The Steel Girls by Michelle Rawlins

Author:Michelle Rawlins [Rawlins, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, World War II, Sagas, Friendship, Romance, 20th Century, City Life
ISBN: 9780008427283
Google: Xmb4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Published: 2021-04-15T08:30:38+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Taking what lay ahead in her stride, Betty turned to her workmates. Nancy was unreadable, her face not revealing a thing, unlike Patty who looked as white as a sheet, her rosy-coloured cheeks now pale and clammy.

‘It won’t be so bad,’ Betty tried to reassure her youngest workmate, but her words of gentle encouragement didn’t seem to do a thing to ease Patty’s anxiety.

In silence the women followed Frank into the room they had been training in, through a door and into an enormous windowless warehouse that seemed to reach the sky and was as long as the eye could see.

‘Chuffin’ ’eck!’ Patty gasped, the ear-screeching cacophony of noise hitting her like a high-speed thunderbolt, instantly stopping all three women in their tracks. Frozen to the spot, the continual deafening thuds from the great steel monstrous machinery they faced and the high-pitched grinding of metal on metal was like nothing they had ever heard.

‘My word,’ Betty whispered when she finally found her voice, barely able to make out her own words over the ear-splitting noise. Despite her normally hardy determination, she was stunned by what she faced. ‘It’s much bigger than I expected.’ Frank had certainly done a good of job the week before of protecting them.

No matter what direction the women looked in, there was something to take their attention, a new eye-popping sight to acclimatize and adjust to: the acrid smell of molten metal that instantly hit the back of their throats; ladders that seemed so tall they could only be a stairway to the heavens; blistering hot furnace fires, which could have easily been the gates to hell; huge machines that were surrounded by packs of men with mucky faces barely visible beneath oversized umbrella-like headgear, handling cumbersomely heavy poker-red rods of steel. Everything was enormous and filthy, and the heat, which left them sweating within seconds, was blistering.

Unable to fully take in and absorb everything before her, Nancy caught Betty’s eye.

‘It’s really not what I was expecting,’ she muttered, horrified by the loud and monstrous scene that enveloped them, like a dark and terrifying dungeon, a million miles from the comforts of their own homes.

‘Yer not wrong there,’ Patty quipped. ‘I can see why me dad wanted me to stay at Woollies now. Mr Watson feels like a walk in the park compared to this!’

‘Don’t you be telling yer dad that now,’ Frank chortled. ‘I put m’ neck out to persuade him to let you start here. If he had his way, you would still be on that make-up counter.’

Patty sighed. ‘I know, I know. It’s just, I didn’t expect all of this.’ She stared straight ahead, her eyes transfixed by a huge cavernous burning furnace in the far corner, where white flashing sparks were emerging like fireworks.

‘What’s that for?’ she asked.

‘It helps soften the steel so it can be shaped and put in the mould,’ Frank replied, ‘but don’t worry, you won’t be going near that.’

A synchronized sigh of relief came from all three women.

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