Winnie of the Waterfront (16 page)

‘I kept my promise to write to you, I swear to you I did,’ he said grimly. ‘I wonder why they didn’t give you my letters?’

Winnie shook her head. She couldn’t understand why. She recalled all the times she’d thought about Bob and how miserable she’d felt because she’d assumed he’d forgotten all about her.

‘You’ve obviously made a new life for yourself,’ she commented. ‘Why are you dressed like that? You look very smart,’ she added hastily, ‘but what sort of uniform is it?’

‘Midshipman. As soon as I’d done my six months at the factory and knew I was free to leave there, and also to leave the hostel they put me in, I signed up to go to sea.’

Winnie frowned. ‘That’s the same sort of life as being in the orphanage, surely?’

‘Not really. Most of the time you are working in the fresh air and you can see the sky and feel the sun and the wind. At night it’s wonderful to go up on deck and see the space all around you and the sky brilliant with stars. I’m sure I’ve made the right choice.’

‘You certainly sound content with your new life,’ she agreed. ‘So what ship are you on?’

‘I’m on the
Patricia
, which is a Blue Funnel
passenger
liner. We come into Liverpool every six months. I was just going back to the ship now, as we sail on tonight’s tide.’

Winnie’s face fell. ‘Does that mean I won’t see you again for six months?’

‘I’m afraid so! It’s a miracle bumping into you like this.’

‘I know, but it’s pretty disappointing that we’re going to have to say goodbye again so soon.’

Bob frowned. ‘I don’t have to be back onboard for another couple of hours. So, are you free for us to spend some time together?’

‘Well …’ Winnie hesitated. Much as she wanted to be with Bob, she was ravenously hungry, and if she wasn’t back at the hostel on time she wouldn’t get any food.

‘Were you going somewhere special?’ Bob persisted.

She shook her head. ‘Only back to the hostel, but if I’m late I’ll miss my evening meal.’

‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll find somewhere to eat, some place where we can catch up on each other’s news. I’ve so much to tell you and I bet you’ve plenty to tell me as well.’

He looked so pleased to see her again that Winnie accepted with alacrity. She wanted to know all about what had happened to him since he’d left Holy Cross and whether he had found it as difficult to adjust to the outside world as she had done.

Bob glanced up at the clock face on the Liver Building. ‘I don’t think there’s time to go back up to the Lyons Corner House,’ he told her, ‘because
I
have to be on board by half past seven at the latest. Would you settle for fish and chips?’

‘As long as we can sit down to eat them,’ Winnie grinned. ‘I can’t eat and walk at the same time!’

‘Not with those sticks you can’t,’ he agreed. ‘Look, let’s find a spot where you can sit while I nip and get them. You’re sure now that you don’t mind eating them out of the paper with your fingers?’

Winnie giggled. ‘It sounds fun. A bit like a picnic.’

‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Now promise me you won’t go running off!’

When he returned, Winnie was glad to see that he had brought them a bottle of pop each. The fish was crisp and golden, the chips were delicious, and they tucked into them with gusto.

‘You must miss your wheelchair?’ Bob commented when they’d finally finished eating and he’d disposed of the greasy paper.

‘I do!’

‘You’ll have to save up for a new one.’

‘Not much chance of ever being able to afford one on the wages they’re paying me at Johnson’s Mantles.’

Bob frowned. ‘What sort of place is that then?’

‘A factory where they make shirts and blouses. I’m on the assembly line where the garments are folded and packed.’

‘It sounds very much like the job they fixed up for me. That was in a factory and I didn’t see the outside world except on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.’ He pulled a face. ‘It was pretty grim
there.
Once the other chaps found out that I’d come straight from an orphanage, and that I was as green as grass, they led me a dog’s life. The foreman was as bad. I was so miserable at times I contemplated suicide, only I didn’t know how to go about it.’

Winnie looked shocked. ‘It would be a mortal sin to do that anyway!’ she reminded him. ‘Can you imagine what the nuns would say!’

‘Well, rotting in Hellfires wouldn’t have been any worse than the sort of life I was living. The hostel was far stricter than the orphanage and not nearly as comfortable. The food was horrible and by the time I’d paid for my lodgings out of my wages I didn’t have enough left over to buy anything except the occasional bun.’

