Chapter Ten

Over the next week, work was busy. It didn’t quite compare to the hectic pace of the months leading up to D-Day in June, but there was still a need for vessels of all kinds. The scales of war were tipping in the Allies’ favour, however that didn’t mean they could rest on their laurels. Doxford’s had recently seen the cargo vessel Registan dispatched into the Wear. Today it was the Shipbuilding Corporation’s turn to celebrate the launch of Empire Cowdray. As the yard was one of the smallest on the banks of the Wear, the town’s bigwigs had decided it needed a show of gratitude and recognition, so the call had gone out to all the yards to send a representative to the launch.

As Harold, the main manager at Thompson’s, rarely left his office these days, it had fallen to Helen to fulfil the role. She was just about to leave when she heard the main admin door swing shut and two familiar voices sound out their arrival. Looking up, Helen saw to her dismay that it was indeed her mother and her grandfather. She felt her jaws clench. What were they doing here? She had told them that she would see them there. She watched with a sinking heart as her personal assistant, Marie-Anne, showed them both into the office.

‘I thought we agreed to meet at the Corporation?’ Helen said.

Miriam ignored the question, instead walking around the office as though she owned the place, wiping her finger along the tops of the cabinets and wrinkling her nose.

‘It was never this dirty when your father was in charge,’ Miriam said.

Helen looked at her mother and then at her grandfather, who was easing himself into the chair at the side of the room. He had on his best Savile Row suit and looked well. Very well.

‘Isn’t it wonderful to have the whole family together?’ Miriam brushed her hands clear of imaginary dust. ‘Well, almost the whole family,’ she said, casting a look through the partition glass towards the entrance to the main office.

‘So, why are you both here?’ Helen asked, making no attempt to keep the irritation from her voice.

‘More like, what on earth is that flea-bitten thing doing in here?’ Miriam replied, seeing Winston pad across the office and start winding himself around Helen’s legs, purring loudly.

‘That flea-bitten thing,’ Helen said, ‘is our resident rat-catcher and has as much right to be here as anyone.’ In truth, Winston had not caught a mouse, never mind a rat, since Helen had brought him to the yard nearly two years ago, when his elderly owner had died during the Tatham Street bombing.

Hearing Marie-Anne’s surprised voice welcoming yet another guest, Helen looked up to see her father arriving.

‘It’s Mr Crawford to see you,’ Marie-Anne said. She was standing by the office door, her eyes darting between Helen, Miriam and Mr Havelock. This would be interesting. The gossip presently doing the rounds was that Miriam and Jack had split up and Jack was living with Gloria. And even more shockingly, little Hope, whom everyone thought adorable, was actually Jack’s love child. Looking at Jack now as he pushed back his thick black hair, you could clearly see the resemblance. Hope and her half-sister Helen had inherited their father’s dark good looks.

‘Would you like a tea tray, Miss Crawford?’ Marie-Anne asked. She glanced at Jack, who had clearly not expected to see his estranged wife or father-in-law here.

‘No thank you, Marie-Anne. They’re not staying long,’ Helen said. She looked at her father and raised her eyebrows to show that this was a shock for her too.

‘Come in, Dad, shut the door.’ She waved him in before returning her attention to her mother. She still found it hard to look her grandfather in the eye after Pearl’s revelations at Christmas.

‘Well, Mama, you’ve obviously got us all here for a reason, so you might as well get on with it and spit it out.’

Helen and her mother had barely spoken a word to each other since her return from Scotland. They were ships passing in the night, with Helen coming home at around the same time her mother was going out.

Miriam smiled, pleased with herself for orchestrating the impromptu meeting, which hadn’t been all that hard to organise. She’d guessed Helen would be in the office getting ready for the launch, but had rung Marie-Anne to double-check. This was followed by a quick phone call to Crown’s to relay a message to Jack purporting to be from Helen and saying that she wanted to see him.

‘If you’re not going to offer us all the hospitality of a cup of tea, darling, I’ll have to indulge in a glass of single malt.’ Miriam walked over to one of the tall metal cabinets and pulled out a half-bottle of Scotch from the top drawer. Helen watched with disbelief as her mother helped herself, then poured another and handed it to her grandfather.

