Shipyard Girls at War, page 28
She was especially sure of this after her reaction earlier on. There was simply no way Peter could know about her other job.
The only way he could ever find out would be if he went there for any of the services offered by her girls, and Rosie was pretty sure Peter was not the type. Lily had told her that they had the occasional visit from one of the Borough’s chief inspectors, but he was always very discreet and only Lily and George knew he was a copper. No one else from the local constabulary had any idea that the beautiful three-storey town house opposite Ashbrooke’s Sports and Social Club was anything but the residence of one of the town’s more affluent inhabitants.
But her reaction to Peter’s innocent question earlier on had given Rosie a shock. It had afforded her an insight into how it would feel should he get to know about her past as a working girl, and her present as Lily’s business partner. But worst of all had been the sense of shame that had unexpectedly hit her during that short moment she had thought Peter knew about the bordello.
It’s a warning, Rosie told herself as she quickly changed her clothes, I’ve got too close to this man for my own good. It has to stop.
Rosie knew she was playing with fire, and she knew she was going to get badly hurt if she carried on seeing him.
As she dabbed make-up on to her face, covering her scars, her mind kept churning over. She knew if her relationship with Peter went any further, the pain she would inevitably feel would be a very different kind to that which her uncle Raymond had subjected her to – but it was pain all the same. And she had suffered enough hurt and torment to last her a lifetime.
‘I’ve already been burnt the once. I’m damned if it’s going to happen again,’ she said aloud to the reflection staring back at her in the mirror.
As Rosie finished getting ready, she left her flat and made her way to her old boarding house, just a few hundred yards up from the main bus depot in Park Lane. Rosie hurried up the worn carpeted stairs, taking care as she was wearing her heels and a dress which wasn’t exactly figure-hugging but that still didn’t allow her much leeway in movement.
Lily had shown her some of the latest ‘utility’ fashions and how it was becoming increasingly common for women to wear slacks for leisure and not just for work. Rosie had liked the look of them; they appeared comfortable and far more practical than a skirt. She longed for the day overalls became de rigueur but doubted that would ever happen, certainly not in her lifetime.
‘Mrs T? You up there?’ Rosie shouted out as she reached the second landing.
‘Of course I’m here, Rose! Where else is an old blind woman going to be? Out living it up? Painting the town red?’ she said with a loud laugh.
‘You don’t fool me,’ Rosie said as she pushed open the old woman’s door, which was always ajar. ‘You’re probably planning a night out on the tiles as soon as you’re shot of me!’
Rosie gave Mrs T a big hug and then put her boxed-up cake on the side table. ‘This is a fleeting visit, I’m just off out, but I wanted to pop in with this for you to have after your supper.’
Mrs T shuffled over to where Rosie had put the square cardboard box and picked it up and smelt it. ‘Ah, you’re a little treasure. It’s my favourite. Good old-fashioned pound cake. I can smell the vanilla and icing powder. Thanks, pet. You don’t have to, you know. You should save your pennies. I know you’ve not got a lot.’
‘If I couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t get it. You just look after yourself and enjoy it. I’ll do us a quick cuppa and then I’ll get off.’
As Rosie made the tea, the two women chatted about their week. Mrs T told Rosie about the new tenants on the third floor, a loud, young woman, with two small but equally vociferous children. And Rosie talked in turn about work, and how she was counting down the weeks and days before her sister Charlotte came to stay over during the school holidays.
‘I wasn’t sure whether I should let her really,’ she told Mrs T a little anxiously, ‘especially after all the air raids we’ve been having of late, but it seems to have quietened down. I think I can risk her being here for a couple of days.’
‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ the old woman said as she lifted her teacup to her lips. Rosie noticed that her hands were shaking more than usual.
‘Charlotte cannot wait to meet you too. I’ve told her all about you – and the girls at work. I think she’s quite excited.’
When it was time for Rosie to go, Mrs T didn’t ask her where she was going, which pleased Rosie, but at the same time it confirmed what she had suspected for a while now: Mrs T had a good idea where she was going and what she was doing – and had probably known for some time. After Rosie had been attacked by her uncle, and the old woman had felt the scars on her face, she’d stopped asking where Rosie was ‘gallivanting’ off to, just like she’d never mentioned the sister and family in South Shields Rosie had purported to have; that was a story Rosie had concocted shortly after she had first moved in to explain why she was coming back so late in the evening.
The women had an unspoken understanding. Rosie was pleased the old woman had some idea as to what she did but, at the same time, she was glad she also knew not to talk about it.
Her only slight concern was that if an old doddery woman, who could hardly walk and was blighted with cataracts, had sussed out what she was doing, how long would it take someone like Peter, a detective, and a naturally inquisitive person, to also work it out?
At about the same time that Rosie was leaving Mrs T’s to go to Lily’s, DS Miller was starting his shift patrolling the north side of the river, where the majority of the bombs had been dropped over the past year. His mind, as it always did when he had time to himself, was replaying his weekly tea date with Rosie.
