‘So, fingers crossed it stays like this. The only spanner in the works is Pearl, but at least we’ve got our Bel back. And Joe’s leg is on the mend. It’s like a great big dark cloud has been lifted from over our house.’
The women welders had decided to forgo their usual trip to the canteen and were sitting around on stacked-up pallets, drinking tea from stainless-steel thermos cups and eating their home-made sandwiches. Polly had just finished telling her workmates all about the night of the air raid when Bel had lost it and run off into the night, pursued by Joe, and how she had returned exhausted, but clearly unburdened and, more importantly, back to a semblance of her former self.
Polly looked up at the midday sun shining through the overhead gantries and towering wooden staithes, and felt it really was a case of nature reflecting life. The weather, like the atmosphere in the Elliot household, had finally turned. There was still a nip in the air, but there was a clear blue sky above and rays of sunlight were shining down on them all.
‘That is the best news,’ Hannah said, putting the stress on the word best.
‘Yes, the best news,’ Martha repeated with a big smile, showing off the big gap in her two front teeth and half a mouthful of a cheese and pickle sandwich.
‘Now you just need to sort out that nightmare of a mother-in-law,’ Gloria said, unbuttoning her jacket as she sat back, revealing her now substantial bump. She knew she couldn’t make out it was simply a case of middle-age spread for much longer, and was bracing herself for the repercussions when Rosie went to see the powers that be to tell them about her condition.
‘I reckon you should send that old cow Pearl packing,’ Dorothy said only half jokingly. ‘She’s nothing but trouble by the sounds of it. Out all night on the razz and up to God knows what.’
‘Sounds like someone I know,’ Angie said, appearing from behind their makeshift seats and causing them all to turn round.
‘Well, it takes one to know one, Ange,’ Dorothy reprimanded her friend in a mock matronly manner.
Angie sidled up to Dorothy and pulled out a big brown paper bag. ‘Well, yer all ganna want to know me when I show yer what I’ve got.’ She opened the top of the bag and held it out so that they could all see the contents.
‘I’ll do yer all a deal,’ she said with a cheeky smile on her face. ‘A good bit of gossip for these lovely iced buns.’
Angie had bought the buns on Sunday morning from the bakery near to where she lived in Monkwearmouth, which sold leftovers from a hatch in the wall at the rear of the shop. She’d queued up for ages in the cobbled back lane, but it had been worth it as she’d managed to get the slightly battered buns for just a few pennies.
‘Ah, Angela,’ Gloria said, ‘you’re a little star.’ Her sugar craving had not once abated as her pregnancy had progressed, but rather increased. Even if she had been offered a chunk of prime beef, she would happily have exchanged it for a bag of the white stuff.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come and work with us?’ Rosie said, leaning over to pick out her sticky bun from the proffered paper bag. Dorothy looked at Rosie and knew that her words had been said in a jocular manner, but that she meant every word. Rosie had tried to persuade Angie numerous times to swap the operating lever of her crane for a welding rod, but with no joy. Angie always laughed off the suggestion, as she did now.
‘You must be kidding! Why would anyone swap sitting on their backside all day and twiddling a few knobs with being on yer feet all day welding great big sheets of metal?’
‘Because you’d be with us!’ Martha’s words were spoken just before she demolished her finger-shaped doughy treat in two mouthfuls. Everyone laughed. They all loved it when Martha chipped in to the conversation. And lately she had shown them all that behind that simple-looking façade lay quite a sharp sense of humour.
‘Yes, Martha.’ Rosie smiled. ‘That would most definitely be the case, providing, of course’– she cast a theatrical glare over to their gentle giant – ‘no one defects and goes off to join the riveters!’
There was a general murmur of agreement, as they all knew Jimmy the head riveter had his eye on Martha and was trying every which way he could to get her to join his team.
Rosie looked at her mixed assortment of women welders and wanted to add that there might soon be no more ‘us’ left, after her meeting with Helen later on in the day when she was going to tell her about Gloria’s pregnancy. Rosie was going to have to fight tooth and nail just to keep Gloria at the yard, never mind as a welder. She was determined, though, that she was not going to let her little group of women welders go down without a fight. She was getting her guns spiked in anticipation of her meeting, and had organised a get-together with her union rep just before the inevitable locking of horns with Helen. Rosie knew next to nothing about a woman’s employment rights once she had fallen pregnant. And why would she? It had never been a concern of hers before. She had no intention of having a baby herself and, apart from that, she had never even known any women shipyard workers, never mind ones who ended up in the family way.
