by AJ Pearce
But it wasn’t. I had forged her signature.
And used Woman’s Friend headed notepaper. And written the letter on Woman’s Friend’s time.
So, actually, it wasn’t anything like me writing to a friend.
As I made a pantomime about leaving the office that afternoon, I could hardly look Kathleen in the eye.
‘IS THAT THE TIME I AM SO LATE I MUST GO HOME SEE YOU TOMORROW GOODBYE,’ I said over loudly, without pausing for breath.
Then I hurtled out of the office with my hat and coat in my hand before she could see I had gone crimson with guilt.
Leaving the building was interminable. I stood in the lift and sweated profusely as it stopped at every floor, and then I lolloped across the foyer in a wonky combination of half walk, half trot while all the time expecting a heavy hand on my shoulder and instant arrest.
By the time I was outside in the sleet-soaked street, I could hardly wait to deposit the evidence in the post box before leaping onto the wrong bus which took me nowhere near the direction of home.
I could never do this again. It was terribly wrong. Even though I felt confident Mrs Bird would never find out, it had still been a crazy thing to do.
I wondered what Bunty would say. I had a feeling she would tell me I hadn’t an ounce of brain and would get the sack if anyone found out. She’d be right too. I was hopeful I might have been able to help In A Muddle, but pretending the advice was from Mrs Bird? Bunty really would think I had gone mad. As for Edmund – I dreaded to think.
I decided it was better to not tell a soul.
For the rest of the week, I worked like fury, trying to be the very essence of a good sort. The disappointment of making a hash of things and ending up at Woman’s Friend still stung badly, but I had kept up my shifts at the fire station so was still trying to do my bit. I continued reading all the newspapers as well, keen to be poised with thoughtful political insight should even the smallest opportunity to move into The Evening Chronicle crop up. I continued to write to Edmund every day, making my letters breezy and light.
At the office I typed up the problems for Mrs Bird’s page double-quick, socked out two romantic stories by Mr Collins on the ancient typewriter, and volunteered to do every job that Kathleen or any of the others said they didn’t much fancy themselves. Things ticked along and when Mrs Mahoney, who I liked very much, called me A Treasure, life at Woman’s Friend started to feel better.
And then the following week, things became tricky again.
I honestly did try to weed out Unpleasantness from Mrs Bird’s letters, but with the paltry amount of correspondence and the bar for immorality set awfully low, it was hard to make up the numbers. I would begin every letter with hope, encouraged by a mild opening, only to have my hopes cruelly dashed when a ‘has stopped making love to me’ or ‘and now I am having a baby’ put its hand up halfway through the second line. While Mrs Bird was convinced that a hearty outlook and a brisk walk would invariably solve one’s problems, most of the Woman’s Friend readers had tribulations that an absolute bus load of fresh air was not going to sort out.
I still couldn’t bear to cut up some of the unacceptable letters. I secretly kept them in my desk, even though there was nothing I could do about them.
On Monday, I was soundly told off by Mrs Bird for giving her a letter from a lady whose husband had had an affair. I had felt so sorry for her. ‘My heart is broken,’ she wrote, ‘as I have just found out that my husband who I still love after twenty years has gone off with a friend of mine at work . . .’
But Mrs Bird didn’t care.
‘Miss Lake,’ she snapped. ‘Affairs. Have you gone entirely mad?’
Two days later I was in hot water over a young woman worried about her wedding night. ‘My friend said hers was nothing to write home about but I’m worried about what to expect’ brought on another decisive response.
‘Might I ask you, Miss Lake, is Pleasurable on the list or is it not?’
I did have the odd success. A maverick query asking if Mrs Beeton was real and was it true she’d died young (‘Of course she was real, Miss Lake, twenty-nine.’) and an overseas reader who found living in Canada rather lonely (‘Dreariness won’t win anything, Miss Lake, we must tell them to buck up.’) went over quite well, but very few letters were free from Unpleasantness to the acceptable degree.
