DANCE LITTLE LADY

Chapter One

July 1941

    ‘No! Don’t! You mustn’t!’
The man just about to lower a sack into the choppy waters of Portsmouth Harbour, turned in surprise as a girl rushed towards him, her dark curls flying out from under the scarf she wore around her head. With half a dozen others, she had been walking through the Naval Armament Depot of Priddy’s Hard, on her way to the shifting room, when through the dim morning mist she had seen Sam Reece stride past, carrying the sack. From the size and shape of it, and the way something inside wriggled, she knew just what he was about to do.
‘He’s drowning the kittens!’ Forgetting all about work, she pushed past the other girls and rushed across to the Camber. Sam was almost at the quayside now, a shadowy figure bending to find a space between the barges where he could drop his burden into the waves that slapped against the wall. Kate screamed at the top of her voice and several men at work loading the lighters to take munitions across the harbour, straightened up and stared at her. Sam Reece himself jumped like a naughty boy caught in the act of mischief, and then flushed a dark, angry red. He was a squat, swarthy man with small, permanently bloodshot eyes and a surly scowl, and he’d never approved of bringing women in to work at Priddy’s Hard.
‘You yelling at me, girl?’
‘Yes, I am!’ Kate was beside him now, breathless, her eyes spitting blue fire. She snatched at the bag and tried to pull it away from him. ‘You’re going to drop them in, aren’t you? Our Tibby’s kittens – you’re going to drop them in the water.’
‘Yeah. What of it?’ He dragged the sack back and a chorus of faint mewing sounds rose from inside. Kate’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You know we can’t keep all the bloody kittens that are born here. Leave go, and get over to the shifting room, or you’ll be late clocking on.’
‘I don’t care if I am!’ It would mean a dock in her pay but Kate ignored that. ‘You’re not drowning these kittens.’
‘For cripes’ sake –’ Sam was beginning, when another voice broke in and they both turned to see the office manager bearing down upon them. Thank goodness, Kate thought, seeing the tall, broad figure, it’s Mr Milner – he’ll understand. She let go of the sack and stepped towards him.
‘What’s going on here?’ Arthur Milner stopped and stared at them both. ‘I could hear the shouting back in the office. Why aren’t you getting ready for work, young lady, and what’s in that bag?’
‘It’s the kittens, Mr Milner –’ Kate began, but Sam’s voice overrode hers, taking on an indignant whine. ‘I’m just trying to carry out orders, sir. It’s nothing to do with this young woman. She just flew at me, started on about how I mustn’t do this, can’t do that - if you ask me, it’s a pity they ever brought women into the yard, nothing but trouble they bin, ever since they first walked in the gates –’
‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion,’ Mr Milner said, cutting in on the flow. ‘We’d be in a poor way without them. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question. What’s in the bag and what were you going to do with it?’
‘It’s the kittens – ’ Kate began again, but the manager lifted his hand to silence her and looked at Sam.
‘Well?’
The workman thrust out his lower lip. ‘All right, so it’s kittens. I was going to drop ’em over the side – it’s what we always do when there’s too many. Blooming cats bin popping off all over the place the past few weeks, we can’t let ’em all live, now can we?’ He appealed to Mr Milner, as man to man. ‘I mean, I likes animals as much as the next bloke, got a cat of me own at home, Ginger he’s called and soft as butter ’cept when another tom comes sniffing round, but anyone with any sense’d see that we can’t just let ’em breed willy-nilly. Wouldn’t be able to move for the little perishers, now would we? So when we gets a new litter, we just puts ’em in an old sack with a couple of stones and drops ’em over the side, nice and tidy. It’s the best way. They don’t know nothing about it.’