Rosie knew Helen would use Gloria’s condition as an opportunity to finally get her team of women welders disbanded. With Gloria gone, all she would need to do was prove that Hannah wasn’t up to scratch, which would not be hard, and then give in to Jimmy’s pleas and move Martha over to the riveters. That would leave her with just Polly and Dorothy, who would then be separated and sent to work at opposite ends of the yard.
Helen would not only have won but, more worryingly, the break-up of her squad would have massive repercussions for the women themselves.
Gloria’s employment at the yard had been her lifeline; she needed the support of her friends, and would need it even more after the baby arrived.
As a fairly recent refugee to the country, Hannah did not know anyone else in her new hometown, apart from her aunty Rina, and would not only be out of work, but also incredibly lonely.
Martha, without doubt, would head straight back to her non-verbal world if she had to work day in day out with a load of blokes she did not know, and who would have no idea how to deal with her.
Dorothy, as the youngest of the group, would most definitely be taken advantage of. She tried to act all worldly-wise, but she was very vulnerable underneath all that puffed-up false confidence. Rosie knew the men in the yard wouldn’t be able to see beyond her pretty looks, or appreciate what a skilled and valuable welder she actually was.
And Polly, of course, would stay on at the yard come hell or high water, regardless of how difficult her love rival made her life, but she would miss her ‘family of friends’, as she liked to call them all. Since her brother had died, she had come to rely heavily on the women for their support and advice.
And Rosie had to also admit that she too would be totally devastated if she did not have her band of women welders. She loved these women. Apart from the fact they’d saved her life, they were the only true friends she had ever had. They had all been through so much in such a short period of time. They knew her, and liked her. They accepted her – and moreover they didn’t judge her.
As she mentally braced herself for her late afternoon showdown with Helen, Rosie ate her iced bun without tasting it and resolved that she would fight to the bitter end to keep them all together at the yard. She wasn’t going to lose them now. And certainly not because some vindictive, spoilt young woman with more money than sense wanted revenge simply because she hadn’t got her man.
As the women all silently ate their pastries, Dorothy looked about her and saw the pensive look etched on her boss’s scarred face. Dorothy might like acting the fool, but she was far from stupid, and it did not take a genius to work out that their little gang was under threat.
As she turned to look at Angie, now sitting next to her, and then over to Gloria, who was picking the icing off the top of her bun and looking as though she was in some kind of gastronomic heaven, an idea came into her head.
‘Hey, Ange,’ she said quietly, ‘let’s have a quick walk over to the canteen to have a neb around – see if there’s any new talent about.’
Angie laughed. ‘Eee, Dor, yer never give up, do you?’
They both jumped off the pallet they were sitting on and hurried off across the yard.
‘Man-mad, the pair of yer,’ Gloria shouted after them, licking her lips. ‘I just hope you’re both careful and don’t end up like me,’ she added, running a hand over her bump.
Martha also watched the pair hurry off across the yard, gabbing away to each other, but something told her Dorothy’s quest, for once, was not about getting a man, but something else entirely.
‘You seen any more of Vinnie?’ Polly asked Gloria as she finished off her bun with a swig of tea.
‘No, thank goodness.’ Gloria sighed. ‘But I’m going to have to face him soon. He’s going to realise that this baby is staying put and he’s going to have to tell Sarah. And when he does, I’ll have him knocking on my door, there’s no doubt about that.’
‘Well, as long as he’s not hammering it down,’ Rosie chipped in. ‘Otherwise he’ll be getting more than a letter from the solicitors.’
They all knew Rosie meant every word she said as she got up and wandered off to check the welding machines before the start of the afternoon shift.
Helen watched the women welders eating their iced buns from behind the venetian blinds of the accounts office, which had been pulled down due to the bright glare of the afternoon sun coming across the river. The thick wooden slates and the tape crisscrossing the windows in anticipation of an air raid provided Helen with a good vantage point from where she could spy on the women – women she hated with a passion. Women she was determined she was going to get rid of, come hell or high water. She was going to break up their jolly little group if it was the last thing she did. She was going to pick them off. One by one. Starting with the peaky little Jewish girl. She would be the first to go.
Helen reckoned she could get shot of the lot of them, and even if she couldn’t banish them all from the yard, she was damn well going to get rid of most of them; any remaining hangers-on would be separated and their working life made hell. She would see to that. She only hoped her father stayed in America for as long as possible, or at least long enough for her to achieve her goal.
