“Yes,” said Rose calmly, fixing Mrs Danby with a blue stare.
“Come with me.” Mrs Danby rustled off in front of them. She threw open a mahogany door revealing a small room furnished with a table, two chairs, a desk, and two typewriters and a pile of ledgers and box files. There was a small gas fire with a broken piece of asbestos which purred and hissed like some infuriated household cat. On the mantelpiece was a black marble clock with a yellow face. By the long window stood a hat stand.
“You are to type the entries in these ledgers,” instructed Mrs Danby, “and when you have completed each page, you will put it in one of these box files. You, Miss Summer, will start with the 1901 ledger and Miss Levine with the 1900 ledger. Take off your coats and hats and begin immediately.”
Rose and Daisy took off their coats, hats and gloves, and sat at their typewriters, facing each other.
“We need typing paper, if you please,” said Rose.
Rose had intended to modify her accent but she had taken a dislike to Mrs Danby and so her tones were the glacial, staccato ones of her class.
Mrs Danby opened the door and shouted, “Miss Judd!”
A small girl with a head of black curls appeared. “Typing paper for these two new workers,” ordered Mrs Danby.
She turned away. Miss Judd winked at Rose and Daisy and shot off to return in a few minutes with a large packet of typing paper.
“I will now watch you to assess your skill,” said Mrs Danby.
Rose and Daisy, like two machines, each put a sheet of paper in their typewriter, found the right ledgers and began to type with great speed and ease.
“I will leave you now,” said Mrs Danby majestically.
“One moment, Mrs Danby,” said Rose. “At what time are we allowed to take our luncheon?”
Mrs Danby longed to tell them that they were to work right through the day but feared that the haughty Miss Summer might report her to Mr Drevey.
“Luncheon is at one o’ clock until two-thirty,” she said.
“Blimey,” said Daisy when Mrs Danby had left. “It’s better than I thought. They do themselves well here. A whole hour and a half for lunch!”
“This is make work,” said Rose. “There is no need for these ledgers to be typed.”
“May as well get on with it,” sighed Daisy. “If we’re awfully good, they might give us some real work.”
They worked hard and their shoulders were sore by lunchtime.
“I need to use the you-know-what,” said Daisy.
“There will be one at King William Street underground station. I read about it in the newspaper.” said Rose. “I do not want to see more of Mrs Danby than I need to.”
As both were still wearing the undergarments that ladies wore, they spent a considerable time in the toilets.
For the fashionable lady of the day wore an incredible amount of undergarments. To begin with, there was a garment known as combinations: a kind of vest and pants in one piece, made of fine wool, or a mixture of wool and silk, its legs reaching to the knee. It had a back panel which unbuttoned below the waist. Over this went the corset, usually made of pink coutil, boned and shaped to provide the fashionable hourglass figure. Then came the camisole, a kind of underblouse that buttoned down the front, was gathered at the waist and trimmed with lace round the neck and the diminutive puffed sleeves.
The knickers had lace frills at the knee and they were made from very fine material such as lawn, nainsook or nun’s veiling. Silk stockings were clipped to the corset. Then the large round petticoat was placed in a circle on the floor and stepped into.
The only advantage of all these layers of clothes, thought Daisy, when she and Rose emerged once more into the freezing air, was that they kept you warm. Rose had been pleasingly impressed by her first visit to a public toilet and thought it well worth the charge of one penny. It was spotlessly clean and all shining white tiles and polished brass and the female attendant had been courteous.
Daisy stopped at a tobacco kiosk and asked the girl for a packet of cigarettes and directions to somewhere cheap to eat. She told them there was a Lyons a little way along Cheapside.
“You’re never going to smoke!” exclaimed Rose.
“I feel like it,” said Daisy stubbornly.
In Lyons teashop, Rose exclaimed over the cheapness of the items on the menu. “Just look, Daisy, meals are only threepence or fourpence. We could eat out every day! What will you have? There’s poached egg on macaroni, Welsh rarebit, or sardines on toast.”
“I’ll have poached eggs on macaroni,” said Daisy. Rose ordered Welsh rarebit.
“That’s better,” sighed Daisy when they were finished. “We didn’t have time for breakfast.”
“It wasn’t much to eat,” said Rose, looking around the restaurant and thinking that at home she would have had a choice of eight courses at least. “It’s not as if it’s expensive. I never saw this one – braised loin of mutton with carrots. Only sixpence, too.” So they had the mutton with bread and butter, two slices at a penny each. And when they had finished that, they rounded off their meal with coffee, twopence a cup, and apple dumpling, four pennies each. When they finished and Daisy was complaining that she would need to loosen her stays when they got back to the office, they left the cosiness of the teashop with its white-and-gold frontage feeling sleepy with all they had eaten.
As they headed back to the office, the day was so dark that the street lamps were being lit, a man with a long brass pole moving from lamp to lamp and leaving a chain of lights behind him.
The air was not only cold but smelt of innumerable coal fires.
Mrs Danby was there promptly at two-thirty to make sure they were at their desks and then retreated.
♦
After an hour, the door opened and a young man came in. He had a thick head of hair, liberally oiled with bear grease, a long nose and large mouth, and wore the City uniform of black coat and striped trousers.
He affected surprise when he saw them and said, “Wrong room. But I’d better introduce myself. I am Gerald King.”
“I’m Daisy Levine and my friend is Miss Rose Summer.”
Gerald perched on the edge of the desk, his eyes on Rose.
“You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Very new,” said Daisy. “First day.”
“You enjoying it?”
“Not much.”
“Doesn’t your friend have a voice, Miss Levine?”
“I do,” said Rose, “when I am not being kept off my work.”
Gerald retreated. But during the afternoon, several bank clerks found an excuse to drop in.
“You shouldn’t freeze them all off,” complained Daisy. “One of them might buy us dinner.”
“You are not in the music hall now,” said Rose severely.
“No, I ain’t,” replied Daisy gloomily.
♦
On Thursday, Mr Drevey went down to the country ‘on business’, which meant he was escaping to attend a house party.
On that same Thursday, one of the directors, Mr Beveridge, sent for Mrs Danby, and told her that his secretary was ill and he needed someone to take dictation.
“I will bring someone to you directly,” said Mrs Danby.
She decided to select Rose. Rose was too hoity-toity. She would have to confess she could not take dictation and that would bring her down a peg.
But Rose merely asked for a notebook, and that having been supplied followed Mrs Danby up the broad staircase to Mr Beveridge’s office on the second floor.
Mr Beveridge was a fat jolly man. Rose was initially unnerved because she was sure she had met him before but he did not seem to recognize her.
Two people were disappointed at the end of the day. Daisy because men popping into the room took one look, saw Rose wasn’t there and retreated. And Mrs Danby because Mr Beveridge had given her a glowing report of Rose’s prowess and of her excellent Pitman shorthand.