‘Were you out late last night, Georgina?’ Mr Pickering asked his daughter as she joined him for breakfast.
Mr Pickering knew that his only daughter – and, indeed, his only offspring left living at home – had spent a good part of Christmas Day working. Not that he minded. The Pickering household had not celebrated Christmas for many years now, not since Mrs Pickering had been taken from them.
‘And my powers of deduction tell me that you weren’t attending some carol service or late-night Mass,’ Mr Pickering added, looking over his half-moon spectacles as his daughter grabbed a slice of bread off the table and went and knelt by the open fire so she could make herself some toast, something she had always enjoyed doing as a child.
Georgina laughed into the dancing orange and red flames of the coal fire, enjoying the heat on her face and body. ‘I think you’d be more worried about me if I had been sloping around in some church, eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood, or worse still, massacring one of his hymns with my very badly tuned pipes.’
‘Ha!’ the old man blustered, ignoring his daughter’s habit of using quite distasteful imagery – something she was particularly wont to do whenever religion was the topic of conversation. ‘They’re only “badly tuned” because they’ve been left to go to rack and ruin. I remember when you were a little girl, if you weren’t arguing with your brothers or running about the house, you’d be singing.’
Mr Pickering suddenly felt a pang of nostalgia. A hankering for the days of old, when the house was full of life – when his Hilda would sing along with her daughter, or chase their boys from room to room, making them scream with excitement.
‘Well, that was then and this is now,’ Georgina retorted a little too sharply.
Knowing he had caused his daughter pain by mentioning the past, Mr Pickering quickly changed tack.
‘So, come on, tell me your findings, Miss Holmes, or should I say Mademoiselle Poirot?’ Mr Pickering cajoled, steering their chatter back on to safe ground with their familiar banter.
‘Just don’t call me Miss Marple! I’m not an old spinster yet!’ Georgina interrupted in mock outrage as she pushed herself up from the fireplace and made her way across to the big dark wooden table with her piece of toast in hand. She sat down in the high-backed, leather-upholstered chair opposite her father and helped herself to the smallest knob of butter and a scraping of marmalade. Mr Pickering wanted to tell his daughter to have more, but stopped himself. Georgina hated being fussed about. And he had to stop treating her like a child. She had turned twenty-one this year and had a wise head on her shoulders despite her relative youth.
Mr Pickering poured himself another cup of tea and a fresh cup for his daughter, pushing it towards her along with the milk jug. Georgina looked at her dad and smiled her thanks as she added a splash of milk.
‘Actually, the past few days have been very insightful,’ Georgina began, thinking about the research she had been doing, which had taken her to places she’d not normally have gone to. First off, she’d visited the town’s Jewish quarters and found everyone very friendly and, more importantly, very talkative. As a result, it hadn’t taken her long to find out what she needed to know.
And she had been surprised at how much she had enjoyed spending time across the water in Monkwearmouth, otherwise known as the Barbary Coast. It was known to be one of the poorest areas of the town, but she’d found it full of colour and life. And because there was so much activity there, as well as being so densely populated, she’d been able to blend in well. It hadn’t taken her long at all to get what she needed, helped by the mother of the young welder called Angela not being as discreet as she probably should be.
But it had been at the town’s library, where she loved to go regardless of whether she was working or not, that she had found some really interesting information about a couple of the women welders. It was amazing what you could find out simply by looking through the newspaper archives, or having a browse through the births, marriages and deaths.
It was a true saying – if you dig deep enough you’ll find something. And sometimes you didn’t need to even dig that deep; sometimes it was enough just to scratch the surface of most people’s lives to find something of interest.
Georgina hated to admit it, but she had begun to enjoy what she and her father called their ‘snooping’ work. They had only branched out into this area when Georgina’s two brothers had signed up and joined the navy. Surviving without the two main breadwinners of the household meant that beggars couldn’t be choosers. And as much as they would have preferred to be investigating some company wrongdoing or helping those who had suffered an injustice, they had been forced to take on less salubrious work. The kind of work people like Mrs Crawford hired them to carry out.
‘Out of the six women your Mrs Crawford wanted “looking into”, I’ve made good headway with five of them,’ Georgina told her father.
Normally, the pair of them would talk through Georgina’s findings with very little enthusiasm or joy. Today, though, Mr Pickering could tell there was something that had caught his daughter’s interest, perhaps even her imagination.
‘They are quite an eclectic mix of women,’ Georgina said, taking another bite of her toast.
‘Pray tell more,’ Mr Pickering encouraged. He loved to see his daughter’s enthusiasm piqued. It kept her busy, or more importantly, it kept her mind busy. And he knew that this was what his daughter needed. He just wished there was a way of using her brain for more high-minded matters.
While Georgina chatted away, relating her findings as they ate their breakfast, Mr Pickering could see why his daughter had become so intrigued by this latest assignment. This was a truly diverse group of women. What she had unearthed was interesting, but for him what was more fascinating was the work they were doing, and where they were doing it. It made him wonder why Mrs Crawford wanted to get one over on them. Surely these women were to be revered. They were breaking their backs trying to help win the war. Everyone knew that if it wasn’t for the country’s shipyards, they’d be in trouble.
But his was not to question why Mrs Crawford had asked for their help. It was work, and work meant money and money meant they got to keep a roof, albeit a leaking one, over their heads.
‘There’s only one of the women I’ve not really had a chance to look at,’ Georgina said. ‘And that’s the women’s immediate boss, a young woman called Rosie Thornton.’
Georgina paused for a moment. When she’d first read the name it had rung a distant bell in her memory, but she was still none the wiser as to why.
‘She’s been away these past few days, so I’ve not had a chance to really do any digging.’
Mr Pickering pushed his chair out and stood up slowly. His body was failing him and it was always at its lowest ebb in the morning. Georgina jumped up to help him, but was immediately shooed away.
‘Don’t fuss,’ he said good-naturedly, despite the sharp shooting pains coursing through every limb, ‘or else I’ll start fussing over you and then there’ll be another war on!’
Georgina smiled, but she was no fool. Her father was in pain and that in turn caused her to hurt.
‘Right, I’ll get cracking on this Rosie woman,’ she said, giving her father a quick hug and a kiss on his stubbly cheek.
As Mr Pickering watched his daughter leave he knew that if there was anything to find then his daughter would undoubtedly find it.
Mrs Crawford would get what she wanted.