2. Barrow Shipyard

With her heavy welder’s mask pulled down over her face, nobody could see Gracie Price’s long, wavy brunette hair, or her sparkling green eyes and full red lips. The masculine work overalls (allocated to all welders, male and female alike) drowned her small, slim, wiry body; even so, nothing could fully disguise the swell of her full breasts and the swing of her shapely hips.

Completely absorbed in welding plates of heavy sheet metal that would form the hull of the latest warship presently being built at Barrow Shipyard, Gracie was grateful for her clothing (ugly and mannish as it was), which protected her body from the red-hot sparks that flared and hissed as she welded together two metal sheets. Gruellingly hard though the job was, Gracie loved it with a passion; her family, like most others in Vickerstown, had been shipbuilders for generations, but now, with the war on, women were urgently needed to take over men’s work in the shipyard. Though keen to do their bit for the war effort, some of Gracie’s workmates disliked the heavy, dangerous job of welding, but tomboy Gracie loved it. Admittedly, in the early days of her apprenticeship, her back felt like it would snap in half, while her eyes burned from the glare of the welding torch, and her ears rang with the constant clamour of the shipyard. Now accustomed to the work, Gracie had developed strong muscles in her arms, legs and back, which eased the strain of the constant heavy lifting of tools and sheet metal essential to the job.

Gracie took pride in her welding when a new ship was launched, sometimes by the King and Queen, who regularly visited the shipyard to support and encourage the workers. As the ship that she had helped to build or repair slid down the runway, then out into the open sea, her heart would beat with patriotic zeal.

Adjusting her position in order to get a better grip on the welding iron in her thickly gloved hands, Gracie glanced anxiously towards her friend Ethel, whom she could just make out through the narrow visor in her welding mask. Married and pregnant, Ethel lived just a few doors down from Gracie’s family. The two girls had been playmates since childhood, learning to walk in the cobbled back streets that separated the rows of redbrick terraced houses, where washing flapped on lines strung between the backyards.

Seeing Ethel struggling to manoeuvre her bulky belly around some heavy machinery, Gracie frowned. ‘She would have been better off staying at home,’ Gracie fretted to herself.

Glancing over to the vast number of ships lined up in dry dock awaiting urgent repairs, Gracie knew full well why even pregnant women had to drag themselves into work. The ships were always needed by the Royal Navy but especially so now, with the Germans forcing British, French and Belgian troops to retreat towards the coastal beach-heads.

Returning to the seal she was painstakingly welding, Gracie blinked as the fizzing sparks bounced off the red-hot metal plate. Feeling the heat through her mask, Gracie was glad that nobody could see her face, which right now was creased with worry. Here she was, worrying about her friend’s health when she was increasingly sure that she was pregnant too. Determined not to think of her situation right now, Gracie concentrated harder than ever on her work, until a sudden tap on her shoulder made her jump.

‘Take Ethel home, lovie,’ the Charge-hand yelled over the din of the clattering machinery. ‘I don’t want the poor lass going into labour on the job.’

Gracie quickly switched off her welding rod and removed her visor. ‘I’ve been worrying about her too,’ she admitted.

‘Tell her, for the love of God, not to come back to work until after she’s had her baby,’ the Charge-hand added. ‘I know she’s a good lass, but there is a limit.’

Leaving their work clothes in their lockers, the two women linked arms and made their way through the busy, bustling shipyard. Gracie never ceased to marvel at how many skilled men and women were needed to build a ship – platers, shipwrights, hammer-boys, drillers, welders, riveters and riggers – many of whom she knew by sight.

‘Oi!’ one man called. ‘Clocking off early?’

As they made their way past the Time-keeper’s office, a sharp sea-breeze caught Gracie’s long brunette hair, sending it flying around her pretty, smiling face.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back,’ she called over her shoulder.

On their way home, Gracie gently chided her breathless friend. ‘You’re due in less than a month – you should be at home, with your feet up.’

‘I know,’ Ethel guiltily admitted. ‘But the thought of sitting on mi own all day, worrying myself sick about mi husband, drives me outdoors. I’ve not heard from Gerald in weeks!’ she cried.

‘Gerald wouldn’t want you working like this,’ Gracie firmly pointed out. ‘Promise me you’ll stay at home until after the baby’s born?’

Ethel gave a feeble smile. ‘I promise.’

Making slow progress through the network of terraced streets that provided housing for the fifty thousand inhabitants who lived in Barrow, they finally reached Ethel’s house in Steel Street, where Gracie settled her friend on the sofa, with her legs up.

