For the rest of the week Rosie’s squad and just about every other man and woman in the town’s nine shipyards worked until they dropped, their hearts growing heavier as the number of those killed in the bombing climbed. The final count told of eighty-three dead, with a hundred and nine injured.
Hearing about the children who had been killed – and the sight of several small coffins being transported to church in the traditional black horse-drawn carriages – caused even the most hardened of hearts to break. But if Hitler thought he could beat into submission the people who lived and worked in the biggest shipbuilding town in the world, he was wrong. If anything, the deaths of the innocents simply made the townsfolk’s determination stronger still, their resolution that they would not be beaten even greater. The whole town pulled together, helping in whatever way they could. Workers toiled round the clock to reconnect electricity and gas supplies, as well as repair damaged sewers and water supplies. As three and a half thousand people had been made homeless, rest centres were set up to give them temporary shelter at least; mobile canteens and a dozen emergency feeding centres were also put into operation.
A number of schools, churches, chapels, theatres, cinemas, shops and businesses were closed until repair work could be carried out.
Two mortuaries were opened to deal with the dead.
Shipbuilders in the south docks worked flat out to repair the two ships that had been hit, and workers at the North Eastern Marine Engineering plant repaired the Hudson and Hendon docks.
As Rosie had forecast, the Chinese Prince hadn’t been too badly damaged. When they had done what they could, they moved on to help with Denewood. Riveters, platers and welders worked together to get her back on her feet and ready for her sea trials. It freed up the other welders to work on Caxton, a screw steamer that had mercifully escaped with barely a scratch and was scheduled to be launched the following week.
In Tatham Street, Agnes and Beryl were taking in even more children for those mothers who needed, and wanted, to do overtime. The two adjoining houses were bursting at the seams. Agnes surprised everyone who knew her by getting her husband Harry’s First War Military Medal out of her bedside cabinet and putting it on display on the mantelpiece, next to the framed photograph of Teddy in his Desert Rat uniform. She even let the children who turned her house into bedlam between the hours of eight and five hold it and rub it in their hands.
Meanwhile, Joe and his Home Guard unit were working round the clock to help any which way they could; Vera and Rina were filling up workers’ flasks for free to show their support; Mr and Mrs Perkins invited Dorothy and Angie back for a meal every day, knowing they wouldn’t have the energy to cook themselves anything decent when they got in from the ten-hour shifts they were pulling; and Kate had hung a notice in the window of the Maison Nouvelle telling those in need of clothing to come and see her. She put all her paid-for orders on hold, so that those who had been bombed out could at least clothe themselves and their children. As demand outstripped her supply, she asked her more affluent customers to donate any unwanted items. Helen dropped off two boxes of clothes, as well as suits and shirts her father had left behind, plus a few of her mother’s skirts and blouses that she knew Miriam wouldn’t miss.
Despite the madness of work and the long hours, Helen still found herself thinking of John. A few times she picked up the phone to call him but stopped herself.
‘If he wanted to speak to me, or see me, he’d call,’ she told Bel. ‘It’s obvious he’s too busy with Claire to spare me the time.’
‘And work – he’ll be busy with work,’ Bel countered. Everyone knew all the hospitals were run off their feet.
‘No,’ Helen waved away Bel’s argument, ‘it’s like the good Dr Eris said that awful afternoon outside the asylum: “You know what it’s like at the start, you just want to be with each other every minute of every day”. Those who are just friends have to take a back seat.’
‘But it’s like you said,’ Bel reminded Helen, ‘that’s only until the “shine’s worn off”.’
‘Ha!’ Helen laughed bitterly. ‘I only said that to be a cow. Make her paranoid.’
‘You’re not going to fight for him then?’ Bel asked.
Helen shook her head. ‘No, it’d be a fight I could never win.’
Bel looked at Helen. She was surprised how defeatist she was being. When Helen had wanted Tommy, she’d gone all out to get him. Talk about dirty tricks. Helen had thrown the lot into the pot to get Tommy. Lies, manipulation – she’d even spread false rumours that Polly had gone off with some plater. Bel was only just getting to know Helen, but still, she thought, she had changed a lot these past few years. Mind you, hadn’t they all?
‘Well, I wouldn’t give up,’ Bel said. ‘Not if you love him, which I think you do?’
Helen sighed.
‘I wish I didn’t. No one tells you how much love can hurt.’
The women tried to keep up their ‘lessons’ in current affairs, although it was generally only Polly who remembered to buy a national newspaper, usually the Daily Mirror as it had always been Arthur’s favourite. Marie-Anne brought in the Sunderland Echo to keep abreast of events closer to home and had been particularly excited to see a photograph of Helen with Mr Royce Jnr at the Empire on Monday evening; she’d immediately rung Dahlia, who used the conversation as an opportunity to quiz Marie-Anne about Miss Crawford’s commitments over the next few weeks.