‘Of course they know about it!’ Kate burst out. ‘They’re drowning! It must be horrible for them. It’s cruel.’
Arthur Milner looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes, but Reece has got a point,’ he said. ‘We’d be overrun with cats if we let them all live. We need a few to keep down rats, and if anyone wants to give a kitten a home they’re welcome to take them, but apart from that they’ve got to be put down. And they don’t suffer much, not if it’s done almost as soon as they’re born.’
Kate stared at him. ‘You mean you’re going to let him do it?’ She snatched the bag and Sam, taken unawares, released his grip. Kate untied the bit of string that was knotted around its neck and peered inside. ‘I knew it! These haven’t just been born - they’re nearly six weeks old! They’re Tibby’s kittens, from our hut. We’ve been helping her look after them.’ She cradled the bag against her and looked fiercely at the two men. ‘You’re not drowning Tibby’s kittens.’
There was a moment’s silence. Kate was suddenly aware of the clatter going on around her – the noise of the munitions factory at work, the clanging and shouting as the lighters were loaded with crates of shells, the sounds of the great harbour that lay beyond the jetties of the little dock. In a few moments she should be clocking on, and even one minute late would mean the loss of half a day’s pay. She stood her ground, meeting the manager’s eye, and he sighed.
‘These kittens ought to have been dealt with before,’ he told Reece. ‘Five weeks is too late – they’re almost ready to leave their mother. Why wasn’t this done sooner?’
‘It’s them bleeding girls,’ the man grumbled. ‘You heard what she said. Bin looking after them, they have. Hiding them in a locker, I dare say, bringing in food for ’em, giving the mother milk. You knows what girls are.’
Mr Milner glanced at Kate and she felt her face colour. ‘We were going to find homes for them all,’ she said defensively. ‘And they’re so pretty. One of them’s a tortoiseshell – look – and one’s black with a white bib and paws, just as if he was going to a posh party – and this one’s pure white – and see how fluffy -’
‘Yes, all right,’ Mr Milner said hastily as she drew out the tiny creatures, one after another, to display their charms. ‘Yes, they’re pretty little mites. But they still ought to have been dealt with sooner.’ He sighed. ‘You say you’ve found homes for them all?’
‘Well, I’m having the tortoiseshell,’ Kate said eagerly, seeing victory within her grasp, ‘and Maxine Fowler wants the white one, and Elsie Philpotts says she’ll have the fluffy one, and I’m sure someone will have the black and white one.’ She looked up at him, opening her dark blue eyes very wide. ‘You wouldn’t like him, would you, Mr Milner? He’s got ever such a sweet face. And they’re almost ready to go – we were going to take them home on Friday.’ She put her head on one side. ‘Don’t let him drown them, Mr Milner. Please don’t let him drown them.’
The office manager hesitated. Sam Reece heaved a loud, heavy sigh. Kate cuddled the tortoiseshell kitten against her breast and kissed the top of its head, then looked up at Mr Milner from under her lashes. He pursed his lips in resignation.
‘All right. You can take them back. So long as they’re not in a dangerous place – dangerous to the job and the workers, I mean. They’ve got to be out on Friday, mind – and if the mother cat gives birth again you must let your supervisor know at once, and leave them to be disposed of. Understood?’
For a moment, Kate struggled with her feelings. Then she nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
Mr Milner glanced at Sam Reece. ‘Right. You’d better both get back to work. The whistle will be going at any minute and we’ve got a big job on. Nobody’s going to have time to worry about kittens for the next few weeks, I can tell you that.’
He turned and strode away. Kate and the workman looked at each other.
‘Bleedin’ kittens!’ he said disgustedly. ‘Bleedin’ girls!’

