A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  Folding the newspaper at the page the advertisement was on, she glanced up in time to see a bus going in the direction of the firm. Newspaper tucked under her arm, handbag held firmly, hobble skirt only slightly impeding her, she joined the queue of those boarding it, thankful she’d not had to wait for ages; the cold brisk wind threatened snow and played with the upturned brim of her hat.

  Standing outside the tall building scanning the several firms marked on the front of the building, she felt her heart sink. What made her think herself capable of office work? Even so, she summoned enough courage to step into the cage of a lift to the second floor.

  Knocking lightly, she waited. A girl in a smart, narrow-skirted suit answered, smiled and said, ‘Just come in, dear – no need to knock.’

  Five young women sat on chairs against the wall, each with that tense about-to-be-interviewed look on their face, each clearly dressed in their best, which was so much better than her own clothing. Each obviously with far more intelligence than she imagined herself to have – girls who knew about offices, not factory girls used to standing at some conveyor belt for hours on end for a pittance, girls no doubt with a high school education.

  She’d never gone on to high school despite her excellent marks. ‘We ain’t got that kind of money for uniforms and books and things,’ her father had decreed. ‘Your sisters didn’t, nor your brothers. Wastin’ time for another couple of years when you could be earning honest money. Makin’ out you’re posh when you aint.’

  So she’d never been given that privilege.

  Handed a form to fill in: her name, previous employment, schools she had attended, any additional education she’d had. She took a seat at the end of the queue.

  As the next hour eased along and the first chair was vacated, in turn occupied by another hopeful, her confidence began to fade. Against all those still coming in and those that had been before, what chance did she stand?

  Finally it was her turn. The inner office door opened to disgorge the previous applicant and Connie got up at a signal from the young lady at the desk, who said that Mr Clayton would see her now. She was a little more encouraged by the fact that being quite tall she might look older and more efficient than she felt, as she tried to stop her eyes from watering.

  A man in a grey suit sat behind a desk. He looked somewhat debonair and had a nice smile as he gestured to the chair on the other side of the desk to where he sat.

  ‘Please, sit down, er …’ He broke off to consult the form. ‘Miss Lovell.’

  Obediently she sat.

  He looked up at her. ‘Are you working now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘References?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘A school report?’ He had a nice voice with a certain deep ring to it.

  Pushing the thought aside, she nodded and quickly produced it, glad to have had the forethought to nip back home after she’d seen the advertisement. Now she watched him scan it, her heart thumping fit to burst as she waited. He murmured, ‘Hmm,’ several times, which screamed, ‘Sorry, but we’re looking for only high school or college-educated applicants.’ After a third ‘Hmm,’ he looked up.

  ‘I see one of your tutors thought highly of your art skills, especially portraits, enough to help you. Have you kept it up?’

  ‘All the time,’ Connie burst out with more enthusiasm than she had intended. ‘I really love sketching and drawing and painting!’

  He sat looking at her as she closed her mouth in embarrassment, already feeling a fool and wishing she could run far away. He was leaning back in his chair and watching her closely, making her fidget uneasily under his stare.

  Finally he said, ‘I’m so sorry, my dear, but as it stands, I’m afraid that you wouldn’t be suitable for the vacancy as advertised.’

  What had she expected? This was only the first job she’d gone for and maybe she should concentrate on war work after all and do her bit. All she wanted now was to get out of this place. Nor was she comfortable with the way he was regarding her. Almost as if she was being flirted with, but she said nothing.

  He had brought his hands together, the tips of his fingers to his lips as if studying her. There was a sparkle in his eye.

  ‘However, if I may I’d like to set you a little task – with your consent, of course.’

  There followed a long drawn out pause while she wondered what she would be asked to do, all the while feeling herself to be under a sort of microscope, making her feel deeply uncomfortable. He hadn’t said test, he had said task. What on earth did he have in mind? She was about to ask when he spoke again.

