The Boat Girls (3 page)

EVERY WEEKDAY MORNING
for the past two years, Prudence Dobbs had left the house in Lime Avenue, Croydon and walked with her father down the front path and out of the gate to go to work at the bank. They left at precisely eight fifteen in order to arrive well before opening time and, as they approached the building, Prudence would hang back a little in order to allow her father to precede her, in deference to his position as chief clerk. Once he had entered the premises, she would then follow to take up her duties.

She had been named Prudence because it was a virtue much admired by her father, especially in a woman. After leaving school at sixteen she had begun work at the bank as a junior, filing cheques neatly in boxes, in date order, and making the tea for all the staff. After eighteen months she had risen to become a ledger clerk, writing the daily balances of customers' accounts into a heavy,
bound book. It was her job to sort the cheques alphabetically and then post the figures neatly into her ledger – the debit entries and the new balance for each account at close of business for the day. There were five hundred accounts in her particular ledger and she had had to learn to recognize the signatures of all the customers she handled, and to write the figures very clearly and beyond doubt. Mr Holland, the manager, always preached what he called the Psychology of Accuracy. Any discrepancies in the day's final figures were dealt with as a very serious matter. All staff were required to stay at work until the mistake was found and rectified and her father, as chief clerk, oversaw the investigation.

In the course of her work she had also learned to match the faces of customers to their signatures, and to spot Mrs Harper, Miss Peabody, old Mr Cuthbertson, young Mr Lewis and so on, whenever they came into the bank. Mrs Harper would have been hard to miss, in any case, as she always made such a to-do at the counter, insisting on being given brand new notes. She quite often demanded to see Mr Holland who came hurrying out of his office at once – probably because she was their richest customer.

When Prudence had first started work at the bank, the war had been going on for nearly two years and Spitfires and Hurricanes were a familiar
sight in the skies overhead. During the summer of 1940 they had watched them dogfighting with the German planes and the town had had its share of German bombs. The first and worst time had been in August, when the Luftwaffe had attacked Croydon airport and made a terrible mess of the aerodrome and houses and factories around it. Her father had been at work and she'd been at home having lunch with her mother. Halfway through the cold ham and lettuce she'd heard a sort of thump in the distance, and looked out of the window to see a puff of black smoke rising from the direction of the airport. The siren hadn't sounded and when she'd pointed out the smoke, Mother had told her to get on with her food and stop imagining things. Suddenly, there'd been more thumps and more smoke, the approaching roar of the German bombers, and the whistle of their bombs as they fell. RAF Hurricanes had come shrieking overhead and the ack-ack guns had started up. She and Mother had dropped their knives and forks and dived straight under the table. In the rush, the salad-cream bottle had got knocked off and spilled all over the carpet, which had upset Mother more than the bombs. The Bourjois soap factory had been badly hit, as well as two hundred houses, and more than sixty people had been killed. The salad cream had left a permanent stain.

Since then, they'd all got used to the war. Used to hearing the sirens wailing all during the Blitz and used to going out to sit in the cold, damp Anderson shelter beside the rhubarb patch at the end of the garden, listening to the bombs whistling and exploding and the ack-ack guns booming, and waiting patiently for the long note of the all-clear. They'd got used to the blackout and the rationing and the queuing and the shortages of food, paper, petrol, string, rubber, batteries, coal, material, glass . . . almost everything you could think of, except potatoes. At the bank, Mr Holland had insisted on regular stirrup-pump practices and practices for putting out incendiary bombs with sand, or using a long-handled shovel and rake to manoeuvre them into a metal box. Father had been put in charge of the practices and of the staff Fire Watch rota, and when he went off on duty at night he wore a tin helmet instead of his bowler hat. Mr Holland, as manager, was considered too important to take part.

