by Lily Baxter
‘You’ll find a surprise waiting for you,’ he called after her. ‘She gave me a shock, I can tell you.’
With his words barely registering, Elsie climbed the stairs. She longed for the privacy of her bedroom where she could have a good cry and release all the pent-up emotions of the last few hours, but she knew that was unlikely to happen. She tried to compose herself, knowing that Marianne would spot that there was something wrong the moment she saw her.
She let herself into the flat and her nostrils were assailed by the pungent smell of French cigarettes. Marianne was in the entrance hall waiting for her. ‘She’s home,’ she said, pointing to the drawing room. ‘Felicia breezed into the flat this afternoon dressed in khaki with her things packed in a kitbag. She looked like Vesta Tilley dressed up as a Tommy. I quite expected her to give us a rendition of “Jolly Good Luck to a Girl Who Loves a Soldier”. Anyway, come in and meet her. She’s been asking about you.’
Speechless, Elsie followed her into the drawing room and saw her hostess languishing on the sofa with a glass of gin and tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Elsie had seen the photographs of Felicia in her prime which were dotted about the flat and she had been a picture of elegance, but this woman was thin to the point of emaciation. The skin was taut over her high cheekbones and her patrician nose gave her profile a dignity that was lacking in the posed studio portraits. Her blonde hair was scraped into a tight chignon at the back of her head, and even without make-up she was stunningly handsome. She put her glass down and rose to her feet, holding out her arms. ‘Elsie, my dear, it’s lovely to meet you. Marianne has told me all about you.’
Elsie was startled by this unexpected welcome, and she felt her cheeks redden. ‘It’s very kind of you to allow me to stay in your flat, Miss Wilby.’
‘It’s Felicia, darling. Miss Wilby sounds like an eighty-year-old Sunday school teacher.’ She sank back onto the sofa, and launched into an account of her experiences on the Western Front with lurid descriptions of the privations she had suffered along with the troops, and the sights she had witnessed in the field hospitals where she went to visit the injured men. Elsie felt physically sick at the thought of Guy, who was so fastidious in all things, being catapulted into such horrendous conditions. She found it hard to imagine him covered in mud from head to foot, like the men Felicia described, their flesh tormented by fleas and lice and their sufferings unimaginable.
Elsie waited for Felicia to refresh herself with a mouthful of gin and tonic, and she stood up. ‘It’s my turn to cook supper,’ she said apologetically. ‘I’d better get on with it or we won’t be eating until midnight.’
‘You girls have done wonders without staff.’ Felicia held her glass out to Marianne. ‘A top-up would be wonderful, darling.’
Elsie made her escape to the kitchen.
‘One gets so tired of bully beef,’ Felicia said, attacking the lamb stew with relish. ‘This is delicious, Elsie.’ She broke a bread roll in half. ‘Rationing will come eventually,’ she said, smothering it in butter. ‘So I intend to make the most of every mouthful. Is there any wine or have you girls drunk my meagre cellar dry?’
Marianne took a bottle of claret from the sideboard. ‘The only thing in the cellar is coal, Felicia, as you well know. We’ve managed quite well during your absence, largely thanks to dear Elsie. She’s whipped Anthea and me into shape so that we take our turns cleaning and cooking. You wouldn’t believe how much we’ve both changed.’
‘What happened to Violet and Mrs Beale? Did you sack them?’
‘Of course not,’ Elsie said hastily. ‘Violet left to work in a munitions factory and Mrs Beale has gone to Croydon to look after her grandchildren.’
‘Oh well. I suppose it is wartime.’ Felicia sipped the wine that Marianne had just poured. ‘I’ve been so used to eating round a campfire or in a soggy tent that this is pure luxury. When this dreadful war comes to an end I think we’ll find the world is a very different place, and some of the changes will be for the good.’
‘How do you work that out, Felicia?’ Marianne asked curiously.
‘There won’t be a class system any longer. I read in the English newspapers that the government is telling people they shouldn’t keep servants because it’s unpatriotic, so from now on that’s how we’ll live.’
‘Are you home for long, Auntie?’ Anthea asked. ‘We’ve missed you.’
