‘I can do it!’ had been Polly’s silent mantra all week. She wasn’t at all convinced she could actually do this job at first, but she managed somehow to brainwash herself with her repeated internal chant driving her on.
Welding was much harder than it looked, and it sapped every ounce of energy Polly possessed. Every evening she dragged herself off to bed as soon as she had eaten her supper and listened to the BBC Home news at nine o’clock. A few times she actually fell asleep while it was on, something she’d never done before.
Agnes, thankfully, understood her daughter’s need to simply eat and sleep. ‘I’ve watched your granda, your da and your two brothers come home after a day’s work in the yards, and that’s all they’ve wanted to do. Eat. Then sleep.’
Polly knew her mum hated the thought of her working in the shipyards, but it meant the world to her that she had her support.
‘Thanks, Ma,’ she said.
‘What for? I haven’t done anything.’ Agnes never found it easy to accept any kind of thanks or compliment.
‘For not giving me any more grief. And for understanding,’ Polly told her. ‘I couldn’t do this on my own.’
One evening Polly caused an uproar at the kitchen table when she admitted, ‘Eee, you know, I can see why a man needs a wife. I’d love a wife.’
Agnes and Bel hooted with laughter at Polly’s outrageousness, but it was true. There was no way Polly had the strength to cook herself a meal every night, as well as do any chores or housework that needed to be done – never mind have a family to care for as well. She was just so thankful that every night Agnes somehow served up a hearty man-sized meal – some kind of offal or meat, vegetables and potatoes or dumplings.
‘Are you forging your ration book, Agnes?’ Bel joked one teatime after seeing another stew keeping warm on top of the range.
‘No, but I’m not averse to a little bribery,’ Agnes joked back.
They all knew Agnes was talking about Dennis the local shopkeeper, who owned the store on the corner of their street. He had managed to dodge conscription due to some bogus but convincing ailment, and had spent the first year of the war lording it over all and sundry who came in for their groceries, especially the women.
‘Everyone but his wife knows he’s playing away from home,’ Bel had told them, ‘with not just one, but a few of the women who live round the doors.’
‘Heavens knows who would want to touch him with a bargepole,’ Agnes had said with a look of revulsion on her face.
‘Well, I don’t think it’s his body they’re after,’ Bel had exclaimed, before confiding, ‘I heard on the grapevine that it can be a bit of a swap shop there – some rashers of bacon, or a few eggs to get his hands on some nice big melons, as it were.’
The kitchen had exploded with shrieks of laughter from Bel and Polly and mock outrage from Agnes. Even Lucille had started clapping excitedly.
Bel loved entertaining and had a tendency to embroider a story, but it was just for the trusted ears of her adopted family. She got plenty of her material from all the gossip she heard or saw working on the buses, and she loved nothing more than enthralling her mother- and sister-in-law with her little bits of scandalmongering.
Agnes was glad they were still able to make light of the strange life they had been thrown into this past year, but underneath it all her own feelings were very much in conflict. On the one hand, it pained her to see her daughter leave for the yards every day. She was worried sick that something terrible would happen to her. Her friend’s husband, a plater, had died tragically when a gigantic sheet of metal had fallen on him, leaving his wife on her own to bring up nine children, the youngest just a babe in arms. But on the other hand, Agnes understood her daughter’s determination – no, her need – to succeed and be able to do this job, and she felt incredibly proud of her, and of her true grit. She’s her father’s daughter for sure, Agnes had thought on more than one occasion that week.
It reassured Agnes to think her Harry was somewhere watching over Polly and the twins, proud as punch at seeing all three of his children doing everything they could to overcome a regime which was so utterly abominable and malignant. Still, every evening Agnes couldn’t help but breathe a huge sigh of relief when she heard her daughter walk through the front door and shout out, ‘Hi, Ma, I’m home!’
‘She’s got that wonderful confidence only the young have that nothing bad will happen to them,’ Agnes said during one of her morning chats with Beryl over the wall in her backyard.
‘I know,’ Beryl agreed. ‘They think they’ll live for ever.’
Both women were each other’s sounding board. They needed each other more than they realised to get their anxieties out into the open, and these past few weeks they were getting increasingly concerned as neither of them had heard from their boys.
‘It’s a wonder we’ve not gone grey,’ Beryl joked.
‘But we have!’ Agnes roared. Both women were only in their early forties, but their once-shiny chestnut-brown hair was gradually being overtaken by a mass of grey and white streaks.
This morning Agnes felt the tiniest bit of relief. It was Friday, which meant a weekend’s rest from worrying. As she stood at her front door, with Lucille in her arms, both of them waving goodbye to Polly and Bel as they left for their respective jobs, Agnes’s mind wandered to the day ahead. She took Lucille and went back into the kitchen to have one last cuppa before the neighbours’ children were dropped off. Her day would be filled with the demands of half a dozen boys and girls, all thankfully still young enough to know nothing of the fear and the uncertainty of the world outside their little playgroup.