. She felt Joe was being too soft on their sister-in-law, too defensive of her, too forgiving, especially as he, out of everyone, was getting it in the neck the most from Bel. That was something Polly could not understand, as the pair of them had always got on so well – from being children; always talking nineteen to the dozen and laughing at some joke, or just being plain silly. Polly had always been surprised that it had been Teddy Bel had fallen for.
Now that Joe was back, though, and they were all living under the same roof once again, it was as if Bel couldn’t stand him. And what had really annoyed Polly more than anything was the fact that Bel had actually encouraged Joe to go back out to work, when it was quite obvious he was nowhere near ready, or well enough, to do any kind of work. It really was beyond the pale – and so unlike Bel. She’d always been the most caring and compassionate person Polly had known.
‘I don’t know how you keep your tongue with her,’ Polly spoke her thoughts aloud, adding, ‘she’s not the only one grieving. We’ve all been grieving. I know that sounds hard and it’s going to be different for Bel because she was married to Teddy, but she needs to realise we’re all going through it.’
Polly looked at Joe before adding gently, ‘You’ve not said much, Joe, but I’m sure you’ve been going through hell as well?’
Polly tentatively tried to open up the conversation, to get Joe to chat to her about how he was feeling, how he was dealing with being back at home, how he was coping with what he had been through over in North Africa and, more than anything, how he was feeling that he no longer had his twin by his side.
‘I do miss him, terribly,’ Joe said.
But that was all he said before turning back to the fire, which was now totally dead.
Chapter Fourteen
That evening, like just about every night since he had arrived back in his hometown, when Joe went to bed and closed his eyes, he welcomed the images of his adorable little niece that flitted across his mind: her wide-eyed joy at something she’d seen or done, the little frown she had mastered to show she really wasn’t very happy at all about something or other, her petulance at not getting her own way. She was definitely going through that determined stage he’d seen in other toddlers, when they were testing those who loved and cared for them – pushing them to see how far they could go and how much they could get away with.
There had been some nights when, lying there enjoying the quietness of the house, Joe had chuckled to himself when he thought of something Lucille had said or done that was particularly funny or mischievous. Today she had been playing with some of the other children in the back yard and it had started to hail. Joe had been getting some coal from the bunker and had seen Lucille throw her head up to the sky and let out such a whoop of unadulterated laughter it was infectious. He’d marvelled at her sheer delight in the sudden, unexpected change of weather, and more so in the fact that she’d kept laughing – as though she was simply enjoying laughter for laughter’s sake.
There really was no denying that Lucille was her mother’s daughter. She was the mirror image of her mother when she herself was just a child. And not just in looks, but in personality too. Just like Lucille, Bel had always been so happy and so full of fun when she was young. He remembered Agnes saying that Bel was like a ‘bouncing ball’. At the time he’d thought his mother had meant her energy; now in hindsight he wondered if she’d also meant that Bel had the capacity to always spring back from whatever life threw at her.
Once, when they were youngsters walking back home, weighed down with bags of the groceries Agnes had sent them out to buy from the market, Joe had asked Bel how it was she was always so happy. So bubbly.
‘Why wouldn’t I be happy when I’m with all of you?’ she had said.
That day Bel’s words had stirred in him a hope that she would always stay with them. Or rather stay with him for ever more. If she was happy, she would not want to leave, would she? And whether Joe had consciously done so or not, he had always tried his utmost to make Bel laugh, to keep her joyful and bolstered up in the hope of keeping her near. And to a certain extend he had succeeded. Bel had often said to Joe how much he made her laugh, often demanding he stop his comic behaviour as it was actually making her stomach hurt. And, moreover, she had stayed with them all, hadn’t she?
As Joe now lay on his lumpy mattress, looking up at the damp, stained ceiling of his small bedroom, the throbbing in his bad leg started to abate, as it always did when he had it stretched out in front of him and elevated off the ground. He enjoyed these restful moments of peacefulness and solitude before the darkness of sleep took him and he was catapulted back to that other nightmarish world he’d inhabited for the past year: a world of war, of gunfire, of the tormented cries of slow and painful deaths, and of the abhorrent, hellish sight of dismembered bodies – the cruel artwork of the Axis’s anti-personnel landmines, hidden in stony, dry terrain, waiting to disfigure, maim and kill.
All of this he managed to keep at bay during the day, but it came back to him with full force at night, when his defences were down and sleep overcame him. He would often wake at exactly three in the morning, covered from head to toe in a sheen of sweat. He’d taken to keeping a towel under his bed, so that when he woke from his night terrors, he could easily wipe down his cold, wet body, while all the time telling himself that he was alive, he was safe, he was here, with people who loved him.
He was home, where he belonged.
Tonight, before sleep forced him back to that godforsaken place and the horror spawned by the bloody battlefields he had fought on, Joe allowed his mind to flood over with calming, happy thoughts of the innocence of life of which Lucille was an embodiment. He didn’t feel as if he could ever get tired of that childishness – that absurd and often nonsensical behaviour – because it was evidence of life’s refreshing simplicity, of which he could never sicken. It was as if it combated all the horror, all the evil, all the base reality, the worst side of human nature to which he had been a witness.