‘I can see that you’ve all got along splendidly without me but, in answer to your question, I’ll be here until just before Christmas when we’re planning more shows for our boys in the trenches. I’m quite a seasoned campaigner. In the meantime I’ll set about raising funds for the troops. There’s much to be done.’
‘I’m sure the soldiers appreciate it,’ Elsie said earnestly. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for you.’
Felicia shuddered dramatically. ‘Awful, darling. Quite awful. And one of the worst things was being unable to have a bath. I long for lovely hot water scented with bath salts and soft clean towels to dry myself, and of course my gorgeous feather bed. It’s good to be home.’
‘Some of us would love the chance to go abroad and do our bit.’ Marianne sent a meaningful glance in Elsie’s direction. ‘I’m frankly fed up with being patronised by the men in Room 40. They like to think we’re all fluffy little things who only talk about kittens and embroidery and new clothes. I’ve put in for a transfer and one day I’ll show them what I’m made of.’
‘Good for you, darling,’ Felicia said, smiling. ‘Is there any more of that lovely stew, Elsie? I could eat a horse, and we quite often did.’
Felicia settled back into civilian life with boundless enthusiasm, throwing herself into organising charity dances and benefits in aid of the troops, and planning her next series of shows in great detail. She was rarely in the flat for long enough to do anything but eat and sleep, or came home after a long hard day simply to bathe, change her clothes and go out again to attend one of the events she had helped to organise.
As the weeks went by, spring evolved into summer, and autumn gave way to the chills of winter. Elsie continued her work with the refugees and giving classes in French, but having seen Guy off to endure the horrors of the battlefield she was even more conscious of the fact that the fresh-faced young men who stumbled over their irregular verbs would soon receive their postings. They were all sons of mothers who must be suffering nightmares even before their boys were pitchforked into hell, and some might be leaving wives and small children. The fact that her students laughed and joked and teased her mercilessly made it even harder to ignore her fears for their chances of survival.
Back in the flat the atmosphere was tense. Anthea was obviously missing Tubby and devoted herself to her work, spending her evenings at home writing letters to him or playing records on Marianne’s new gramophone.
Marianne herself was a bubbling mass of contradictions. She was still trying to get Elsie a job in Room 40, but it was not as easy as she had thought. Most of the time she seemed carefree and happy, but the next moment she might sink into a deep depression. She was so volatile that Elsie would not have been surprised if she had been sacked from her job, but after months of lobbying and generally making a nuisance of herself in Room 40 Marianne was hauled up in front of Sybil, Lady Hambro, the formidable head of the secretarial section.
‘I thought I was going to get the boot,’ she said when she arrived home on a foggy winter evening, bringing the unmistakeable smell of a peasouper into the fuggy warmth of the drawing room. She flung off her hat and dropped her damp coat over the back of a chair. Elsie was balancing precariously on top of a ladder as she attempted to pin up paper chains in preparation for Christmas, which was just a fortnight away. ‘You should have seen Hambro,’ Marianne said, flinging herself down on a chair and kicking off her shoes. ‘The old girl was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk smoking a cigar all through the interrogation. She grilled me like a kipper. Anyone would think I was a German spy pla
nted in Room 40 to pass on secrets to the Boche, instead of a woman ready and eager to die for my country if need be.’
She was interrupted by Felicia who had been rushing about searching for odds and ends to pack in her suitcase as she was leaving next day for her next round of entertaining the troops in Northern France and Flanders. She delved down the side of the sofa and came up with a spectacle case. ‘Ah. I knew this was somewhere in here.’ She opened it and tut-tutted. ‘But my specs aren’t in it. Where did I leave them?’
Elsie looked down from her superior height on the topmost rung of the wooden steps and grinned. ‘On your head. You’re wearing them like a tiara.’
Felicia retrieved her glasses with a sigh. ‘So much to do. I know I should have started earlier but what with writing Christmas cards and sorting out all the things I need to take for a sojourn of at least a month in the awful conditions our poor boys have to suffer, I haven’t had a moment to call my own.’
‘You might actually see one or both of us in Paris, if you get that far,’ Marianne said casually.