******

The other girls looked at Kate as she strode towards the shifting room, triumphantly holding up the sack of wriggling, mewing kittens. ‘You did it! You stopped him! What did Mr Milner say?’
‘He said they were too old to drown. But next time Tibby has kittens, we’ve got to let someone know, so they can be “disposed of”.’ She snorted. ‘Disposed of! He means drowned, just like these would’ve been. It’s cruel.’
‘My dad always drowns our Micky’s kittens,’ one of the girls said sadly. ‘He says they don’t feel it when they’re so young. He leaves her one though, otherwise she’s got nothing to take the milk, see.’
‘Well, I don’t believe it. Of course they feel it.’ Kate carried the sack over to the corner just outside the long shed, where the mother cat had a nest made of old rags in a disused wooden bomb crate. Tibby wasn’t there – she’d probably gone hunting – and wouldn’t even know that her babies had been missing. She opened the sack and tipped the kittens gently into the crate, watching them as they scrambled about in a heap of fur.
‘Come on, Kate.’ Maxine Fowler, Kate’s best friend, was at her elbow. ‘The whistle will be going any minute and you’re nowhere near ready. They’ll be all right now.’
Kate nodded and opened her locker. Each girl had one, a green-painted metal cupboard where she could put her outdoor clothes and valuables while she was at work. Not that anyone had anything of real value, except for wedding or engagement rings, but even these must be put into the locker. Anything made of metal could cause a spark and blow the entire site sky-high. It had happened years ago – her grandfather, who had also worked here, still talked about the men who had been killed then – and again in 1921 when her father had been here. Four men had been killed then, all Gosport chaps, and it had brought home to everyone on the site the danger of the materials they worked with.
The shriek of the whistle broke into her thoughts and she closed the locker door and followed the others into the shifting room. They had five minutes now, to take off their jumpers and skirts and hang them up, then step across the painted red line in their underclothes into the ‘clean’ area and put on their magazine clothing – loose brown overalls and cloth cap. Some of the caps bore a red spot, denoting that its wearer worked with gunpowder, while those who worked with more modern explosives were marked by a black spot.
‘I feel like Blind Pugh,’ Kate observed when she was first given her cap, and when the others looked blank she explained. ‘You know. The old pirate in Treasure Island.’ They nodded then. The story had been read to most of them at school and they remembered the sinister tap-tap-tap of the blind man’s stick, and the horror of having the ‘black spot’ laid on you. It had haunted Kate for a week, and she’d been unable to sleep at nights, certain that every little tapping sound was Blind Pugh coming for her. Her brother Ian had discovered this and stood outside her bedroom door when she was in bed, tapping on the stairs and driving her into nightmares from which she woke screaming, but she’d never told her mother what was frightening her so much. She didn’t want her complaining to the teacher who read the story to them, in case he stopped.
From the shifting room, the girls trooped through to the laboratory and took their places at the benches where they would spend the next twelve hours inspecting and putting together ammunition. As soon as the chargehand’s back was turned, Kate ducked down and lifted a section of floorboard to reveal her tea can. She pushed in the paper bag of sandwiches she had brought with her, replaced the board swiftly and stood up, winking at Maxine. ‘That’s for tea-break. We’ll make a cuppa from the outlet pipe when old Fred goes up to the office.’
‘You’ll get caught one of these days,’ Maxine said, but Kate shrugged.
‘Everyone does it – I reckon they know, anyway. They never search us for food. A couple of Marmite sandwiches won’t set the cordite off – and I haven’t noticed you turning your nose up when I offer you one!’
Maxine grinned. ‘Matter of fact, I’ve got a bit of cake this morning. Mum found a packet of sultanas at the back of the cupboard and made one at the weekend.’ She didn’t add that she’d refused a piece when it was offered her at Sunday tea-time and only grudgingly accepted it for her lunch-box.
‘Fruit cake!’ Kate rolled her eyes. ‘You’ll share it around, naturally.’
‘Only with my best friend,’ Maxine said, and then turned hastily to her work as the chargehand bore down upon them.
They worked steadily through the morning, stopping only for the illicit tea-break when the supervisor was out of the way, and then for their official lunchtime at twelve. By then, Kate’s legs were aching from having stood for nearly six hours, and she was glad to push her way out with the rest of the girls and get a bit of fresh air.
Set on a peninsula of land on the western shores of Portsmouth Harbour, the armament depot covered a large area of what had once been waste ground, a ‘hard’ area of solid mud, its channels washed twice a day by the tide, and covered with tough grass and furze bushes which burst into golden flowers every spring. Until it had been taken over by the Government nearly two hundred years ago the area had been more or less wild, with the grassy ramparts of Gosport Lines - the earthen fortifications once constructed to ward off possible invasion by the French - forming a long low hill across its neck.
Before then, Naval munitions had been made and loaded at the Gunwharf, on the Portsmouth side of the harbour, but that had been considered too dangerous for the fleet of ships coming through the narrow entrance and mooring at the jetties, so the work had been transferred to Gosport. By 1777, the huge Magazine had been built and munitions were being shipped across the harbour by barge, or lighter, just as they were now.
