“You mean as in Boss!” Sophie was wide-eyed.
“She’s not twenty-one yet.” Lillian was bewildered.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s got to do with her pay packet,” Sophie retorted. “Tell us about that, Grace.”
“Please,” she begged. “Please, Grace. Tell them…”
“Tell us, Grace. Does her wage go up to an adult’s?”
“You forget your place, Sophie. I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Angrily striking a match, Joan lit a cigarette.
“Put it out, Joan.” Pointedly exercising her authority, Grace indicated a sign on the bright new wall. “There’s no smoking in here.”
“Since when?”
“Since Anne got promoted!” Sophie was livid.
“What happened to seniority?” Joan viciously stabbed the un-smoked cigarette into her empty cup.
“That’s filthy.” Snatching the cup, Lillian washed it in the sparkling new sink.
“Do I get an answer?” Joan pressed. “Why Anne? Why not one of us?”
She quailed. So much for new beginnings. So much for friendship. “Please, Grace.”
“Okay…” Grace hesitated. “Okay, Anne. No explanation is due. But common courtesy....”
“Do let’s have common courtesy,” Joan sneered.
“Looks like courtesy’s not going to be too common around here,” Sophie derided.
Grace was unfazed. “The promotion is a fact of life. As for the explanation…”
“This will be good.”
“Who wants a damned explanation! It’s done!”
“I want to hear why.”
“How could you do it, Anne? Is it the money?”
“It’s not the money.” How could she make her friends understand? She hadn’t even thought about the money; she still didn’t know what her new salary would be. It was her duty. Surely they’d understand that.
“We know that.” Grace regained control. “You have to agree, Anne’s earned a step up. You’ve said it often enough. She’s as good at her job as any of you.”
“Who’s she supposed to supervise?” Sophie finally asked the obvious.
“There are three new staff. Anne’s to supervise them.”
Alarmed, she protested. “You said I’m to teach! You didn’t say anything about supervising!”
“I said teach, yes. I also said you would oversee their work.”
“You said teach! Overseeing is making sure they learn. It’s not being a boss. It’s not the same thing!”
“It is the same thing. What’s wrong with you?” Grace looked at her watch. “Do we really have to go through all this? We have important work to do.”
“Agreed,” Lillian ignored the signal to get to work. “We will get to work. So let’s not start with an unnecessary misunderstanding.”
“Explanations are a courtesy only, Lillian,” Grace chided.
“So be courteous,” Joan demanded.
“I disagree,” Lillian argued. “What we’re asking for is not just a courtesy. It’s basic. We need clarification of our working conditions. Is Anne to teach and oversee development of skills? Or is she to supervise? As in assuming major responsibility.”
“Honestly?” Grace answered. “It’s a distinction I’m uncertain of. It never occurred to me. All I know is, the orders come from central office. Congratulations are in order. Anne is to be responsible for teaching the new people to upgrade their skills to the highest level. She’s to be on an adult salary. In my view she’s earned it.”
No one responded. What were they thinking?
“And the rest, Grace?” Still, Joan was suspicious. “What else is there?”
“I’m happy for you, anyway, Anne.” Helen hugged her. “You work hard. Like Grace says, you’ve earned it.”
At least there remained one friend.
“There’s more, isn’t there, Grace.” Margaret was also suspicious.
“Not really. It’s….”
“Am I in the right place?” The voice was sharp, the words clipped. Standing in the open doorway was a stranger, a tall wiry woman dressed in a mouse-brown tailored suit, matching gloves, shoes and hat. There was not a sign of relieving colour.
Startled, they fell silent. Lean to the point of emaciation, the newcomer’s skin was leathery, her lips uncomfortably thin and, peeping from under the brim of the mouse-brown hat, was a frizz of greying hair. Despite the initial impression of a boring frump, it was her eyes which held them. Almost black, they inspected the group with hypnotic intensity.