Anthea dropped the paper chain she was about to pass up to Elsie. ‘You’re going to Paris?’
Elsie wagged a finger at Marianne. ‘You’re not supposed to tell anyone. Lady Hambro would have you thrown in the Tower for less.’
‘And shot as a traitor,’ Anthea added, chuckling. ‘So you managed to persuade her, did you? She’s actually going to trust you to go abroad and spy for Britain.’
‘Shut up, Anthea.’ Marianne glanced round the room and shivered. ‘You never know who’s listening. Anyway, you weren’t supposed to know about it.’
‘No one could live in this flat and not know what you’ve been planning. If you’re going to be a spy then heaven help us all.’ Felicia left the room, closing the door behind her.
‘So what will you be doing in Paris?’ Anthea slumped down on the sofa. ‘We all know that you’re going under cover so I don’t see that a little more information is going to endanger national security.’
‘Well, if you must know, I’m being assigned to the department of British military intelligence in the Rue Saint-Roch.’ Marianne laid her forefinger on her closed lips. ‘But it’s top secret.’
‘All right, you’ve said that before, but what about Elsie?’ Anthea dodged a paper chain that had come apart and drifted to the ground.
‘She’ll have to go through a series of interviews before they agree to her coming with me. I’ve told her ladyship that Elsie and I are like Siamese twins. Where one goes the other has to accompany her, and I can’t work alone.’
‘And what did the grand dame say to that?’ Anthea retrieved the paper chain and passed it to Elsie. ‘Did she tell you to go to hell?’
‘We had a grown-up discussion,’ Marianne said airily. ‘She said no and I said then I’m going to leave here and work in a munitions factory and probably earn more, considering the hours of overtime I’ve put in.’
‘You would. At least that part’s true,’ Elsie said, pinning the paper chain to the coving.
‘Indeed it is,’ Marianne said, frowning. ‘Do you know that the men in the department get paid twice as much as we women? That’s not fair and I told her ladyship so. I think it might have struck a chord because she eased up a bit after that.’
Elsie climbed down from the ladder and moved it to the centre of the room. ‘Pass me another paper chain, Anthea.’
‘So are you going with her or not, Elsie?’ Anthea asked, holding up a length of the linked coloured paper strips. ‘Marianne takes ages to get to the point.’
‘I applied a couple of months ago and I still haven’t heard, but if they accept me I’ll have several weeks of intensive training.’
‘If all goes well we’ll be off to France in early spring. I can’t believe that it’ll soon be 1916,’ Marianne said thoughtfully. ‘And they said that the war would be over by last Christmas. Here we are putting up the decorations and there’s no sign of an end to hostilities, but we’ll change all that, won’t we, Elsie? The two of us will win the war together.’
Elsie leaned over perilously to fix the drawing pin into the plaster ceiling rose. ‘If you say so, Marianne.’
Marianne had, as usual and as she predicted, got her own way at last. Elsie had endured several interviews in Room 40, which at times had seemed more like interrogations, but eventually she had been given permission to accompany Marianne to Paris. Marianne congratulated her on her success but Elsie suspected that it was the striking likeness between them that had eventually swung opinion in her favour. Lady Hambro had puffed cigar smoke in the air and had eyed her thoughtfully, before giving her opinion that it might prove useful for a would-be agent to have someone who could act as their double. She had laughed heartily and said that anything which would confuse the enemy was an advantage. Elsie had signed the Official Secrets Act and had been solemnly appointed to a very junior position in the secret service. She told Marianne afterwards that she fully expected to be presented with a mop and bucket the moment she entered their new office in Paris.
On a bitterly cold February morning Elsie woke up and for a moment thought she was back in Cromwell Road, but she stretched and her feet touched the icy cold part of the bed bringing her back to reality with a jerk. She pulled the thin coverlet up to her chin. Although the room was in almost complete darkness the first grey light of dawn was seeping through the small windowpanes and gradually everything came into focus. The sound of soft breathing reminded her that she was sharing the sparsely furnished room with Marianne.