The ramparts were still there, making a good buffer against possible explosions, and other hillocks had been pushed up between the sheds so that each was protected from the others. What with these and the old moats that ran between the Lines, with blackberry bushes growing along their banks, and the groves of walnut trees that had been planted to provide wood for rifle butts and pistol grips, it was almost like being out in the country.
‘They say you can’t see Priddy’s from the air at all, with all the roofs being painted green to match the grass,’ Maxine observed. ‘That’s why we don’t get bombed. Makes you wonder why they don’t paint everyone’s roofs green, doesn’t it.’ She looked up at the sky and unbuttoned her brown herringbone tweed coat. ‘Look – sunshine!’
‘Don’t blink, it’ll be gone in a minute,’ Kate advised. ‘It’s only the first of March, you know, not Midsummer Day.’ She grinned as a chilly wind sprang up and Maxine hurriedly pulled her coat around her again. ‘Not a bad day really, though – in like a lion, out like a lamb, they say, don’t they? Don’t really know what today is – just sort of grey and draughty. Like a seagull, perhaps,’ she added as half a dozen birds flew over, cackling.
‘It’d be quite nice if you pushed away the clouds and switched off the wind,’ Hazel Jackman remarked. ‘At least it’s not raining.’ She gazed across the harbour at the warships that lay at the jetties, awaiting their load of ammunition. ‘Did you hear Mr Churchill was in Pompey last Monday? My Uncle Joe came round last night for a game of cards, and he said heaps of people saw him walking round looking at the bomb damage. He was smoking a cigar and he gave them the V-sign and everything.’
‘Well, I’m more interested in all those Canadians who arrived at the weekend,’ Maxine declared with a wink. ‘Reckon it’ll be worth taking a trip over the water on Saturday? I bet there’ll be quite a few on the lookout for a nice girl to show them the sights, and they’ll have plenty of money to spend as well.’
‘Maxine! You’re awful.’ Kate poked her friend in the ribs. ‘You’ll get into trouble one of these days, the way you go on.’
‘Not me! I may not always be good, but I’m always careful.’ Maxine tossed her blonde curls and giggled. ‘Why don’t you come too? It’s only a bit of fun – they’re decent blokes, most of them.’
‘Sad to say,’ another girl put in, and they all laughed. ‘Let’s all go. Safety in numbers and all that. What about it?’
Maxine nodded vigorously. ‘I’m on! Hazel? Janice? Val? Kate? You’ll come, won’t you?’
‘I don’t know -’ Kate began and, as the others stared at her in surprise, ‘I’ll be taking Topsy home on Friday – she’ll be lonely - I can’t really leave her to Mum –’
‘For goodness’ sake, Kate! You can’t stay in all weekend for a kitten! It’ll be all right – probably sleep most of the time anyway. Look, you’ll have all Saturday afternoon to play nursemaid, and you can come out with us in the evening – what about that? We’ll go over to South Parade Pier, there’s bound to be a dance on and they always have a good band. You don’t even need to talk to a boy if you don’t want to.’
‘Well, that sounds like a really good night out,’ Kate said. ‘I can sit on a chair being a wallflower and not open my mouth all evening, while the rest of you get off with rich Canadians. Thanks a lot!’
Maxine laughed. ‘I can’t really see you doing that! You talk more than all the rest of us put together. Anyway, I thought maybe we could get some of them to take us to the pictures on Sunday. That new Bob Hope and Bing Crosby film’s on at the Gaiety – Road to Zanzibar. They say it’s ever so good. It’s got Dorothy Lamour in it as well, she’s really glamorous. But if you’re not interested –’
Kate clutched her arm. ‘I didn’t mean it! I was only joking. I’ll come. Only – I don’t want to come home on my own, all right? No malarkey - you’ll have to promise to catch the last boat with me.’
‘Well, what else d’you think we’re going to do? Of course we’ll catch the last boat, dope!’ The irrepressible blue eyes gleamed. ‘There’s plenty of time for a bit of malarkey before then.’ Maxine grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Kate – we’ll be good. Won’t we, girls? The question is – will you?’
The others giggled and nudged each other. Val said, ‘We might find ourselves a nice rich husband, what about that? I wouldn’t mind going to live in Canada.’
‘Gosh, yes! That’d be nearly as good as America – better, because they’re still British. Part of the Empire, anyway.’ Maxine stretched her arms above her head. ‘Just think of it, no food rationing, plenty of nylons, plenty of everything –’
‘That’s just greed,’ Kate protested. ‘You wouldn’t marry someone just for nylons. You’d have to love him.’
‘Well, I would love him,’ Maxine said. ‘I’d love anyone who could give me a new pair of nylons every day!’
They screamed with laughter, and Kate gave them a reproving look. ‘Well, I’m not going to look for a rich Canadian to marry. I’m not looking for a steady boy at all. Not till the war’s over, and maybe not even then.’
‘We’ll all be old by the time the war’s over,’ Hazel told her. ‘Nobody will look at us. You’ve got to take your chances when they come, Kate. There’s a Mr Right for all of us. You never know when you might meet him. Anyway, I’m just looking for a bit of fun – a good dance, and a nice kiss and cuddle at the end of it.’
‘And that’s all?’ Janice asked slyly, and they laughed again.
Kate shrugged but joined in their laughter, while privately making up her mind that although she was happy to dance with boys - British or Canadian – and even go to the pictures with them, any goodnight kisses would be just that – a kiss and no more. And there would be no question of finding ‘Mr Right’.
I wish I could be like the others, she thought, eating her sandwiches and gazing out across the grey, choppy waters. I wish I could believe that there’s a boy out there who’s meant for me. But I just can’t. I can’t forget what happened before, and I can’t believe it won’t happen again.
Perhaps it would take one special man to make her believe that. Perhaps there really was one somewhere, and perhaps one day she would meet him.
Perhaps.

   

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