Lost and Found in Lavender Bay (The Lavender Bay Chronicles #2)

21. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

D espite the straight run up the highway, the twenty-mile ride back and forth between Cheever and Lavender Bay six days a week was going to be a long trek. Laura posted an ad in The Lavender Bay Chronicles looking for others to carpool with . She also tacked up an index card with her name and phone number on the corkboard at the back of the post office. There were no responses to either. Because she was now considered an essential worker, she was able to secure extra gasoline rations, but she would have preferred to share the drive with other women, if only for some conversation.

Going in alone on her first day, she had no idea what to expect. She’d never worked in her life. Shaking, she took a deep breath and followed the crowd of women walking through the factory doors. Immediately, she was directed to a side room where she was given standard-issue coveralls and a pair of shoes for the plant. Next, she was assigned a locker. When she’d changed into her coveralls, she thought she looked ridiculous, but she supposed it didn’t matter what she looked like.

Posters were plastered all over the walls. Loose Lips Might Sink Ships . We Can Do It —this one depicted a Rosie the Riveter type flexing her muscle. And then there were numerous slogans encouraging them to buy war bonds.

The women were divided into groups, and she found herself in a group of twenty, directed to a room where a projector had been set up between two rows of wooden benches. She slid onto a bench and scooted over when another woman followed her in, giving Laura a brief smile.

A man stood at the front of the room, hands on his hips, his right hand holding a clipboard. “Come on, ladies, take your seats and settle down.”

He was about Laura’s age, maybe a little older. There was no wedding ring on his finger, and her first thought was Why aren’t you off fighting ? He was of average height with thinning hair and sharp gray eyes that were too close together. His top lip was so thin it didn’t look like he had one.

Once everyone hushed, he spoke. “I’m Les Stockton, I’m the assistant to the foreman. If you have questions about anything, you come to me. This group has been selected to train as riveters.” A murmur rippled through the crowd of women. “You’ll be drilling the rivets into the planes. Each plane contains thousands of them, and I cannot emphasize enough how important this job is. The last thing our fellas need is for their plane to fall apart mid-air because we didn’t put it together properly.”

Laura shuddered; she certainly didn’t want that .

“You’ll work with a partner, which I’ll assign to you, and training is six weeks. Now, I’ve got a short film for you to watch about the different types of flush riveting.” He pointed to a woman in the back row. “You, with the bright red hair—yes, you—flip that light switch off.”

The room went dark, and the assistant foreman started the projector. The reel spun, and the machine made a clickety noise. As she watched the film, Laura began to doubt she could do the job. There seemed to be a lot of math involved: the diameter of the rivets, the degree of the countersunk head, and then there were the varying thicknesses of the metal sheets you were drilling into. Her heart began to sink. She’d never been any good at math in school. How was she supposed to figure all this out? More than once, she was tempted to raise her hand and excuse herself.

The film was only about fifteen minutes long. When it ended, the woman next to her whispered, “Yikes!” That made Laura feel somewhat better, that she wasn’t alone in her confusion. When the overhead lights went back on, she glanced around the room as unobtrusively as possible to look at the other women. It was a mixed bag: some stared blankly at the screen, some wore frowns, and one or two had their mouth hanging open. But the consensus was the same; they looked as confused and doubtful as she felt.

But she carried on. Every day, she showed up and every day, it became slightly better. She only wobbled during those times when she was arriving or leaving and spotted groups of three or four women either climbing out of cars or piling into them. Some she recognized from Lavender Bay. Although some nodded their acknowledgement, others pretended not to know her. Luckily, she was so busy focusing on what she had to learn for her job as a riveter that she didn’t have time to let it upset her too much.

For the training period, she’d been paired with a riveter who’d been working at the plant for ten months. A woman named Millie who had five kids and whose husband was in North Africa. When Millie handled that air gun, she made it look like she’d been using it all her life. Laura doubted she’d ever look that adept and skillful.

At the end of the second week, Les approached her to check her work. She stopped the rivet gun and lifted up her goggles. Millie held the bucking bar in her hand.

He examined her work and nodded, giving her a smile that revealed his tobacco-stained teeth. “You’re getting the hang of it, Laura.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze, his fingers lingering a little bit longer than necessary over the strap of her brassiere.

At the end of the training, she was assigned a partner, a woman named Antoinette but who preferred to be called Toni. They worked together on the cargo planes, one drilling in the rivets and the other holding the bucking bar on the other side of the hull against the drill. It was hard work. The drill was heavy, and the bucking bar was something else. You had to hold it steady, and the constant vibration of the drill against the bar made your wrists ache.

Toni lived in a suburb outside of Cheever. She was the same height as Laura, and like most of the women in the factory, she wore her brown hair covered with a kerchief. She had bright hazel eyes and a heart-shaped face, and whenever the drill was silent or when they were on their breaks, she was friendly and chatty, and Laura relished the work relationship with the other woman .

One morning, Laura arrived late, as the fog was heavy coming in from Lavender Bay. She punched in, slammed her locker shut, and ran all the way to her plane, where she found Les huddled with Toni. He was rubbing her shoulder as he spoke to her, his fingers going around in a circular motion. Toni stood frozen, her expression blank.

Laura stepped up her pace. “I’m sorry I’m late. The fog was terrible.”

Immediately, Les removed his hand from Toni’s shoulder, and she quickly took three steps away from him. She replied, “Everyone was late this morning.”

Les looked at the watch on his wrist. “You better get started, girls. We need to keep the production up.” Turning on his heel, he walked swiftly away.

“Creepy Les,” Laura remarked, not taking her eyes off of him.

Beside her, Toni agreed. “You got that right.”