The Ferry Girls

by Rosie Archer

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Vee Smith is twenty-two when she starts work on Gosport's ferries. She soon makes friends with the other women workers, and together they enjoy nights out dancing in Gosport. Vee even feels herself falling for Sam, the skipper of the ferry and her unhappily married boss. But Vee has a secret: her real name is Violetta Schmidt, and she is half-German. If her true nationality is discovered, she and her mother could find themselves interned as enemy aliens.

Release date: June 15, 2017

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 272

Sample

Chapter One

1941

Vee had never stolen a thing in her life, yet here she was, her hands shaking, fumbling with a large brown envelope, terrified that at any moment the lavatory door might open and she would be discovered, about to thieve from her boss.

But what was the alternative? Stealing was a sin, but better than spending a loathsome weekend in bed in a New Forest hotel with Sammy Chesterton. This was her one chance to keep her virginity and morals intact.

She paused. Bing Crosby’s voice seeped from the bar into the disinfectant-swilled ladies’ room in Southampton’s docklands’ Black Cat Club. He was insisting there would be ‘Pennies From Heaven’. Vee hoped he was right: pennies would be much more satisfying than the nightly rain of Adolf Hitler’s bombs.

Holding her breath and listening until she was satisfied there was no one outside, Vee continued her search, fingers rifling through the cardboard and papers, her eyes flying from one false name to another on the identity cards, ration books, birth certificates and passports that her boss had obtained illegally to sell on for payment in cash or, in her penniless state, sex.

And then she saw them! Her own and her mother’s Anglicized names!

Twenty-three-year-old Violetta and May Anne Smith of Honeysuckle Holdings, Leap Lane, Netley. Excitement rose as she pulled out the ration books, medical cards and other documents that would make them legal citizens of the land they had been born in, their beloved England.

Vee’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh!’ she murmured. ‘How wonderful.’

Now she and her mother would no longer be aliens. The false documents would give them their freedom to live, walk around and shop locally, like any other English person, all of which had been denied to Vee, especially since the start of this awful war with Germany.

Of course, owning and using forged papers was a criminal offence. Hopefully Vee and her mother would never need to produce them, and as long as no one discovered the truth, they could live and contribute to the war effort by growing food on their smallholding just as Vee’s grandparents had done.

Vee fingered the papers, which represented freedom. She wondered how she could explain all this to her mother. May would be appalled to think Vee held herself so cheap that she could agree to Sammy’s demands. She knew Vee wanted to remain a virgin until she could give herself freely to the man she truly loved. That man was out there somewhere, waiting to love her. But the loss of her virginity was nothing compared to the possible loss of her mother if they were removed to an internment camp for aliens.

Before Vee was born, her English mother had married a German pilot. He’d been the love of her life. Not for one moment had May thought that, due to the Aliens Restriction Act, marrying a German would take away her and her baby’s English birthright and make them Germans.

If the law that imposed a husband’s nationality on his wife and children was flouted, serious consequences befell the offender, especially when that citizenship was German.

The British people hated the Germans. This war had come so soon after the bloodbath of the Great War, and now the Luftwaffe was attacking English airfields, sending at least a thousand aircraft every day. Already Hitler had invaded the Channel Islands. Any hint of German blood, and homes were burned. Friendships disintegrated overnight. Shops were boycotted or, worse, looted and torched.

Vee didn’t want a fate like that for her mother and herself. For years they had managed to keep secret her father August Schmidt’s marriage to her mother.

Both she and her mother had been born in Netley, near Southampton: why should a government Act decree that they were not British?

Living on a smallholding that provided them with food meant they had so far managed without having to present ration books and other essential documentation. Already the two women made do and mended without tendering clothing coupons, but both Vee and her mother knew that, sooner or later, clarification of their status would be required. They were living in fear.

Two weeks ago, the local post office had been set ablaze, and the elderly Martina and Hartmund Braun, who had served the villagers for ten years, had been severely injured by thugs hurling stones. Villagers who had previously been their customers and friends had shouted obscenities at them as they had been taken away in the back of a lorry. Vee would never forget the terror on the seventy-year-old woman’s face.