‘Thank you, Miriam,’ Mr Havelock said. He’d been happy to accompany his daughter to the yard, knowing she was up to something.

Helen looked at Jack. ‘Would you like a drink, Dad, seeing as no one has had the courtesy to ask you?’

‘Yer all right, Helen,’ Jack said simply. He looked at his watch and then at Miriam. Just being in the same room as her made him feel ill. ‘Yer’ve clearly got us all here for a reason, Miriam, so get on with what yer wanna say. You’ve got five minutes ’n then I’m out of here.’

‘What? No “Lovely to see you, darling? How are you, Miriam?” Dearie me, how long is it since we’ve seen each other?’

‘January 1942,’ Jack retorted, quick as a flash. ‘Two years ’n seven months. Every minute of which has been pure bliss. Now gerron with what yer’ve got to say.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘That’s one minute gone already.’

Jack, like Helen, was ignoring his father-in-law – not to be rude, but simply because the very sight of the man repulsed him.

‘Very well.’ Miriam took a sip of her Scotch. It was not her preferred tipple, but any port in a storm. ‘First of all, Jack, I’d like to remind you that we’ve been married twenty-five years and are still married. You are still my husband. Something you seem to have forgotten.’

‘That’s something I’ve most definitely not forgotten. Far, far from it,’ Jack said, looking at the woman just yards away from him and hating himself more than ever for marrying her. Or rather, for having been duped into marrying her – conned by the oldest trick in the book.

‘Good, because you’re going to stay my husband whether you like it or not.’ Miriam narrowed her eyes and smiled. Since Jack had been allowed back to live here, she had obsessed about the injustice of it all. Her fury grew every time she thought of him shacked up with his bit and their bastard, playing happy families. It was not just the public humiliation of being a spurned wife – abandoned for another woman, his childhood sweetheart no less, the woman from whom she had originally snatched him away. It was just as much about him winning – and her losing.

‘Why don’t you want a divorce, my dear?’ Mr Havelock asked. He had hoped Miriam would change her mind. ‘I’d have thought you’d want shot of the man.’

Helen was also giving her mother a look of total disbelief.

Miriam’s attention, though, was focused on Jack, her look one of pure malice.

‘She won’t divorce me,’ Jack said, ‘because she knows that’s what I want. She knows as soon as the ink is dry on the divorce papers, I’ll be marrying Gloria. And she’ll do anything to stop that happening – even to her own detriment.’

Miriam let out a tinkle of laughter. Too right. If she couldn’t have what she wanted, he damn well wasn’t going to have what he wanted either. ‘Oh, Jack, you know me so well.’ She kept her focus on her husband. ‘I will never divorce you, and if you try and divorce me, I’ll make sure I’ve got the best and most expensive lawyers fighting my corner, putting up insurmountable barriers every step of the way.’

Miriam glanced at her father. She fully intended to take him up on his promise of helping her in any way he could.

‘Your child – ’ she returned her attention to Jack ‘ – will continue to be a bastard in the true sense of the word. A child born out of wedlock. Illegitimate.’ The corner of her mouth inched up into a snide smile. ‘And I’ll make sure everyone knows it. Every Tom, Dick and Harry in the east end.’ She raised a manicured hand and moved it as though showing off a banner. ‘Jack and Gloria – adulterers … Their child – a bastard.’

‘Enough, Mother!’ Helen pushed back her chair and stood up.

Miriam ignored her daughter. ‘I’m going to make it my mission to make your life an absolute misery.’ Her tone dripped with spite.

Jack let out an angry laugh. ‘I think you’ve already succeeded on that score.’

Miriam glowered at the man she had once set her heart on having, and had now set her heart on destroying. ‘And don’t think for one minute that I care two hoots about my reputation. Any hope of that disappeared on Christmas Day, when, I’m informed, you came racing back from the Clyde and set up home with your hussy.’

‘I said, enough, Mother!’ Helen started to move around her desk.

