Sunderland, 1941
With a brief break in air raids providing some much-needed respite from the war, things are looking up for head welder Rosie, who has fallen head over heels for Detective Sergeant Miller. But how long can their romance last in such uncertain times?
Life remains full of challenges for Gloria, who must face her abusive ex-husband and confront her own guilty conscience about baby Hope’s real father. The secret is tearing her apart but if she admits the truth, she will risk losing everything.
Both women are determined that their love and faith will be enough to keep the most difficult of promises, but nothing is as simple as it seems …
Nancy Revell is the author of the Shipyard Girls series, which is set in the north-east of England during World War II.
She is a former journalist who worked for all the national newspapers, providing them with hard-hitting news stories and in-depth features. Nancy also wrote amazing and inspirational true life stories for just about every woman’s magazine in the country.
When she first started writing the Shipyard Girls series, Nancy relocated back to her hometown of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, along with her husband, Paul, and their English bull mastiff, Rosie. They now live just a short walk away from the beautiful award-winning beaches of Roker and Seaburn, within a mile of where the books are set.
The subject is particularly close to Nancy’s heart as she comes from a long line of shipbuilders, who were well known in the area.
Also by Nancy Revell
The Shipyard Girls
Shipyard Girls at War
Secrets of the Shipyard Girls
To the seven hundred women who worked in the Sunderland shipyards during World War Two.
As the Shipyard Girls series continues, so does the incredible support and enthusiasm I have received from so many people and organisations:
John Wilson and his lovely staff at Fulwell Post Office, researcher Meg Hartford, Jackie Caffrey of Nostalgic Memories of Sunderland in Writing, Beverley Ann Hopper of The Book Lovers, Linda King, Norm Kirtlan and Philip Curtis of the Sunderland Antiquarian Society, journalist Katy Wheeler at the Sunderland Echo, the Sunderland and Gateshead libraries, The Word in South Shields, Suzanne Brown and members of the Sunderland Soroptimists, book blogger Amanda Oughton, Pat Robinson for the loan of her father’s book: The Barbary Coast: The Story of a Community by J. Gordon Holmes. As well as ‘Team Nancy’ at Arrow: publishing director Emily Griffin and editor Cassandra Di Bello, my wonderful literary agent Diana Beaumont, and, of course, my parents, Audrey and Syd Walton, husband, Paul, and walking companion, Rosie.
Thank you.
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark
– Rabindranath Tagore
‘I just don’t understand, Mam.’
And it was true. Sixteen-year-old Gloria Turnbull simply did not understand.
‘I thought we would be together for ever.’ Gloria spoke her words quietly, as though more to herself than for her mother’s benefit. ‘We promised each other we would.’
Quiet tears were now rolling down Gloria’s cheeks as she turned her forlorn gaze to her mother, who was perched on the edge of her daughter’s narrow wooden-framed bed.
‘There’ll be someone else out there for you,’ Peggy tried to console her daughter as she started to get up off the bed. It was nearly six o’clock and she knew Clifford would be back soon. If there wasn’t a plate of something hot, filling and tasty waiting for him, there’d be another war on.
‘Trust me,’ Peggy said, gently pushing her daughter’s curly brown hair away from her eyes, ‘there will be others after Jack.’
‘There won’t be! There won’t be anyone else, Mam!’ Gloria’s voice was thick with emotion. ‘Not like Jack – I know!’
Peggy opened her mouth to rebuff her daughter’s comments, but closed it again. Gloria was not far off her seventeenth birthday. She had only ever had eyes for Jack, and Jack had only ever had eyes for Gloria, or so Peggy had thought. Everyone who knew the pair had presumed they’d be engaged before long. Even Clifford had been saying to her just the other night that it was ‘about time’ young Jack came to ask for his daughter’s hand.
‘I’ll bring you some supper in after I’ve sorted yer dad out,’ Peggy promised as she left the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her.
Only when she heard her mother shooing away her younger brothers and sisters, who had been milling around in the hallway wondering what was going on, did Gloria allow her tears to come freely.
Why, Jack? Why? Gloria wanted to scream. She wanted – needed – an answer.
Gloria smothered the sound of her heartache in the bunched-up pillow she had pressed hard into her face, and she coiled her body up tighter, as if by doing so she might disappear and become nothing, feel nothing. At the very least she hoped to barricade the world and all the hurtful feelings that came with it away from her being.
Deep down, though, Gloria knew that it was too late to ring-fence her heart. It had already been shattered into hundreds of pieces. And like a mirror that had been dropped, the shards of glass had been flung far and wide and there was no way it could be pieced back together.
Jack’s sudden decision to end their courtship had come like a bolt out of the blue. There had been no warning, no falling-out, no gradual dwindling of feelings. Far from it – they had been as mad about each other as when they’d first met when Gloria was fourteen and Jack fifteen. And they were certainly as passionate about each other, although Gloria, of course, was saving herself for marriage.
They’d only ever really had one major falling-out in all the time they had been together and that was a few months back, when they’d argued over Gloria having a ride home from work on the back of a lad’s motorbike. The green-eyed monster had showed itself in Jack and they’d had an almighty bust-up. Neither of them would back down, with Jack declaring Gloria shouldn’t have accepted the ride, and Gloria standing her ground and saying there was nothing wrong in it – that the boy was just a workmate. It had been the first time their stubborn natures had clashed so forcefully and it had taken a few weeks before they’d kissed and made up.
