“Ah,” said the uniformed man. “Yes.” Head, hand, and papers promptly retreated behind the hatch. A loud, suspicious rustling was followed by the tinkle of a telephone and a muttered one-sided exchange of which Miss Seeton, mindful of her manners and moving a few steps away, heard nothing beyond the single syllable hat—which in full, she knew, could have referred to almost anything.
“Awright,” said the uniformed man, reemerging from his retreat with a suddenness that made Miss Seeton jump. “Here you are.” The muscular hand waved the papers in her direction. “You shouldn’t have to show ’em again after Ma Morris has checked ’em, but keep ’em by you all the time, just in case.” Now that the newcomer’s legitimacy had apparently been established, the custodian of the hatchway was willing to impart useful information. “Third door on the left, and go in as soon’s you’ve knocked.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Seeton, receiving her assorted credentials with a shy smile. “The third door on the left, and I’m to go in after knocking. Er—thank you.”
“Time enough to thank me when you come out again ... if you come out again.” The hatchway’s custodian grinned as he uttered this ominous warning. “There’s some folk whose bark is worse’n their bite, but our Mrs. Morris ain’t one of them. She can be a holy terror if she takes a dislike to you, not that you look the sort to go giving trouble.”
“Indeed I’m not,” Miss Seeton assured him with a startled blush. It was true there had been those at art college who preached—and lived—the bohemian lifestyle, but Emily Dorothea, daughter of Alice, had never been of their number; and, so many years later, she had hardly thought herself to resemble (even by association) the sort of young woman who might Give Trouble. Which was of course the uniformed man’s tactful way, as he must know from her identity card that she was unmarried, of saying Getting Into Trouble. Which, even had she ever been so inclined to do, at her age, thirty next birthday, which was closer than she cared to think, whether there was a war on or not—
“Off you go, then.” The one-armed man’s encouragement was brisk. Looked terrified out of her wits, and going to be a welfare officer—’strewth. Those girls would eat her for breakfast if she didn’t buck up her ideas, and dithering in the corridor wasn’t exactly a good start. He hoped Mrs. Morris would set the poor girl straight, he really did, but if he knew the woman, she’d make mincemeat of this one.
“Off you go, duck,” he urged. “Third door on the left.” Then he winked. “And give her my love!”
Miss Seeton, unsettled by the wink—one had to suppose he was joking, but in these uncertain days, when the whole world seemed upside down, who could tell?—nodded politely at him, blushed again, and hurried to the third door on the left, where she knocked and waited a courteous five seconds before turning the handle and going in.
There was a grim, grey-haired woman standing by the window—would there ever again (mused Miss Seeton) come a day when windows were free of their brown paper tape?—holding a cardboard folder in her left hand. Even from the doorway Miss Seeton could not fail to notice how white her knuckles were, and how deep the lines of tension on her face as she looked at the newcomer, hesitated, and tried to force a smile. She tried in vain. “You must be Emily Seeton,” she greeted her visitor, who could not deny it.
Nor was Miss Seeton’s attempt at a smile any more successful than that of the grey-haired woman. On both sides courtesy had fought with nerves, and lost.
“You’d better let me see your papers.” The grey-haired woman moved away from the window and threw the folder on her desk with an irritable slap.
Once more Miss Seeton held the documents out for inspection. Mrs. Morris (that air of authority required no formal introduction) was not so much casual in her manners, she decided, as preoccupied. The war, no doubt ...
Mrs. Morris hesitated again after studying the papers, then tossed them across the desk towards Miss Seeton, and sighed. “Sit down,” she instructed, following her own instruction as she spoke. Quietly Miss Seeton collected her papers, pulled out the visitors’ chair, and seated herself in front of one she must now regard as her new superior.
“They told me to expect you,” said her new superior in noncommittal accents. “You are Emily Seeton, sent from the ministry—and I’m Mrs. Morris.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Morris,” said Miss Seeton.