On Christmas Eve 1943 Prudence walked with her father to the bank, as usual. Mr Holland had kindly permitted coloured paper chains to be strung above the cashiers' counter and holly to be placed on the window sills, and, at the end of the day, when work was finally finished – with no mistakes – he invited all his staff into his office for
sherry. Miss Tripp, his secretary, dispensed the British sherry from a bottle – exactly half a glassful each – as if she was pouring out a dose of medicine, which was what it tasted like. They stood awkwardly around the room while Mr Holland delivered his annual speech, reminding them of their good fortune in working for the bank and of the vital importance of the Psychology of Accuracy, before he wished them a merry Christmas. Mr Simpkins, the senior cashier, was standing close behind Prudence and when he leaned forward to speak, she could feel his breath puffing into her right ear.

‘I wonder if you would care to go to the picture house on Boxing Day, Miss Dobbs? They're showing an American film, but I understand it's quite good.'

It wasn't the first time that he had asked her out and she always refused him. ‘It's very kind of you, Mr Simpkins, but my aunt and uncle are coming to visit.'

‘Another time then.'

She suspected that he mistook her reluctance for shyness and awe of his position at the bank, talking directly with the customers. It would never do to tell him the truth – that she found him repulsive – in case he found ways of making trouble for her. He was years older than her, with thin, scurfy hair and eyes that glinted at her
through wire-framed spectacles. Whenever his hands touched her – which they did if he got the chance – her skin crawled in disgust. Once, he had hinted at his good prospects at the bank. A senior cashier could expect to rise, in time, he told her, to become chief clerk and, one day, manager. Father, she knew, had his own sights set on taking Mr Holland's place in the private office behind the big leather-topped desk, dictating letters to Miss Tripp, issuing orders and delivering the Christmas Speech.

As usual, she left the bank a little before her father and waited for him outside in the dark. Miss Tripp passed her with a sharp ‘Goodnight' and walked away, her lace-up shoes with metal bits on the heels ringing loudly on the pavement. Nobody knew where she lived or anything about her life outside the bank, and nobody much cared. She had never been known to smile – maybe because she had nothing to smile about after working there for thirty years. Prudence shivered.
Thirty years!
It was like a prison sentence. All those days and weeks and months spent shut up in a place where the windows were made of frosted glass, so you could never see what was happening outside or even what the weather was like. If she wasn't careful she might end up just like Miss Tripp, with only retirement to look forward to and a presentation clock to go on the mantelpiece.

There was a way of escape, though, now that she was eighteen. She could leave the bank to join one of the services, the ATS or the WRNS or the WAAF, or go and work in a munitions factory. Making bullets or guns, or aeroplane parts to fight the enemy seemed a lot more useful than posting endless figures about other people's money in a book. But when she'd suggested it to Father on the way to work one day, he'd told her he'd never allow it. Over his dead body, he'd said, striking the pavement with the steel tip of his rolled-up umbrella . . . a daughter of his mixing with common servicemen or with girls of loose morals. And, in any case, working in a bank was of vital importance to the war effort. Banks were needed to make everything run properly, he'd said. Where would the country be without them, he'd like to know? In chaos, that's where it'd be. When the conscription age had come down from nineteen to eighteen years old, she'd hoped that she'd be called up, whether he liked it or not, but so far it hadn't happened.

Father came out with Mr Holland and the bank door was locked as carefully as if it was the Bank of England chock-full of gold bars. Mr Holland went off towards Chestnut Drive where he lived in a detached house with a big garden and a gravel driveway, and Prudence walked home with her father to the semi-detached in Lime
Avenue with a sun-ray gate and a crazy-paving front path.

Christmas Day was the same as it had been for as long as she could remember. In the morning they went to church before they sat down for lunch in the dining room – Mother, Father and herself – with the best dinner service and the silver-plate cutlery and cruets brought out specially and polished for the occasion. Mother had queued for a small joint of beef at the butcher's, and roasted it with potatoes and boiled cabbage and Yorkshire pudding, and she'd made a sort of Christmas pudding out of breadcrumbs and dried fruit and carrots. Afterwards they sat down in the lounge to listen to the King's Speech and when the drums rolled for ‘God Save the King' at the end of it, they stood up – Father ramrod straight as a soldier on parade. Then it was time to open their presents. Mother and Father had given her a book on the Royal Family and she had given Mother a pair of woollen gloves and Father a pair of socks. Mother had given Father a grey scarf that she had knitted and he had given her a marcasite brooch. After that, Mother got out her knitting bag and carried on with a balaclava helmet for the Forces Comforts, while Father read
The Illustrated London News
and Prudence opened her Royal Family book and looked at the photographs of the King and Queen
and the two Princesses doing their bit for the war, including stirrup-pump practice. In the evening they listened to the Home Service on the wireless and to the nine o'clock news before they went to bed.