When they did, though, they’d seemed closer than ever before, talking about getting married and even joking about how many children they’d have. Jack hinted that he intended to ask Mr Turnbull for permission to marry his daughter on the day of Gloria’s seventeenth birthday next month.
But then, without any kind of warning, their lives together came to an abrupt halt when Jack came to meet Gloria after work at the ropery and told her he was ‘really sorry’, he was ending their courtship.
At first Gloria thought it was some kind of wind-up, but when he told her he was serious and she asked him ‘Why?’ – a question she would ask herself for a long while after – Jack seemed unable to give Gloria an explanation, but instead just kept on apologising.
When Gloria kept on demanding an answer, tears had formed in Jack’s eyes, which alarmed Gloria even more. She had never seen Jack cry. Not once.
‘Something’s not right!’ Gloria was beside herself. ‘Yer don’t just love someone one minute and turn yer back on them the next!’
But that was exactly what Jack did.
‘You deserve better than me, Glor. Much better,’ he said before he turned and walked away.
Away from Gloria and away from the future they could have shared.
In the weeks following their split, every time Gloria thought of her life without Jack, which amounted to just about every spare minute she had of every day, her whole body would well up with the most terrible feeling of panic. It was as though she was falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole, with no idea where she would land, all the while the question Why? spinning around in her head.
It took a month to find out the answer. Her friend Violet sat her down one lunch break at the rope factory and pushed the Sunderland Echo under her nose, with the words, ‘Sorry, Glor, but I think you should see this.’
Never a strong reader, Gloria used her finger to follow the article Violet had directed her to look at. She saw Jack’s name and her heart foolishly leapt, before her eyes darted back up to the subheading: FORTHCOMING MARRIAGES.
Again and again she read the words:
MR J. CRAWFORD AND MISS M. I. HAVELOCK
The engagement is announced between Jack Crawford, son of Irene and Edward Crawford, and Miriam, daughter of Catherine and Charles Havelock, both families of Sunderland, County Durham. The wedding will take place at St Andrew’s Church, Roker, Sunderland, on Saturday, 5th September.
At first Gloria’s mind seemed unable to process what she was reading, until, finally, a great wave of realisation drenched her.
Violet put her arm around her friend, who was sat stock-still, staring down at the newspaper. She couldn’t imagine what Gloria was feeling. Not only had she been dumped by Jack, but she had been replaced by one of the town’s most well-known beauties, who was also one of the richest. Everyone in the town knew the Havelocks. Mr Havelock probably owned or had substantial shares in a good 50 per cent of the town’s businesses and shipyards. His wife, Catherine, and daughter, Miriam, were often photographed at various highbrow events and were known to go to the launch of every ship built on the Wear, which was where, Violet presumed, Miriam must have met Jack.
‘And talk about a shotgun wedding,’ Violet said quietly.
Gloria turned quickly to look at her friend. ‘You don’t think …?’ Gloria left the question unfinished. It was as though she was reading about a complete stranger, as if she had never known Jack at all, as if the love they had shared had meant nothing. But worst of all, if Violet was right and this was indeed a ‘shotgun’ wedding, it could mean only one thing – Jack had betrayed Gloria in every way possible.
Over the next few weeks Gloria tried her utmost not to become obsessed with the Havelocks and, especially, Jack and Miriam. Jack would be turning eighteen just a few days before the marriage ceremony, meaning he would not have to get permission from his parents to walk down the aisle. Not that Gloria thought his mam and dad would have offered up any objections. They’d probably be waiting cap in hand, and palms turned skywards, as Jack walked out the church.
And from what Gloria had heard, Miriam was at least a year older than Jack. There had been speculation that she was in fact approaching her twenty-first birthday, which meant that if her own family had been against their coupling, she was of an age where she could do what she wanted, whether they liked it or not. And, if it was a shotgun wedding, she had clearly been doing exactly what she wanted well before now.
In the run-up to the wedding, Gloria’s emotions seemed to be in constant motion, swinging like a pendulum – one moment hate-filled, the next heartbroken. She cried herself to sleep most nights, but quietly so none of her other siblings with whom she shared a room could hear. Her father had told her in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want to see Gloria’s face ‘tripping her up’ over the trifle of some failed romance – not, he said, when every day ‘our boys’ were being killed on foreign fields.
Over the next six months Gloria became an avid newspaper reader, scanning the back pages every day. At first for an article on the wedding, which she had been surprised to see was just a few words with no photograph, then to check out the ‘Births’ section for an announcement that Mr and Mrs Crawford had had either a son or a daughter.
Gloria knew her family and friends thought it was time for her to dry her eyes and get on with her life, especially as the Great War had finally been won and people saw it as a time for new beginnings. But Gloria’s heart was still raw with grief and she honestly believed it was a wound that would never heal.
‘Perhaps they didn’t have to get married, after all?’ Gloria asked Violet just under a year after Jack had become Miriam’s husband.