‘Honestly, Kathleen,’ I said one morning when I was struggling to find enough post to give to Mrs Bird, ‘if we won’t answer proper problems, it’s no wonder no one writes in.’
‘Some still do,’ said Kathleen. She was wearing a complicated double-knit cardigan and looking perturbed.
‘Not many,’ I said. ‘If you look at other weeklies, they’re full of advice about rotten husbands and having babies or not having babies, and what to do when your boyfriend’s been away fighting for a year and you wonder if you’ll ever see him again.’ I thought of Edmund and how most of the time I didn’t even know where he was. ‘That’s what people are worried about, not whether ants are likely to be a problem this June. Who cares about that?’
Kathleen glanced nervously at the door.
‘For goodness’ sake, Kathleen, she’s out,’ I said.
It wasn’t fair to snap just because I was tired. The previous night’s raid had been heavy, and while I had worked another long shift at the fire station, half of London probably hadn’t slept either. We were all in the same boat. But ignoring the readers still struck me as wrong.
‘We should be helping people like this lady,’ I said and I began to read a letter out from someone who had signed it Confused.
‘Dear Mrs. Bird,
‘I am very much in love with my fiancé, but he has sud- denly become very cold to me. He says he is fond of me but not passionately.’
‘Emmeline,’ whispered Kathleen going pale. ‘Don’t.’
I ploughed on.
‘Should I marry him and hope that he comes round?’
I glared at her, which was entirely unfair as she wasn’t the one I was cross with.
‘Why can’t Mrs Bird help?’ I asked. ‘This girl is going to have a wretched time if he doesn’t actually love her. We’d only have to say there are plenty more fish in the sea. Or, or, this one.’ I opened the desk drawer where I had put a desperately sad letter I couldn’t bear to throw out.
‘Dear Mrs. Bird
‘I am a mother of three and was widowed before the war.
I don’t have many friends and when a very kindly soldier was billeted with us, we became close. Now, to my horror, I find I am going to have his baby. I have written to him but he hasn’t replied. I am desperate – please tell me, what should I do?’
‘Emmeline, stop it,’ said Kathleen, now getting impatient. ‘You know these are the type of people Mrs Bird won’t entertain.’
‘Type of people?’ I said, thinking of Kitty and her little boy. ‘For heaven’s sake, Kathleen, it could happen to you or me. It’s not just a Type Of People. Listen to this one:
‘Dear Mrs. Bird,
‘When they first evacuated the kiddies from London, I couldn’t bear to let my little boy go. Two months ago we were bombed out and now my boy has been crippled for life.’
I stopped. I was not a cry baby, but I felt my voice catch in my throat. I had shown this letter to Mrs Bird. She’d said the woman had only herself to blame.
‘Honestly, Kathleen,’ I said. ‘What’s the point of Woman’s Friend having a problem page, if we don’t help anyone out?’
I knew I was speaking to the wrong person. I should be trying to persuade Mrs Bird.
Kathleen sighed.
‘Emmy, look,’ she said in her quiet voice. ‘I know it can be awful. Sometimes I feel terrifically glum about it as well. But there’s nothing you can do. If Mrs Bird says to ignore someone who has, um, you know, is having . . . a baby then that’s what we have to do.’ She shook her head and her hair joined in sympathetically. ‘Even if we don’t like it.’
I bent down to p
ick up an envelope that had fallen under the desk.
‘If I was having a baby,’ I said to the dark wooden floor. ‘I’d like to think someone would help.’
I heard Kathleen’s chair scrape against the floor. Then a different, decidedly chilly voice, said,
‘And is that a possibility, Miss Lake?’
The wall clock behind Kathleen’s desk chimed, a helpful reminder that Mrs Bird was due to return to the office at eleven, having been sorting out a dipsomaniac who had been run over outside in the street.
I kept my head under the desk as the clock continued to strike. I wondered if I could stay down for the entire eleven chimes.
‘Miss Lake?’