He really had never met another woman like her. She was totally unique, but he still couldn’t quite work her out. Sometimes he felt he knew her well, other times not so well. Like this afternoon, he had picked up on something when he’d asked her about ‘her girls’, but he couldn’t interpret her slightly odd reaction. It was as if she had panicked. Which didn’t make sense.
He was usually good at reading people – years on the job had taught him that – and he was also naturally intuitive, but Rosie was different. A part of him was of the opinion that there was more to Rosie than met the eye. That she had a secret of sorts, although he had no idea what that could be. Another part of him was saying that he’d been a copper for too long and had become overly suspicious of people. What he did know, though, without a shadow of a doubt, was that he was falling in love with her. That much was obvious, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. And he didn’t want to stop it. And he felt that Rosie was also falling for him, even if she was incredibly guarded about showing it.
The woman was just so contradictory, without being aware of it. She was an odd mixture of worldliness and innocence. He had never come across a woman who gave off such maturity and experience of life, but at the same time seemed extremely young and almost naïve – certainly with regard to any kind of courtship.
Her complexity did not in any way dampen his fervour for her; if anything it fired it up even more. He had never imagined he would ever find another woman whom he loved as he had his wife. But then Rosie had come along and bowled him over.
Every minute they were together, sitting opposite each other in the café, he had to stop himself reaching over and kissing her; just like when he was walking her back home and her hand seemed to burn into his own, he had to physically stop himself pulling her into his arms and caressing her. He did not know how much longer he could keep his amorous feelings for her in check.
Part of him wished he had kissed her the first time he’d taken hold of her hand, but something had made him hold back. Was it something he had picked up from Rosie? He could not be sure. Or perhaps it was his own reticence? A residual feeling of guilt that he was somehow being unfaithful to his wife, even though she had now been gone for several years.
As he walked down Sea Road towards the beach to go and chat with some of the Home Guard manning the pillboxes on the promenade, he made a decision: there would never be a right time, and he might never know the answers to his questions, so he just had to follow his heart and show Rosie how he felt – that he loved being with her, loved her company and her conversation, but that most of all he wanted and desired her as a woman.
And there was only one way of showing her this and it was through actions – and not words.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next morning Rosie woke from a disjointed dream about DS Miller that she couldn’t really remember, but which had left her with a feeling of light-heartedness, of being happy and loved.
Her night-time slumber had also triggered in her a real need to see the detective; she wished that while she had slept a week had magically passed by so it would be Wednesday once again. Her feelings lifted her and perturbed her at the same time. She was still awash with conflicting feelings. It was as if she was in the throes of an addiction, and one from which she did not want to break free.
She wanted more. More of Peter.
She knew Lily was right. Even though she had not come out and said anything as such – she didn’t need to – Rosie knew what she was thinking. No good would come of it.
But Rosie just couldn’t put the stoppers on it. Not yet. Not at the moment.
As Rosie got ready for work and headed out of the door and down to the ferry, she decided that she could allow herself to keep seeing the detective.
For just a little while longer.
‘Rosie. Can you come here, please?’
Rosie’s heart sank. She didn’t need to turn around to see to whom the voice belonged.
‘Ah, Helen. How are you? Lovely day today, isn’t it?’ Rosie said, squinting up at the sunny, almost faultless clear blue sky, peppered with only a handful of billowy white clouds.
‘Any news on Jack’s return?’ Rosie looked at Helen’s perfectly made-up face. Her other girls in Ashbrooke would have given anything to get hold of some of her classy and clearly very expensive poppy-red lipstick, and today she was wearing a very unusual green eye shadow, which made her emerald eyes even more striking than they already were. Not for the first time, Rosie wondered how someone so beautiful on the outside could be so vile on the inside.
‘Not yet,’ Helen spat out, knowing full well that Rosie’s question was really a forewarning that she wouldn’t be in this position of power for that much longer, which was all the more reason she should act now.
‘I’m afraid Hannah’s going to have to go and work with Mickey’s lot,’ she said, trying to fight back a smile which had nothing to do with joy, and everything to do with spite.
‘And, I hate to take your star player off you, but Martha’s needed with the riveters again. So sorry, Rosie. I know it’s a pain …’
Her words were spoken without even a hint of apology, however. Helen was revelling in her meddling and, what was more, she knew Rosie didn’t have the standing in the yard to stop her.
Rosie glared at Helen and, without speaking, turned her back on her and went to see the women.
Hannah looked as though she was going to burst into tears when Rosie told her she was being sent to work with Mickey’s crew who, the women had all agreed, were like an ageing pack of testosterone-fuelled bulldogs – small, but thickset, and still strong despite their years. They were always given the most strenuous type of welding work, and basked in their notoriety as hard men with whom no one dared mess.
Martha was also clearly far from happy on learning she was being siphoned off to go and work with the riveters. She banged her welding mask down and snatched up her holdall, before declaring in a booming voice to the women, ‘I do not like this!’
She then lurched off towards Jimmy and his men over in the dry dock.
Dorothy, Angie and Polly exchanged concerned looks, before pushing their masks back down and cracking on with their day’s work.
At lunchtime they all met up, but no one was in a particularly chatty mood. Martha had sunk back into her old non-verbal ways, and when Rosie looked at Hannah, she thought she had never seen her look so white. The poor thing was almost translucent.
