When Polly got up the next morning, she was greeted by Bel’s very impressive rendition of ‘Cheek to Cheek’. Polly just laughed and Agnes told them both to get a move on otherwise they’d be late for work.
‘Honestly, Ma, I remember a time not so long ago you forbade me to work in the yards. Now you cannot wait for me to get there.’
‘Well, I’ve given up trying to tell you what to do – it just falls on deaf ears,’ Agnes retorted.
As Polly headed to the front door, her mother came bustling along the hallway after her. ‘Ask that Tommy of yours when’s a good night to invite him and his granda round for a bit of supper,’ she commanded, drying her hands on her pinny.
Polly knew the image of the old man sitting on his own, waiting for his grandson to come home last night, had unsettled her.
‘Thanks, Ma, I will do,’ she said.
‘And say hi to lover boy,’ Bel teased as she watched her sister-in-law walk out the door.
Polly turned and scowled, but her expression belied the happiness she felt inside.
A few minutes later Bel gave Lucille her goodbye kiss, and said her usual ‘Be good for Grandma’ before she hurried out the door.
It was cold today so Bel had her coat on over her conductress’s uniform. She was glad of the warmth it afforded her as she made her way to work, although it did nothing to shield her from her worries about Teddy, which came to the fore, as they always did, when she was on her own. Bel was fine when there was company about, or she was working, but as soon as she had a minute on her own her heart started to beat a bit faster and her breathing got shallower as she thought about Teddy – and Joe too, whom she loved like a brother. Her concern for them both was escalating by the day as they hadn’t heard anything from the twins for months now. Bel listened to every news report and during her lunch break read every newspaper she could get her hands on in the depot’s canteen. There had been news that Mussolini had sent troops into Egypt and the Allied forces had held them off and even taken a substantial number of Italian prisoners, but there had been no information about any British casualties, and Bel knew there was never a victory without a number of lost lives – on both sides.
‘Oh, Bear, please be all right,’ she pleaded aloud. ‘I really don’t know what I’ll do if you’re not.’ Just the thought of spending a life without her cherished soulmate filled Bel’s whole being with a terrible darkness.
As she passed the town’s magnificent museum and glass-fronted Winter Gardens, which had been designed to emulate London’s famous Crystal Palace, Bel waited until the road was clear before hurrying across, hopping over the thick metal tramlines. As she did so she was hit by one of her earliest memories of Teddy, when they had both just been youngsters, no more than six or seven years old, and as usual Bel had been out playing on her own in Tatham Street. The tramlines had been her imaginary tightrope and she’d loved to pretend she was one of those circus performers she’d seen on posters advertising the arrival of the annual big top, walking along a narrow rope with their long poles helping them to balance. Bel would wait for a tram to go past, and before the next one would arrive she would step carefully on to one of the tramlines, place an imaginary pole across her chest and carefully put one foot in front of the other as if she was the tightrope walker being applauded by the crowd below. She had even mastered a pretend wobble as if she were just about to fall into the net.
One Sunday when there were only a few trams running, she had been re-enacting her performance, jumping off and doing a theatrical bow to her enrapt audience. As she’d stepped back on to her tightrope and started the careful walk back to the other side of the big top, she had been shocked out of her imaginary circus daredevilry by a sudden thump right in the middle of her stomach. It was so forceful it had totally knocked the wind out of her and she had been left gasping for air in the middle of the tramlines.
She’d looked up to see one of the local lads standing over her with a big grin on his face.
‘What did yer do that for?’ she’d rasped, creased up in agony.
It was then she’d heard Teddy bellowing across the street, ‘Oi!’
The grinning bully boy had looked up, seen Teddy, and scarpered. Teddy had run over to Bel and escorted her doubled-up body back on to the pavement.
‘You all right?’
She’d squinted up at her friend, but had still been too breathless to say anything.
Teddy had taken her back to see Agnes, who’d made her a milky cup of tea with a big heaped teaspoon of sugar in it, and had let her sit in front of the range while she’d prepared the dinner.
Teddy had gone back out and returned a little while later. The next time Bel had seen the bully boy he’d given her a wide berth. After that he’d never laid a finger on her again. It wasn’t until she was older that Bel understood what Teddy had done for her, and she loved him all the more for it. He had always been there for her, even when she hadn’t known it, and she couldn’t bear to think of the prospect of a life without him.