‘Yes, Mrs Bird?’ I said, finally emerging. Kathleen was standing to attention. She had gone the same colour as a lady I had once seen rushing out of the Dr Crippen exhibit at Madame Tussaud’s.
‘I trust, Miss Lake,’ said Mrs Bird, calm in the face of potential depravity, ‘we were being hypothetical?’
‘Oh yes, goodness, of course,’ I said, clearly a goner. ‘Kathleen and I were just discussing one of the readers’ letters.’
I saw Kathleen blanch and too late, remembered that discussing the letters was strictly Off Limits.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Bird, who didn’t look as if she did.
‘Well, I say we were discussing,’ I said, backpedalling to first-team standard. ‘It was more me saying, really. Kathleen was stuck here having to listen.’
I hoped I could at least get my friend out of the mire.
‘And what was it you were saying, Miss Lake?’ asked Mrs Bird, managing to look apoplectic and icy at the same time. She was wearing an ancient and vast fur coat, which gave her the appearance of a large bear that had just failed to catch an especially juicy fish. ‘Because I was unaware that as a part-time Junior Typist, you were employed to say anything very much at all.’
I braced myself. I had been at Woman’s Friend for less than a month and now I was going to be given the sack.
Then again, if I did lose my job, it would mean I would have no alternative but to join up, even if it would send Mother and Father quite lunatic with concern. At least then I would have proper war experience and that might even help me get a job as a War Correspondent one day.
Perhaps I could join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. That was a wonderful idea. I could train up to pack the parachutes and then join my brother Jack’s squadron and make sure I did his. Or perhaps the ATA so that I could ferry around planes as a lady pilot instead, even if the rules meant they wouldn’t let me shoot anyone down.
As Mrs Bird got into the swing of telling me off, I considered more options. Perhaps I could stay with the Fire Service and do the motorcycle course to become a dispatch rider. I’d met a couple of girls who did that and they were excellent sorts – bright and hardworking, and always rushing off right into the thick of things. Jack would laugh his head off if I learnt to ride a motorcycle but it would also mean I could stay in London, which I was very keen to do. There’d be Bunty and the station girls, and William and his chums too for the cinema and dances and things, so really nothing would change. We could ask Kathleen along too.
Perhaps leaving Woman’s Friend would be a good thing. Even if being sacked after just a few weeks would look rather grim on my record. I could say it had all been a mistake and I was just enormously keen to do more for the war effort. I would feel bad about leaving the readers that Mrs Bird ignored, but there was nothing I could do to help them anyway.
‘And I hardly think the Woman’s Friend reader wants her afternoon spoilt by This Kind Of Thing, do you?’
Mrs Bird had come to the end of her speech. It had been quite an innings.
‘No,’ I said, firmly. ‘No, she doesn’t.’
I steadied myself for an exit, although as it turned out, Mrs Bird had only momentarily stopped play for tea, and was now firmly back at the wicket.
‘Miss Lake. You are An Innocent Abroad,’ she thundered, making it sound like a crime. ‘You will learn that PEOPLE ARE NOT ALWAYS GOOD SORTS.’
Mrs Bird put her hands behind her back as if she were inspecting the troops. ‘Particularly ones like these,’ she said, nodding at the mess of letters on my desk.
‘Affairs . . . losing their heads . . . babies . . . UNPLEASANTNESSES,’ she boomed, pausing to let the abomination sink in. ‘And, even, Miss Lake . . . NERVES.’
The look that accompanied this suggested we had moved on to a level of quite treasonable offence.
‘These women are having The Time Of Their Lives while our men are off fighting for the future of the free world. I hardly call that deserving of help, do you?’
I hardly thought this was true from what I had read, but with Mrs Bird in full throttle there wasn’t much point in arguing. And really, why should I care about the problem page anyway?
But as Mrs Bird motored onto the second leg of her lecture about how awful people were, I realised. I did care.
I really, truly did.