Violet looked at her friend and sighed inwardly. Gloria had to stop obsessing about Jack and his new life – with his new wife.
‘Mm,’ Violet agreed, before nudging her friend and adding playfully, ‘but what I find odder still is that my best mate hasn’t even been out, let alone gone on a date since that lying toerag did the dirty on you. Which is why …’ she paused, keeping a steady hold of the huge bulk of raw fibres they were combing out, a technique known as hatchelling, ‘… you’re coming out with me and Dickie tonight.’
Violet failed to mention that her Dickie was also going to bring along a friend of his who had recently been demobbed, having served most of the war out on the North Atlantic.
When Gloria turned up that evening, she was furious with Violet, but she had been brought up to be polite and not cause a scene, so when Dickie introduced her to his mate, a former Royal Navy petty officer, she forced a smile on her face.
‘Gloria, this is my good friend …’ Dickie turned to the serious-looking young man, who was wearing a smart new suit that Gloria guessed must have been bought with the money he had been given after being demobilised, ‘… Vincent Armstrong.’
‘And Vincent,’ Dickie turned with great ceremony towards Gloria, ‘this is Violet’s very good girlfriend – Gloria Turnbull.’
The young man stepped forward and held out his hand to Gloria.
‘Please,’ he told Gloria, ‘call me Vinnie. Everyone calls me Vinnie.’
‘And Dor … Thanks for the cake!’ Gloria had to shout to be heard above the piercing squeals of a passing tram.
Dorothy and the other women welders had just left the warmth of the Elliots’ mid-terrace home, where they had been for a little, low-key party to celebrate baby Hope’s christening, and were now standing on the pavement of a bustling and noisy Tatham Street.
‘It really was the “biggest cake ever”!’ Gloria added, her voice shaking a little with emotion.
Dorothy’s face lit up and she tottered back to the front door as speedily as she could in the heels and figure-hugging black dress she was wearing. Her face was full of compassion as she flung her arms around Gloria and gave her a tight hug.
Dorothy had promised Gloria ‘the biggest cake ever’ if she finally got round to having Hope baptised. There had been much ribbing and banter over the promised cake and how it was going to be the centrepiece of Hope’s party. But, after the unexpected and very dramatic events of the day, the wonderful three-tiered Victoria sponge – a marvel in these times of rationing – had paled into insignificance.
‘We’re all here for you,’ Dorothy whispered in her ear. ‘Night or day … And I mean that!’
For once Gloria didn’t chide her workmate for her open display of affection and, much to Dorothy’s surprise, actually hugged her back.
As Dorothy turned to join the group, Gloria forced back the tears welling up inside her as she looked at the women welders, who were all wearing the same look of concern on their faces.
‘Thank you!’ she managed to shout out above the cacophony of street sounds to the four young women who not only were her workmates, but had become her closest friends this past year and a half.
Dorothy, Angie, Hannah and Martha all waved back at Gloria before they joined the gurgling stream of shoppers who had brought the east end alive this afternoon following the morning’s torrential rainstorm. The dark, thunderous clouds had gone, leaving behind a clear blue sky. Even the sun was now starting to show itself.
‘Blimey,’ Angie said, as they hurried down the street, ‘that was a christening and a half, wasn’t it? With Jack just turning up like that?’
‘And did you see the look on the vicar’s face?’ Dorothy chuckled. ‘Bet you he won’t forget Hope’s christening for a long while!’
‘I’m still a little confused.’ Hannah tried to raise her voice so she could be heard over the excited screams and shouts of the neighbourhood’s children out playing, glad to be free after the storm had forced them to stay indoors for an entire morning. ‘Do you think Jack has got his memory back?’
‘He looked like he knew Hope,’ Martha said, equally puzzled.
‘Which is odd,’ Hannah said, looking up at Martha, who was towering above her, ‘because he’s never seen Hope before today.’
‘I know,’ Dorothy agreed. ‘I think he only knew who we were from when he was in the yard the other week. I don’t think he remembers us from before he went to America.’
As they passed St Ignatius Church, where they had just been a few hours previously, the crowds started to thin out a little.
‘Heavens knows what’s going to happen now with Gloria and Jack – and, more worryingly, with Miriam and Vinnie.’ Dorothy’s voice dropped at the mention of the man they all detested.
‘Yeh,’ Angie agreed. ‘Really worrying.’ She’d seen the mess he’d made of Gloria’s face earlier on in the year.
When she’d finally chucked Vinnie out, there’d been a collective sigh of relief, although they all knew she had done it because she was worried about the safety of her unborn child, and not for her own wellbeing.
As the four women started walking up Villette Road, Hannah suggested going somewhere for a cup of tea.
‘I’d invite you all to mine, but it’s the Sabbath and my aunty Rina won’t even be able to put the kettle on, never mind make us a cuppa.’ Hannah was a Jewish immigrant whose parents had sent her to stay with her aunt before Hitler claimed their beautiful city of Prague as his own.
‘Eee, listen to Hannah here, “cuppa” now, is it? You’ll be speaking like Angie if you’re not careful,’ Dorothy joked.
‘There’s nowt wrong with how I speak,’ Angie said, putting on an even stronger north-east accent than the one she already had.