  ‘This may sound a little odd, Miss Lovell …’ He gave a brief, self-conscious laugh before continuing. ‘Would it sound too preposterous if I were to ask you if you could do a small sketch of one of my colleagues for me? Would you be able to do that? I’ve just had a sudden idea, you see.’

  Bewildered, she found herself nodding in agreement, not quite understanding why. She was beginning to feel even more uncertain. Had he been elderly or imperious, she’d have walked out, but as he was youngish – she judged in his late twenties – not at all high-handed and being so nice, maybe he had something in mind for her that might get her a job here after all.

  ‘Our Mr Jonathan Turnbull,’ he said, ‘sits in the next office. What I’d like to ask you to do, if you don’t mind, is sketch our Mr Turnbull’s likeness as near as you can manage. Would you do that for me? Please.’

  Again she nodded. She found herself suddenly eager to show him that she was more skilled than he seemed to imply, and he could laugh his head off once she’d left this office.

  ‘Well, if you will excuse me just one moment,’ Mr Clayton said, getting up from his chair and walking out of the office, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  She could not help but wonder why a man of his age should still not be in uniform when men were out there fighting for their lives and the honour of their country.

  Minutes later he returned with Mr Turnbull, a rather plump, middle-aged man who, smiling awkwardly, sat down on a chair on one side of the room. Mr Clayton laid several pencils and a rubber on the desk where Connie was sitting, together with three or four sheets of high quality cartridge paper. It was then he saw the look on her face.

  ‘Please, Miss Lovell, I’m being very serious about this. When you have finished drawing our friend here, I’ll explain. This isn’t a joke. If you wish I’ll leave the room?’

  Connie merely shrugged, determined to prove her talent as an artist even if not as a filing clerk. But she didn’t want him looking over her shoulder. To her relief, he walked off, leaving her alone with her chubby sitter, who smiled awkwardly at her and said, ‘Sorry about this, miss, but he doesn’t do anything without reason.’

  Feeling more at ease and with a sudden surge of excitement, Connie took up one of the pencils and, studying the man’s podgy face, became lost in a world that she had always enjoyed.

  The man was decidedly embarrassed and it showed in his eyes. Connie always thought that the eyes made a person, brought them to life, bared their soul as no other part of the face could. And as Connie observed Mr Turnbull she could see that there was more than just embarrassment in there. Her pencil seemed to fly, hardly any need for the rubber. It was only a quick sketch but right out of the blue she felt inspired. This sometimes happened and in no time at all it was finished. She put the pencil on the desk together with the completed likeness. ‘It’s done,’ she announced firmly.

  The man got up and stretched. ‘Never could sit still for too long,’ he said quietly, seemingly over-awed. ‘Hope it was worth it. Can I see?’

  ‘Come and look,’ she said, feeling suddenly proud of the likeness she had captured, almost having forgotten where she was.

  She watched him bend over the drawing, stare at it for a moment, then straighten up. She heard him whisper, ‘Good God! It’s me. No doubt about that. But I look worried out of my life – sort of haunted. I never thought … I didn
’t think it showed.’

  His last words caught her attention. ‘Why should you feel haunted?’

  He looked at her for a moment or two, then seemed to collapse in on himself, his voice fading to a whisper.

  ‘My son-in-law was killed last week. My wife and I, we don’t know what to say or how. Our daughter is beside herself with grief, and we don’t know how to help her. We feel helpless. We feel—’

  The door opened, cutting him off mid-sentence as Mr Clayton came in.

  The man instantly straightened his shoulders, becoming a different person as his boss enquired, ‘Is it finished? There are a lot of applicants still waiting.’

  As if it were her fault, Connie bridled inwardly, beginning to feel on edge as he picked up her drawing and studied it a moment, comparing it to the sitter.

  ‘Good God! You look—’ he began, but Turnbull cut him off mid-sentence, saying, ‘Thanks, old man, but I’ve got work to do,’ and promptly waddled back to his own office. Mr Clayton watched him go with a crooked smile that Connie could only interpret as completely cordial.