She stuffed the papers into her handbag. Now she and her mother could present identification without the fear of being different, of being hated.

A door creaked. Someone was coming! Vee fumbled for the cubicle’s bolt, forgetting it was broken. With her back against the door she stared at the package. Where could she hide it?

There was no chance now that she’d be able to replace it beside the till behind the bar. She could hear footsteps and someone singing along with the wireless. Now Frank Sinatra was crooning ‘All Or Nothing At All’.

Thinking swiftly, she climbed up on the wooden toilet seat and hauled at the metal cover over the cistern. At first it refused to budge. A spider lurking among the grime swung out but disappeared beneath the metal lid as it lifted. Vee shoved the envelope into the dry space between the cistern and the wall, pushed the lid back into place and stepped down. Whoever was outside the lavatory door was still singing.

Vee ripped a few sheets of shiny San Izal toilet paper from the roll and wiped her hands, then dropped the paper into the lavatory pan. Smoothing her hands down her black skirt, she took a deep breath, picked up her handbag and pulled open the cubicle’s door.

Vee saw surprise on Greta’s face. The singing had stopped. ‘I thought I was alone in here,’ the blonde-haired girl said. ‘You don’t make much noise, do you? I never heard the flush.’ She let her hand fall from the cubicle’s door.

Vee tried a smile, but it didn’t come across the way she wanted. The girl was wearing her usual strong freesia perfume.

Greta frowned. ‘You all right? You look a bit peculiar . . .’

Vee sent up a silent prayer of thanks. The girl’s words had given her an idea.

‘Actually, no, I don’t feel too good at all. I think I’ll go home. There’s no way I could be nice to the punters tonight.’

‘The boss won’t like it.’ Greta took a step away from her.

Vee thought of Sammy Chesterton, the tall, dark-haired gangster, who had taken a fancy to her because, he said, she reminded him of a girl he had once loved and lost. Always dressed in smart suits and with a camel coat slung round his shoulders, he looked exactly what he purported to be, a businessman with sway in politics. He strayed on the wrong side of the law but, with his connections in the police force, had managed to keep his good reputation unsullied and his bad one feared.

‘I think Sammy would rather I wasn’t here than being sick all over the place,’ Vee said.

Greta shrugged. The girls weren’t great friends but working together had made them allies.

Oh dear! Not only was Vee now a thief, but she hadn’t hesitated to lie. She sighed as she waited for Greta to offer to tell the boss that one of his hostesses wouldn’t be putting in an appearance. Greta would normally take any chance to cosy up to Sammy – it was well known that she had designs on him.

‘I could let him know . . .’

‘Would you?’ Vee thrust her arms round a surprised Greta in a hug, then pulled quickly away. She was supposed to be poorly, wasn’t she? Not bursting with energy. ‘I think it’s something I ate,’ she said. ‘Thank you, you’re a good pal.’ She held the cubicle door open so Greta could go in, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door had closed.

From inside Greta shouted, ‘It’d better be something you ate! I don’t want to catch it!’

Vee walked back into the smoke-stale bar.

Small wrought-iron tables and chairs with plush velvet seats faced the stage area where a microphone was set up on the parquet flooring. Red velvet curtains at the sides hid the small dressing rooms and were a backdrop for the striptease shows. The bar area at the side of the huge room had mirrored shelves containing bottles of brightly coloured liquids that purported to be exotic drinks. Vee had never heard a single person ask for one. The clientele, mostly merchant sailors and servicemen, preferred beer or the standard spirits.

A wrinkled, stooped man was sweeping the stage, where pale confetti blew about like tiny butterflies. Mindy’s strip act included a snowfall of artificial snow. The punters loved it but it was messy and Donald hated clearing it up. He moaned continually. He’d been with Sammy for years, so it was rumoured, and was one of the few people the boss trusted implicitly.

‘All right?’ Vee smiled at him.

Donald hadn’t been in the bar earlier when the young man had entered the club and handed her the large brown envelope for him to deliver to Sammy. She’d stood it next to the till so he’d see it when he came on duty.