‘Not much right with it either,’ Dorothy said, purposely speaking in her best King’s English.
‘The café on Villette Road then?’ Hannah interrupted.
The women all murmured their agreement but when they reached the little tea shop sandwiched between the butcher’s and a hardware shop, they could see through the taped-up windows that it was full to bursting with customers.
‘Come to mine!’ Martha perked up. ‘My mam and dad have been dying to meet you all properly for ages.’
‘Are ya sure that’s a good idea?’ Angie said dramatically. ‘They might meet us and decide we’re not suitable company for their “little” girl … Or that we don’t speak proper.’ She cast a dark look across to Dorothy.
Martha chuckled and gave Angie what she considered to be a playful shove, but nearly ended up pushing her over.
‘Eee, Ange.’ Dorothy gave her friend a mock scowl. ‘You’ve got a right low opinion of yourself. And us.’
Within a few minutes the four had turned into Cairo Street, which was made up of a long row of terraced cottages.
‘Here we are!’ Martha said as they approached a little single-storey red-brick house that had a knee-high stone wall at the front and the remains of a hinge where there used to be an iron gate.
The front door, like many on the street, was wide open. Martha led the way, stepping over the brass doorstep and announcing, ‘Mam … Dad … I’m home! And I’ve brought Dorothy, Angie and Hannah with me.’
Within seconds a tall, skinny woman with short, dark brown hair came hurrying from the back kitchen and into the hallway. She was drying her hands on the floral pinny she had tied around her waist.
‘Oh my!’ she exclaimed. A big smile spread across her face, showing teeth that looked too perfect to be real and Dorothy guessed they must be false.
‘William!’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘Martha’s back and she’s brought her friends with her.’ Martha’s mother was clearly over the moon at her unexpected company.
‘At long last,’ she said, stretching out a long, very slender arm to shake hands with Dorothy, who had been first through the door after Martha.
‘Hello, Mrs Perkins,’ Dorothy said, ‘it’s lovely to meet you!’
‘Oh, likewise, my dear,’ she said. ‘And I’m guessing,’ she added, peering behind Dorothy, ‘that you are Hannah?’ She certainly could see why Hannah, who looked much younger than her nineteen years, had been given the nickname of ‘little bird’. She was quite tiny, with perfect olive skin and the most amazing dark eyes.
‘And, that must make you Angela,’ Mrs Perkins said to the pretty young girl with the shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair, who was wearing what looked like an identical dress to Dorothy’s, only in red.
Within minutes they had taken off their coats and dumped their boxed-up gas masks and bags, and were all sat round the dining-room table while Mrs Perkins poured out cups of tea and placed a plate of freshly made oatmeal biscuits in the middle.
‘Ah, at last,’ a loud, slightly gruff voice sounded out from the doorway. ‘It’s grand to meet you all properly,’ William, Martha’s father, said.
Martha’s mother and father had met the women welders very briefly one night two weeks earlier when they had turned up on the doorstep to see if Martha wanted to join the search for their friend’s mother, Pearl, who had gone missing. It had been a bitterly cold night and they had all been so well wrapped up that – coupled with the darkness of the enforced blackout – their faces had barely been visible, while the urgency of the search had prohibited any kind of formal introductions.
‘Hello, Mr Perkins!’ Dorothy’s voice sang out. As usual, Dorothy had taken it upon herself to be the group’s main spokesperson.
‘So,’ Mrs Perkins asked, ‘how was the christening? Did everything go off all right?’
The women all looked at each other, not quite sure what to say. Nor were they sure how much Martha had told her parents about the intricacies of Gloria’s complicated love life – or the truth about Hope’s paternity.
‘Well, it was certainly different,’ Hannah said, sensing that, for once, Dorothy and Angie seemed at a loss for words. ‘But then again, I wouldn’t really know what was “normal”. This was the first christening I have ever been to.’
Hannah looked at Mr and Mrs Perkins, who were listening intently, and thought they seemed like really good, honest people and that it was probably not appropriate to tell them that Gloria’s lover had suddenly turned up at the christening and met his baby daughter for the first time.
‘In my religion,’ Hannah continued, ‘we don’t have a christening but something called a “bris”, but it’s only for the boy babies.’
‘How interesting,’ Mrs Perkins said, taking a sip of her tea. ‘Tell us more.’
‘Well,’ Hannah said, ‘it’s when the baby is given his Hebrew and secular name.’ She paused for a moment, unsure whether to go into any more detail. Deciding that it was better than talking about the christening they had just been to, she continued.
‘And it’s also when the baby boy is … how do you say it in English … “circumcised”?’
The table suddenly fell quiet. Mrs Perkins blushed and Mr Perkins decided he needed to go to the ‘little boys’ room’. Dorothy squirmed uncomfortably in her chair and put her half-eaten biscuit back down on her plate. Martha and Angie, however, just looked puzzled.
‘Blimey, Hannah, for someone who could barely speak a word of English you know some pretty fancy words.’ Angie laughed.