  For a long time it seemed, there being other applicants waiting, he surveyed her drawing until she was on the point of asking if he was done with her as she had work to go back to, then he looked up at her and said quietly:

  ‘As I said, Miss Lovell, Constance, you’re not really suitable for the job of filing clerk, but, if you don’t mind, there’s something I really would like to put to you which you might be interested in. I have to make a few enquiries and it’s a bit of a long shot. Hopefully I’ll be in touch. But we’ll just have to see.’

  Chapter Six

  On the bus back to Shoreditch High Street she couldn’t get Mr Stephen Clayton out of her mind. The way he’d regarded her was unsettling, though she couldn’t quite say why, only that it had set a strange churning in her heart. Suddenly she wanted desperately to get that job, though it didn’t look all that likely now. But he’d said he’d something else in mind. What was it? She knew her father would think the worst of his interest in her, given the difference in their ages and social standing, but she felt sure that Mr Clayton was an honourable man more interested in her artistic skills than her pretty face.

  He had said before she left, ‘It often occurs to me that cameras can be a little intrusive. The moment people find themselves in the camera’s eye they instantly pose or try to hide, depending on circumstances. The result, a precious second of truth lost. A cameraman busily setting up his camera may fail to catch that illusive expression, a fleeting second of shock or devastation on a grief-stricken face. But no one notices someone with a pencil and a scrap of paper. An expression you seem to have caught on my colleague’s face. A camera can’t always do that.’ He had smiled at her, a charming smile that lit up his face, making her heart race.

  Walking home along Bethnal Green Road, too excited to return to work today even if it meant she got into trouble, she recalled that smile he’d given her after studying her drawing, even more than those words he’d spoken almost to himself. ‘Uncanny, quite uncanny, the expression you’ve caught. Could only have been there a second yet you’ve captured it and held on to it.’ But the more she thought of his smile, the more her heart began to race all over again.

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ he’d said, his smile fading, suddenly becoming serious. ‘But first I need to ask you: how long does an expression stay in your head?’

  The question had surprised her. ‘It stays with me,’ she’d said. It felt quite normal to her that it would, so why had he needed to ask such an odd question? Surely something seen lingered in everyone’s mind, didn’t it?

  It was then he’d mentioned that he might try and put an idea of his to the powers-that-be, as he termed it. It had sounded very mysterious and when she asked he’d answered with a lovely smile and ‘We’ll just have to see.’ He’d not expanded on it and now here she was, still blank as to what he’d had in mind – if he’d had anything at all, though it did, she was sure, have something to do with her being asked to sketch that Mr Whatever-His-Name-Was. He had promised to notify her one way or other, though it would take a little time and he had asked her to be patient.

  As he’d remarked with a wry grin, committee meetings seldom settle anything quickly and even then a proposition can be thrown out. But he would put his idea forward and see what would come of it.

  ‘If not …’ He’d shrugged. ‘It’ll be my loss. I’m good at facing up to loss.’ He’d ended with a look that made him strike Connie as someone who had faced some tragedy in his life. But she could still remember that whimsical smile he’d given.

  The question was, how long would she have to wait for a decision? Should she stay in her present job or carry on looking for another one where she’d be of more use to the war effort? Her mind on this, she finally turned into her street. There was no point going back to work now. She’d tell them tomorrow that she hadn’t been feeling very well.

  Her mum answered the door to her knock, and the first words to come spilling from her mouth were, ‘What you doing home? Are you poorly?’

  ‘I went looking for a job,’ she said as she passed her in the tiny hallway. ‘Like Dad suggested.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  Hanging her hat, scarf and coat on a hook, glad of the warmth of the house, she said, ‘I don’t have enough schooling. The man interviewing me said he might have something else in mind but not to count on it. So I shall wait. I don’t know how long for. Could be a waste of time and it was too wet to go looking for anything else. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll have to go to work tomorrow or you’ll lose the job you’ve got. And you don’t want that. Anyway, I’ve made dinner, so you might as well sit and have it with me.’