They had left the luxury of Felicia’s flat and had travelled to France in an overcrowded troop ship, although they had been afforded the comparative luxury of a cabin below deck. It had not been the most comfortable journey, but luckily neither of them suffered from seasickness. They had landed under the cover of darkness and the official who had travelled with them had organised transport to take them to the station, which was seething with men in uniform. The smell of French cigarettes mingled with the stench of unwashed bodies, smoke and engine oil. The babel of voices raised to make themselves heard over the hissing eruptions of steam from the huge iron monsters only added to the din and confusion that surrounded them. Eventually they had managed to hail a fiacre, which took them to their lodgings close to the rue Saint-Roch. The concierge, who had introduced herself as Madame Chausse, had shown them to their apartment. She had been proud of the facilities offered at such a reasonable rate, but Elsie was not impressed.
She yawned and sat up, reaching for her dressing gown with a sigh. This is where they would be for the foreseeable future. She rose somewhat unwillingly from her bed, and taking care not to wake Marianne made her away across the cold oilcloth-covered floor to the tiny room which served as a kitchen. The furnishings were basic and the only method of heating food, or obtaining any warmth at all, was a single gas ring set on a rickety wooden table next to a chipped stone sink with a single tap. The bathroom and lavatory were situated at the far end of the landing and shared by all the occupants on the fifth floor.
Elsie washed her hands and face in ice-cold water and filled the kettle before placing it on the gas ring, which lit with a sputter, flamed and then dwindled to almost nothing. At this rate it would take an hour to make a pot of tea. She had had the forethought to pack a good supply of Lyons’ tea and several packets of cocoa, but the small amount of luggage they had been allowed precluded very much more than the bare essentials. Marianne had been most annoyed to discover that she could only bring a limited amount of clothes, but eventually she had been dissuaded from packing an evening gown and several silk tea gowns. Elsie had managed to convince her that warm underwear and woollen jumpers would be far more useful in the bitter winter weather.
She hurried into the bedroom and dressed quickly, but she was still shivering. She added an extra jumper in an attempt to stop her teeth chattering and pulled on her fur-lined boots. They had been warned in advance that the Parisians were suffering severe privations, but sh
e had not been prepared for the austerity they had come across in such a short space of time. Coal, the concierge had told them grimly, was unobtainable, as what supplies there were had gone to factories and the military. Domestic boilers could not be lit and paraffin was unobtainable. ‘You will turn your lights off at ten o’clock in the evening and if you want to use candles they will cost you forty centimes each.’ Madame Chausse had left them to consider this as they settled into their new home.
Elsie glanced at the travelling clock that Marianne had placed on the small table between their beds. She went over and shook her gently. ‘Wake up. It’s eight o’clock. We don’t want to be late on our first day at work.’
Marianne opened one eye and groaned. ‘Go away. I want to sleep.’
‘Get up. I’ve put the kettle on but heaven only knows how long it will take to boil, and there’s no milk.’
Marianne snapped into a sitting position. ‘It’s freezing in here. We’ll die of pneumonia.’
‘Nonsense,’ Elsie said briskly. ‘I’m going to find the lavatory, and then I’ll go out and get some milk and something for breakfast. I saw a shop a little further down the street.’
‘I refuse to share a lavatory with strangers,’ Marianne said, reaching for her dressing gown.
‘I don’t think we’ve got much choice.’
Marianne leaned over the edge of the bed and peered underneath. She righted herself with a grunt. ‘I thought there might have been a po, but there’s only dust and fluff. I don’t think much of the cleaners here.’
‘If you think I’m emptying a chamber pot for you, forget it,’ Elsie said, giggling. ‘And the only cleaners here will be you and me, so we’ll take it in turns.’ She took her hat and coat from the row of hooks on the door and left the room before Marianne had a chance to grumble.
The corridor was dark and the only source of light was a window at the far end. She made her way towards it, trying hard to remember which door Madame had indicated when briefly showing them round. It would be embarrassing to barge into the wrong room, but all the doors looked the same. She was getting desperate when a woman emerged from one of the rooms. Elsie hurried up to her. ‘Good morning,’ she said in French. ‘I’m looking for the lavatory.’