‘Stay right where you are,’ she commanded. ‘I’ll make us a brew before I head back to the yard.’

Ethel gratefully accepted a mug of strong hot tea, and, by the time Gracie had washed and tidied away the cups, her friend was fast asleep on the sofa. Creeping out of the house, Gracie retraced her steps through the back streets, dodging drying sheets flapping on washing lines. Alone, Gracie’s thoughts immediately returned to her own problems. She knew her mother wouldn’t throw her out into the street. Tough, working-class Vickerstown had seen many a local lass get wed in a rush! Nevertheless, if she really was pregnant, Gracie dreaded the moment when she would have to tell her parents that she was in the family way.

Before he had bolted, her cowardly lover had left Gracie a hundred pounds inside a farewell letter in which he had revealed that he was married and the father of three. The letter she had immediately thrown on the fire, but the money she had carefully kept. If she had to go away to have her baby, Reggie’s guilt money would pay for her stay in a Mother and Baby Home. The sight of a gleaming Ford motor-car cruising down the main road into town caught Gracie’s eye. Blinking away hot tears of anger, she roundly cursed herself. ‘Stupid, stupid woman,’ she seethed. ‘You should have walked away the minute he offered to take you for a ride in his blasted car!’

Tall, handsome, thirty-something Reggie from down South had turned quite a few heads on his arrival, an experienced Foreman from London’s Dockland, he had been transferred to Barrow, where he had given every impression of being single and unattached. Nobody could fail to notice the good-looking new Foreman with his sweep of black hair, flashing dark eyes and elegant high cheekbones.

‘He reminds me of a film star,’ one of the welding girls had giggled. ‘Cary Grant or Robert Mitcham!’

Gracie drained her mug of tea and lit up a Woodbine. ‘Don’t be daft!’ she had mocked. ‘He’s a Southerner, he won’t want now’t to do with the likes of us poor Northern lasses.’

But Reggie’s wandering eyes had lingered on the stunning, slim brunette sitting on the dockside with seagulls winging overhead and a fresh sea-breeze blowing her long, dark hair around her sweet young face. Determined to make a play for the sexiest girl in the shipyard, Reggie had flirted with the welding girls whenever he passed their way.

‘Cheek!’ one of them had grumbled. ‘Coming up here with his flirty Southern ways.’

‘He is gorgeous,’ another girl sighed. ‘So mature, and he talks dead posh too.’

Pulling on her thick protective gloves that finished at the elbow, Gracie rolled her eyes at her silly, infatuated friends. ‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,’ she declared.

‘How right I was,’ Gracie murmured under her breath as she re-entered the shipyard. ‘If it hadn’t been for his damn fancy car, I might have followed my instincts and stayed well out of harm’s way.’

Gracie knew now, with the wisdom of hindsight, that it had been Reggie’s stylish Hillman motor-car that had broken her resolve. She knew nobody in Barrow who could afford a car like Reggie’s, or any car at all in fact; plus petrol was regarded as a precious commodity.

Gracie’s love of cars had begun in her childhood, when she and her dad had taken an ancient Morris apart; dismantled, the old heap had stood on bricks for months while her dad tried to work out how to put it back together again. Gracie, a regular little grease monkey, who loved the smell of the engine oil from the time she was a little girl, had always dreamt of learning to drive.

Working at the yard, watching the crane drivers skilfully swinging their mighty cranes out over the sea to hoist goods from the ships lining the dockside, made Gracie’s heart race. What must it be like to be up there, seated in the driver’s cab?

‘It’s always fellas that get to drive the cranes,’ Gracie thought resentfully. ‘Would the gaffers ever allow a woman to drive one?’ she wondered. ‘Maybe they’d have to if the war continued, and more men were called up. Who else would replace them but women?’

When Gracie had first seen Reggie cruising out of the shipyard in his Hillman Fourteen, with its shiny chromework and expensive leather upholstery, her green eyes had all but rolled out of her head. Having systematically ignored the brash interloper for weeks, she found herself gaping at his car in open-mouthed admiration.

‘Smart little number,’ she had murmured under her breath.

Reggie had smiled and waved at a blushing Gracie, who had quickly turned away from him, but not before he had seen the rapt expression on her face. Smirking, Reggie had slammed his foot on the accelerator and roared away; after weeks of trying to engage with aloof but gorgeous Gracie, Reggie realized that he might have just discovered her weak spot.