The woman was a caricature, not an amusing one. The inquisitorial eyes, the sharp voice, the stern face and the rigid carriage of the bony body which propelled itself with disconcertingly jerky movements into the room, inspired acute disquiet.
“Come in, Alice.” Grace indicated an empty chair at the table. “Meet your new colleagues.”
Alice Henderson’s remarkable eyes fixed on each face. After listening to each name she lingered over it as though tasting it, then repeated it in her brittle voice. Clipped and impersonal, yet paradoxically intense, she managed to successfully communicate that no name would be forgotten and that no person would escape her critical judgement. However odd in appearance and manner, this woman was not to be taken lightly.
“We always start the day right,” Grace finally invited: “What’ll it be? Tea or coffee?”
“Tea! Not that new-fangled coffee!” Removing the hat and placing it on her lap, Alice shuddered. The greying frizz jounced, the thin lips snapped together over large yellow teeth and the dark eyes widened in theatrical horror; an unsettling reaction at ludicrous odds with her previous behaviour.
Who was this woman? How had anyone ever imagined she would fit in here?
“I’ll get it,” Helen’s good nature was boundless.
As though there had been no interruption, Joan pressed: “You still haven’t answered us, Grace. What is it you aren’t telling us?”
“I was about to…”
“Ah! Myrtle!” Alice ushered in another newcomer. “Let’s see how my memory is. I’ll introduce our new colleagues…”
At first glance Myrtle, who seemed comfortable with Alice, appeared to be more suited to the duties of home and family than to the rigours of the laboratory. Plump, middle-aged, conservatively dressed in dark blue suit and matching accessories, her smile was sweet and her blue eyes ingenuous; a welcome contrast to Alice.
Behind her was a third stranger. Small, round, yellow-skinned and nervous, he could be as young as thirty or as old as sixty. It was impossible to even hazard a guess. Owl-eyes blinking behind thick lenses, he was dressed in a crumpled dark grey suit, crumpled blue shirt, black polka-dot tie and notably heavy-soled shoes. His accompanying odour, a repellant mixture of after-shave, perfumed hair oil, naptholine, and unidentifiable others, was sickening.
“Aaron! Do come in.” Grace ushered him to a vacant chair. “Alice is introducing everyone. She’s remembered all our names already.”
“God!” Sophie turned aside. “I want to be sick.”
“Sh…,” she warned. But Sophie was justified. The new trio, each uniquely different from the other, were remarkably different from the established staff. It was additional cause for alarm. Their recruitment to this highly specialised work was impossible to comprehend. Again, she wondered. Who were their unseen masters? Because for sure, this time, they’d excelled themselves. This latest development was incredibly ridiculous.
“I still want to be sick,” Sophie whispered.
“It’s awful. . .”
“Shut up, Anne.” Joan lit another cigarette.
“Joan!”
“Something wrong, Grace?” Joan blew a ring of smoke ceiling-wards.
Grace backed off. “Time for work, I think. Your assignments are as always. You’ll work it out. I’ll see to Anne and our new friends.”
“What friends?” Sophie muttered.
“A moment, Grace.�
� Ignoring the presence of the newcomers, and their possible embarrassment, Lillian doggedly reverted to the original question. “You still haven’t told us what we have to know.”
Already at the open door, Grace paused. “What, exactly, is it you want to know?”
“Anne’s new role. Training our new recruits. That, we can accept. The adult salary. That, we can live with. But there’s more. Am I right?”
“To be blunt, Lillian…”
“Do let’s be blunt.”
Grace coolly surveyed the beautiful new staff room, the old staff, the new staff, and quietly replied. “I am sorry, Lillian. It’s really not your business.”
She cringed. The new building and the excitement of their triumph hadn’t even steered them harmoniously through the first hour.
“So where to for us, Grace?” Either unaware of or unmoved by the tension, Alice had her own question.
“This way….” Leading the three newcomers and Anne from the staff room, Grace opened the unmarked door next to it.
