‘Before we all start this morning,’ Rosie said to Gloria, Martha, Dorothy and Angie, who were all sitting on a large stack of wooden pallets within a stone’s throw of the edge of the river, ‘I want to say thank you for really pushing yourselves that extra mile this week. Denewood’s nearly there. I reckon we can get her finished today, which means tomorrow they can start getting her ready for her sea trials.’
‘So, she’s only a week behind schedule?’ Martha asked, taking out a packet of biscuits from her holdall.
‘If that – they’ve managed to do quite a bit of the fitting out while we’ve been patching her up,’ Rosie said, topping up her tin cup from her tea flask.
‘Well, it’s good to know the long hours have been worth it,’ Angie said, yawning.
‘And thanks for coming in today. I know how much you enjoy your Sunday lie-in,’ Rosie said. ‘Especially after a night at the Ritz.’
Rosie, Gloria and Martha looked at Dorothy and Angie, who still looked half-asleep.
‘I know this is the fourteenth day on the run you’ve had without a day off, so next week you’ve got the whole weekend off – boss’s orders,’ Rosie said, shaking her head when Martha offered her a biscuit.
‘Brilliant,’ Dorothy said, smiling at Martha and taking two biscuits, then handing one to Angie. ‘That means we can go out on Friday night as well, doesn’t it, Ange?’
Angie didn’t look so sure. ‘I think that might be when Quentin’s coming up. I said any night but Saturday.’ She took her biscuit from Dorothy and bit into it.
‘I’m sure Dorothy won’t mind,’ Gloria said, declining Martha’s offering and patting her belly; she’d struggled to get her waistline back after having Hope. ‘Will you?’ Gloria glared at her workmate.
‘Looks like I don’t have a choice,’ Dorothy said in a surly voice.
‘So,’ Rosie said, taking one last sip of tea and throwing the remnants onto the concrete, ‘we’ve just got the very top part of the hull to finish off today, which means scaffolding work and vertical welds.’
Angie groaned through a mouth full of oatmeal biscuit.
‘But not overhead,’ Rosie reassured, picking up her haversack.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Dorothy said. ‘We’re going to have arms like Popeye if we keep on like this.’
They all looked at Martha.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with having arms like Popeye,’ Dorothy added, nudging her.
‘Come on, then, let’s get this done,’ Rosie said, putting the top back on her flask.
As they trooped over to the dry basin, Rosie waved up at the admin office window.
Gloria looked up to see Charlotte smiling down at them and waving back. ‘I would have thought she’d have been enjoying a lie-in and having the house to herself?’
Rosie sighed. ‘No such luck. In her words, “that’s what boarding school does to you.”’
‘What?’ Angie asked. ‘Makes you not wanna have a lie-in?’
They all navigated round a haphazardly stacked pile of sheet metal.
‘I think it’s more that it’s a hard habit to break,’ Rosie said.
Angie guffawed. ‘What? Getting up at the crack of dawn?’
‘It’s a different life,’ Dorothy tried to explain. ‘Going to boarding school.’
Angie resolved to quiz Quentin about his boarding school.
They stepped over a load of metal girders that had been laid out on the ground.
‘And I’m guessing because she was always with other people from dawn to dusk, she’s finding it hard to be on her own,’ Dorothy said. As a child she had often dreamed of going off to boarding school so she wouldn’t be on her own so much.
‘I think that could be part of the reason,’ Rosie said.
‘Is she all right?’ Gloria asked. All the women now knew that Charlie had recently found out the truth about Rosie’s ‘other life’.
‘I think so. She seems OK. She’s not been down or upset or angry, quite the reverse. But she doesn’t seem to want to be on her own at all. And I mean at all.’
‘Hence her being here on a Sunday morning?’ Gloria said, waving over to Jimmy, the head riveter, who was heading over to the platers’ shed.
‘Exactly,’ Rosie said. ‘I said she could come with me today if she stayed up in the office and did her homework – I even tried to put her off by saying that there was a good chance Helen would be in and that if she needed her to do any chores, she had to oblige – but even that didn’t work.’
‘And what about her little friend Marjorie?’
‘Thank goodness, she’s planning on going to see her next week, but she doesn’t want to stay over.’
‘She probably just needs time to adjust,’ Gloria said as they reached the dry basin.
‘I hope so,’ said Rosie.
Five hours later, they all downed tools.
‘We’ve done it!’ Dorothy declared.
‘We certainly have. Well done, everyone,’ Rosie said, looking at her workmates’ dirt-smeared faces. Everyone looked shattered.
‘I’m guessing everyone’s heading home – and then staying home?’ Rosie asked, looking over to see Charlotte appearing through the double doors at the bottom of the admin block.