Martha wiped some crumbs away from her mouth and agreed, ‘Yeah, you do, Hannah. What does “circum—”’
‘Circumcised,’ Hannah said the word again. ‘Well, how do I put it?’ She checked that Mr Perkins was not about to re-enter the room, then dropped her voice. ‘It’s when the baby boy is cut … you know – ’ she looked down at her lap ‘ – down there …’
‘Urgh!’ Angie couldn’t contain her shock and disgust. ‘Blimey, Hannah, that’s terrible. Why would they do something like that?’
‘I think,’ Mrs Perkins said, ‘if I’m right,’ she looked at Hannah, ‘it’s an important part of the Jewish religion. In the Old Testament it says that every male child should be circumcised.’
Hannah nodded her agreement, but Angie looked even more perplexed and was just about to ask another question when Dorothy kicked her under the table.
‘So, then,’ Mr Perkins said as he came back into the room and sat down. He looked at his daughter and the friends he had heard so much about. ‘Martha here tells me you are all working on a new ship, a screw steamer – Empire Brutus, I believe she’s called?’
Jumping at the chance to steer the topic of conversation towards something more suitable for tea and biscuits with your friend’s parents, Dorothy leapt in with enthusiasm and regaled her workmate’s father with how they were indeed working on a cargo vessel called Brutus and that she was the latest commission from the Ministry of War Transport.
‘The launch date’s still a way off, but when she’s finished she’s going to be over four hundred and twenty foot long, and over thirty-five foot from keel to bridge!’ Dorothy boasted proudly.
Mrs Perkins had to suppress a smile as the women all joined in telling her husband about the problems they’d had and how the future of shipbuilding was welding and not riveting. She marvelled at how the lives of women in general had changed these past few years since war had been declared.
Above all else, though, she felt such a huge relief that their daughter – their very special girl – had found not only a job that it was obvious she had been born to do, but these young women who had also become her friends.
It was no coincidence that Martha’s sociability and her speech had come on in leaps and bounds since she had started at Thompson’s. She and William had been loath to admit it, but for Martha the war had actually been a blessing in disguise. The work she was doing as part of the war effort, as well as the voluntary work she was doing on an evening for the town’s civil defence service, had really brought her out of her shell.
It had been a joy to see for them both.
Half an hour later, after the biscuits had all been devoured, and Dorothy, Angie and Hannah had thanked Mr and Mrs Perkins profusely for their hospitality, they bade their farewells, shouting back at Martha as they left the house that they’d see her on Monday.
As the women headed back along Cairo Street and then on to Villette Road to the home Hannah shared with her aunty Rina, Angie turned to their little bird.
‘Eee, Hannah, I don’t know about this religion of yours.’ The perplexed look Angie had worn earlier on at the table had returned. ‘I really can’t get me head around what you said your lot did to little boys’ you-know-whats.’
As she spoke, a couple of elderly Jews, with long beards and curls of silver grey hair, passed them on the street; not an unusual sight as they were now in the centre of the town’s Jewish community.
Angie shook her head in continued disbelief.
‘I will never be able to look at a Jewish man in the same way ever again.’
Hannah smiled but she seemed distracted. Dorothy looked at their little friend with her black hair, cut into a short bob, and thought the dark circles around her almond-shaped brown eyes seemed more noticeable than normal.
‘Everything all right with you?’ Dorothy asked.
‘Olly hasn’t said or done anything to upset you, has he?’ Angie asked, cottoning on to Dorothy’s concern.
After being transferred to the drawing office, Hannah had become friendly with a young lad called Oliver. ‘Young Olly’, as he was known by the women welders, had started to accompany Hannah to events outside of work, and had been to the christening with them in the morning.
‘No!’ Hannah said, defensively. ‘Olly would not do anything to hurt me.’
‘Well,’ Dorothy said, ‘I’m no mind reader, but I can tell something’s bothering you.’
Hannah let out a long sigh. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, you know, with today being the christening and everything. It’s meant to be a happy day, isn’t it? Celebratory. And I feel so glad for Gloria that Jack was able to be there too …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Spit it out, Hannah!’ Angie commanded.
‘Well,’ Hannah began, ‘my aunty Rina heard last night that there was the possibility that my mother and father may have been put into the Theresienstadt ghetto.’
Now it wasn’t just Angie who looked puzzled, but Dorothy as well.
‘You’ll have to explain what this whatever-you-call-it ghetto is,’ Dorothy cajoled Hannah, as gently as she could. Hannah wasn’t like the rest of them. She was so fragile, both physically and mentally. She hadn’t talked about her parents, who she knew were still stuck over in what was now Nazi-occupied territory, and no one had wanted to ask her if there had been any kind of an update as she seemed so happy since starting her apprenticeship as a draughtsman.
‘Well,’ Hannah took a slightly shuddering breath in and tears started to pool in her eyes, ‘from what my aunty has heard from our local rabbi, the Germans have been herding all the Jews into an area of the city which has been … how do you say it … seg … segregated … made into a kind of huge, walled prison. It’s meant to be terrible there. People are dying of disease and starving to death … The Germans are trying to make out it is a nice place to be, but they are lying.’
Hannah and Dorothy had slowed their pace and were concentrating hard on what Hannah was telling them. As they took in her words, they exchanged a look of outrage and anger.