  Mum always cooked dinner at midday, eating hers then and reheating the others for when the rest of the family came home from work. Bringing in the meals, she went to the stairs and called out, ‘George, dinner’s ready.’

  ‘Be down in a minute,’ came the faint reply.

  As her mother came back into the room, she said, ‘He’s bin out.’

  ‘Looking for work or signing up?’ Connie asked tartly as she sat down to eat. Her mum gave half a sigh, torn between love for her son and loyalty to Dad.

  Her dad had made no secret of his feelings towards George: a mixture of anger, disgust, contempt and not a little embarrassment. She understood how he felt, but like Mum, she loved all her brothers and sisters. Though she was closer to her brothers, sometimes she felt as if her sisters looked down on her a little, maybe because she was the youngest, and sometimes it hurt. But they looked down on George more. Surely, he must know what they all thought of him after Bert and Ronnie had practically fallen over themselves to enlist, while he hung back, still quoting that same old phrase: Thou shalt not kill! He seemed quite impervious to others’ opinion of him, and sometimes Connie felt hardly able to look at him let alone speak to him.

  Her thoughts went suddenly to the man who’d interviewed her today, Mr Clayton: good looking, healthy, of fighting age, she’d judged. So why wasn’t he in the forces? Was journalism an exempt role? She didn’t think so. Had he even attempted to volunteer as her brothers had done? To believe such a thing would destroy these feelings he had conjured up inside her, feelings that even now were unsettling her.

  Hastily she turned her mind away from speculation. What the man did was nothing to do with her. She had her own life to worry about. He had at least made her think more seriously about this artistic talent she had.

  Dad called it messing about. For all that her eldest sister had liked the portrait of baby Henry, mostly she and Lilian sneered at her efforts and said it was about time she grew up. Her two brothers had no opinion and for that she was glad. Only George showed any interest, taking her drawings seriously, and for that she loved him and tolerated him more than the rest of the family. Mum, of course, was proud of her talent – said it came from her side, although none of it had seemed to come down to a
ny of the others. Now she prayed that she’d get this wonderful opportunity, whatever it turned out to be, to use it. All she could do was keep her fingers crossed.

  Upstairs George heard his sister come in and vaguely wondered at the reason for her being home so early from work, though his thoughts were elsewhere. Since his two brothers had enlisted, Dad kept calling him yellow, scared. He’d talked about it with his minister, Joseph Wootton-Bennett, who in his strong, assertive voice had advised him to trust his Bible that said emphatically, thou shalt not kill.

  ‘It says exactly what it means, my boy, and you can’t get away from that for it comes from the very mouth of God Himself. You are one of my most dedicated parishioners. Surely you would not go against the teaching of Our Lord and look to slay your fellow man? Yes, they are wrong to walk into another’s country, but ending a man’s God-given life will not solve the situation, my son. All you will succeed in doing is cutting short that man’s life – a man who may have been given no choice but to obey his superiors – and cause his parents to grieve for the son they had probably brought up tenderly, with love, in the hope of him living a long and useful life, marrying, begetting children, until God Himself called him. Condemn his wife to be a widow? Orphan his children? And why? Because this country says you must go against God’s Law and kill your fellow man, a man you have never met. You know it is wrong, my son.’

  Yes, it was wrong. He trusted his pastor implicitly. A non-conformist, Joseph Wootton-Bennett may have been at odds with the sentiments of most other churches, but his aim was to help the poor, the sick, the needy, expecting members of his congregation to do the same. How then could he go against such a man whose teaching made more sense than orthodox religion, which looked on those willing to go off to kill their fellow man with pride? Now, with his brothers having rushed off to join up, he was beginning to find himself in disgrace, his beliefs misunderstood.