by Bryher;
“You will never get anywhere by worrying.”
“I know, dear, but I can’t stop thinking; and when I think, I worry. I am going now to arrange about sandwiches. If you don’t mind, I’d rather picnic in the shelter, because hearing that siren just as we are sitting down to supper gives me indigestion. I shall collect Rashleigh, because if anything did happen I should never be able to get him down those stairs, and Cook can fill the thermos with soup. After all, as long as the guns are firing it is very difficult to sleep.”
Was it dampness or was it the camp bed? Selina rubbed her neck as she got up, it seemed to be permanently stiff and she must remember to take her liniment down with her. It seemed monstrous that they should all be suffering so much. War… it was like an endless succession of rainy days in a small country place on a brief summer holiday. Oh, dear, every winter brought her a year nearer that date (she had watched it come to so many) when the hustle of the tearoom would be too fatiguing to be borne; and she had dreamed, not of escaping it, no, there was a moment when evasion was impossible, but of pushing it just a little further away. If I had my life over again, she thought, staring at the empty, crackling twigs of the plane trees, I should like to be a housekeeper in one of those funny little City houses. What fun it could be to sit in a high attic with a gable, overlooking the crowded streets, at one not with London only but with the inner kernel of it, with those early moments when Chelsea gardens were a day’s ride away. She imagined the pavement in the June light, a little fainter really than apricot, the men gone, the offices silent and herself painting (for if she were born into the situation that she wanted, she would also have the skill)… think of the history recorded in a solitary cornice! How often she had wanted to say to her companions, this is not dust, this is not smoke or cloud, it is a rainbow floating over battlements. Above all, she wanted to wait in the summer dusk and know that though it was holiday-time she did not have to go away and sit beside a bath chair on some promenade listening to Miss Humphries. London was unhealthy, Miss Humphries had always complained, but what was the using of living if you became a great, rank vegetable without any interests?
It was stupid to dream, her aunt had always reproved her for it, but tonight age haunted her. Poor Mr. Rashleigh, how sad it must be to feel sureness go, the skill of his hand. Worse than if he had never been a painter. What must he think of Beowulf? That dog… but she must try to be tolerant, it gave Angelina so much pleasure. “You will come down to the shelter, won’t you, dear, before the guns begin? I know you’ll laugh at me, but I have a feeling that it is going to be bad tonight. It makes me nervous to know that you are upstairs.”
They could hear the shop door constantly open and close, as Selina went out with the tray; the girls from neighbouring offices were coming in for early tea before the stampede home.
7
MR. BURLAP WALKED straight over to the window. “Bricks and mortar, Miss Wilkins,” it was his inevitable greeting but the new secretary was getting used to it, “bricks and mortar; ah, if I had my life to live over again I’d farm.” He looked down at the square that was full of plane trees and a half-dug shelter trench. “If we had not drifted away from Nature we should never have had this horrible war. You would never find bird-watchers raking up the skies with those miserable aeroplanes.” A silver barrage balloon floated above the black, desolate branches. “It’s going to be a dreadful night,” he said, wrinkling up his nose, “I hope I shall get home.” His mother worried so when he was late and he simply could not afford to ask for sick leave at present. Everything was upset and the raids made him feel—it was useless pretending that they didn’t—that life was not worth living.
“It must be a terrible journey, Mr. Burlap,” Rose Wilkins said respectfully, “especially now the days are so dark.”
“Yes, it means feeling my way to the coach stop in the morning, and crawling along the lane in pitch blackness at night. But we have the stars, Miss Rosy Wings, we have the stars. You must not think that I blame your ancestors for the bombers. Peter Wilkins did his flying in imagination, that is its proper place.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Burlap, but we never had a Peter in our family. My great-grandfather’s name was Alfred, I looked it up.”
“Dear, dear, I perceive that you have never adventured into the byways of our literature. Winged beings drew Mr. Wilkins, but his name was Peter, to an island full of marvels. A penny dreadful, Miss Rosy Wings, but a penny dreadful with a difference.”
