Women and Children First by Gill Paul Read Free Book Online

wages were only two shillings and four-pence per day, so that breakage would cost him more than three days’ wages – in other words half of what he would make on that crossing.
    ‘Worse than that,’ he told John later, ‘it’s going on my report. I explained what happened but he wasn’t having it. It’s one law for them and another for us and I’m fed up to the back teeth with it.’
    ‘It’s just the way it is. No point fighting the system.’ John never got into trouble, never got caught on the rare occasions when he did transgress the rules.
    ‘It’s all right for you with your squeaky clean record. I’m trying to better myself and all I get are setbacks.’
    ‘It’ll be fine so long as you keep your nose clean from now on. They won’t do anything about one misdemeanour. Anyway, I wish I had your problems with all the lasses fancying me.’ John grinned at him. ‘You’ve always got lasses chasing after you. Remember those ones at the fairground last week? It must be your dark, brooding looks.’
    ‘What a load of rot!’ Reg punched his arm. It was true that two girls had latched onto them at the fair and wouldn’t leave them alone even after he mentioned he was stepping out with someone. They hadn’t been interested in John, just him. That kind of attention was discomfiting. He hated it.
    ‘Did you see your lass at lunch?’ John continued. ‘The one from the boat deck?’
    ‘She never turned up. She must take her meals elsewhere.’ Reg had forgotten about her till John brought it up but suddenly he recalled the vision of the silvery-white dress silhouetted against the dark ocean, and the fur coat flapping as it fell through the air.
    ‘Way you described her, I think you’ve got the hots for her,’ John teased. ‘You like the lasses with a bit of class.’
    ‘I wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole,’ Reg exclaimed. ‘I don’t like girls who mess around with other women’s husbands.’
    ‘I’m sure she’ll be heartbroken to hear it.’ John imitated a lady sobbing into her sleeve.
    Reg laughed, but he meant it. He felt contempt for women who did that. He bet they never thought of all the people their affairs affected, and the repercussions it could have. They were selfish creatures, only in it for what they could get.
    Back home in Southampton, when Reg was a young boy, he used to lie crushed up in bed with his three younger brothers, hearing sounds from the next room of his dad groaning and the bedsprings creaking and then a woman uttering little sighs. Reg knew that his mum was at work – she worked nights at a laundry – and his dad was in there with someone else. He was too young to know exactly what sex was, but old enough to know that shouldn’t be happening. ‘Keep yer mouth shut or I’ll clip yer ear for ye,’ his dad snapped in response to Reg’s reproachful stare over breakfast.
    He wanted to tell his mum what he’d seen, because he was young enough that he still felt he ought to tell her everything, but he didn’t because she always looked so sad. When she was at home she often sat at the kitchen table and wept and Reg didn’t want to be the one to make her any sadder. Then his dad left home when he was eight and he heard his mum saying it was all because of ‘that floozy’. She took longer shifts at the laundry and drank gin and got sadder, and it was up to Reg to look after his younger brothers, scraping together haphazard meals and forcing them to wash every now and again.
    Reg went to sea when he was fourteen. It’s what you did when you came from the Northam district of Southampton. All his mates were doing the same. Some became firemen or trimmers, electricians or greasers, but Reg always wanted to be out front meeting the wealthy passengers, so he trained as a saloon steward and worked his way up from third class to first. He had to learn silver service, and be able to explain all the dishes on the menu, and most of all he had to become adept at gliding