Although, like the room they’d just left, it was illuminated only by overhead lighting, this room was three times its size. A smaller facsimile of the large main laboratory, its floor was parquetry, its high benches set in rows well apart, its new machinery inviting. Even though there was the same sense of space and clinical sterility, this windowless laboratory was a place designed for maximum concentration and intensive effort.
“This is wonderful!” Momentarily, she forgot her misgivings.
Grace explained to the new staff: “As you’ve heard, Anne is to be your supervisor.”
“I see.” Alice’s beady inspection voiced disapproval.
“If you’re worried about her youth,” Grace answered what had not been said. “Don’t be. Anne knows the techniques of this job better than any of us.”
“I think we will be most happy with Anne’s supervision,” Aaron breathed.
“I’m sure you will.”
“We’ll take care of her.” Alice looked to Myrtle, who nodded an obedient head. “Now then - where do we start?”
“Your work’s already set out. I’ll call back later.”
“Grace!” She followed her through the door, out into the main laboratory. Her friends were already at work, and feigning disinterest. “Can I talk to you?”
“There’s no point, Anne. Just get on with it.”
“I can’t….”
“You’ve got no choice. You might even like it.”
“What if I don’t like it? What if I really can’t do it?”
“You really must have more confidence in yourself, Anne,” Grace smiled. “Still – if it turns out badly, then we’ll take another look. Fair enough?”
“I’m not sure.”
“At least give it time. We haven’t gone into this without serious thought about it.”
Maybe they had given the job thought. What about her relationship with her friends? Nothing would ever be the same again.
As Grace negotiated her way between the gleaming new desks to the closed office, her friends looked up, absently smiled, and continued working. They had reason to smile. This was by far preferable to prison, or working in a distant hospital as June was, or as a process worker or in the Land Army or...
Maybe it would all work out okay.
Chapter Ten
June 24th:
Political furore over plan to abandon part of Australia to the Japanese in the event of an invasion. Known as ‘The Brisbane Line.’
August 21st:
Labor has overwhelming win in the Australian Federal election
It wasn’t all bad. The work was as engrossing as ever; she loved every single minute when she was calculating, assessing, solving problems, testing her skills, writing reports, stretching her brain to its outermost limits.
She’d been incredibly lucky. Contrary to the fate of too many people, she’d been blessed by the war. After leaving school, she’d expected to work in an office, marry and have children. What else was there? Then the war had broken out, June had gone off to train as an Army nurse and she’d been destined to employment in some physically demanding war-related job. Until she’d been given the chance to work in the laboratory.
She’d been young, she’d been lucky. Although older than she was, her friends in the large laboratory had approximately similar stories. They hadn’t been career women; they’d never anticipated becoming long-term working women. Just as she had, they’d been culled from women applicants volunteering to do the work of the men now in the armed forces.
The war was opening doors formerly closed to women. Even her mother, middle aged and totally untrained, was working as a volunteer aide in the local hospital. And enjoying it. She was enjoying the experience of being needed in the wider world, of giving service to a broader cause, an urgent cause. She was even beginning to regret that she’d not trained as a nurse, as June was doing.
How many of the thousands of women working for the war effort were feeling as her mother did? How many were enjoying the experience, and wondering why they’d not ventured further than the kitchen sink in their younger years? How many women would be able to contentedly return to the lives the war had forced them to leave? How many women in the future would be happy to limit themselves to catering only to the needs of husband and children?
It was worrying. Her father was going to come home to a very different household to the one he’d left when he’d joined the Civil Construction Corps. Boys like Gary would be going home to very different mothers and sisters, and maybe to girls who wanted more than domesticity. That would be when the war ended. Right now, it looked like never ending.
It was almost impossible to remember what life had been like, a mere four years ago, back in 1939 when Hitler had invaded Poland. No. Even before that. Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich had been the first indication of monumental upheavals ahead. No. Before that, there’d been….