Rose had often changed employers since she had first gone out to business aged sixteen, but none of them had resembled her present chief. Some had shouted at her, some had been thoughtful, but they had all used an English she could understand. She did not mind Burlap’s laughing at her, men liked to work their moods off on their secretaries, but his indifference was baffling. He was easygoing about lunch and his dictation was superb, but privately she had christened him “the Loon.”
“I can still count five leaves.” Burlap stared out of the pane that was neatly crossed with strips of paper; autumn was, he decided, a less disturbing time than spring. “But come, we must get on our treadmill or the wheels will stop; we have a busy afternoon.”
How like the Loon to notice the branches and not the condition of the room! Rose sat down primly and rigidly. Burlap glanced at his newly won carpet to give himself courage. It was only then that he noticed an unfamiliar space. “But, Miss Rosy Wings, why, what … where is your desk?”
“They fetched it away.”
“What!”
“Four men collected it while we were both at lunch.”
“Collected your desk?”
“Yes, Mr. Burlap, they loaded it onto a van in the courtyard, the one that has just driven away. I did not give the men anything as I did not know the procedure. Ought I to have given them a shilling?”
“Tell me, Miss Wilkins, I am worried, I have been worried, but am I to understand that … unauthorized persons have entered this room where I am engaged, oh, in a very humble and insignificant manner, in guiding the destinies of a war racked country and have removed the tool with which you aid me in such labours?”
“Yes, Mr. Burlap.”
“And you did nothing about it, you did not protest, you did not summon the doorkeeper?”
“How could I, Mr. Burlap? They were within their rights. I am afraid you have forgotten that I only joined the staff three weeks ago.”
“I am well aware of the fact. You still have not run folder X/Z 10342 to earth?”
“I am only entitled, sir, I mean Mr. Burlap, to a deal table.”
“Of course, of course, I did remark that you were using an item of furniture to which you had no legal right, but this is wartime and how can we get on with that report, and without the report they can’t have their machines, unless you have something to write on? Where is your table?”
“The foreman said that a Department in the country had been promoted, he wouldn’t say where, it’s hush-hush, but I think I know because the girl who sat at my table for lunch …”
“Yes, yes, Miss Wilkins, but where is your table?”
“The hush-hush groups are to have our desks and we are to have their tables, on Monday, I think.”
“But this is Thursday.”
“That’s what I said, but the foreman shouted back that I could sit on the floor. I can’t do that, Mr. Burlap, it’s so heavy on the stockings.”
Mr. Burlap looked out of the window to relieve his embarrassment. The barrage balloon was looking more of an aluminium sausage than ever. “The Government would never wish you to assume so undignified a position,” he said severely, thinking of the hilarity the situation would provoke among the juniors. “We must use our initiative, improvise.”
“I have sat on a packing case.” There had been a glorious morning in one of Rose’s first jobs when the manager had removed the office furniture in a van before his partner arrived.
“This isn’t a question of a chair but a table.” Burlap sta
red gloomily at the carpet that showed he was a seven-hundred-a-year man and saw with horror marks of muddy boots on the new surface. “What do you suggest we do?”
“I could bring my little bedside table with me tomorrow,” Rose suggested, chewing her pencil, “that is, if they would let me take it on the bus. Auntie made me ever such a sweet little cloth to put over it, but it is plain deal underneath.”
“I am afraid that would never do, Miss Rosy Wings; if anything were to happen it would not be on the Government records and we would be uninsured.”
“If we have a direct hit,” Rose said cheerfully, “there wouldn’t be anything of us left to claim anything.”
Such a different type from our regulars, Burlap thought, wishing that his previous secretary had not joined the A.T.S. “The proportion of direct hits per population, Miss Wilkins, is, as I am glad to say, infinitesimal. I have a friend in Statistics who tells me that at the present rate it will be several years before London is demolished. No, regulations are regulations and if in the flurry of opening this new wing we break them, you see the result! Without rules, Government cannot function nor can we bring the war to a successful end.”
