Survivor

by Lesley Pearse

  The next morning, she went out early for an interview for a job in Baker Street. As she walked there, her mind was on how different Morgan and Gerald were, yet both were desperate for her to write to them. If only Gerald set her on fire the way Morgan had, then she would agree to marry him right now, if he asked. He had all the right credentials – family, education, prospects – he was excellent company, the kind of man everyone wanted for her.

  While she had no intention of writing back to Morgan – only a complete fool would do that after the way he’d treated her – she couldn’t help but feel a little wistful when she remembered how handsome he was, and what a great lover he’d been before he disgraced himself.

  But then, with the war just beginning and all the new experiences in store for her, perhaps it was a good time to be fancy free?

  13

  London, May 1940

  Mr Greville came through from his office and loudly cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. Mariette, who was typing up a letter to a supplier, looked up at her boss expectantly, while the other girls in the office stopped what they were doing.

  ‘Mr Chamberlain has resigned as Prime Minister,’ he announced with his customary pomposity.

  ‘Who will take his place, sir?’ Doris asked. Doris was in charge of accounts and considered herself a cut above everyone else in the office.

  ‘It’s sure to be Winston Churchill, he’s the only man with the right credentials, even if he is something of a bounder,’ Mr Greville replied. ‘I would imagine that will be verified shortly. One thing is certain, though, which is that even more uniforms will be needed now. It’s an ill wind, as they say.’

  He disappeared back into his own office, leaving Mariette thinking that his obvious delight at profiting through war was a little distasteful.

  At the time of her interview to be his secretary, back in September – eight months ago – the only good thing she could see about the job was that it took a mere ten-minute walk to get there. A company which made uniforms sounded deadly dull, the Baker Street office was gloomy, and she thought Mr Greville was slimy. But she was very aware that she was young and inexperienced, and that she was unlikely to get a better offer, so she felt she had to accept it.

  Rose had called here once and proclaimed Greville – who was around forty, with oiled dark hair and a droopy moustache – to be ‘an East End spiv, only one step up from a barrow boy’. Yet, in Mariette’s opinion, there was no doubt he was a sharp businessman, whatever his background. Eighteen months ago, he had been manufacturing ladies coats in his Shoreditch factory, but he’d been quick to tender for government contracts for uniforms, and then turned over the entire production line to supply them.

  Despite all Mariette’s reservations about the position, it had turned out to be much better than she expected. She liked both Polly, Doris’s assistant, and Susan, who did the filing, and her expectations that Mr Greville would be making passes at her within a week, as he certainly looked that kind of man, were wrong. He had never said or done anything to her that was improper.

  Nor was she bored. She’d imagined her job would merely be taking dictation and typing up letters to woollen mills in the north of England. But it soon transpired that there was far more to the job. Along with having to chase up orders of buckles and buttons, get samples of fabrics, and many other related tasks, she often had to go to the factory in Shoreditch to find out how production was going. She took shorthand notes of Greville’s meetings with senior military personnel, and now and again he would ask her to accompany him to lunch or dinner with men who would put more business his way.

  ‘A pretty face and a touch of class will sway most men,’ Greville said the first time he asked her to accompany him to the Savoy for dinner. He was to be even more impressed with her when one of his guests was French and she translated for him.

  Mariette knew she owed the ‘touch of class’ to Noah and Lisette. She could attribute every improvement in her character since leaving New Zealand seventeen months ago to their influence. It wasn’t just sending her to college, taking her to the theatre, or Lisette’s encouragement to be chic and ladylike, it was more that they’d opened her eyes to her own potential.

  Back in Russell, her only talents had been sailing, fishing and sewing. And they hadn’t made her a good conversationalist because these were her only interests. But Noah’s enthusiasm for history and world events had rubbed off on her, and Lisette had taught her by example to be interested in other people. She could now hold her own at a dinner party; she’d learned to ask the right questions to allow other guests to shine, which made them think she was intelligent and caring. Once she’d thought that being reckless was the best way to get attention, but now she found she got that without even trying.

  She could remember waking up in the mornings, back in Russell, already bored before breakfast because each day was so predictable. The same old routine, the same faces, the same conversations about the weather, peppered with a little gossip.

  But now she could have a real conversation with a total stranger on the bus. People wanted to air their horror at the atrocities in Poland, and praise the courage of the Poles, who had tried so hard to defend Warsaw. Often these strangers told her that the company they worked for was moving out to a ‘safe’ place in the country, or young women confided they were going to join the Land Army or the WAAFs. But whether or not people were talking about the war in general, or only their small part in it, there was no doubting the excitement and expectancy in the air.

  While there was still no real evidence of war in London – apart from almost every able-bodied man being in uniform – it was coming closer every day. In April, Denmark and Norway had been invaded by the Germans and Noah had said, the previous night, that it was only a matter of days before they swept through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. He was seriously concerned for France as their troops were sitting on the Maginot Line of forts and anti-tank defences, on the German frontier between Switzerland and Luxembourg, and he couldn’t understand why they were too blinkered to see that the attack would come through Belgium.