As Joe heard Pearl return from another late night, trying her hardest to be quiet and tiptoe down the long hallway and up the stairs to her room, his mind wandered to Bel. It was not just the images of Lucille that replaced the horror he carried with him, but also the love he had for her. A love he knew he couldn’t have, but which he didn’t have the strength to fight like he used to.
Unlike before, he now happily gave in.
As Joe lay there, enjoying the stillness of the late evening, and hoping it would not be broken by the disruptive wailing of the air-raid sirens, he allowed himself to think about his love for Bel. He realised now that he had loved her from the first moment she had come into their house – and had loved her ever since.
As the physical pain in his leg ebbed, the ache in his heart grew stronger as he recalled the anguish he felt as a young boy when he realised that it was his brother Bel wanted – and had always wanted.
In the darkness of his room, Joe allowed himself to indulge his secret thoughts and feelings for Bel, which no one else would ever know – could ever know.
Joe had resigned himself, a long time ago, to the fact that his love for Bel, for the stray his sister had brought home that day, would never be requited. From the moment he had seen Bel’s dirty, tear-smeared face, even though he’d only been eight years old, he had felt that he would love this little girl for a very long time.
And now he was older, and felt older still in his head and in his heart, he knew that he would love Bel until his dying day.
He had accepted that now.
Chapter Fifteen
Monday 24 February 1941
‘Thank goodness for that!’ Gloria’s voice boomed across the yard. She was wrapped up in so many extra layers of clothing to keep out the bitter winter cold that she resembled a little barrel.
As she scrunched through the layers of crisp new snow that had just fallen in flurries on the yard’s concrete surface, she left the warmth of the roaring five-gallon barrel fire, around which she had been standing with Polly and Rosie as they had tried in vain to combat the freezing early morning temperatures.
The three of them had turned up early to work after last night’s air-raid attack on an area of the town where they knew their other workmates all lived. Four bombs had been dropped on houses, along with a clutch of incendiary devices. Word had spread – like the fires that had started up amongst the debris – that three women had been killed in the hour-long attack; another had been seriously injured and taken to hospital.
Gloria’s face was a picture of concern as she hurried over to Hannah, Martha and Dorothy.
‘You all okay? Anyone you know got hit?’ Gloria asked, as she cupped her hands around Hannah’s little ashen face and then inspected the other two women, who had stopped in their tracks to be given the once-over by the group’s mother hen.
‘All fine,’ Hannah said.
‘All fine too,’ Martha repeated.
Hannah and her aunty Rina lived on Villette Road, just a few streets away from Martha and her mum and dad, who rented a little single-storey cottage on Cairo Street. Dorothy lived about a quarter of a mile away in a large detached house, which overlooked the town’s expansive Backhouse Park.
‘Yes, we all fine too,’ Dorothy said cheekily, deliberately speaking in pidgin English and mimicking Hannah and Martha as she sidled over to the women’s makeshift mini-furnace to catch some warmth.
‘Dor! Dor!’ The women looked around to see Angie running as best she could in her oversized overalls and her hobnailed boots across the freshly laid snow, face flushed red and panting heavily, trying to catch her breath in the icy cold.
‘Thank goodness you’re all right. I was worried sick about you last night. I nearly came over, but my ma was having none of it. And my da said he would thrash seven bells out of me if I stepped out the front door …’
‘Don’t worry, Ange, Jerry isn’t going to stop us going to the flicks tonight. I know that’s what you were really worried about. Who else could you go out with if I wasn’t here?’ A big smile spread across Dorothy’s face as she joked with her friend. She looked as pleased as punch with all the attention she was getting.
Gloria shook her head in mock disapproval at the way Dorothy always made light of the serious, but she was more than relieved to see her workmates were all in one piece. Gloria knew her pregnancy was making her overly sensitive and definitely more emotional and maternal than she would have been normally, but she had decided to give up trying to fight it. Despite all the worries and secrecy that went with this baby growing inside her, she felt happy. So much happier than she had in such a long time. Years. She had been surprised at just how carefree she felt, and had come to the conclusion that it might have been partly down to her pregnancy, but it was also largely due to the fact that she was now on her own, free from the constraints of her husband Vinnie, and no longer having to live under a cloud of threatening violence, unpredictable rages, and alcohol-induced highs and lows.
As Gloria looked at the women all huddled round the fire, all jigging about from one foot to the other and clapping their gloved hands in an effort to keep warm, she thought how she was old enough to be every one of their mothers. And perhaps it was because of her condition but, as she looked at them all now, she realised she would not have minded having any of them as her daughter – even Dorothy.
‘I heard Tunstall Vale was the worst hit.’ Rosie jaw was chattering as she spoke. She had been at Lily’s last night when the hour-long raid had started, and all the girls and their clients had piled down into the cellar, which had been kitted out with plenty of food and drink and comfortable seats; there was even an old chaise longue down there. There had been much chatter and laughter last night with Vivian, as usual, being the centre of attention and giving them a very convincing rendition of Mae West’s ‘I’m No Angel’.