Miriam made a show of looking at her watch. ‘Oh dear, look at the time! I believe my five minutes is up, dearest Husband.’ She then turned her attention to Mr Havelock and Helen. ‘And we’ve got a launch to attend, I do believe.’

Jack glared at Miriam. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself. He knew he’d end up saying something he’d regret. ‘I’ll see you later, Helen,’ he said instead, before turning and marching out of the office.

Helen looked at her mother as she finished off her drink. Her grandfather had already finished his and was pushing himself out of the chair.

‘Don’t forget, Mother,’ Helen hissed, ‘that Hope is my sister.’

‘Half-sister,’ Miriam corrected.

‘We share the same blood,’ Helen countered. ‘Hope’s my sister. There are no half measures. Just as the man you have declared your intention of ruining is my father.’

Mr Havelock cleared his throat. ‘Of course he is, Helen, my dear,’ he interjected. ‘But don’t forget that you are also a Havelock just as much as you are a Crawford.’

Helen eyed her grandfather, feeling the return of her disgust and shame that they shared the same blood.

‘And I hope you know just how much that sickens me to the very pit of my stomach,’ she said.

Neither Mr Havelock nor Miriam was in any doubt that Helen meant every word she had just spoken.

When Mr Havelock and Miriam made it out of the admin building, the sound of the shipyard was overwhelming, as was the sun’s shimmering heat. The summer this year seemed to be as hot as the winter had been cold. Mr Havelock raised his hand to shield himself from the blinding rays and stood surveying the concrete jungle of men, metal and machinery. He scanned the individual groups of workers, the squads of riveters with their heater boys and catchers, the platers with their helpers, the foreman with his whistle in his mouth, overseeing the lowering of a mammoth sheet of steel. The women welders, he knew, would not be hard to find. Women might well be a part of the workforce these days, but they were still very much outnumbered by the men. And they still stuck out like sore thumbs.

He continued searching the yard, glancing over the flat caps, trying to catch the glimpse of a headscarf. He spotted a group of women who were red-leaders, judging by the blood-like splatters on their denim dungarees, but he still couldn’t see the women welders.

All of a sudden, he heard a piercing whistle. He looked up. There they were. Sitting on some scaffolding, their legs dangling over the edge, their faces just inches from the hull of the ship in the dry dock. They all had their welding masks down, apart from the one with light ginger hair poking out of her headscarf – the miner’s daughter whose mother was having it off with a bloke half her age. She had her thumb and forefinger in her mouth and was whistling to someone below. He looked back down to see the dark-haired girl – the one whose mother was a bigamist. Watching as she smiled and waved back up to her friend, he wondered if she’d still be smiling when she was visiting her dear mama in jail.

Towering next to her was the daughter of the town’s infamous child murderer. He smiled to himself. He could just imagine everyone’s reaction when they found out the truth. She’d be shamed and shunned. Probably railroaded out of town.

A woman suddenly appeared at the top of the staging. Judging by her body language and the way the women all pushed up their masks and were looking at her, she must be their boss, Rosie Miller. He watched as she dropped down on her haunches and started talking to an older woman, Jack’s bit. Miriam would make sure she got her comeuppance. Of that he was certain.

Ignoring his daughter’s impatience as she started to shuffle about next to him, Mr Havelock continued to inspect them, imagining their reactions when he revealed their secrets to the world – when he destroyed their lives and the lives of everyone around them.

He’d like to see the state of the common one’s mother after her brute of a husband finished with her. And then there was the pretty young brunette he’d just caught sight of. Polly. Bel Elliot’s sister-in-law. My God, the Elliots wouldn’t know what had hit them by the time he’d finished with them.

Feeling Miriam take hold of his arm, he turned to look at her. She was mouthing something to him, but it was too noisy to hear. She started stabbing her watch with a glossy red-painted nail. He nodded and allowed himself to be guided towards the waiting Jaguar, idling outside the giant gates of the shipyard.

He had much to look forward to. His plan was taking shape. He just wished he could move everything along that bit quicker.

Still. The waiting would, he was sure, be worth it.