‘Bloody hell!’ Angie couldn’t stop herself. ‘How can they get away with doing something like that? What have your people done to deserve that?’
‘Nic!’ Hannah said, reverting to her native tongue. ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing! It is simply because they are Jews.’
Dorothy had to bite her lip to stop herself letting rip. She had been brought up living alongside the town’s Jewish population. To her, seeing a man with a skullcap or with a prayer book in his hand had been no different than seeing some bloke wearing a flat cap and smoking a pipe. She knew that they were by no means an evil race. On the contrary, they always came across as very calm, very polite people.
Dorothy, Angie and Hannah slowed down and stopped as they reached the corner of Manila Street opposite the Barley Mow Park, which had recently been divided up into allotments. There was now fruit and veg where there had once been pretty flower beds and a bowling green.
Dorothy gave Hannah a big hug, followed by Angie.
‘Try not to worry, Hannah,’ Dorothy said, giving her friend a reassuring smile.
‘Yeah,’ Angie added, ‘we’ll beat the bastards and before you know it yer mam and dad will be out of that ghetto place.’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said, her spirits lifting a fraction at her friends’ hopeful words and determination, ‘and what is more is that we will help “beat the bastards”,’ she said quoting Angie. ‘We will make the ships “to beat the bastards”.’
Angie and Dorothy chuckled at Hannah’s repeated use of a swear word.
‘We will, Hannah!’ Angie and Dorothy said, glad not to leave their friend in total despondency.
‘You’ll design the ships and we’ll build the buggers!’ Angie shouted as they left.
‘Poor Hannah,’ Dorothy said as they hurried across Ryhope Road and into the wide, tree-lined residential road known as The Cedars where most of the town’s affluent families lived.
‘I know,’ Angie agreed, staring at the row of huge houses. It never failed to amaze her how magnificent these homes were.
‘You know, Dor, I really just can’t understand it. I don’t even know why Hitler hates the Jews so much? My dad says it’s because he’s a nutter and thinks everyone should have blond hair and blue eyes.’
Dorothy looked at her friend in her red dress with her light blonde hair and blue eyes.
‘You’d be all right then,’ she said, ‘but I’d be for the chopper.’
Angie looked at her friend’s thick, raven-coloured hair and dark eyes.
‘You know, you look a bit Jewish,’ she said, as if seeing her friend for the first time. ‘What was yer da like? Yer proper da, I mean.’ Angie knew Dorothy’s mother and father were divorced, but it was not something her friend liked to broadcast.
‘I’ll show you a photo when we get home. I’ve just got the one picture of him. He was dark, but I reckon he looks more Italian than Jewish.’
By now the women had almost reached Dorothy’s home, a large Victorian house that looked out on to the massive natural arboretum known as Backhouse Park.
‘Martha’s mam’s really dark as well, isn’t she?’ Angie’s head was now swimming with all the happenings of the day.
Dorothy laughed.
‘Honestly, not everyone with black hair and dark eyes has Jewish heritage, Ange!’
They walked up the long crunching gravel driveway that led to a large white front door.
‘They both seem really nice though, don’t they?’ Angie added, looking at her friend.
Dorothy knew Angie would have been happy to stay at Martha’s all afternoon, chatting away and eating Mrs Perkins’s warm biscuits. She certainly couldn’t see Angie’s mother and father making polite conversation over a cup of tea. The few times Dorothy had been at her friend’s it’d been pandemonium. There were kids of every age running around, either fighting with each other or screaming with excitement. Her mam always looked run ragged and rarely even acknowledged either of them. And just one look at Angie’s father, sitting there in his armchair next to the fire, in just his trousers and vest, still covered in coal and dirt from the colliery, had you inching towards the front door.
‘Yes, Martha’s mum and dad seem really nice. She’s lucky,’ Dorothy agreed, thinking of her own mother and stepfather and how they would have barely batted an eyelid if Dorothy had turned up with her friends out of the blue.
‘Eee, but I tell you what,’ Angie said puzzled, ‘Mrs Perkins isn’t a bit like Martha, is she? Neither is her dad, come to think of it.’ Angie was thinking about her own mam. She had inherited the same light reddish blonde hair as well as her mother’s big boobs and wide hips. And her little brothers all looked like mini versions of her dad.
‘Mrs Perkins is more like Olive Oyl.’ She chuckled at her comparison. ‘And I reckon her dad’s old enough to be her grandda.’
‘I know, Martha’s not like them at all. Not one little bit. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
‘About what?’ Angie asked.
‘Well, you know,’ Dorothy said, ‘whether Martha is their real daughter?’
She saw a look of comprehension make its way across her friend’s face.
‘Eee, yer might be right there, Dor,’ Angie said. ‘Bloody Nora,’ she said, blowing out air, ‘it’s been a right ol’ day today, hasn’t it?’
As Dorothy opened the front door, she turned to Angie.
‘And it’s not over yet. You still up for going out tonight?’ she asked.
‘Too bloody right!’ Angie couldn’t get the words out quickly enough, before they chanted their well-worn mantra in unison: ‘You only live once!’