She knew that Jack would most certainly scupper her plans if he came back before she had had a chance to do what she wanted to do. She knew he had a soft spot for the women, although heaven only knew why. It was not as if he could possibly find any of them attractive.
Martha was like a man, Dorothy was young enough to be his daughter, and Hannah looked young enough to be his granddaughter. Rosie was very womanly and had been attractive once, but was now scarred and, as the saying went, was ‘spoilt goods’.
And then there was Gloria, who was around the same age as her dad, and who Helen had heard from her mum had once gone steady with her father another lifetime ago, but lately she had started to resemble a female version of Fatty Arbuckle. She had become a right heffalump these past few months. She was the only woman Helen knew who was putting on weight in these times of food shortages and rationing.
And then, of course, there was Polly.
Why had Tommy thought her so bloody perfect? Helen silently fumed. She stamped her foot on the floor, trying to stop herself thinking about that woman. There weren’t enough words to describe the pure hatred she had for Polly. She still could not get over Tommy choosing that scruffy little welder over her. Helen had men falling over themselves to take her out on a date, and she had lost count of the number of times she’d been told she was the double of either Vivien Leigh or Hedy Lamarr. So why had he preferred Polly? She really had no idea – but he had, hadn’t he? And he’d not just favoured her, but asked her to marry him.
Helen was once again filled with the familiar feeling of being totally wronged.
She wanted to scream: The injustice of it all! Tommy had been hers! She and Tommy had known each other most of their lives!
Which made it even more infuriating that this overall-clad upstart from the town’s east end, who had only met Tommy when she’d started work here, had snatched him from under her nose.
God, it still made her blood boil.
And to add insult to injury, one of her little welder friends had found out that she had spread a rumour that Polly was seeing one of the yard’s platers, Ned Pike, and had gone and told his wife. It had been annoying enough that she had not realised the bloke was married, let alone that his wife was heavily pregnant, but it was beyond humiliating when the woman had marched into the yard and actually yelled at Helen, calling her a ‘sly, conniving bitch’. The words were still imprinted in her head.
Which was another reason why not just Polly should suffer her wrath, but all the other women as well.
As Helen watched Gloria demolishing the rest of her pastry, she laughed out loud in the empty office; the entire department had gone outside to eat their lunch, craving the sunlight they’d been starved of for so long.
‘No wonder you’ve got fat, dear, eating like that,’ she said aloud to herself, smoothing down her figure-hugging tweed skirt and turning away from the window. As she made her way out of the office and down the stairs, she laughed again at her own venomous observations: ‘You should give it to Hannah – she could do with some meat on her.’
Helen waggled her way across the yard, enjoying, as she always did, the leering looks and racy comments from the male workers, who had learnt they could get away with it. When she reached her destination, Rosie was just surfacing from behind a load of welding machines.
‘I have a very important appointment later on, Rosie.’ Helen was lying. She had no such ‘appointment’, but she wanted to show Rosie who was boss, especially as she had no idea why Rosie had asked to have a meeting with her or what she wanted to talk to her about. ‘So I’d like to have our little chat now, if that’s all right by you?’
It wasn’t really a question – more of a demand.
Rosie responded with a scowl, and Helen had to fight the feeling of intimidation she always got around the yard’s head welder. Helen knew she would never get rid of Rosie – that was one battle she had realised she would never be able to win. Rosie was an unknown entity, which was why she had to be on her guard. She was peculiar. What woman in her right mind wanted to work in the shipyards, never mind encourage other women to work there too. She was like one of those suffragettes she had learnt about at her girls-only, very expensive, and very boring school on the town’s Mowbray Road.
Just as long as she doesn’t chain herself to the yard’s gates when I put my plan into action, Helen thought.
‘Looks like I don’t have a say in the matter.’ Rosie’s voice had a very definite chill to it.
‘We’ll go to my office,’ Helen told her.
‘Jack’s office?’ Rosie made the question sound genuine, although she knew perfectly well that was where Helen meant. It was a veiled reminder that Helen’s position was just temporary; she was only boss until her father returned.
And how Rosie wished Jack was back.
Jack was such a nice, decent bloke. How he’d sired such an abomination of a woman she would never know. Helen was the antithesis of her father; by the sounds of it she took after her mother; she had heard from those who knew the family that Helen was a carbon copy of Miriam – in both looks and personality.
Helen forced a tight smile and told Rosie that was exactly where she meant, before the pair walked off for their impromptu meeting, watched with a degree of dread by the women.
They did not have a good feeling.