“I don’t see how we are going to win it if we keep to them.”
Burlap pretended not to hear. It reminded him of a painful altercation on the coach between a young pilot who should properly have been at school and a colleague. “Our first objective ought to be Minnie,” the fellow had grinned, “I don’t mind fighting but I do mind leaflets.” It revealed a shocking state of part of the public mind.
“Well, I suppose we shall have to recast our afternoon. It is annoying because it will throw our schedule completely out of gear. I have an appointment at three,” he glanced at the memos, “some fellow named Ferguson, you might find me his dossier. As soon as I have got rid of him I will go and call on Supply. Perhaps we can get the loan of a table for the morning.”
“I believe that factory is waiting for your report, Mr. Burlap. Unless it’s ready for the Committee tomorrow, production will be held up till next week.”
“I could not regret it more, but if you have no table what are we to do?”
Nothing, Rose thought, nothing. If a private firm carried on in such a manner it would be bankrupt in a week; but public service was like a steam roller, it went in a straight line or it stopped. As her uncle said to her every evening, “Why should a Ministry be efficient, my girl? It hasn’t anything to lose. Provided you get your salary, it is no concern of yours what happens. I can’t stand a woman, and you know it, who pokes her head into politics.”
“Mr. Hodgkins rang up in no end of a temper.”
“I am afraid that is what is wrong with us as a nation, Miss Wilkins; few of our young men have learned the elements of procedure. Without regulations we have anarchy. I am sorry that our schedule is delayed, but we are not responsible. And once you have found that folder, I will give you permission to knit.”
“Sometimes I’m glad my boy friend’s in the Navy.”
“Really, Miss Rosy Wings, I must ask you to keep your personal reminiscences until after office hours.” Among war’s disagreeable changes this enforced mixing with incompatible characters was the worst. He opened the top folder on his own desk and eyed it distastefully. “You know, Miss Wilkins, these papers should have been dealt with much lower down.”
Rose opened the middle drawer of the filing cabinet and began to lift the contents out methodically. She wondered, as she had often wondered before, whether this treasure of flimsy carbons really helped the world to move. It was a dusty job and she wished that she had brought an overall to put over her clean blouse. Two pieces of cardboard stuck. She put her hand down and touched something soft. “Oo, Mr. Burlap, look! Biscuits!”
“Biscuits!”
“Yes, they’ve upset all over the back of the drawer. Are they samples, or shall I clean them up?”
Mr. Burlap walked over to look at the offending crumbs. They smelt of cheap fat and must. “Disgusting! Throw them away at once. But how could they have got into the file? I lock it personally every evening.”
“I expect someone used the folder as a lunch plate.” “Not in my Department.”
“Perhaps it’s a fifth columnist making signals?”
“I am afraid, Miss Wilkins, we must leave ideas like that to the pages of the popular press, where they belong. It is our duty, you know, as servants of a great community, to be cautious and sober in our statements. People look to us for guidance.”
“But there were fifth columnists in France.”
“Even a quisling could hardly use crumbs. No, Miss Rosy Wings, I fear that once upon a time you misdirected one of your sprites.”
Miss Wilkins giggled. She was going to enjoy her supper, having the family listen to her for once. “And the Loon stood there,” she would say, “with his nose puckered up, just not able to believe his eyes. The man doesn’t even know what goes on in his own Department; but then, like all these Government fellows, he lives in a dream.” “Call it a haze,” Uncle would snort, “and we have to pay for it!” She shook the biscuits into a sheet of paper rescued from the wastepaper basket and sauntered off to the recess at the end of the corridor where they made tea, hung up their coats, and gossiped.