After Gloria waved Dorothy, Angie, Hannah and Martha off, she shut the front door of the Elliots’ Victorian terrace and stood for a moment in the long, narrow hallway. The mosaic floor tiles seemed more colourful than normal, and the intricate patterns seemed to dance around her feet. She didn’t feel like this was really happening. In fact, she would not have been at all surprised if she had blinked and suddenly found herself back in her bed at home having just woken up from the strangest of dreams.
Had today really happened? In the space of just a few hours her world had yet again been turned upside down. In fact, it had flipped so many times this past year and a half, she didn’t know which way was up. But, at least this time the outcome was good. More than good. It was a dream come true. She had been given back something she thought had been taken from her for ever.
She had the love of her life back.
It had been the last thing on earth she had expected to happen – and today of all days.
These last few weeks she had been desperate to tell Jack that he had a baby daughter, but how could she when he didn’t even recognise her, let alone know they had been lovers before he had gone to America?
She had forced herself to accept that Jack was firmly back in Miriam’s clutches, and had decided, for now at least, that she had to let Vinnie believe Hope was his. If he got to know the truth, she was under no illusion as to what would happen.
‘You all right, Gloria?’
Gloria looked up to see Agnes Elliot in the doorway to the kitchen, her little granddaughter, Lucille, clinging to Agnes’s long skirt, a thumb stuck in her mouth and her hand clutching her beloved raggedy toy rabbit.
Gloria realised she must have looked odd simply standing there, staring at the floor, lost in her own world.
‘Why don’t you come in and sit down and have a cuppa,’ Agnes beckoned, her Irish lilt soft and reassuring.
As she came back into the kitchen – the heart of the Elliots’ home – Gloria saw Arthur sitting quietly in his armchair by the big, black range.
Tramp, the Border-collie cross that had followed Agnes home one day and not left, and Pup, the runt of the litter that no one wanted, were sniffing the threadbare carpet around the old man’s feet, scavenging for crumbs or any other edible titbits.
The room was calm now that all of the guests had gone. Gloria looked across at Jack sitting at the large wooden table. Hope was cradled in his arms, and he was looking at her with unadulterated love. By the sound of her daughter’s gentle snuffles, she was sleeping soundly.
Gloria looked at her lover’s worn face. Jack may have risen through the ranks to eventually become a yard manager, but his impoverished upbringing and the years he’d spent working out in all weathers had left their mark.
Everyone who had been at the christening and had come back for tea and cake had been sensitive enough not to stay for long. They had all made pleasant conversation, oohed and aahed over baby Hope and made a fuss of Lucille, who had revelled in the attention.
They had cut up the huge Victoria sponge that Dorothy had got delivered to the house earlier that morning, and all had relived the drama of Hope’s birth at Thompson’s, making great comedy out of Hope’s impromptu arrival in the world.
Jack had sat and listened, mesmerised by the story of how Gloria had gone into labour at the exact moment the town had been hit by a midday air raid; how they had all been frantic, none of them ever having witnessed a birth before, never mind helped deliver a baby. As the bombs had rained down on the town, they’d managed to create a make-do-and-mend delivery suite in the painters’ shed.
Dorothy, he heard, had been the unexpected heroine of the moment, the one to roll up her sleeves and bring his little daughter into the world. She had been rewarded with the honour of being appointed Hope’s godmother, a role she had clearly taken very seriously. Jack could see the story had been told many times these past three months as each of the women had their own retelling down to perfection.
After the cake had been consumed and the tea drunk, the women welders as well as their boss, Rosie, and her friends, Lily, George and Kate, made their excuses and left; all of them more than aware this was the first occasion that Gloria had been able to spend any time with Jack since he’d come out of his coma.
The party’s host, Agnes, also knew that Jack and Gloria needed time to talk about the consequences of their rekindled love. When the truth came out it was going to be a huge scandal, especially when it became known that their adultery had resulted in an illegitimate baby.
‘I’m going to pop next door to see Beryl and I’ll take cheeky Charlie here with me.’ Agnes glanced down at Lucille, who was being surprisingly quiet, perhaps sensing the enormity of what had taken place – and was presently going on – in her home.
‘Aye,’ Arthur’s low voice agreed, causing Jack to drag his gaze away from Hope and look at the old man now getting to his feet from his chair near the range, ‘and I’ll get out o’ both yer hairs. I’m sure Albert would appreciate a bit o’ help at the allotment. He’s probably out there now, happy as owt that we’ve just had that huge downpour, though I’m sure his broad beans will have taken a bit of a hammering in that storm.’
Gloria looked at Arthur and thought that they weren’t the only things that had taken a battering in the storm this morning. The old man had turned up at the church with Jack, drenched to the skin and looking like he was on his last legs.
‘Arthur,’ Gloria asked, ‘would you mind staying with us for a little while before you go? It would be good to have a chat.’
What had happened this morning had been wondrous, something Gloria never thought could happen in a million years, but for now she needed to concentrate on what they should do next.
Arthur eased himself back into his chair, inwardly thankful as he didn’t think he had the strength to make it out the door, never mind trek across to the Town Moor; he’d thought he was going to take his last breath under God’s roof right there at St Ignatius.
‘Aye, course I will.’ Arthur spoke in such a way that Gloria knew he understood why she wanted him to stay.
