Children in Her Shadow (7 page)

Moira explained that Vickers employed thousands of people many of them women and that they were building Wellington bombers. As always, when speaking of such things, Moira ended by lowering her voice and repeating the government’s mantra of
keep it under your hat
and
careless talk costs lives
. Much of this went completely over Ruth’s head as a mixture of tiredness, excitement and some trepidation led her to ask if she could go to bed.

Ruth slept well but was nonetheless shocked to be woken and told the time was five o’clock and that they needed to be out of the house by a quarter to six. Moira gave Ruth a dark blue overall and light blue shirt to wear and told her to put her hair into a head scarf which must enclose all her hair. When she eventually emerged for breakfast it was clear that Ruth had never seen hair drawn into a headscarf in the way Lancashire ladies have done for years.

With a little help from Moira, Ruth eventually was able to master the wrap and knot and she felt rather good that she had been able to transform herself into a factory girl. What a contrast this was to the neat attire she was expected to wear in the post office and how liberating it felt to wear the dungarees rather than a skirt.

On arrival at the factory, Moira took Ruth to the clocking on station which was located just inside the factory gates, alongside the security office and showed her where her card could be found if she was employed and how to drop the card into the machine and clock on. ‘Clocking on’ was loathed by all workers at the factory. It was seen as a cynical way in which bosses could cut wages for what were seen as minor infringements such as being a minute or two late for work. Workers at the factory were astute and when the supervisor was not stood by the clocking on station they would clock on their friends who they knew would be late.

Ruth was quickly taken through the noisy factory area past rows of whistling lathes up some stairs that led into the foreman’s office. His office had a commanding view over the factory floor and Ruth couldn’t help noticing the blaring sound of music being played over the Tanoy speaker system. The noise and industry of this place only served to amplify the extreme contrast to the silence she had been used to working in during her short time in the Cardiff post office.

Moira introduced Ruth to the foreman and was quickly dismissed to get on with her work. The foreman, a short balding man eventually swivelled around from a large drawing board and without getting off his raised chair he slowly inspected Ruth from head to toe. Throughout the inspection not a word was spoken until eventually he signalled for her to come to the table. There he picked up a small aluminium machine part and pointed to a drawing. Over the course of the next hour, he showed Ruth how to read measurements from the drawing and using a precision micrometer to check that the machine part conformed within prescribed tolerances shown in the drawing.

Once this was over, the foreman confirmed that Ruth could be employed and would be working in a shift group of thirty, mainly women on a three shift, five day rota of six in the morning to two o’clock in the afternoon, two o’clock to ten in the evening and ten in the evening to six in the morning. Each shift would be for a period of two weeks but always working with the same people.

Ruth was taken aback; she never thought that she would ever work night shifts. However, she was pleased to be able to do her bit and also pleased that at eighteen years of age, she was to be taking on what was clearly an important task in the assembly of aircraft. She reflected back to Moira that the foreman had said it was only because of her developed numeracy skills and her ruthless commitment to accuracy that she was being given this job and that she should realise that many of the people she would be working with were innumerate and made many silly mistakes.

Ruth quickly settled into the work at the factory and the confidence placed in her by the foreman was clearly not misplaced. She had not realised until the end of the first week when she received her wage packet that her position was officially that of ‘trainee machine parts inspector’. Ruth established herself as a tactful and personable individual within the shift and struck up several new friendships. She also realised that many of the small, irritating measurement errors she was detecting were both costly and time consuming and set back production.

Ruth suggested to her foreman that far too many of the machinists where having problems translating measurements from the drawings often because they could not visualise the part they were making. Based in part on her recommendation, the shift foreman established a routine whereby at the start of each shift, each machine would be calibrated for the machine parts that were to be made and where a part required several different sizes to be machined, rather than transferring a measurement from a drawing to a machine setting the machinist would have one completed part placed alongside the machine that could be used as a template reference. This simple adjustment saved thousands of hours and reduced wastage to a minimum. It also did a great deal for the self confidence of the people on the lathes and further endeared Ruth to the work group.

What Ruth didn’t adjust to nearly as well was the three shift pattern. The six to two and the two to ten shift were fine and indeed they offered Ruth the opportunity to spend time in Blackpool often at less crowded times. However the ten to six shifts took Ruth many nights to adjust to. She would find it difficult to get to sleep in the day time and by the time she had done so, she invariably found it was time to get up for work. Equally, she found that readjustment to picking up the following six to two shift very difficult. But having worked the shift pattern for some months, like others she settled into a routine.

Another routine for Ruth was to write once each week to her brother Michael who was by now serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Singapore and to her mother back in Senghenydd. These letters were important links for Ruth back to Michael who she loved dearly and to her family in south Wales. The letters from Michael were infrequent and had the nature of never flowing from one to the other because letters frequently were lost or delayed and so each letter had a familiar tone: From Ruth, they spoke of happy things and happy times and from Michael, they moved from his love of the army, a boyhood ambition, to a man concerned for the direction of the war, concerns that were always in coded, guarded language but sufficient for Ruth to note that he was afraid.

Her last letter from Michael had a dark and sad tone to it with Michael speaking of his concern about the Japanese potential to move south, through Malaya to Singapore. His words were considered and deep as he spoke of his love of life and his fears that the war was coming his way. That latest letter ended in the saddest of ways. He wrote:
‘I am young but have seen many things in my life. I have known love in abundance from my family and especially from you my dear sister Ruth. I have seen the dawn in exotic places and I have experienced the beauty of this wonderful country and its hard working people. Ruth this may be the place where my war ends but if it is, you should know that I am happy for so many of the things I have seen’.
His letter closed with the following line: ‘
I miss the valleys of my beautiful Wales and the song of its people, I miss the sparrow and the black bird but I am a happy man, and if I should die here in this far off land, tell Mam …..I saw swallows in February’
. Ruth wept as she read the letter knowing that his fears for the ambitions of the Japanese forces were well founded.