Everyone mumbled that was exactly what they were going to do.
‘You too?’ Martha asked.
‘No such luck,’ said Rosie, with forced laughter.
Everyone looked round to follow her gaze.
‘Charlie has repeated several times over that it’s been a whole week since she saw Lily, so we’re popping in for a little while.’
‘Entrez! Entrez!’ Lily waved Charlotte and Rosie across the threshold of the West Lawn bordello in Ashbrooke.
‘Ma chère,’ she exclaimed, putting her heavily jewelled hands on Charlotte’s shoulders and planting a kiss on both cheeks. ‘It has been one whole week since I have seen my favourite fourteen-going-on-fifteen-year-old.’
Rosie sighed, knowing when it came to Lily and Charlotte, she was fighting a losing battle. She might as well be done with it now and capitulate, saving herself some time and energy. The madam of a bordello, though, would not have been her first choice as a substitute mother for her little sister.
‘Go straight into the kitchen, Charlotte,’ Lily said, opening her fan with the flick of a wrist. ‘If you ask nicely, I’m sure Vivian will make you one of her special chocolats chauds.’ She started fanning herself. ‘Just thinking about it has me breaking out into a hot sweat.’
‘Délicieux! Et merci!’ Charlotte spoke French like a native.
‘I’m going to take that child to gai Paris one day when this wretched war is over,’ Lily promised, more to herself than to Rosie.
Hurrying down the hallway, Charlotte disappeared into the kitchen.
Rosie could hear Vivian’s American drawl welcoming her – her impersonation of Mae West now pretty perfect – then Maisie’s southern accent commenting on how Charlotte’s hair could do with a good cut and didn’t she fancy having a bob.
‘How long have we got?’ Rosie asked.
‘Until seven,’ Lily sighed dramatically. ‘Then the pumpkin turns into a carriage and the first clients arrive. Or is it the other way round?’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘Anyway, tell me, how’s she been?’
Rosie pulled a face.
‘Clingy.’
This past week, Rosie had not been to the bordello, which she now part-owned, due to Charlotte sticking to her like a limpet and her not having the heart to abandon her sister at home on her own.
‘Mmm,’ Lily said. ‘Not surprising, all things considered. Could be worse.’ It had been Lily who had told Charlotte about Rosie’s former life as a call girl and the vile actions of her uncle Raymond.
She looked at Rosie.
‘You look tired, my dear. Not often I see you with dark circles,’ she said, before turning and walking down the hallway.
‘So, ma petite …’ Lily bustled into the kitchen and took a seat at the head of the table. ‘We want to hear all about you and what you’ve been up to.’
Before Charlotte had time to answer, they heard the front door clash shut and the sound of a walking stick striking the parquet flooring.
‘George, mon amour!’ Lily looked at Charlotte and winked. ‘Come and join us. We’re slumming it in the kitchen.’
George appeared, looking dapper, as always, in a grey three-piece suit and tie.
‘Ah, Charlotte, lovely to see you.’ He took off his trilby and smiled at their guest.
‘Sit down, darling.’ Lily pulled out the chair next to her and patted the cushioned seat. ‘Charlotte was just going to regale us with what’s been happening this week.’
‘Nothing. Just school,’ Charlotte said as Vivian put a steaming hot chocolate down in front of her. ‘Merci beaucoup,’ she said to Vivian, who was wearing a cream-coloured dress with a plunging neckline that left little to the imagination.
‘De rien.’ Vivian somehow always seemed to make any French words she spoke sound American.
‘No after-school clubs? Hockey matches?’ Lily asked.
‘We played a tournament yesterday,’ Charlotte said.
‘And?’ Lily asked.
‘We were runners-up,’ Charlotte said.
‘Charlie!’ Kate came bustling into the kitchen. She was holding a dress over her arm as though she were a maître d’. As always, Kate looked chic but comfortable, her trademark black stylish rather than sombre. An onlooker would never have guessed she had spent years begging and living rough before her old friend Rosie had spotted her in a shop doorway and taken her to Lily’s, where she had been given a bed, clean clothing – and, most importantly, a sewing machine.
‘How are you?’ She went over to Charlotte and gave her a kiss on both cheeks.
She looked at the blue dress Rosie’s younger sister was wearing – and which she had worn every time Kate had seen her since she had made it for her.
‘Pop into the boutique when you get a chance and I’ll see if I can rustle up a summer dress for you,’ she said.