‘Be safe, Bear. For me. And for Lucille,’ she said to the darkening skies above that were just starting to spit down fine droplets of rain.
As Polly hurried through the drizzle, dodging the other workers, she spotted her workmates chatting to each other as they got their welding gear together. She took a deep breath, knowing she was about to walk into the spotlight of their scrutiny and face the inevitable questions they would surely fire at her about last night.
A few moments later, as predicted, as soon as the women saw Polly they started up a loud ruckus, led naturally by Dorothy. ‘We want every detail. Tell us everything,’ she demanded.
‘Oh yes,’ Hannah said, excitedly. ‘Was it romantic?’ she asked imploringly, while Martha stood by her side, stock-still, gawping at Polly and eagerly awaiting her response.
The buzz coming from the little group of women didn’t go unnoticed elsewhere in the yard. A thunderous-looking Helen watched the women’s excitement at Polly’s arrival from the window of the accounts office. She didn’t need to hear what they were saying, for she too had seen Polly’s departure last night with Tommy. Watching Polly and Tommy walk off together, chatting and laughing, Helen had been livid, beside herself with jealousy. Tommy was hers. She had known him most of her life. He knew her, liked her. Spent time with her and her family. She was in the process of reeling him in. She had just about everything she wanted in life. Tommy was to be the cherry on her perfectly baked cake. She only needed a little more time for him to realise that he wanted her, and that he could have her – and everything which came with her: money, a lovely house, the best of everything.
But now this scrawny, boring, brown-haired church mouse had scuttled into the yard and had, unbelievably, caught Tommy’s eye.
‘What does she have that I don’t?’ she’d almost screamed in frustration at her mother the previous night. Helen had been so angry, so frustrated, that she’d had to vent to her mother of all people. Not that her mum really gave two hoots about her. She was probably secretly glad – Helen knew deep down that her mother wanted her to marry someone of what she called ‘equal standing’.
Well, Helen didn’t need that. She was standing up fine on her own. She didn’t need another man to prop her up. She wanted Tommy and no one else. And by hook or by crook she was going to get exactly what she wanted.
When the women broke off for lunch they practically begged Rosie to join them. It was the last thing she really wanted to do – her mind still felt confused and disturbed, as if it were a million miles away – but seeing the women’s pleading faces and being aware for the first time of their merry mood today, she surrendered and agreed.
When they had all got their lunch and were sitting down at their usual table to the side of the canteen, Dorothy took centre stage as she always did, filling them all in on the yard’s latest gossip: ‘You wouldn’t guess what I heard!’
The women knew that Dorothy must have been seeing her fella Eddie last night, as she always had some titbit to impart to them the next day. They all shook their heads between mouthfuls of food.
‘Well, apparently there’s a rumour going round that some of the women working in the yard are earning a little extra on the side, by being a bit of extra on the side, if you know what I mean.’ She lowered her voice to a loud whisper.
Martha looked at her as if she was speaking a different language. Even Polly and Hannah seemed a little thrown.
‘She means selling their bodies,’ Gloria said bluntly.
Rosie froze.
‘Like Prague, where there are… how do you say it, brothels?’ Hannah asked, genuinely intrigued.
‘Well, I don’t know where they are doing it, as such,’ Dorothy said, wishing now she’d quizzed Eddie more after she had overheard the men chatting, ‘just that they’re doing it for money.’
‘Oh, that’s awful,’ Polly said, shocked. ‘Why would any woman do that – for money?’
‘I know. I’d rather starve,’ Dorothy exclaimed, before adding, ‘Ugh, can you imagine having to do it with some horrible, crinkly old man?’
‘That’s enough,’ Gloria said. ‘You’re all putting me off my food. If a woman wants to do that with her body, then that’s up to her. It’s no different than someone who marries for money.’
The women all thought about it for a moment before Rosie spoke up. ‘Where did you hear this, Dorothy?’
‘It was Eddie’s lot that were talking about it. I think they’d heard it from that old bloke Mick who does our time cards.’
‘He’s a weird one, he is,’ Gloria said. ‘He had a strange-looking man in there with him the other day. Right creepy he was, sat in the dark in the corner. Gave me the willies.’
As the women continued their chatter, none of them noticed Rosie blanch, or the look of panic which had spread across her face.