Mrs. Morris waved the courtesy aside. “We’ve no time for the niceties, Seeton. We’ve a war to fight—aeroplanes to manufacture—and you may as well know right now that I didn’t want you.” Miss Seeton blinked. “There’s no time,” Mrs. Morris informed her crisply, “to waste on training you. Some kind of teacher, they told me?” She gave Miss Seeton a sharp look as she opened her mouth to explain. “Art, of all things,” went on Mrs. Morris with scorn. “That’s no use on the factory floor, believe me.”
Miss Seeton would have liked to agree with her superior that, without training, she would indeed be of no practical use on the manufacturing side, but Mrs. Morris continued her scornful denunciation of the younger woman before the latter could draw breath.
“You’re still wet behind the ears for a job like this, Seeton. We’re not dealing with schoolgirls sitting in nice neat rows with their arms folded while you stand in front of a blackboard hurling order marks and detentions at anyone who misbehaves. This is the real world, not the Never-Never Land. Here,” said Mrs. Morris, “we’ve had to grow up.”
“There is a war on,” said Miss Seeton as Mrs. Morris sat forward on her chair preparing to emphasise her next point.
The interpolation, quietly though it had been delivered, startled the welfare officer. Her prim, grim curls trembled under their steel-grey net as she shot upright and for the first time regarded Miss Seeton with—grudging—respect.
Miss Seeton met her gaze calmly.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Morris at last, the first to blink. The silent confrontation had been swift, but (to her surprise) decisive. She wondered that she was not more tempted to begrudge Miss Seeton the honours: but she was now strangely willing to concede that there might—just might—be more to the young woman than her appearance (that hat!) and her personal history (an art teacher!) suggested. “Yes,” she said again. “There is a war on, and the most unexpected people have shown the stuff they’re made of when they’ve been given the chance ...”
She recovered herself, and once more leaned forward for emphasis. “But I warn you, Seeton, I’ve no time to see how, or whether, you exceed expectation. There are nearly a thousand people in this factory, working round the clock, all of them knowing what they’re doing—and doing it. You don’t, so you can’t, without a lot of people taking valuable time to show you.” Her eyes challenged Miss Seeton to argue the point, but Miss Seeton, incurably honest, said nothing.
Mrs. Morris sighed and nodded. It was almost a gesture of approval.
Almost.
The tone in which she concluded her welcoming remarks was slightly—slightly—less brusque than before. “The ministry,” said Mrs. Morris, “sent you here—heaven knows why—as a war artist, so that’s what you’d better be. Orders are orders: I can’t get rid of you without a lot of paperwork for which I haven’t the time: but I want you out of my way. You’ve had no experience of office work and keeping files in order—I have. You don’t know the first thing about industrial work and workers—I do. Keep from under everybody’s feet, scribble quietly in a corner and don’t interfere, and the ministry will be happy.” Another attempt at a smile had more success than when she had first set eyes on Miss Seeton: it did not reach her eyes, but the curve of her narrow mouth was less angular.
“The ministry will be happy,” she reiterated, “and so will I. You can call yourself my assistant, as that’s how you’ll be listed in the records, but for pity’s sake don’t try to assist me. Someone like you will be more hindrance than help until you know the ropes ...
“By which time,” concluded Mrs. Morris, “we could have been invaded.”
; chapter
~ 15 ~
WHAT MRS. MORRIS said was, indeed, all too true: but Emily, daughter of Major Hugo and Alice Amabel, could scarcely approve of her having voiced the defeatist thought aloud. Yet Mrs. Morris—dislike the arrangement as the elder woman might—was Miss Seeton’s professional superior. It would be discourteous to challenge her—and so short an acquaintance could only compound the discourtesy. In traditional British fashion, Miss Seeton compromised: saying nothing, but making her disapproval known with a frown.
Mrs. Morris cleared her throat and shifted on her chair. “Yes ...” she said uneasily. “Yes—well ... I suppose we may as well start, as you are here, by taking you on a quick tour of the factory.”
Miss Seeton nodded politely, murmured her willingness to do as she was told, and waited for further instructions.
“And I suppose we’d better find you a tin hat,” said Mrs. Morris, “if you’re going to be wandering about the place by yourself ... But we’ll do that later. Don’t let me forget—though I really haven’t the time to spare,” she reminded the younger woman as she left her desk and headed for the office door. Mrs. Morris was regaining her self-possession. She had mistaken Miss Seeton’s quiet acquiescence for the dumbstruck dismay of one thrown in suddenly at the deep end; one who would all too soon find herself helpless in an alien environment. Seeton would have to remember, just like the rest of them, that there was a war on—first day or not ...