‘Why do they find us such awful jobs?’ she asked.

‘Not many firms want to take kids from an orphanage, that’s why.’

‘I would have thought we were ideal employees. We’re trained to be polite and obedient, and after being shut inside for so long we haven’t committed any sins worth talking about.’

‘It’s because they know nothing about our family background – we might come from a family of thieves.’

‘That’s what Sister Tabitha told me, but surely the nuns would tell them how we came to be in there?’

Bob looked sceptical. ‘They’re not going to say anything bad about us, are they, because they want to get us off their hands as quickly as possible.’

‘They wouldn’t have to tell lies, though!’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps not.’

‘Nuns never lie!’

He looked at her speculatively. ‘They lied about the letters I sent to you, didn’t they?’

‘Not exactly. They just didn’t give them to me.’

‘Right. They kept them and probably destroyed them, and that’s even worse. What is more, when you asked if they had any news of me they told you “no”! That was a lie, wasn’t it!’

He sounded so angry that Winnie looked at him in surprise. Bob had always been so easy-going that it came as something of a shock to see how heated he could be.

‘You were a very special friend,’ he pointed out, ‘and I knew no one at all on the outside, so when you didn’t even bother to answer my letters I felt really deserted, I can tell you.’

‘I felt hurt that you hadn’t kept your promise,’ she reminded him.

‘You still had the security and familiarity of the place you were used to, though. I was in a world I wasn’t used to, full of strange people, and I didn’t know who to trust or where to turn. I didn’t know how to go about living in the outside world. Everything was so strange that I felt like an interloper.’

‘What made you decide to go to sea?’

‘I thought it couldn’t be any worse than living in a hostel where I didn’t like the people and nobody cared what I did or where I went. All that seemed to matter to them was that I obeyed the rules to keep my room tidy, and that I was in
before
ten every night and went to Mass on Sundays.’

‘I think they must all have the same rules,’ Winnie murmured. ‘That sounds pretty much the same as the hostel I’m in.’

‘Like you, I didn’t have any friends at work either,’ Bob went on, ‘so I was pretty miserable and terribly lonely. I only signed on for a year, though, in case I didn’t like going to sea either. Now I’ve tried it I like it so much that I want to go on doing it and make it my career.’

‘Will you sail all over the world?’

‘Not with Blue Funnel line. They only go to the Mediterranean and back, but I love the life.’

‘And it’s giving you the chance to see other countries?’

‘Yes! When we put into port I always go ashore and have a look round. I might transfer to another line later on where they have ships that sail to America and Australia so that I can see more of the world.’

‘It sounds exciting,’ Winnie agreed.

‘I couldn’t bear to go back to factory work and be shut in again. Even when it’s blowing a gale and we are being tossed around in the Bay of Biscay it is better than being in a factory.’

‘I don’t think I want to stay doing the job I’m doing either,’ Winnie confided. ‘As soon as my six months is up I’m going to look for something else.’

‘Why wait six months? No one from the orphanage ever checked up to see if I was all right at the hostel or at the factory. If I’d known that I
would
have left at the end of the first week,’ he told her.

Before they parted, Bob to go to his ship and Winnie to make her way back to the hostel, they agreed that they’d meet again next time he came ashore.

‘What if I’ve left there,’ she frowned as she gave him the hostel address.

‘You could always leave a letter for me at the Blue Funnel office.’

‘Supposing it gets lost, or they forget to give it to you?’

‘It’s May now, so we should be back in Port towards the end of November. You can check on the exact date of arrival at the shipping office. I’ll be here, at this very spot, at six o’clock every night for as long as the ship is in port. How about that?’

Chapter Seventeen

MAGGIE WEEKS WAS
waiting for Winnie when she arrived for work the next morning.

‘Enjoy your dirty weekend?’ she sneered.

‘Dirty weekend?’ Winnie frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean. It was a wonderful weekend. The sun was shining and it was so warm that …’

‘Oh shut your gob! You know what I’m talking about so don’t play the innocent.’

Winnie looked across at Sonia, her eyes puzzled.

‘She means you going off with that red-haired whacker from Paddy’s Market.’

‘Spent the weekend shacked up with him, did you?’ Maggie persisted. ‘You were all over him like a bloody rash, sickening it was.’