‘My, my, Charlie,’ Vivian said, putting her hands on her hips and widening her eyes, ‘consider yourself honoured. Most of us have to wait in line for Coco Chanel here to work her magic.’ She looked at Kate and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. ‘Unless your name’s Alfie, of course, and then you just go straight to the front of the queue.’ Alfie was the former timekeeper at Thompson’s who had recently got a job in admin. It was obvious to just about everyone but Kate that he was sweet on her, and that he called upon her seamstress’s skills as an excuse to spend time with her.
‘Alfie gets pushed to the front of the queue because his tend to be just quick tailoring jobs,’ Kate defended.
Vivian and Maisie looked at each other. They had joked on more than one occasion that Alfie purposely ripped his clothes so as to have an excuse to see Kate.
‘Never mind Alfie,’ Vivian cooed as she inspected the dress draped across Kate’s slender arm. ‘This looks fabulous. I do believe it’s been worth the wait.’
‘Why don’t you try it on?’ Kate said, handing over the dress.
Vivian gently took the garment as though it were a sleeping child she did not want to wake.
‘I’ll come and give you a hand,’ Maisie said, putting her cup of tea down.
George went to put on a record of the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing Rhapsody in Blue, a choice met with relief by Lily, who had been complaining about George’s new affinity for what she called ‘screeching jazz’, and a few minutes later Vivian and Maisie were back – with the bordello’s very own Mae West giving an impromptu fashion show in her new dress.
For the next hour Charlotte revelled in the chatter and laughter filling the kitchen and in the company of those she now felt were family. A rather unusual – some might say dysfunctional – family, but a loving and caring one all the same. Lily had become a surrogate mother of sorts, replacing the one Charlotte had lost when she was just eight, while George had become a quiet but concerned fatherly figure. Maisie and Vivian were akin to two eccentric aunties who just wanted to have fun and would happily lead Charlie astray if Rosie was not on guard.
Kate was definitely the ‘middle sister’, having known Charlotte as a small child when she’d lived in the same village. By an uncanny coincidence, she and Charlotte had been orphaned at the same age, albeit years apart. But whereas Charlotte had been sent to a posh all-girls’ boarding school in Yorkshire, Kate had been taken to live with the nuns who ran the Nazareth House children’s home – a place that was far more ungodly than any house of ill repute.
Later on that evening, after Rosie and Charlotte were long gone and the bordello was bustling with activity, Maisie popped her head round the kitchen door.
‘Sorry,’ she said, seeing that Lily and Kate were poring over bridal magazines spread out on the table. ‘I’ll come back later.’
‘No, no, ma chère, come in. I can sense Kate is getting tetchy because she’s been parted from her beloved Singer for at least an hour.’ Lily looked at Kate. ‘She always starts shuffling round on her chair and I know my time’s up.’
Kate tutted but didn’t deny the accusation; instead, she gathered up her magazines and made quick her exit, ducking under Maisie’s arm as she held the door open.
‘Good job I’ve got plenty of time before the big day,’ Lily said.
‘You still set on a New Year’s Eve wedding?’ Maisie asked as she shut the door.
‘I am,’ Lily said, getting up and retrieving a bottle of Rémy from the armoire. ‘Although which New Year’s Eve that might be, I’m not so sure.’ She winked at Maisie and poured out two brandies.
‘I’m guessing whatever you want to tell me is confidential?’ Lily asked, waving her arm at the chair adjacent to hers.
‘It is,’ Maisie said, ‘and it’s a tricky one.’
She sat down at the table, crossed her legs and put her slender, manicured hands around her glass.
‘Can you remember a while ago when I was worried about a client?’
‘That he might be Bel’s father?’
‘That’s right,’ Maisie said.
‘And it all sorted itself out – it wasn’t him?’ Lily said.
‘That’s right. It did. Thank God.’
Lily took a sip of her brandy.
‘The thing is …’ Maisie paused, re-crossing her slim, stockinged legs.
‘Go on,’ Lily said, reaching for her Gauloises.
‘Night, Geraldine … Night, Pearl!’
Bill was standing at the doorway to the Tatham, his attention momentarily drawn away from his two barmaids by a striking full moon, its beauty visible thanks to a perfectly clear night sky.
‘Aye, night night, Bill,’ Pearl shouted out as she crossed the road. ‘Mind the lops don’t bite!’
Geraldine swung her gas mask over her shoulder and looked at Bill, whose attention was now back on Pearl. He was laughing. He’d been in good spirits since last week’s air raid; some might say it was because he’d dodged death, but Geraldine thought it had more to do with how well he’d been getting on with Pearl. God only knew what he saw in her.
‘See yer tomorrow, Bill,’ she said, gazing up at the star-speckled sky. She felt a shiver go down her back. The sky was clear. Just like the night of the last air raid. Clearer, in fact, for tonight the moon was full and bright, as though rebelling against the blackout.