The letters to her mother also followed the same familiar structure: Ruth would start by answering the questions raised by her mother in the previous letter, questions that were beginning to have a familiar ring to them. Her mother could ask the same question in so many different ways and Ruth could herself answer them with the same opaqueness.

The questions would start simply enough, ‘Are you eating enough, are you sleeping enough and how’s the weather been?’ Inevitably they would move to the vague: ‘Are you able to get out much?’ or ‘What are your friends like?’ and ‘Have you met anyone nice this week?’ They both knew that the central theme of the questions were the same, “Are you going out with a boy?’, or ‘Do you have a boy friend?’ and if so ‘What is he like?’ The word game continued for months with neither party saying exactly what they thought.

The next part of the letters from Ruth’s mother was taking on an increasingly open and adult theme as her mother opened up to Ruth about her father’s moods, drunkenness and ill behaviour both in the home and at his place of work. Ruth would politely offer sympathy but recognised that in part these letters were cathartic and as such required no response.

Then a letter came in early December in which her mother confided that her father had been sacked by the colliery for his fighting at work and his ill tempered behaviour. The fights, of which this was only one of many, were always about the same thing, why he was not fighting on the front line as many other Irish men who had come to Wales had gone on to do for the British crown to which so many still felt loyalty, and why Ireland had remained steadfastly neutral. This fight however was one too many and as a result, Ruth’s mother was confiding in Ruth that she felt the prospects of him getting work in Wales, or anywhere in England were poor. She went on to say that she feared that before many days passed they would be thrown out of their tied cottage. The strict rules set by the colliery company who owned the house were that you can live in it for as long as you are employed by the colliery.

The following two weeks of letters in the run up to Christmas revealed that a date had been set for the family to move out of the house. Without any job or prospects of getting one her mother wrote: ‘
It is increasingly likely that we will have to move back to County Roscommon in Ireland where the Arigna Coal Mine is eagerly looking for workers with experience of working in very narrow seams
‘. Ruth knew that her father had this experience but she also knew of the dangers of working in such seams.

Ruth quickly wrote back to her mother and arranged that she would telephone Mrs Thomas at the Senghenydd post office at a pre arranged time so that they could speak. On the morning of Christmas Eve as arranged, Ruth went to Blackpool post office and made the telephone call to her mother. The conversation was short and emotionally charged as Ruth absorbed the news that her whole family; her mother father, brothers and sisters would indeed be moving to Ireland in one week’s time.

Her mother begged Ruth not to succumb to the demands from her father that she must move back to Ireland with them. She explained that at best they would move into appallingly small tied accommodation and that the pay would be poor for her father given the circumstances of his dismissal and the requirement that he demonstrated good character or he would lose this job too. Her mother explained that Ruth should continue her job and make a success of herself but that she should at least promise to keep up the letters to her once they settle into Ireland.

Ruth rang her mother one more time to make final arrangements to meet her and the family at the ferry terminal in Heysham. Heysham was one of the few ports still running a regular service to Belfast whereas services to Dublin from England or Wales were curtailed or unreliable. Heysham was also convenient for Ruth as it was a very short distance up the coast from Blackpool.

Ruth arrived at the rail terminal in Heysham with little time to spare before her parents arrived to board the Duke of Lancaster which would take them to Belfast via the Isle of Man. The terminal was busy mainly with other Irish people either returning home or visiting loved ones in their mother country.

In the few moments Ruth was able to have alone with her mother, she confided in her that she had indeed met a man who she liked. Ruth explained that it was an acquaintance more than a boy friend and was complicated by the fact that this man, Edward Carmichael was with Sarah Prentice a girl who Ruth had met on a few occasions at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Ice Drome.

Ruth tried to explain to her mother her feelings for someone who in truth she had only met a few times and had only spoken to twice and even then always in the company of Sarah. Ruth hurriedly explained that she knew nothing about Edward but that she was very attracted to him and that she saw some signs that he was also attracted to her.

Ruth’s mother listened to the increasingly excitable Ruth and saw instantly that this was no mere acquaintance and nor was it a relationship that would ever be straight forward or easy. She counselled Ruth: “Go slowly, and be careful not to lose the friendship of Sarah by getting between her and someone who she is clearly in a relationship with.” Their conversation continued until the arrival of her father and her brothers and sisters to say goodbye.

Ruth kissed her father on the cheek but few words were spoken. Perhaps he knew already that Ruth was aware of the circumstances of their hasty retreat from Wales. Or perhaps he realised that this composed, dispassionate young girl was now a woman and that she, like most women could see through him and through his feeble attempts to put a gloss on their move as being a move back to their homeland and “friendly people.” Ruth kissed her siblings saying to each in whispered tones to “look after your mother and your mother will look after you.”

Ruth’s final farewell was to her mother. As she walked into her mother arms she felt the strangeness of the role reversal of a daughter gently comforting her mother. Tears were reserved for another day when each would reflect the chasm that would now separate the two of them. They clung to each other until they felt the vice like grip of her father’s hands tearing them apart. And still they did not cry. Ruth felt a terrible sense of foreboding that however saddened she felt today it would be as nothing compared to what she would experience in the years to come.

Ruth saw in her mother’s eyes a reflection of her own fears. As she turned towards the ferry Ruth’s mother looked back and saw the long shadow her daughter’s image cast in the evening sunlight and with a final smile she slipped into the darkness of the ferry terminal and out of Ruth’s life.