Agnes stepped towards Jack and baby Hope. ‘It’s been lovely meeting you, Jack.’
‘Aye, and you too,’ Jack said, reaching out and shaking Agnes’s hand. ‘And thank you. For everything.’
Jack had realised on returning to the Elliots’ house after the christening that Agnes had already played an important part in his little girl’s life. He had learnt that not only had she and her daughter-in-law, Bel, been looking after Hope during the day while Gloria went to work, but they loved this little mite, now asleep in his arms, as though she was one of their own.
‘Ah, it’s my pleasure.’ Agnes touched Hope gently on the cheek. Then she looked at Gloria, whom she had come to know well these past few months, and gave her a smile that somehow conveyed the empathy she felt.
After Agnes left, having given in to Lucille’s demands that she be allowed to keep her new yellow pinafore dress on, Gloria moved her chair nearer to Jack. As she did so, Jack looked at her and took her hand.
His head felt like it was going to explode with everything he had learnt today, and with all that had happened. As soon as Arthur had explained to him that he had been spending time with Gloria before he’d gone to America, and that his marriage to Miriam was far from what his wife had led him to believe, Jack knew he had to talk to Gloria himself. He’d raced to the church, driven by the knowledge that something momentous was about to happen. And it had. As he’d walked down the aisle, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Hope. It made no logical sense, but he had known straight away that the child was his.
‘I’m so sorry I can’t remember anything from before I nearly drowned. God, I’d give anything to have my memory back.’
Gloria squeezed Jack’s hand and kept hold of it.
‘You know, I think you will remember in time. The doctor I spoke to said there was a good chance your memory would come back.’ Gloria forced herself to sound more optimistic than she felt.
‘Yes, of course,’ Jack said. ‘You came to the hospital, didn’t you? Not long after I’d come out of the coma?’
Gloria would never forget that afternoon in September when she had rushed to the hospital in such excitement after Rosie told her Jack had come out of his coma, thinking that at last she and Jack would be reunited and live happily ever after with their baby daughter. She should have known it was all too good to be true. Her joy that Jack was back in the land of the living had been snatched away almost as soon as it had been gifted to her when she had seen the look on Jack’s face and he had smiled at her with blank eyes. The nice young doctor had then taken her to his consultation room and explained that Jack had amnesia.
Gloria looked at Jack and realised she had a lifetime of memories to give him, but now wasn’t the time. Too much had already taken place today. If she felt as though her head was spinning, Jack’s must have felt like it was in the middle of a tornado.
Besides, the present was more pressing. Arthur had told Gloria on the way back from the church that Jack had taken the morning off work but was expected back after lunch. They had managed to buy more time as Polly had gone to Crown’s to tell them that Jack had got held up and wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day. But there would be questions asked if he wasn’t home after the end of the day shift.
‘Jack,’ Gloria began, ‘there is so much to talk to you about, but we can’t do it all in one go. I’m not even sure how much you know.’ Gloria looked at Arthur with a questioning face, ‘How much Arthur has told you already?’
Arthur sat up and perched himself on the edge of the armchair so that he was looking at Gloria and Jack.
‘Well, we didn’t have that much time to chat before the service. We went for a walk along the river yesterday and I told Jack a bit about his younger days, when I was working at the yard for the Wear Commissioner.’
‘I did get a memory back,’ Jack interrupted. ‘A man dressed in all his diving gear – you know, massive twelve-bolt helmet, big canvas suit with tubes coming out of it, and great big steel boots.’
Gloria was listening intently, a faint shard of hope breaking through that Jack might actually manage to retrieve at least some of his memory.
‘But I couldn’t remember anything about my mam and dad or anything about growing up,’ Jack said.
‘I didn’t pull any punches,’ Arthur admitted. ‘I told Jack that his ma and da, like many back then, were very poor, and their situation wasn’t helped by the fact Jack’s da wasn’t far off a total waste of space and when he wasn’t doing piecework, he was drinking every penny he earned. I told him he started at Thompson’s as an apprentice plater as soon as he left school, and that if he wasn’t at the yard, he’d be with me – and Flo and our Tommy, of course – at the Diver’s House.’
Arthur thought for a moment. ‘And I told him that you two met when you were really just bairns, and that he courted you for, well, I reckon a good couple of years?’
‘That’s right,’ Gloria said, flashing a look at Jack, ‘two and a half to be precise.’ An image of Jack as a young lad with an unruly mop of thick, dark hair and dancing grey-blue eyes suddenly struck her.
‘But,’ Arthur continued, ‘you two split up and Jack married Miriam not long afterwards.’
‘It sounded to me like there was a reason for our getting married so quickly …’ Jack looked at Gloria for an answer.
‘That’s what you told me, not long before you went off to America.’ Gloria paused. ‘That you married Miriam because she told you she was in the family way, and that later she admitted to you she had lied, but by then she’d got pregnant for real.’
When Jack had told Gloria the truth about why he had ended their courtship all those years ago – how he had gone out on a few dates with Miriam when he and Gloria had fallen out over her ride on the back of her workmate’s motorbike, and how a while later Miriam had come to him and told him she was expecting – it was clear he still felt terribly ashamed.