Mrs. Morris, pointedly leaving her steel helmet on the table, unhooked her gas mask from its peg and slung the strap across her shoulder. She watched without comment as Miss Seeton, selecting (also without comment) a discreet corner of the room in which to deposit those of her accoutrements she deemed unnecessary, followed her example.
“Of course,” said the welfare officer as Miss Seeton presented herself for duty, “I can’t take you to any of the high-security areas. And of the areas you will be allowed to visit, I’ll only show you where the girls work.” That thin smile again crooked her mouth into an angular curve. “We might as well,” said Mrs. Morris, “go along with the ministry as far as we can—but I assure you that even if you were my assistant I would never dream of asking you to deal with the men until you’ve found your feet.” She said no more, but the implication was clear. In the opinion of Mrs. Morris, spinster school-teacher Emily Seeton, war worker for the duration, was unlikely ever to find her feet among the female of the factory species, let alone the male.
Miss Seeton, still polite, nodded again and smiled. Like the nod, the smile was polite: but there was a gleam at the back of her eyes that—had she noticed it—might have warned Mrs. Morris her new assistant was not as helpless as first appearances might suggest. Miss Seeton accepted and understood the irritation of one who had had imposed on her by a government department an assistant—herself—who, nobody could deny, was untrained ... but she did not regard herself as completely inexperienced in the ways of young females, even if she could also accept that factory girls must be different from schoolgirls in some ways—just as she supposed that in other ways they must resemble them. Or students, in whose ways she was similarly experienced—if only as an onlooker. And did not the onlooker, after all, see most of the game?
Fun and games. Miss Seeton continued to smile as she recalled some of those she had met, both male and female, during her student years. How odd that Mrs. Morris should suppose (or so it seemed) she would be helpless in mixed company and be perplexed by its mysteries. She had, after all, been to art college, where she had seen enough male (and female) bodies, both alive and dead—although the latter had been in hospital—
“Well, come along!” Mrs. Morris barked out the command, and Miss Seeton blushed. This was no time for reminiscence: there was a war on.
“If I must leave my office,” the welfare officer went on, “I want to get away quickly.” Miss Seeton’s blush grew more pink and guilty. “Before the phone rings,” Mrs. Morris condescended to enlarge. “Or people take five minutes out to come here to complain, which they will do, about anything—even in wartime.”
“Time,” murmured Miss Seeton, composing herself as she followed the older woman out of the room into a corridor lit by flickering fluorescent light. “Oh, indeed, yes, I know—slipping away when they say they’re going to the lavatory, which I imagine must cause difficulties with the foreman, or whoever is in charge—which is no doubt why they do it, if that is what they do.”
Mrs. Morris shot a startled look over her shoulder.
Miss Seeton was calm. “Girls,” she said, “have quite as lively a spirit of mischief as any boy, and will always try to take advantage if one is insufficiently firm—and, of course, if they try their excuses with a male supervisor, one can well imagine that he would find it embarrassing to deny them, as they will find it amusing that he should. When, that is, they are supposed to be working round the clock—or rather in shifts, as my fellow lodgers told me.”
Mrs. Morris looked at Miss Seeton again. What else had her fellow lodgers told this young woman? There was something about her ... did she know more than she was, in her apparent confusion, saying? Yet there was, indeed, something about her that hinted the ministry might—perhaps—have been not entirely wrong about young Seeton ...
“Tea breaks,” said Mrs. Morris after a few thoughtful moments, “were often the excuse—before things got so—so frantic ... although I imagine that at school you always knew when the breaks were going to be, which would rule that one out for even the most enterprising pupil.”
“You might,” remarked Miss Seeton as she accompanied her preceptress along the corridor, “be surprised, Mrs. Morris.”
“Or I might not,” said Mrs. Morris dryly, after another few moments spent in thought. “Feeling faint is another good one, though a burnt feather under the nose can often work wonders.”