‘We went to the same school when I was a small kid,’ Winnie told her. ‘We hadn’t seen each other for years.’

‘Making up for lost time, were you?’

‘Yes, something like that,’ Winnie admitted. ‘He used to push me to school in my invalid chair when I was eight years old.’

‘So you lived round Great Homer Street way, did you?’ Sonia said in surprise. ‘Does he still live there?’

Winnie looked taken aback. ‘I suppose he does. I didn’t ask him.’

‘Bet she’s lying,’ Maggie snapped. ‘If they was all that close she’d know where he lived. She was trying to pick him up.’

‘Fancied him yourself, did you, Maggie?’ another girl, Polly Webster sniggered. ‘Fancy losing out to a cripple.’

‘Put a sock in it, you great fat cow!’

The next minute Maggie and Polly were at each other’s throats, scratching, screaming and tugging at each other’s hair while the other girls gathered round, taking sides and shouting encouragement.

The foreman intervened before either of them were too badly hurt. Roughly, he dragged them apart, promising both that they’d get a bunch of fives if there was any more disturbance.

‘She’s the one who started it,’ Maggie screamed, pointing a finger in Winnie’s direction.

‘I don’t give a damn who or what set you alley cats off, all I’m interested in is how much work you can get through. Now get on your perches and get stuck in, and no more trouble. Understand?’

As Maggie had warned her, they all had different jobs and Winnie found herself responsible for laying out the shirts and folding the sleeves back so that they lay perfectly flat and parallel to the edges of the shirt, before they moved along the line to Maggie.

For the first few minutes all went well and Winnie thought that the bickering was over and they were all on good terms again. Then Polly, who was working further down the line than Maggie, and who was responsible for placing the shirts into
the
packing box after Maggie had folded them into three, raised a hand to draw Bert’s attention.

‘Well, what is it now?’

‘None of these are folded properly,’ she complained.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ he barked as he strode over to take a look.

‘It’s the cuffs, they’re all buckled over.’

Bert checked them for himself then turned on Maggie. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded.

Maggie shrugged. ‘I folded them into three as I’m supposed to do. That’s how they came to me; it’s the fault of the person who straightened them out after the stiffeners were put in.’

Bert looked back along the line, his gaze falling on Winnie. ‘You careless cow,’ he snarled. ‘Can’t you do anything right?’

‘I did do them right,’ she protested. ‘They were folded properly when they left me.’

‘Trying to put the blame on me, are you?’ Maggie challenged. ‘What’re you implying, eh? Are you saying I twisted them round after you passed them on.’

Winnie caught the look of triumph on Maggie’s face as she winked at Sonia and her temper flared. ‘It’s more than likely that is what you did,’ she declared spiritedly.

Maggie swung down off her stool as if she was going to go for Winnie. As she did so, her foot landed on the end of one of Winnie’s sticks and she screamed as her ankle twisted under her and she fell heavily.

‘Those bloody sticks!’ Bert exclaimed angrily. ‘I knew they’d cause an accident sooner or later.’

‘They were tucked under my stool,’ Winnie protested.

Bert shook his head. ‘That’s a feeble excuse and you bloody well know it. I’ve had enough. Come on, down off that perch and get out. I’ve had enough of you, you’re nothing but a troublemaker.’

Shaking, Winnie clambered down and picked up her sticks. ‘Where do you want me to go?’

‘Go where the hell you like as long as you get out of my sight. You’d better go in the office and collect what money is due to you, and then get out of the building and don’t come back.’

The colour drained from Winnie’s cheeks. ‘Are you sacking me?’

‘Too bloody true I am!’

‘But I’ve done nothing wrong. I folded every shirt exactly the way I was told to do!’

‘Go!’ His face red with anger, Bert pointed towards the door. ‘Out! Out!’ he yelled.

Tears trickling down her cheeks, Winnie hobbled towards the door. A feeling of panic engulfed her. She didn’t like working there, she didn’t trust any of the girls, but she needed the job, she had to earn money to pay for her accommodation at the hostel.

Her heart thundering in her chest, she made her way to the office as Bert had told her to do. The blonde, thin-faced woman regarded her disapprovingly as she explained what had happened.