To the innocent onlooker the afternoon shift passed pretty much as normal, but under the veneer of business as usual there was a lot more happening other than the building and repairing of ships.
In the account’s office Helen made some feeble excuse and snuck out for a mid-afternoon break. None of the other comptometer operators tapping away on their steel green mechanical calculators complained as Helen was, after all, the boss’s daughter, and no one wanted to rock the boat or, worse still, get on the bad side of Helen. Her unsanctioned break, though, was not to have a sneaky cigarette but to go and see her friend Norman, who worked in the boiler room. He was the only homosexual Helen knew, and she was the only one in the shipyards who knew he was what the men in the yard would call a ‘willy woofter’. It was not something Norman wanted to broadcast. His fellow workers would more than likely rip him apart and eat him alive if they thought they had a ‘pansy’ in their midst. Helen had reassured him that his secret was safe with her, but in return it meant that he was pretty much firmly under her thumb. And if she wanted him to do something, then he had to jump to it, and quickly.
*
Helen wasn’t the only one to sneak off for an afternoon break. Dorothy’s Eddie had also given his boss a wink and a nod and been allowed to go and chat to one of the new girls, a pretty, blonde crane operator, about some bogus job they would possibly need help with next week. He’d been given just enough time to work his charm on the young, naive girl. But it was also long enough for him to be spotted by Gloria, who was answering nature’s call and was walking over to the women’s lavatories. When she spotted Eddie leaning into the young girl and touching her arm as he made a joke, she felt like clocking him one there and then, but stopped herself. She had her own problems to deal with and Dorothy was just going to have to learn about men like Eddie the hard way.
After work the women all went their separate ways. Polly went over to see Tommy to invite him and Arthur round for tea. The look on his face spoke a thousand words. Martha was met by her elderly parents, just a few hundred yards up from the shipyard gates, as they were off to see some relatives in town. And Hannah left the yard on her newly acquired second-hand bike, which she was delighted about as it reminded her of her life before the war, when she would cycle round the cobbled streets of her homeland without a care in the world.
Dorothy left with a heavy heart, as she had been meant to be going out with Eddie but he had made some excuse and called off their date. Gloria, meanwhile, regretted leaving the yards at all as the moment she walked through her front door she saw that Vinnie was drunk. He was in the happy phase of inebriation, but Gloria knew from bitter experience that this would most certainly change as the night wore on.
Rosie was the last to leave work, and had done so feeling as though she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Hearing Dorothy’s gossip and the women’s ensuing comments at lunchtime had been like a stab in the heart. But worst of all, it was proof that Raymond was ready to put his threats into action. Rosie knew time was now running out for her.
As she trudged home, she didn’t think she had ever felt more lonely or more isolated. Or so desperate. Over the past week she had spent every waking minute trying to work out a solution to her problem, but she still had no idea what to do.
Rosie walked along Dame Dorothy Road. She knew she should get a move on as she was working at Lily’s tonight, but as she passed St Peter’s Church she was hit by a wall of tiredness and when she saw a double-decker waiting at the bus stop, she jumped on.
When the bus stopped for a short while in Fawcett Street in the town centre, Rosie spotted a woman who was down and out, sitting huddled in a doorway. She had a half-empty bottle of spirits next to her. As an aged couple passed her, she raised her hand to beg a few pennies from them. Rosie looked at the woman’s face and realised she recognised her. It was her old friend from school who had been orphaned and sent to Nazareth House and into the care of the nuns. When Rosie had seen her as a young girl all those years ago, she had been shocked at the change in her friend, and had felt, rightly so, that she’d had the life beaten out of her. Now here she was again – the fallout of a brutal childhood clear for all to see.
Rosie didn’t think her day could possibly get any worse. Here was a future which she had always dreaded might befall her little sister, and if Raymond had his way, it still easily could.
It was then that Rosie knew what she had to do.
As she got off at the Park Lane depot and walked back to her bedsit, she knew she somehow had to find the money to pay Raymond and keep Charlotte at her boarding school. She had to earn enough to feed Raymond’s evil and keep her sister safe. There was no other option. And there was only one way of doing it. She would have to work every minute of every day, every second of overtime, and every night at Lily’s to make ends meet.
She would do it. She had to do it. There was no other choice.