Rosie and Helen’s departure coincided with the end of the lunch break, and as the women were gathering up their equipment to start work again, Jimmy appeared.
‘Hey, Martha, you’re with us this afternoon.’
There was no Rosie about to say otherwise, so Martha reluctantly put down her welding rod, took off her helmet and followed the riveter’s foreman.
A few minutes later the head plater arrived and told Hannah that she was to work with them on the ship’s hull this afternoon.
‘Boss’s orders,’ was all he said.
Hannah reluctantly put down her tools and did as she was told. Her face, though, looked woeful, and she was clearly on the verge of tears.
Dorothy, Gloria and Polly all looked at each other.
‘Rosie’s not going to be at all happy about this,’ Polly said.
‘I know,’ Gloria agreed, ‘and there’re no prizes for guessing who’s behind it all.’
For once Dorothy did not say anything, but she thought all the more. She had been the one to tell Ned’s wife about the malicious rumour Helen had spread, the outcome of which had been better than she could have wished for; but she should have known Helen would never forgive or forget. She was baying for blood, and it was not just Polly she was determined to rip to shreds – but them all.
‘Am I hearing you correctly?’
Helen put on her best speaking voice, as she knew it had the effect of making most people feel subservient. Helen wanted to rub Rosie’s nose in the fact that not only had she benefited from a top-notch education, but that she was a cut above, and certainly a class above her.
Furthermore, she needed every advantage she could muster. She hated to admit it, and she certainly made sure it never showed through, but she always felt a little out of her depth whenever she had any kind of dealings with Rosie. An effect people rarely had on her.
When Rosie had come to work in the office for a short time last year after her accident and wasn’t able to weld for a while, Helen had felt uncomfortable in her presence. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but the woman made her feel uneasy. When Rosie had opted to go back to work in the yard, Helen had been more than a little relieved, especially as anyone in their right mind would have jumped at the chance of working full time in the administration department. Her father had it all set up for her, soft touch that he was.
But, no, Rosie had chosen to return to the backbreaking shifts required as a shipyard worker, and had done so at a time when they were in the middle of the worst winter they had endured for a long time, certainly in her lifetime.
‘Yes, Helen, you are hearing me correctly,’ Rosie said. ‘What is it that you are struggling to understand?’
Over the years, Rosie had managed to curtail her north-east accent, but she had not lost the hard vowel sounds or the singsong inflection in her speech.
Helen let out a breath.
‘Well, to be honest, Rosie, I’m having difficulty understanding how a woman of her age is in the condition she’s in. Isn’t she too old to get pregnant?’
Rosie kept her voice level. ‘Obviously not.’
‘Well,’ Helen said dismissively, ‘she’ll just have to go. We can’t have her heaving her great big belly around the yard. It’s just not practical.’
Helen’s mind was racing and, as she was speaking, she felt a thrill of excitement. This was better than she had expected. She had thought Rosie wanted to see her about something boring, like buying in new welding rods or helmets, not to tell Helen that one of her much-loved team was up the duff. She had thought the woman was just getting fat, not eating for two.
Rosie had to bite her tongue, before adding as coolly and as professionally as possible, ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Helen. There are rules to be adhered to. Employment laws to be abided by.’ But her outward confidence belied her uncertainty. Rosie knew she was skating on thin ice: she had no idea what the rules and regulations were, or if, in fact, there were any. It had been for this very reason that she had arranged the chat with her union rep a little later on, in anticipation of her scheduled meeting. She’d been caught on the hop by Helen bringing the meeting forward.
‘Well, we’ll see about that,’ Helen said, moving over to the door and opening it to show Rosie that their meeting was now over. She was determined to end their little tête-à-tête on a high note, and could not wait to be on her own to digest this unexpected and rather excellent news. She could now get rid of Gloria in one fell swoop, followed by Hannah, and then Martha. The dismantling of the women welders’ group might be happening sooner than anticipated.
As Rosie walked out through the door, she stopped and looked at Helen. She wanted to say so much. But she did not. Instead she simply said, ‘We’ll speak again in the next week or so.’ She then immediately turned on her heel and walked back out of the office door, allowing it to slam shut behind her.
When Rosie arrived back at the welders’ work area, she was fuming.
When she learnt that Martha had been ordered to go and work with Jimmy’s squad of riveters, and that Hannah had been hauled off to work with the platers, she struggled to keep a lid on her simmering rage.
Calm down and use your head, Rosie, she told herself.
She had to play this one right. And she needed time to work out her strategy. Helen might have the advantage after this first skirmish, but Rosie was determined to win the war.