When Polly arrived back home, she was greeted by the noisy chatter, laughter and cries of half a dozen children. She hadn’t been the only person to start a new venture today: Agnes had also decided to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort, and, as of eight o’clock that morning, had transformed their home into a makeshift crèche. The government had stuck up posters emblazoned with the plea: ‘If you can’t go to the factory, help the neighbour who can’, and Agnes had taken the call for help quite literally to heart.
‘You’re back.’ Agnes raised her voice to be heard above the commotion. She stepped over a few of the little children playing contentedly with their wooden dolls and drawing on scraps of paper to give her daughter a big hug. ‘Look at the state of you. You look like you’ve been down the mines – never mind in the yards,’ Agnes laughed as she tried to wipe off some of the grime on her pretty daughter’s face.
Polly picked up Lucille from her cot and followed her mum out to their small backyard. The few weeds sprouting up through the concrete slabs and up the stone wall didn’t afford the area the title of a garden. With one arm slung round the large laundry basket doing a balancing act on her hip, Agnes unpegged the rows of towelling nappies, sheets and clothing fluttering in the gentle breeze. She was also taking in washing for some of the local businesses to bring in a little extra cash.
‘Well, then? What was it like?’ she asked eagerly.
As Polly started to tell her mum all about her day, the smell of a delicious rabbit, black pudding and dumpling stew pervaded the air, reminding her of just how hungry she was. Polly was saved the energy it would take to tell her mum all of the day’s trial and tribulations by a loud knock on the front door that heralded the arrival of the first mums who’d come to pick up their little ones after work.
Not long after that Bel arrived back home, looking bushed after her day on the buses. She made a beeline for Lucille, who was loving all the hustle and bustle and attention. Next came their neighbours, Sheila and Jimmy, and their young son, Jimmy Junior, who had been out at the crack of dawn to catch them their rabbit supper. They were followed by Beryl and her two teenage girls, Audrey and Iris. They’d all been invited round for a special dinner to celebrate Polly’s first day as a ‘Wearside welder’, as Agnes had taken to calling her.
Somehow they all managed to squeeze around the kitchen table, and for the next few hours there was much chatter, laughter and appreciative sounds made by them all over their scrumptious supper.
After they’d all finished eating, Agnes looked over at the clock on the mantelpiece and announced, ‘It’s time.’
Bel switched on the wireless and they all huddled round the little radio for their daily evening ritual, the BBC Home Service news report on the war.
When Polly finally fell into bed that evening her mind was buzzing with the events of the day: her new workmates, Rosie, the images of the huge half-built ships and the forest of overhanging cranes which dominated the skyline. She could even still hear the cacophony of sounds created by the shipbuilders at work.
But it was the image of the deep-sea diver Tommy being pulled up from the water which kept swimming to the forefront of her mind. His serious, slightly brooding face, short, coarsely cropped fair hair and his tall, thickset, muscular body were enough to catch any woman’s breath, but it was the moment he’d looked over at her and they’d caught each other’s eye that kept going round and round in her head.
It was as though she had been drawn into a trance from which she couldn’t, didn’t want to, break free. As they had looked into each other’s eyes, she had felt a sudden spark of electricity course through her body, a spark that she intuitively knew he too had experienced.
Tommy’s fearless face stayed with Polly right up to the moment her eyes closed and she fell into a deep sleep.