“The play was not very memorable; there was an air raid warning during it, and we had supper afterwards.”
“And Richard … how was he?”
“Very nice indeed.”
“And?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“In the circumstances, no.”
“What circumstances?”
“He’s very attractive.”
“Oh, good night, Dorabella.”
“Nothing to report then?”
“Nothing.”
“You disappoint me.”
“There have been occasions when I felt the same about you.”
Banter, I thought. What did she expect? She was like my mother. They were both hoping that I should give up grieving for Jowan. They could not believe I would never forget.
The Dark Secret
MARY GRACE HAD TALKED A great deal about her work at the ministry and the people she met there, and she thought I might be interested to meet her special friends.
“Don’t get the idea,” she said, “that we are doing very vital war work—involved in top secrets and such like. This is the Ministry of Labour and our work has a great deal to do with putting papers in alphabetical order and finding jobs best suited to the abilities of the people who are registered with us. Those who work with me are rather like myself—inexperienced. Some have never been out to work before and what we have to do is simply the sort that anyone could do.”
I said I thought she was being modest.
“No, no,” she answered. “That is not so. You will see I am right when you meet my special colleagues. We all sit together at a table, sorting out our papers, making notes of information, watched over by our supervisor. The supervisor is, of course, a bona fide civil servant.”
I realized what she meant when I met the girls. They often lunched together in a Lyons or A.B.C. teashop. There were four of them including Mary Grace. She was what was called a “part-timer” on account of certain responsibilities concerning her mother. The others worked full-time—nine until five.
The Ministry was in Acton, not so very far from the center of town, and I was to meet them in the Lyons teashop at twelve-thirty.
No sooner had I entered the restaurant than Mary Grace rose to greet me. Seated with her were the three I was to meet. They all surveyed me with interest.
“Mrs. Marian Owen, Mrs. Peggy Dunn, and Miss Florette Fields,” said Mary Grace with dignity. “And this is Miss Violetta Denver.”
“Oh, that’s a classy name,” said Miss Florette Fields. “I like that. I was Flora but I changed it to Florette. Professional reasons, you understand?”
“Florette,” I said. “That’s charming.”
She flashed her rather toothy smile in my direction. There was something very friendly about her.
“We’re ordering the Home Pie,” said Mary Grace. “The ingredients may be a little mysterious, but it’s tasty.”
Everybody laughed. I was to discover that they laughed easily and in this they reminded me of the soldiers in the theater.
“You are staying in London for a while then?” said Marian. She was different from the others and I realized that she was eager for me to know this.
“Yes,” I told her. “I shall be going back to my parents’ home at the end of the week.”
“Lucky you,” said Florette.
They were all a little stiff at first but it was not long before conversation was flowing easily. We spoke mainly about the Ministry. There was a Mrs. Crimp, who was called “Curly,” and a Mr. Bunter, who was known as “Billy” for obvious reasons.
Mary Grace, I discovered, had a hitherto unsuspected gift for making people talk. I think she was very eager for her friends to reveal themselves and over Home Pie, which was indeed surprisingly tasty, and coffee, I glimpsed something of the backgrounds of Peggy and Florette, though Marian Owen was quite reticent.
Peggy and Florette were quite different and both had the gift of being able to laugh at themselves. Florette was a girl without guile or pretense. Within fifteen minutes of our acquaintance, I knew of her ambitions. She was going to be what she called a “star.” Peggy admired her as someone she herself could never be. She listened avidly, watching her as she talked, with wondering eyes full of admiration.
“Florette won a competition once,” Peggy told me. “Came first, didn’t you, Florette?”
Florette smiled broadly.
“Tell Violetta about it,” said Peggy. We were on Christian-name terms by that time.
“Well,” said Florette. “There was this talent-spotting competition, wasn’t there?”
I was reminded of Charley and Bert. She was not asking me to recall the occasion. It was just a form of speech.
“There were big posters outside the Music Hall. The Empire, wasn’t it? ‘Try your luck,’ it said. ‘This might be your road to fame.’ Everyone was saying, ‘Go on, Flor, you can sing with the best of ’em.’”
“She’s got a lovely voice,” put in Peggy.
“Well,” said Florette modestly. “It’s not bad. You should have seen me. Practicing for weeks, I was.”
“And she won it,” cried Peggy, impatient for the climax.
“Well, I got up there, didn’t I? Was my knees shaking? You can bet your life. I was like a lump of jelly. I thought, I’ll open me mouth, and there’ll be nothing but a squawk. Well, there I was. ‘Blue skies over the white cliffs of Dover.’ You can always get away with that one, and then an old-fashioned one. ‘After the ball was over.’ My mum always wanted to go on the Halls and she used to sing that one to me. Well, I got in the first six … and then we did it all again.”
“And she was the first,” cried Peggy again.
“Five pounds I got. First prize. Thought it was a fortune. It was a start. Well, I reckon I’d be on my way if it wasn’t for this old war. Where can you get in times like these? Still, I made a start. I’ve always got that. Gave me a certificate, they did, to say I’d won first prize.”
“It must have been wonderful,” I said.
“You wait. You’ll see me in lights. My mum used to talk about Marie Lloyd. That’s what I’ll be. You wait until this war’s over.”
While this conversation was going on, I was listening with earnest attention. Peggy was as excited as Florette herself and Mary Grace was watching me, to see if I were enjoying meeting her friends. Marian Owen was sitting quietly by, with a faint smile on her face. Every now and then she caught my eye, as though to say, “We must be lenient with these people. They are not as we are. They have not had our advantages of education.” At least, that was the construction I put on it. I would share the impression with Mary Grace in due course.
“Then I changed my name to Florette,” went on the owner of that name. “Well, Flora … mind you, it’s a nice enough name. I’m not saying anything against it. But it’s not quite show business.”
“Florette will look better up in lights,” said Peggy.
“It is all very interesting,” I said. “I hope you succeed. I am sure you will.”
Florette nodded agreement and Mary Grace said: “Violetta wanted to meet you all. She thought you sounded so interesting.”
“You won’t find me very interesting,” said Peggy. “Poor old me.”
“I am sure you have had an interesting life,” I said, and I meant it. Peggy was small, thin, and I guessed her to be in her mid-forties. Her face was prematurely wrinkled, and her hair had been dyed—not very expertly—a deep black. Her face gave me the impression of one who had lived through much—mostly tribulation. One only had to look at Peggy to see that life had not been easy for her.
Her past was revealed—if not all at that first meeting, soon after. She had married young—not very satisfactorily—and had had two children. One had emigrated to Australia five years before the war; the other had married and gone “up north.” Her husband had drunk away his wages every Friday night, and there was nothing to do but keep the house going. She had some odd jobs cleaning other people’s houses and so it had gone on. And now, here she was—husband dead, children far away and not really taking much trouble to come and see her; she admitted that it was a great pleasure to her to have this “cushy little job in the Ministry.” I admired her. She was irrepressible. Her wizened little face would light up with a smile and find something amusing in most situations. I supposed life had been so hard to her that she had learned to appreciate what she now had. Florette was her ideal, and she was as certain of her eventual success as Florette herself.