  But here in England daily life was still much the same as it had been before war broke out. Rationing, the blackout and having to carry gas masks everywhere were all irksome. But so far, the worst danger Mariette had encountered was tripping up or banging into something in the dark.

  She and Rose were anxious about David and Gerald as they were fully trained pilots now, and they could be called upon any day to fly against the enemy. Yet whenever they came home on leave, they were always in high spirits, ready for a night on the town with the girls, and from the stories they told about their fellow airmen they were having a lot of fun back at the base too.

  Mariette had become very fond of Gerald, and although she had never once felt a surge of passion for him, she could say she loved him as the dearest of friends. She liked his company, he was fun, kind and so easy to talk to, and it made her sad that his kisses left her unmoved. She wished with all her heart that he could make her feel the way Morgan used to do.

  Morgan was somewhere in northern France now. She had relented and written back to him, purely because she needed to tell him just how appallingly he’d behaved that night and to explain that it had killed off any affection she’d once felt for him.

  However, he’d written back to her, saying he understood her feelings and was ashamed of himself. But he begged her to write now and then because there was no one else he could expect to get a letter from.

  So she had continued writing because she felt sorry for him. But his inability to write a good letter was as frustrating as Gerald’s inability to make her feel lust. Morgan couldn’t convey what he was feeling – not about her, what he was doing, or even how he was getting on in the army.

  He still claimed he loved her. But she couldn’t tell if he really meant it, or if he was merely holding on to an image of her for comfort while he was away.

  As for her own feelings about him, they
were confused. She did still think about his lovemaking, and his looks, but she felt she didn’t really know him.

  She did know Gerald. Along with coming home often and taking her out for dinners and dancing, he also wrote wonderful letters. He took a real interest in what she was doing; he often slipped in a bit of poetry that he liked, told her about books he’d read, and there were always amusing anecdotes about the other flyers. While it was clear he couldn’t wait to go out on his first mission, he also told her that sometimes he was scared. It was his letters that had made her see what a good man he was – brave, honest and very open.

  Rose had once said she thought a woman had a better chance of a long and happy marriage with a man who was ‘suitable’ and her best friend, and she believed people talked a lot of baloney about falling in love. Perhaps she was right, but Mariette didn’t think Rose had been ‘awakened’ by a man. Maybe if she had, she might think differently.

  Just after lunch, and a few hours after Mr Greville had made his announcement about Chamberlain’s resignation, he called Mariette into his office.

  ‘I want you to go to Shoreditch now with some instructions for them,’ he said, putting some papers into a large Manila envelope. ‘I’ve just received a huge order for more uniforms, which means the girls there will have to work harder, and longer hours, to fill it. I’d go to the factory myself to talk to them, but I’ve got to catch the train up to the mills in Yorkshire and step up my order with them. So I want you to stand in for me.’

  Mariette wasn’t sure what he meant by this, and her blank expression must have told him as much.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Miss Carrera, surely that isn’t difficult to understand? I want you to give them a pep talk to make sure they understand that their work is vital for the war effort. Now can you do that?’

  Mariette gulped. The factory girls were a hard lot, and they were unlikely to appreciate anyone telling them they’d got to work harder, and for longer hours, especially if that person was an office worker who was younger than most of them and who knew nothing about sewing uniforms. But she was touched that Greville thought her capable of doing it, and she was delighted to have an afternoon in the East End.

  Rose couldn’t understand why Mariette liked going there – she shuddered at the very thought of the overcrowding, disease and poverty – but Mariette understood now why Morgan had said she needed to see it. Living in St John’s Wood, and mixing only with the wealthy and privileged, would have given her a very narrow view of London.

  However, her first reaction had been one of sheer horror. She had known in advance that whole families sometimes lived in one room, that a single outside lavatory and one tap might serve twenty or more people, and that most of them had appalling diets.

  But what she saw during that first visit was hopelessness. There were dirty, grey tenements with even greyer washing hanging across the fetid yards, where little sunshine ever shone. She saw ragged children with pale faces and hollow eyes sitting listlessly on doorsteps. A careworn mother struggled home with an ancient pram loaded not only with a baby but a toddler, a sack of coal and a bag of washing too.

  That day her stomach had been turned by the smells, and she’d had to avert her eyes from a severely crippled man who was being dragged along in a soapbox on wheels by a girl no more than seven or eight years old. She had wanted to run back to St John’s Wood, where she felt safe and secure, and she couldn’t understand why Morgan thought she ought to visit such a place.

  Yet months later, after many more visits and having got to know many of the staff at the factory, some of whom lived in those same tenements that she’d found so repulsive, she had a different view.

  They might have very little, and many lived in conditions which were terrible, but they weren’t downtrodden. Against all the odds, most managed to keep themselves, their children and their homes surprisingly clean. She’d heard talk of rats and bedbugs, and how living in such close proximity to others meant that they knew their neighbours’ bodily functions as well as they did their own. But these were things they laughed about. And laughter, it seemed, was as important as food and drink in the East End.