There’d always been something! Even while her school teachers had been teaching ancient history, the newspapers and wireless had been reporting the sensational events they were all living through; momentous events that future school children would be required to learn about. Back then, the Japanese had set their eyes on different goals, on Manchuria, on China.
Back then, Australia had been as vulnerable to invasion as it was now. Back then, the placid world she’d thought she was living hadn’t existed. There’d been persecutions, invasions, barbarism, rebellions, wars and chaos. There’d been Roosevelt, Chamberlain, Gandhi, Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-shek, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky. There’d been ex-servicemen, crippled men who’d never work again; and quiet men like her father.
She’d known about it all, and not heeded it. She’d seen the headlines, and not comprehended them. But Julian had. Julian had opened her to eyes to what had been there all her life. She’d lived through, and was still living in, an era of unprecedented historical significance.
Working in the segregated small laboratory, traveling each morning and evening on the tram, walking to and from St Margaret’s, coming home to the empty house, sharing her thoughts with no one, she became increasingly analytical.
She began to ask questions she’d never before thought to ask. Firstly, how had these three very odd people, Alice, Myrtle and Aaron, come to be here right this minute? Had they undergone the same entry tests as the original six? They must have. What about training? While both Alice and Myrtle had an understanding of the basics, Aaron was extremely adept. He’d obviously worked in metrology before. Not that he ever said, he didn’t need to.
There were other questions. What had happened over the few days after they’d exited the luxurious boardroom? Who had arranged the impossibly quick transfer? Who had sanctioned the impossibly luxurious rooms and the abundance of new equipment? Who had really recommended her for the promotion? More importantly, who had ultimately approved it?
Whatever the truth, the promotion invited confusion. Because employing her to
perform the work she’d been taught to do was logical, while employing her to supervise was not. The most significant reason was her age. Why should these three mature people respect her? Just because someone somewhere had decided they should respect her, didn’t mean they would.
Why should Aaron respect her? Even though he was still not thirty years old, he’d been a highly respected physicist. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany, everything about his initial appearance recalled the secret night in the dark suburbs and Inga and the haunted eyes on the newsreels. Even so, he’d quickly adapted. Within a week of starting at the laboratory his hair was trimmed, his clothes neat and the odd odours almost eliminated.
Myrtle was different. She really was a home-body enlisted for the duration. Kind and caring and conscientious and intellectually capable, she had no confidence. A fact Alice shamelessly exploited. The woman was a tyrant. The team spirit, so essential to the job, was alien to this one. Though she was an unattractive despot she was a quick learner, conscientious and dedicated; she also needed a strong boss. Even Grace would find Alice difficult to control.
Gradually, disheartened and disillusioned, she confronted her own limitations and stopped trying to do anything more than teach essentials and monitor reports. In effect, Alice became the supervisor.
Meanwhile, Aaron’s nervous manner disappeared and his skin slowly lost its unhealthy pallor. All that remained of the first unsavoury impression was the owlish spectacles which magnified gentle brown eyes that, occasionally, twinkled with humour. More importantly, he quickly proved his reputation to be soundly based. Because his skill was far superior to anyone else in the laboratory, only he was able to use the grand new machines. She was learning new skills from him and she was learning to respect him. They were becoming friends. In a very different way from her friendship with the girls, who were increasingly resenting her, she was finding relief from the stresses of her position by talking with Aaron.
At morning tea breaks, half an hour earlier than the main laboratory break, she and Aaron talked about music, theatre, movies and the idiosyncrasies of the Australian way. He never talked about his private life. He was at ease with her, and she him. Occasionally, if they were alone, she’d allow him a glimpse of how she felt about Alice. He seldom responded. It was as though he’d seen, or suffered, too much to be impressed by the small inconvenience of Alice. He’d politely listen, and then revert to previous talk of music or theatre or Australian idiosyncrasies.
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