On Boxing Day, Father's brother, Uncle Ted, and Auntie Dot came for lunch. Auntie Dot had short, wavy hair, eyes as bright as a bird's and a chuckling voice. After lunch, they played racing demon and snap. Father didn't like card games and he left the room while Mother went into the kitchen to make the tea. Uncle Ted was shuffling the pack with loud zipping noises when Auntie Dot took a piece of paper out of her pocket and gave it to her.

‘I saw this in a magazine, Prudence, and thought of you.'

The cutting featured a picture of a young woman in trousers, standing on the deck of some kind of boat, holding a long wooden pole and smiling happily, as though she was having a wonderful time. Underneath it said,
CANAL JOBS FOR WOMEN. TRANSPORT MINISTRY'S CALL. Women volunteers are needed for training to operate canal boats . . .

‘It sounds fun, doesn't it, dear? You earn £2 a week while you're training and then £3 after that. Wouldn't you like to do something like that, instead of working in the bank?'

She said, ‘I don't know anything about boats. I've never even been on one.'

‘You don't need to. They train you. I think it'd be just the thing for you.'

Prudence stared at the picture of the smiling, carefree girl again – it
did
look as though it was a lovely thing to do. Out in the fresh air and sunlight, sailing up and down on the water – not stuck indoors all day, sitting at her desk, sorting cheques and posting figures. And no creepy Mr Simpkins. No sour Miss Tripp, either. No Mr Holland and his Psychology of Accuracy. The escape she had been hoping for.
Praying
for.

She handed the cutting back with a sigh. ‘Father would never allow it. Over his dead body, he'd say.'

Auntie Dot smiled. ‘Leave him to me, dear.'

Mother wheeled in the tea trolley and Father came back and sat down in his chair. Auntie Dot waited until the tea was poured and the paste sandwiches passed round before she spoke.

‘I expect Prudence will be called up any day now, won't she, Arnold?'

Her father frowned and stirred his tea vigorously. ‘No reason why she should be, Dot. She's got an important job in the bank.'

‘But it's not
reserved
, is it? She wouldn't be exempt. And now they've lowered the age, the Government could call her up at any moment.
Our neighbours' daughter has just been sent into a factory. She works a twelve-hour day, testing nuts and bolts, and the man in charge of the women takes all kinds of liberties with them, she says, and they can't do a thing about it. And, over the road from us, the Taylors' daughter has had to join the ATS. They're not very happy about
that
, I can tell you. Well, you've heard the rumours, I dare say, Arnold. Specially now the
Americans
have come over . . .' She let the words hang ominously on the air for a moment. ‘You're a man of the world – you know what goes on. I heard a shocking story, just the other day—'

Her father interrupted hastily. ‘Prudence will be staying at the bank.'

Auntie Dot wagged a forefinger at him. ‘But what if they tell her she can't? We're at war. The Government can do anything they like. Order people about, send them wherever they're needed. They've got
powers
. Now, if I were you, and Prudence was
my
daughter, I'd make sure she wasn't sent into a factory or some military camp where she'd be at the mercy of unscrupulous men. I'd find something else for her to do before that happened – something respectable. Something nice and
safe
.'

Her father frowned again. ‘Such as?'

The magazine cutting was produced and played deftly like a good card. ‘I just happened to see this
in a women's magazine the other day. An appeal for women to do essential war work on the canals. It's from the Ministry of War Transport. All above board and
very
respectable.'