When they all headed back to work, they did so without the usual cheery banter – even Dorothy and Angie were unnaturally subdued.
Rosie was fuming. She just couldn’t understand how another woman could be like this to others of the same sex. Hadn’t her posh education taught her anything? She would have thought going to Sunderland Church High School – the town’s only private girls school – would have instilled in her some kind of understanding of the meaning of sisterhood, or what Rosie had heard referred to as ‘feminism’, rather than a tendency to treat her own gender in such an antagonistic and vindictive manner.
Just before the end of the shift, Rosie went over to see how Hannah was coping. When she got there she could see her childlike body slumped over a weld, and she kept breaking off to rest her arm. When Rosie tapped her on her narrow shoulder and Hannah turned round and pushed up her welding mask, she could have cried. The group’s little bird looked well and truly on her last legs. Dark circles encased her eyes and it was obvious she’d been weeping behind her mask, as she had dried tear marks running down her sooty face.
‘That’s enough for today,’ Rosie said, bobbing down on her haunches so that she was facing Hannah. ‘I don’t have to ask how you’re doing,’ she said, ‘because I can see full well how you’re feeling.’
Rosie wanted to add, and I know exactly who is responsible for this, but she didn’t. There was a part of her that realised, much as she despised Helen, that Hannah would be struggling even if she didn’t have the boss’s daughter constantly on her back.
Hannah took a big gulp of air. ‘I can’t go on with this, Rosie. I am defeated.’ Her words were followed by heaving gasps, as she dropped her head and sobbed.
Rosie noticed Hannah’s overalls were laced with pin burns; she’d been doing overhead welds most of the day, the hardest kind of welding work, and she had obviously been giving herself regular molten showers.
Rosie let her cry for a little while.
She was just about to say something, when all of a sudden Hannah looked up. Her face looked desolate. ‘And today my aunty told me she had heard rumours that the Nazis have started to murder thousands of Jews. And here I am – doing nothing!’
She burst into more tears.
Rosie had also read about Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and just about any other minority race in existence; it had been a topic she and Peter had talked about. They had been incredulous that one man was able to inflict such evil. Wield such power. And cause such annihilation and horror.
Rosie put her arm around Hannah and comforted her.
‘There are no words to describe how truly awful this is. I know you must be worried sick about your mum and dad, and all your family and friends,’ Rosie said, adding as an afterthought, ‘Thank goodness your parents sent you over here when they did.’
Hannah voice was muffled as she despaired. ‘But what good did that do? I can’t even do this’ – she threw her pipe-like arms open wide at the weld she was doing – ‘to help beat the Nazis … I’m useless.’
‘No, you’re not useless!’ Rosie reprimanded her. ‘Far from it! Look at me.’
Hannah’s distraught face, a picture of pure misery, looked up.
‘We need to put our heads together. I’ve been thinking since our last chat – about why you wanted to work in the yard in the first place … that you felt all the learning you’d done had come to nothing and was useless.’
Hannah nodded, and wiped her nose on the back of her overall sleeve.
‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps you can use it.’
‘How?’ Hannah asked, the slightest tinge of hope breaking through her voice.
‘I’m not sure,’ Rosie said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘But what I do know is that sometimes you can try too hard and there are times you have to give up in order to move on. Sometimes you have to admit defeat and giving up isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it can sometimes clear the way to something good – something better.’
‘Mm.’ Hannah nodded thoughtfully, before looking back up at Rosie.
‘You are – how do you say it – very phil-o-soph-ical, Rosie.’
The horn blared out the end of shift and they both got to their feet.
‘I’m not sure I think I really even know what that means,’ Rosie said wryly, adding, ‘I think I’ll round the girls up and we’ll treat ourselves to a drink down the Admiral.’
Hannah’s face immediately brightened up.
‘You know what they say,’ Rosie added as they started their trek across the yard, ‘a problem shared is a problem halved.’
Hannah smiled for the first time. ‘I like that saying. I think you do know the meaning of philosophical.’
Twenty minutes later, all the women were standing at the bar in the Admiral, which was just starting to fill up with the end-of-day trade.
Much to all of their relief, Martha had come out of her mute mode and taken the lead on getting the drinks in.
‘Gin and tonic?’ she said to Dorothy.
‘Yes, please!’ Dorothy said, adding, ‘and the same for Ange here.’
‘I have got my own tongue, you know!’ Angie retorted, but she still nodded to Martha that she was happy with her friend’s choice, before heading off to bagsy a table for them all.
Martha looked at Gloria and said, ‘Lemonade – with sugar?’ Before letting out a loud guffaw at her own joke.
Gloria chuckled. ‘Yes please, Martha, shove a double in there!’
‘Guinness?’ Martha asked Hannah, who was standing so close to Rosie that the pair of them looked attached at the hip.
Before Hannah had time to answer, Dorothy butted in, ‘Why don’t you give up on the black stuff, Hannah? I really don’t think it’s working. You’ve been forcing the stuff down your neck for months now and I don’t see you sprouting any muscles. Why don’t you try something you actually like?’