They weren’t the only ones to see the photo and the article. Dr Eris had also seen it and made sure that a copy of the paper, open at the pertinent page, found its way into the staffroom over at the Ryhope.
Mr Havelock and Miriam were also taking up column inches – much to Bel’s annoyance. Both impeccably dressed, they were pictured handing over a cheque to the children’s hospital in town, which had been damaged in the recent raids.
When Polly read out an article reporting that the government was now allowing church bells to be rung for any purpose, the women’s reaction was lukewarm. The bells had initially been silenced so that they could act as an alarm should the country be invaded. Everyone should have been joyful – the government clearly no longer feared a German invasion. But the news didn’t bring quite the reaction that it might have done as, with the number of funerals taking place across the borough, the bells seemed more like death knells.
Quentin had to cancel his trip back up north due to ‘work commitments’.
Dorothy imparted the news with a comically sad face and theatrical eye-rolling in Angie’s direction.
‘Honestly, Dor, it’s not as if I’m pining to see him or owt!’ Angie snapped.
‘I never suggested you were,’ Dorothy said, ‘but it’s funny you thought it.’
Angie chucked her crusts at her best friend by way of a reply.
Hannah had been noticeably subdued after this latest air raid, and when a concerned Rosie asked if she had heard any news about her parents in the Auschwitz concentration camp, she shook her head, but explained that her aunty Rina had heard that a man called Josef Mengele was being transferred there as a medical officer.
‘Isn’t it a good sign that they’ve appointed someone in charge of those who aren’t well?’ Martha asked.
Hannah had given Martha the most melancholic of smiles and related to the women with tears in her eyes that Dr Mengele was not a good man. Before the war he had published academic papers on those born with genetic abnormalities and he had an unhealthy interest in dwarfs and twins.
‘I don’t think he’s a doctor of healing – more of experimentation,’ Hannah said.
They were deathly quiet. All of them trying to comprehend this level of evil.
‘Says here the miners are being asked to increase coal output,’ Angie said, breaking the silence and staring down at the Daily Telegraph. ‘Tell that to my dad ’n his marrers. They hardly see daylight as it is.’
Polly looked at the article Angie was reading.
‘“If the gap between production and consumption is not closed, the war could go against us,”’ she read out.
‘That’s all we need to hear,’ Martha said, her broad shoulders slouching a little. She had been working overtime with Jimmy and the riveters.
‘If we don’t build enough ships, we’re doomed … If we can’t mine enough coal, we’re doomed,’ Dorothy moaned.
‘It’ll be the same for them,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m sure they’ve not got a limitless supply of ships and coal either.’
‘Exactly,’ Gloria said, trying to lift the mood, even though she herself felt exhausted. Hope’s cough was still bad.
Rosie’s own worries about Peter seemed to be weighing on her more heavily than normal. It had been almost six months since she had received her last communication from him – a letter brought to her by Toby on Christmas Eve. Toby, who had recruited Peter, had become her one tenuous connection with her husband. Every time Dorothy saw him, she half hoped for, half dreaded hearing any news. She kept telling herself that no news was good news, but that argument was wearing thin.
Not that she had too much time to dwell on it, what with the demands of work and, even more so, of Charlie, who was hanging on to Rosie and Lily as though they were life rafts. Lily had said to let her be as clingy as she needed to be – the phase would pass.
One of the main problems was that Charlotte seemed overly anxious about spending the time between Rosie leaving for work and the start of school on her own. Rosie had a word with Lily and asked, since the bordello didn’t open up shop until after midday and the school was just a few minutes’ walk away, if it would be possible for Charlotte to go to Lily’s for breakfast.
‘A perfect solution,’ Lily declared.
‘It will mean, though,’ Rosie eyed Lily, ‘that Charlotte turns up on your doorstep at around seven,’ Rosie stressed, ‘when I leave to go to work.’
‘I know exactly what time you start work,’ Lily said. ‘Don’t you think I’m capable of getting up so early?’
Rosie couldn’t help but laugh.
‘Lily, in all the time we have been acquainted, I’ve never once known you to get out of bed before midday.’
Lily waved her words away with a heavily jewelled hand and marched off in search of an alarm clock.
Needless to say, when Rosie told Charlotte of the arrangement, she was ecstatic.
The following morning, her little sister stood outside the front door, yelling at her that if she didn’t get a move on, Rosie would be late for work, and what kind of an example was that to set her squad?