‘Me dad was hoping to get paid on delivery,’ the thin youth said hesitantly.

‘Well, there’s only me here and no one’s said anything.’

He’d looked at her, then at the package. ‘I’ll call back later.’

Vee hadn’t found out until quite recently that Sammy had many strings to his bow and supplying forged documents was one of them. The idea had fermented in her head until she’d finally plucked up courage to ask him for help. She never would have done if she hadn’t overheard him collecting the last of the payments from the new Austrian doorman for his birth certificate. The amount of money Sammy had asked for had been much more than Vee could ever hope to give him.

Later, he’d suggested a few days away in the New Forest in lieu of payment and Vee had agreed. She wanted her mother to feel safe and be able to go on selling her produce. Vee had heard that on the Isle of Man women and men were interned in camps. She couldn’t erase from her mind the sight of Martina and Hartmund Braun being loaded on to a lorry.When the forger’s lad had left the building, Vee’s heart had been pounding and she couldn’t resist peeping inside the package.

Then she had snatched it up and taken it to the lavatory. As she did so, she wondered how soon it would be before it was missed. Of course the club would be searched. What if the package was discovered? Sammy would know immediately that her and her mother’s papers had gone. Only she could be the culprit and he wouldn’t like being made a fool of. His peers would laugh at him. He would have to think up a suitable punishment for her. She shivered. Her voice cracked as she spoke again to Donald:

‘I’m in no fit state for either bar work or welcoming punters . . .’

He leant on his broom. ‘You do look a bit peaky, girl.’ He smiled at her. She hated lying to Donald, who had always been kind to her. He took out a grubby handkerchief and mopped his forehead. ‘Leave it with me, love. I’ll get your coat.’

She nodded and he lifted the flap in the bar top and shuffled out the back to return moments later with her coat. Vee shrugged herself into it and made for the door, fearing at any moment that she would be called back. One thing seemed to be leading to another: now she had lied to Donald.

Out in the August evening air she nodded to the doorman, then began walking across the park towards the bus station.

Huge cranes towered over the docks, like praying mantis, and she could smell the oily water where the container ships were berthed. Servicemen passed her on their way to the dark streets where the bars and strip clubs waited to entice them in. Sometimes they took no notice of a lone girl walking quickly. At others they called out to her. She ignored them and the smell of alcohol that often followed them.

But the sun was still shining and the flowerbeds along the pathways bloomed with mauve Michaelmas daisies and vibrant red geraniums. They would not be around for long, as people were being asked to dig for victory and all available land was being used to grow vegetables.

Vee, her mother and their few helpers worked backbreaking hours growing vegetables and fruit on their smallholding, so she appreciated the brightness of the flowers. She took a deep breath of the geraniums’ scent before she crossed the road and went into the bus station where, once more, the smell of oil and petrol reigned, and rubbish littered the ground.

Sitting on the top deck of the bus, seeing the shops interspersed with the gaps caused by Hitler’s relentless bombings along the south coast made her feel sad. So many lost lives and homes demolished. She knew how lucky she was to live where there were no docks or factories for the German bombers to destroy.

The bus wound its way to the leafier countryside outside the city, but Vee couldn’t stop thinking of the crime she’d committed. She had stolen from Sammy Chesterton, one of the most feared men in Southampton. And what would he do to her when he came after her, when he found her? Vee had worked at the club for about six months. Before that she’d worked in a bomb factory and enjoyed the camaraderie but had left when one of the men wouldn’t stop pestering her, touching her at every available moment as she worked on the line. She was scared walking home – he had begun to follow her and would hang around outside the cottage. She couldn’t see him but when she drew the curtains she could feel his presence outside. Vee didn’t dare involve the police in case they delved into her history and found out that her name was actually Schmidt. Nor did she want to worry her mother. Walking past the Black Cat Club one day on a shopping expedition, she had noticed the sign requesting a barmaid-hostess and had left the munitions yard. She hadn’t seen the man since.

She caught sight of herself reflected in the window of the bus.

