Shipyard Girls at War by Nancy Revell

Author:Nancy Revell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

Chapter Twenty-Six

When Gloria made it back through her front door she was jiggered, and practically fell into the armchair positioned in front of the little electric fire. Realising she didn’t even have the strength to switch the heater on, she decided just to take herself off to bed. This baby was sapping every bit of energy she possessed.

She was beginning to resign herself to the fact that she was not going to be able to keep welding for much longer. And from what Rosie had told her, it was clear Helen intended to boot her out of the yards as soon as she could.

She felt so sad at the prospect of leaving her little clan. They had learnt their craft together, worked together until they dropped, and sweated and frozen together in all weathers. But most of all they had been there for each other these past nine months. Talking and listening to each other’s trials and tribulations, and helping each other try to get some perspective on this queer life that they were all being forced to live.

She would miss the women’s warmth and their sincerity, but she knew her friendship with the women would not be the same if she was no longer working in the yard. There simply wouldn’t be time to see each other, not with the amount of overtime they were doing.

And she had to admit that she would miss the actual work – the cathartic feel of seeing the smooth flow of steel and the iridescent colours a weld produced, the unmistakable smell of hot metal, and the sound of a hissing rod, all coming together to create the perfect pattern of a well-woven weld. Welds she produced day in and day out and which gave her a much-needed feeling of order and control in her life. Neither of which she had had for many a year.

And, strange as it might seem, she would also miss the actual physicality of the work. Although backbreaking, she enjoyed the way it made her body feel at the end of the day – a satisfying exhaustion.

She wanted to push all her worries about the situation at work to one side. She wanted to ignore the sadness in her heart that she might very soon have to leave the one place which had given her so much – shown her a different life, gifted her a group of invaluable mates, and brought back to her the man she had loved all her life.

At least, she thought, as she hauled herself out of her chair and slowly made her way to the bottom of the stairs, I now have the freedom to do what I want.

No more worrying about what Vinnie was up to, no more anxiously awaiting his return from the pub, and no more wondering what state he would be in. Her time at the yard had set her free from the restrictive shackles of her sham of a marriage.

She now realised that the love that had bonded her and Vinnie together had never been a true love.

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