“And so much less messy than a glass of water in the face,” agreed Miss Seeton, her footsteps clattering on the bare concrete floor. “For myself,” she continued, “I found smelling salts to be even more convenient, as they did not require matches. I don’t smoke, you see.”
Mrs. Morris grunted. Perhaps it was merely shortness of breath as they hurried on their way. “Well, stay here long enough,” she said, “and you’ll smoke like a chimney—everyone does. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep awake.”
Miss Seeton replied with a noncommittal murmur, and Mrs. Morris sighed.
“To be fair,” she conceded—she grudged the concession, but she made it—“the girls don’t try it on half as much as in the early days, when things didn’t seem so—so urgent.” She glanced at Miss Seeton and stifled a sigh for those early days of the Twilight War, as Mr. Churchill had called it. Others—except sailors, who knew only too well that the war at sea was far from boring—had called it the Bore War: but since Dunkirk that term was no longer in use among the peoples of the United Kingdom.
“Most of the faints we have now,” Mrs. Morris continued as the two turned a corner, “are the genuine article.” Her tone was still grudging, but she had to be fair. “It can really get very stuffy, with every window in the place permanently boarded up. Each time they bomb us I wonder if our luck will run out because an incendiary has blocked a main exit route. Without the windows ...”
Miss Seeton pondered these remarks for a few moments. “I suppose,” she ventured at last, “that it would take too long to install and remove the blackout each day over so large an area as you must have here.”
“It would,” Mrs. Morris agreed with emphasis. Yes, she might just have second thoughts about the wisdom of the men from the ministry ... “With those huge skylights in the roof it would be far worse than painting the Forth Bridge. You wouldn’t so much have to start as soon as you’d finished as start before you had finished, and that’s not counting the windows in the walls. Mr. Coleman—he’s the works manager—insisted that all the glass came out and the boards went up right after Dunkirk.” She lowered her voice, and for the first time slowed
her walking pace so that Miss Seeton could, without too much effort, move closer. “Mr. Coleman knows all about bombs, you see. His son—his only son—was killed in Spain.”
“Oh,” said Miss Seeton. Grim visions of dusty rubble and shards of glass, broken limbs and bloodied flesh, swam before her inward eye. “Oh—I’m so sorry.”
“Mr. Coleman said we’d be sorry if the roof blew in on us,” said Mrs. Morris darkly. “Sticky brown paper and wire mesh would be no use at all, he said. It might just stop the windows being blasted sideways, but there would still be the risk of splinters and in any case it wouldn’t hold up the roof—so out the whole lot came.”
“And in,” supplied Miss Seeton, “went the boards. Yes, I see. But during the day, I suppose, the factory doors may stand open to allow whatever draught there might be to bring a little fresh air from outside?”
Mrs. Morris almost laughed at this. “Remember how hot the weather has been, these past few weeks?” She gave Miss Seeton no time to say that she remembered very well. “Every building on site was a positive oven after the first day,” she said grimly. “All the overhead ventilation systems burned out within hours—the heat rose straight to the top of the roof, and of course with the blackout it couldn’t escape—and with everyone so busy, you just try asking for repairs or replacements and expect to see anything happen! Believe me, Seeton, Lord Beaverbrook himself couldn’t do it.” Now Mrs. Morris did laugh, albeit briefly. “And I’m sure he wouldn’t do it,” she added, “no matter who was brave enough to ask him—or foolish—if anyone was, which even Mr. Coleman says he isn’t.”
“The works manager,” Miss Seeton reminded herself, as Mrs. Morris hesitated, and seemed lost for words.
“One of the kindest—most considerate—men on earth,” the older woman brought out at last. In someone less world-weary the tone in which this accolade was spoken might have been accompanied by a blush. “Which is why you’re here,” she went on quickly as Miss Seeton turned an enquiring look upon her. “Or so I imagine. Mr. Coleman’s no fool. He knew how much my job was growing—and likely to go on growing—with the increase both in workers and in the rate of production, and I know he said that at least he could do something about that—although why they sent you ...”
Miss Seeton's Finest Hour (A Miss Seeton Mystery) Page 13