  Mariette saw the people she’d got to know as brave little terriers, prepared to take on another dog twice their size. She admired the factory girls, who sang as they worked, made jokes about everything and shared what they had. She saw how neighbours looked out for the elderly, the sick and other people’s children. There was a camaraderie there that Mariette had never experienced before. Sometimes, she almost wished she could be one of them because they struck her as far more genuine and warm-hearted than some of the people she’d met through Rose and considered to be friends.

  ‘You can do this, Miss Carrera,’ Mr Greville said. ‘You are good with people, and I have been told that many of the women at the factory like and admire you. So don’t let me down!’

  ‘I’ll try not to, Mr Greville,’ she said, and went back to the general office to get her jacket and handbag.

  Mariette wished she’d had the nerve to speak out and say that the women might be more inclined to help him out if Mr Greville was kinder to his machinists, if he took into consideration the fact that many of them had small children and ageing parents to take care of along with their job. But Mr Greville was a hard man – only a week ago, he’d sacked a woman for taking home scraps of wool to make a patchwork blanket. The scraps would only have been thrown away, they were no good for anything else, but he’d felt he had to make an example of her.

  Mariette caught the underground to Bethnal Green station and then made her way to Greville’s factory. For once, she wasn’t noticing the mean little houses or the dank, musty smell that wafted out of open doors. She was too intent on thinking about what she could say to inspire the machinists to want to work longer hours.

  Greville’s factory blocked off the end of a short street lined with small terraced houses. It stood behind tall iron gates, giving the ugly stone-built factory the look of a prison or a Dickensian workhouse. In fact, it had been built in the 1800s as a slaughterhouse. The front, which must once have been where the animals were herded, ready to be slaughtered, was now a loading bay. With its soot-blackened stonework, and the rusting hooks and pulleys that had been left behind, it still retained a sinister appearance.

  Mariette went through the side entrance and up the stairs to the first-floor workroom. The noise of thirty or so sewing machines all going at once was deafening. Blasts of steam were coming from the pressing area, and the smell of machine oil, damp wool, sweat and cheap scent was overpowering.

  The first time she’d come here, she thought a person could easily go mad in such an environment, especially as the women shouted to each other over the noise of the machines. But they seemed unfazed by it.

  She found Solly Freilich, the manager, in his office. She liked Solly. He was perhaps fifty-five, small and thin with a hangdog expression, but his dark eyes were full of merriment, and she knew from the staff that he was a fair man. She handed him the notes from Mr Greville, and explained that he’d said she was to talk to the workforce.

  ‘I wish you luck,’ he said, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘They will heckle you! But take no notice.’

  Coming out of his office with her, Solly blew a whistle to get everyone’s attention and asked them to turn off their sewing machines.

  Mariette’s legs turned to jelly as the big room went quiet and everyone looked up expectantly. There were around thirty female machinists, their ages ranging from eighteen to fifty. The male cutters had all been called up and their places taken by some of the older women, who had worked for Greville for years and quickly adapted to being cutters. There were only four men other than Solly. Two were in their fifties, too old for call-up, the third was a young lad of fifteen or so, and the fourth man appeared to be in his early twenties, with dark curly hair. She hadn’t seen him before, but he was looking at her appraisingly.

  ‘Mr Greville has sent Miss Carrera over to have a few
words with you,’ Solly announced. ‘Please pay attention and don’t interrupt.’

  All the women wore the same dark green overalls and had a scarf tied turban-style around their heads. Mariette had spoken to many of them in the past and found them to be welcoming and interested in her because she came from the other side of the world. But now, guessing that she had been sent here with bad news, they folded their arms across their chests and glowered at her in an intimidating manner.

  Mariette had a strong desire to just run from the building. But she knew, if she did, she’d lose her job.

  ‘Today we received a very large order for more uniforms –’ she began.

  ‘And you want us to work harder to get them out?’ a woman shouted from the back. This created a wave of indignation and intimidated Mariette still further. But she was determined to give as good as she got.

  ‘Is your name Gypsy Rose Lee?’ Mariette called back to the woman, a bleached blonde who she knew often stirred up trouble. ‘I think it must be, as you’ve obviously been looking in your crystal ball.’

  A ripple of gentle laughter went through the workforce, and she knew then they were prepared to listen.

  ‘Well, Gypsy Rose Lee’s prediction is correct,’ she went on. ‘The message from Mr Greville is that he wants you all to work longer and harder to get this new, big order completed.’

  As she expected, there was dissent. Someone shouted out that Greville could stick working longer hours unless he was offering to pay them extra. Several women got to their feet as if to walk out, while another woman yelled out that Greville was lily-livered to send a mere girl to do his dirty work.

  ‘Please sit down and hear me out,’ Mariette shouted over the raised voices. ‘I haven’t been told anything about extra pay. And I know that asking you to work longer hours when so many of you have children who need you at home is going to cause difficulties. But there is a very good reason why you should all push yourselves a bit harder. Hands up all of you who have a husband, sweetheart or brothers who have enlisted!’