Mr. Burlap glanced up from his blotter, trying to formulate his plans for the afternoon. He wished his mother would understand that it was the war that made him late for dinner every evening. (“Perhaps when you have laid us all up with a bad dose of flu, you will catch the four-five.”) The darker and more wintry the day the more necessary it was, as an example to the junior staff, not to leave a second before the appointed hour. With two changes and all the transport upset he could not help it if he missed the connection and got in at nine. It was a consolation to feel that the war was bringing his “blueprint age” much nearer, but he hoped that aerial traffic would be outlawed at the peace conference. He hated those youths who sprang into the skies overnight, disturbing the rooks and yelling at each other like footballers. Just then the telephone buzzed and the desk porter announced a visitor. “Colonel Ferguson? That’s right, I was expecting him; send him up.”
It was another of the volunteers, no doubt, who thought that they could gate-crash a Government Department just because the country was at war; one more symptom of the general slackness. Let them fight their way in, as he, Burlap, had done, from a grimy desk with a bus seat for a study. He could always recognize a colleague who had come from the same school mill as himself. There was an identity of purpose, a shade more precision in their reports. He could not disregard an introduction from Harris (people thought he would soon get his Department), but the interview, while friendly, might leave the applicant in the air. There was a knock, the messenger entered, and an old gentleman followed him with that air of assurance and good temper that Burlap so disliked, just the constituent, in fact, who prodded a Member to ask awkward questions in the House.
“Good afternoon, what news have you got of our good friend Mr. Harris? Do sit down, we still have chairs. Whilst I was in conference there seems to have been a slight misunderstanding about a desk, so this room is looking barer than usual. We’ve been flooded with new employees who will not learn procedure. There’s a right way, I tell them, and a wrong; but they never listen.”
Ferguson nodded; this time he felt that the interview was going to be definite. “I haven’t seen Harris since I got back to London; he has been evacuated north.”
“Yes,” the lucky fellow, Burlap thought, I wish I were in his shoes, “he hates it, we hear, but it’s wartime and we can’t grumble too much, can we?” He gave his visitor one of those witty smiles that were “just pure Hollywood” as Miss Wilkins said ecstatically. “It would be disastrous if anything happened to the records.”
“Of course. That is why I have come to see you. Harris thought with all the present dislocation you might have some work for me.”
“It’s rather late,” Burlap said, chewing his pencil tip
, “all the purely voluntary posts have been filled.”
“I was living abroad, as I expect Harris told you. It took me some time to get back.”
“What was it like on the Continent?”
“Oh, very interesting. Of course we knew that war was inevitable years ago, but people here would not listen.”
It was just as he had surmised; Ferguson was another of those old-fashioned chatterers who were partly responsible for the present chaos. A type that had hated Chamberlain and talked irresponsibly about “liberty,” as if it mattered that a frontier was changed. “What a tragedy this is,” he said, “the Germans were such an orderly people.” To Burlap, with his instinctive distrust of action, no more admirable virtue existed.
“They were really not very efficient, you know, except with their propaganda.” It was curious how unwillingly the English gave up any tradition, but Ferguson himself had never found German organization particularly good. “Still, that’s all over for the moment; what I want to do is help to the best of my ability.”
“And what special qualifications do you possess?”
“I speak several European languages fairly fluently,” Ferguson said with a faint touch of pride. It was fortunate that he had never allowed his mind to rust and that he had kept up his German translations.
“Languages!”
“Yes.”
“Rather a drug on the market. I think, on the whole … ” Burlap jotted a few words on the blotter, “it would be better not to mention them. I am not suggesting, mind you, that you are a fifth columnist, but you know how people talk? All this grumbling about the British climate is exaggerated. I have often watched birds in February, with only a light coat on.”
Ferguson did not attempt to argue. He knew that sunlight suggested sin to many islanders, who seemed to confuse it with free love; and perhaps, he looked at the sallow face in front of him, a pale atmosphere suited some temperaments. “What about liaison work with the foreign troops? They must need someone, if only to teach the men English.”