Her fair hair was tied back, showing off her deep blue eyes. She knew she owed her looks to her mother but she’d inherited the impulsiveness of her father. There wasn’t anyone special in her life at present. She’d been writing to a local lad serving in France in the British Expeditionary Force, but his letters had stopped coming. Then had come the evacuation of Dunkirk . . . Looking back, Vee remembered his letters had been peppered with the name ‘Colette’, and decided that Colette was probably more than just a friend. She would rather believe he had fallen in love with another girl than perished.

Not having a boyfriend had meant working at the club with its odd hours wasn’t a problem. She knew very well that some men wouldn’t have liked her choice of work or the fact that she was driven home, with some of the other girls, in the early hours by one of the male bar staff. At her interview with Sammy she’d been adamant that she wouldn’t dance, wouldn’t undress and wouldn’t go to bed with the punters.

Sometimes she worked behind the bar, serving watered-down overpriced drinks to the men who came into the Black Cat looking for girls. Sometimes she sold cigarettes and cigars to the men sitting at tables watching girls strip. Sometimes, as the cloakroom girl, she took hats and coats from the customers and was often tipped for this service. Vee now realized her reticence had probably drawn Sammy to her.

Her mother hated her working at the club, but never asked too many questions. May knew that living in virtual isolation and working on the land made for a healthy life, but that it wasn’t what her daughter needed for fulfilment. Vee needed the companionship of other girls. Working nights meant she could help on the smallholding during the day. She needed to live her life, and her mother trusted her to continue in the honest way she’d been brought up. She had now broken that trust.

The bus lurched on, and Vee stared out of the window, but saw nothing of the countryside’s majesty. All she could think of was that she had stolen from Sammy Chesterton. She had welshed on a deal with him and he was not likely to forget it. He would want reparation.

Icy fingers of fear crept over her, not simply for herself but for her mother, who had done nothing to deserve Sammy Chesterton’s wrath but would now be in the firing line.

Chapter Two

Jem was chopping wood. The sound of his axe cutting logs to stack against the side of the house for the coming winter rang comfortingly through the trees as Vee walked down the lane from where the bus had dropped her. She opened the wide front gate and pulled it back far enough to step onto the path leading to the front door. The smell of late roses filled the air, but already the blooms had the brown-tipped petals that heralded autumn. She felt sad to know that their colour, perfume and beauty would soon be gone.

‘Hello.’ Jem waved in greeting, a grin splitting his face. Vee waved back and pushed open the front door, which was never locked. She threw her coat and handbag over the newel post at the bottom of the wide stairs and called to her mother.

May appeared at the top of the stairs, her arms full of clean bedding. A pregnant grey cat watching Vee from the second stair came down to meet her.

‘You’re home early . . .’ May paused, doubtless noticing Vee’s worried expression. She left the pressed sheets on the landing table and continued down the stairs. ‘It’s not Jem and that blessed newly sharpened axe, is it?’

Vee put her arms around her mother. ‘No, he’s fine. I need to talk to you.’ She could smell the aroma of baking emanating from her mother’s skin and wrap-around pinafore. ‘Sit down, Mum, while I make a cup of tea.’ She bent and patted the cat, which butted her head against her legs. ‘Not had your kittens yet?’ The animal purred. May sat down at the scrubbed wooden table, a frown creasing her forehead.

Vee shook the kettle, decided there was enough water in it and put it on the stove.

‘I think Jem should hear what I have to say.’ Going to the door she called his name loudly. ‘Otherwise you’ll have to explain to him later.’ There were no secrets between them.

Vee couldn’t remember a time when Jem hadn’t walked up daily from the village, where he rented a small terraced house near the church. He employed casual labourers for May when the crops were at their heaviest and needed harvesting. He took it upon himself to look after her cottage, and many times May had offered him a room at Honeysuckle Holdings, but Jem had always refused, aware of the tittle-tattle his living there with the two women would cause.

He’d begun working for Honeysuckle Holdings about the time that May’s mother had died of influenza in the pandemic just after the Great War. To Vee, Jem was like the father she had never known – August Schmidt had been killed shortly before the Great War ended.