I cared about the women who wrote into this old-fashioned, dead duck of a weekly magazine. Mrs Bird received so little post that it would have been entirely possible for her to find time to answer every one. Instead, she had a lowly assistant like me cut up their letters while she charged around London on her do-gooding committees. It must be bad enough having your house bombed out, I reckoned, without Mrs Bird turning up and insisting on a rallying speech and a reminder about backbone and stiff upper lip.
She may not have cared about those readers, but I did.
Joining Woman’s Friend had been a mistake. But giving up on it would be worse. I might not be getting very far trying to stand up to Mrs Bird, but if I lost my job what if the next Junior Typist didn’t even try? What if no one ever stood up for the women desperate enough to write in?
I had always thought the proper war action was reported in the newspapers. The battles and enemy casualties and important announcements by politicians and leaders. I had wanted to be part of that. Now I began to think I had been wrong. The Government was always saying everyone at home was vital to the war effort, and needed to keep supporting our lads and get on with normal life as if nothing was different, so Adolf wouldn’t think he was getting us down. And we should be chipper and stoic and jolly good sorts and wear lipstick and look nice for when the men were on leave and not cry or be dreary when they went off to fight again. And of course I agreed with that, of course.
But what about when things got difficult or went wrong? The papers didn’t mention women like the ones who wrote to Mrs Bird. Women whose worlds had been turned upside down by the war, who missed their husbands, or got lonely and fell in love with the wrong man. Or who were just young and naive and had their heads turned in a trying time. Problems that people had always had, only now, with everything so topsy-turvy, they were expected to just battle on.
Who was supporting them?
I still wanted to be a proper Correspondent. A lady war journalist like the ones I had read about who marched off to report on Spain’s Civil War with nothing more than two fur coats and a fierce determination to find out the truth. I wanted to be part of the action and excitement.
But trying to become a news journalist could wait. Mrs Bird was stuck in another age. Her views may have been accepted thirty years ago but they were out of date now. This wasn’t just her war. It was everyone’s. It was ours.
I wanted to make a go of it. I wanted to stay at Woman’s Friend and try to help the readers out. I still didn’t know exactly how I would do it, but people needed a hand.
It was time to gorge on humble pie.
‘Mrs Bird,’ I said with vigour, ‘I apologise profusely. I’m afraid I’m still getting the hang of all this.’ Looking soft in the head seemed the best approach. ‘I now understand everything far more clearly. I really am very sorry I have been so terribly slow on the uptake. You won’t have to tell me again. Might I show you this letter from a lady who is Disappointed With France?’
‘Miss Lake, your moral standards belong in the gutter. They are quite extraordinarily low.’
She made it sound as if I had been brought up by a group of exceptionally awful prostitutes or had made a habit of punching the infirm. Nevertheless, I looked as contrite as I could.
‘I do not want to see that sort of letter,’ she said pointing to my desk in a final declaration. ‘I will not read them, I will not answer them. They are not from Good Sorts.’
With that she took a handful of the letters I had been reading to Kathleen and threw them all into the bin.
Then, like a galleon that has outflanked an Armada despite having an off-colour day, she made as magnificent an exit as the size of the room would allow.
Kathleen and I sat in silence, until we heard the door to Mrs Bird’s office slam shut.
‘Crikey,’ I said, feeling heady with triumph.
‘I say,’ said Kathleen in a whisper, her eyes like soup plates. ‘That was brave.’
‘Do you think we can call it a draw?’ I said, suddenly giggly.
‘I thought we were for it there,’ said Kathleen. ‘Thanks awfully for saying it wasn’t me.’
‘Well it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘You were the one telling me to shut up. I’m sorry about getting you involved. I won’t mention the silly letters again.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Kathleen. ‘I quite enjoyed it really. I’m going to the Post Room now.’ She looked hugely relieved the row was over and rushed off to the stairs.
When Kathleen had gone, I leant back in my chair and let out a breath.
‘I do not want to see that sort of letter. I will not read them.
I will not answer them.’
It all seemed quite clear. I would buckle right down. I would follow Mrs Bird’s instructions to a tee and never show her another letter that didn’t exactly comply with her list.