Triumph of the Shipyard Girls by Nancy Revell

Author:Nancy Revell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781473572812
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sunday 14 March

‘Georgina, come in, come in. I wasn’t sure if you’d be here with all these wretched air raids we’ve been getting. I hope no one you know has been affected?’

‘No, no one. Thank goodness,’ Georgina said, taking her pew in front of Helen’s desk. She looked to her right and was glad to see the tea tray in its usual place. She could do with a pick-me-up; like most people in the town these past couple of nights, she’d had little sleep.

‘I heard an AA shell fell in the grounds of the Children’s Hospital, and another in some poor woman’s front garden. Both exploded,’ she said as she watched Helen pouring their tea.

‘I know, a friend of mine works at the Ryhope.’ Helen handed Georgina her cup and saucer. ‘He said it was pandemonium there.’

‘Your friend a doctor?’ Georgina asked.

Helen nodded.

‘They get the overspill. Only one dead. Thank God.’ She sighed heavily. ‘What times to live in when you’re actually thankful that there was only the one casualty.’

Helen went to sit down at her desk with her own cup of tea, reaching down to her handbag for her cigarettes. ‘I don’t know, it makes my concerns about Bel’s parentage seem so insignificant.’ She lit a Pall Mall. ‘Maybe even a bit pathetic. I wonder if I should just forget it and put my time into something more constructive.’

Georgina sat up and put her cup and saucer down. ‘Well, I think that’s the good thing about employing someone like me. You’re not having to waste any valuable time whatsoever … I do the time, as it were, and you can get on with what’s really important.’

Georgina looked out the window at the empty office. It was Sunday. There were no office workers, and only a skeleton staff out in the yard, by the looks of it.

‘You can concentrate on running this place, getting the ships built,’ she continued to stress her point. ‘I hear you’re launching the Chinese Prince in the next week or so?’

Helen’s face lit up with pride.

‘Yes, on the twenty-third. On schedule. She’s going to be taking troops as well as cargo across the Atlantic. Let’s hope Lady Luck’s on her side.’

‘Yes, she’ll need all the luck she can get, the rate Jerry is sinking ships …’ Georgina was relieved she’d steered Helen away from any thoughts of ending the investigation. She and her father were living on a shoestring – a very thin and frayed shoestring at that. ‘So, let me fill you in,’ she said, pulling out her notepad.

‘Well, first of all, I didn’t realise that your grandfather, Mr Havelock, had a younger brother?’

‘Gosh, yes, of course, I completely forgot about him! Dear me, memory like a sieve … I do believe he died before the start of the First War. Tuberculosis, I think. Grandfather’s not one for talking much about family. Never has been. It’s always work, work, work.’

Helen tapped her cigarette on the steel ashtray on her desk.

‘Neither is my mother, come to think of it, although she’s more play, play, play.

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