As he wiped his boots on the doormat, Vee saw Jem frown as he looked first at May, then back at the axe he’d set down against the kitchen’s skirting board. He pulled the door closed behind him. He was tall, with broad shoulders, dressed in corduroy trousers and a cotton shirt. He stopped near May and looked questioningly into her eyes.

‘Sit down, Jem,’ said Vee. ‘I’ve got something to say that will ultimately concern you – and you, Mum.’ Going over to the Aga she picked up the brown earthenware pot and made the tea, careful not to spill any precious leaves. Leaving it to settle, she went to the bottom of the stairs and picked up her handbag. Without another word, she took out the documents and laid them on the table in front of her mother.

May’s eyes widened. For a while she sat quite still. Then she picked up the brown ration book bearing the name ‘May Smith’ and stared at it.

Her voice was soft, almost tearful, as she asked, ‘Where did you get this? How?’

Jem had risen protectively and now he stood behind May and whistled through his teeth as his hand reached for an identity card, which he scrutinized.

‘These are forged, right?’ Vee nodded. ‘Must have cost you a pretty penny.’ He let out a deep sigh.

‘I’ve done something stupid, and I’m going to have to pay for it.’

At first, May didn’t seem to be listening because she said brightly, ‘We can be like everyone else now.’ Then silence filled the kitchen, until she cried out, ‘However did you get hold of them?’

Before Vee could answer, Jem asked, ‘Are you sure there’s no one who knows you married Gus Schmidt?’

May shook her head. ‘No one. The few that were in on the secret are gone now, even my friend Annie who was so kind to me, when . . . when . . .’ her voice trailed off into a whisper ‘. . . Gus and I wed in secret at the register office in Southampton. After Vee arrived, I called myself Smith and, as far as anyone hereabouts knows, I’m Mrs Smith. Schmidt is on my marriage certificate so I’ve been scared to apply for any papers that might show my husband’s surname. And now I’m more petrified after reading in the newspapers of the abuse hurled at anyone with a German-sounding name . . .’

Tears filled May’s eyes and she put a hand over her mouth.

Vee spoke: ‘I thought when I asked my boss for help I was doing the right thing for you and me, Mum. He does this a lot, providing fake identity papers, passports . . .’

‘As well as now having a hold over you.’ Jem ran a calloused hand through his grey-blond hair. ‘Oh, love, whatever have you done?’

Vee took a deep breath. She’d never meant to cause unhappiness. ‘I thought I was getting the best of the bargain when he said, at first, he’d take the money from my wages weekly . . .’

‘You’ll be paying through the nose for these for the rest of your life.’ Jem’s words were harsh.

‘No, no, I won’t. He said afterwards he didn’t want any money . . .’

‘What does he want?’ Jem asked. When she didn’t answer straight away, Vee saw sadness in his face. ‘Don’t tell me, you . . .’

‘That’s just it.’ Vee looked first at her mother then back at Jem. ‘I knew I couldn’t go through with it.’ She wiped her hand across her wet eyes and told them how she had taken the package from the lad at the club and, instead of leaving it behind the till for collection had opened it, stolen their papers, then lodged the envelope in the lavatory cistern. The kitchen became silent again, apart from the ticking of the ancient cuckoo clock above the mantelpiece.

Eventually she said, ‘There are many women who’d jump at the chance. Not me. I didn’t want to spend two nights in a hotel in the New Forest and have him pawing me.’

‘Oh, Vee!’ Her mother let the ration book she had been clutching fall to the table.

‘He said he didn’t want my money, but I honestly believed he’d let me pay him in cash, like the other customers he gets false passports and documents for . . .’ She was gabbling on.

Jem’s face was like marble as he left May’s side and stepped towards Vee, enfolding her in his brawny arms. For such a big man, his voice was now surprisingly gentle. ‘He’s the one in the wrong, not you, love.’

As he spoke, Vee thought of the many other times he had soothed her as any father would his child. Now, clutched to his chest, she to. . .