Maid Elizabeth

June 1940

“Good God Almighty! Beth, would you look at this!” Beth jumped, unaccustomed to hearing her father blaspheme. He thrust the ‘Daily Express’ towards her. “Isn’t that your friend, that Reynolds boy?” She gasped as she saw the photograph. It was Jack all right and the ‘Maid Elizabeth’. The ‘Maid’ was crowded with weary-looking soldiers. There must have been over thirty crammed into her twenty-four foot length. Jack was unmistakeable in his canvas sailing smock, his thick dark hair tousled by the wind. She quickly scanned the story. It was about the ‘little ships’ that had gone to Dunkirk and plucked the British Army off the beaches. Already this massive defeat was being re-written as an epic. She supposed it was in a way but, like everyone else, she’d have preferred a real victory.
“Among the last of the gallant ‘little ships’ to leave,” the story read, “was the sloop ‘Maid Elizabeth’ and her eighteen year old skipper, John Reynolds of Lyme Regis. ‘Maid Elizabeth’ undertook several trips from the beaches to the waiting destroyers and then brought home her own precious cargo after the bigger ships left.”

The article continued in a jingoistic vein before concluding with the news that John Reynolds would shortly be joining the Royal Navy, after recovering from ‘his ordeal’. Beth handed the newspaper back to her father. “It is him, isn’t it?” he said. “Yes, Daddy,” Beth replied. “ It’s Jack, all right. In fact, it’s Jack all over.”

August 1942

The small grey ship inched its way up the Mersey to the naval dock. Another Atlantic convoy over. More ‘tools to finish the job’, as Churchill had called them, delivered safely but almost as many now littered the ocean floor. Petty Officer (Acting) Jack Reynolds, twenty-one and now a veteran, was at the wheel, as usual. As the coxswain of HM Corvette Speedwell, it was his job to steer the ship in action and at any other time when his experience and skill was needed, such as entering and leaving harbour. Jack’s assistant, Leading Seaman ‘Tom’ Piper gave a gap-toothed grin. “ Leave, ‘swain. Two bloody glorious weeks! What you going to do?” Jack grunted. He hadn’t really thought much about it. “ Go home, I s’pose, Tom. What about you?” Piper danced a little jig. “Nookie, nookie, nookie!! Then a pint or ten to wash away the salt. Then more nookie!”

Jack looked away. He felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he was prude. You couldn’t survive three years and more on the lower deck and be a choirboy. Somehow he’d never felt it right to go whoring with his messmates. He was twenty-one and he’d never even kissed a girl properly. Always in the background was Beth. They had written to each other regularly. Well, to be honest, she had written regularly and he had replied when he could. Whenever the Fleet Mail caught up with Speedwell, he could be sure of a dozen or so letters in her neat, round hand. Jack didn’t know how he felt about her. They had been friends for so long. She must be what, nineteen now. He hadn’t seen her since 1939, since that last brief summer of peacetime.

He’d wanted to see her, of course. Somehow he couldn’t quite gather together his courage and telephone her. He worried about her. Living in London through the Blitz was dangerous. Thousands had died. He’d had messmates who had learnt that their family, be it mum and dad or wife and children, had been obliterated by the nightly bombing. London, Coventry, Bristol, Plymouth and many, many more; they had all suffered the devastation of modern warfare. And then there was her. She probably had a proper man by now. London was crawling with young men in uniform. She’d be an officer’s lady, he thought and felt a wounding stab.

Lyme had changed. It was now the base for Motor Torpedo Boats and the harbour was off-limits to civilians. Reynolds’ Boat Yard was building for the Navy. Motor Boats and Landing Craft. The previous month the allies had invaded Sicily; everyone knew that France would be next; perhaps not this year but soon. After a week at home, Jack was climbing the walls with boredom. After a couple of nights in the local pub he has stopped going out. The complaints about shortages angered him the most. He had seen the cost of keeping the country fed. The shattered ships and drowning men were engraved forever on his consciousness. As for his parents well of course they were pleased to see him but seemed remote, separated from him by experiences unshared. In desperation, he resolved to go to London.

He telephoned her from the station. “Beth? It’s Jack Reynolds.” He took her silence as disapproval; could imagine her mouthing to someone ‘ what does he want?’ When she spoke it was like hearing music for the very first time. “ “Jack. Oh God! Fantastic! Where are you?”
“Um, I’m in London. Just got off the train. I, er, I don’t s’pose you’re free this evening?”
“Of course I am for you, silly!”

He’d still never been to London. He’d passed through a few times, en route from one naval base to another but he’d never stopped. He realised he hadn’t the least idea where to take her. ‘Oh well,’ he thought, ‘it’s her town, I ‘spect she’ll know somewhere.’ He found her house in Palmers Green without too much difficulty but then spent twenty minutes or so walking up and down to gather his courage. She must have seen him from the window because suddenly she was there beside him. Her arm slipped through his and she kissed his cheek. “You could’ve come in, you old silly. We don’t bite you know.” Jack looked sheepish and smiled down at her. He was overwhelmed with how wonderful she looked. Yes, he could still see the remains of the skinny girl from the boatyard but as for the rest… The only word that came to mind was ‘lovely’. Her long hair was twisted up into something Jack thought of as ‘French-looking’. Her green eyes sparkled and her clear complexion seemed to positively glow.

For her part, she thought Jack looked older. There were signs of strain in his face and lines that did not belong on the face of a young man of twenty one. It suddenly made the war seem more personal, somehow. She leaned into him and squeezed his arm.

Beth’s mother looked out at her daughter and the smiling young man. She turned to her husband and said, ”She’s made her mind up you know. He doesn’t know it yet but I do!” Her husband snorted in reply and went on reading his paper.

“It’s all very well, dear, but this war, it’s changed things. Young people are in a hurry now. You can’t really blame them. Look at the Owens’s girl, married at eighteen and a widow four months later. You’re going to have to speak to her, make sure she doesn’t do anything rash.”

Beth’s father put the newspaper down with slow deliberation. “Since when has anything I’ve said made the slightest difference? She’s her mother’s daughter, that one. Pretty as a picture and stubborn as a mule – just like you!” He smiled fondly. “She’s old enough now to know her own mind and young Jack’s a steady sort. I can’t see him rushing into anything. To be honest, I don’t think I’d object if they did. This war won’t last for ever and that Boatyard is a sound little business. It wouldn’t surprise me if Reynolds didn’t do very well out of this war and all those Government contracts.”