‘No one had time to get to a shelter,’ Hannah said, her body shivering from top to bottom – tremors caused not only by the morning’s arctic weather, but by memories of the devastation she had seen the previous night.
‘The rescue men were digging away, trying to free people who were trapped,’ she added.
‘It was awful. Chaos. There was dust all around. All you could hear was people shouting, ambulances … fire engines … It felt like we were all in hell.’
Martha nodded her agreement. She too had seen the decimation caused by Hitler’s Luftwaffe, but what she didn’t tell the women was that she had spent most of the night helping the wardens and the rescue men shift piles of bricks and wooden beams so they could check to see if anyone had been buried alive. Her mum and dad had also taken in an elderly couple who had lost their home and all their possessions.
When Martha had returned to their modest little terrace in the early hours of the morning, her mother had given her a cuddle and told her, ‘Well done, pet,’ before sending her off to bed with a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. Martha’s favourite – and a rare treat these days.
‘I heard three people were killed,’ Polly said sadly, ‘with at least a few others seriously injured and taken to hospital.’
When the sirens had sounded out at just before nine o’clock, Polly, Agnes, Bel, Lucille, Arthur and Joe had all made it to a nearby shelter. Pearl was out and had returned about an hour or so after the all clear, with tales of walking wounded and houses that had been reduced to mountains of rubble. It had been Pearl who had told them about the three fatalities as she had puffed on a cigarette standing in the back doorway, turning every now and again to blow smoke out behind her so it wouldn’t go into the house. When she had mentioned the women who had died because they had not been able to get to a shelter, Bel had got up and taken herself and Lucille off to bed without so much as a goodnight. Joe’s face had also displayed a mixture of sadness and anger. Polly knew what her brother was feeling – he so desperately wanted to be doing more. She had seen the same look on Tommy’s face whenever the town had taken a battering from bombs, or there were reports of yet more deaths and atrocities abroad.
As the yard’s klaxon blared out the start of the day’s shift, the women all let out a collective groan.
‘One day I’m going to live somewhere there are no horns, no sirens and no noise … in fact, I think I’ll just move to the country,’ Angie said as she reluctantly dragged herself away from the warm fire and headed off to the other side of the yard, where the crane she was operating was standing idle, its huge metal neck hanging over the river like a docile giraffe about to take a drink from the water below.
‘Hah, you’d be bored stupid,’ Dorothy said with complete conviction, but also hating the thought her best friend could even think about leaving her. ‘You wouldn’t last two minutes out in the sticks!’
‘All right, let’s get to it,’ Rosie said, but she didn’t need to tell the women twice. They were keen to move and start work, not only to get warm in front of their welds, but because she knew that today of all days they would be even more determined to do something which they felt would help to defeat Jerry – and, more importantly, help to put a stop to any more loss of life.
By the time they all stopped for their lunch break, the women crowded alongside the men to get into the warmth of the canteen. They were all starving, and all eager to get some warm food in their bellies. A few minutes later they were inside and standing in the queue, breathing in the smell of meat stew and warm pies, and feeling their mouths watering in anticipation of having their hunger sated.
‘Excuse me … sorry … can I just get to my friends?’ It was Angie, trying not to cause too much upset by pushing her way to the front of the queue so she could be with the women welders.
‘Wait till you hear what I’ve just been told,’ she said, grabbing a plate of shepherd’s pie and peas which had just been served up by one of the three elderly dinner ladies who worked there.
As the women welders all scraped their chairs back and sat around the table they’d made their own at the side of the cafeteria, Angie took a mouthful of food, and savoured it, before continuing.
‘Mildred, who’s been taken on as one of the painters, has just heard from her mate who lives up Tunstall way that they found a little baby this morning – alive – in one of the houses which had been bombed.’
All the women stopped eating and were staring at Angie, eager to hear more.
‘The poor bairn had been there – exposed to the elements – for more than ten hours. The rescue men had been working flat out all night when they heard a faint cry from one of the wrecked houses. They went to investigate and found the baby in one of the bedrooms which didn’t even have a roof over it – or even an outer wall.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Dorothy exclaimed, ‘the little thing must have been frozen.’
‘What about the baby’s ma?’ Gloria asked, instinctively knowing what Angie was going to tell them all.
Angie’s face dropped and the excitement in her voice immediately disappeared.
‘The baby’s mum was killed … They found her bed, which was just next to the cot, buried in a load of bricks and wooden beams …’
There was a sad silence as all the women let Angie’s words sink in.
Polly’s eyes watered as she thought of yet another life gone. Snuffed out. Just like her brother’s.
Hannah put her hands together and said a silent prayer, thinking of her own mother and father, from whom she had not heard for some time.
Martha looked at Dorothy, who sadly returned her workmate’s stare. No words were needed.
Gloria felt a lump stick in her throat as she imagined the baby swaddled in blankets, crying out for its mother – a mother the tiny little child would never have.
Rosie looked at the women and saw how this news, which was both a tragedy in that a life had been taken, but also a miracle as a life had been saved, had affected them all. She knew the mother’s death and the baby’s incredible survival would mean something different to them all. But out of all the women, she knew it would affect Gloria the most.
