Sleep in Peace (46 page)

Leaving the cloakroom, one wandered through a maze of corridors, some of them flanked with partitions of unpainted wood, some with green marble columns. The room where Laura worked was sometimes large and cheerful, sometimes dark and grim; for the section was the Cinderella of that department of the Ministry, and was frequently moved out to make room for another more important. Sometimes, therefore, Laura worked at a handsome desk in a fine polished armchair, with her block of filing cabinets conveniently placed just to her hand; at other times she wrestled with sheets of figures on a trestle table too high for her, in the same room as a dozen actively employed typewriters. The work was easy—sometimes Laura, with a twinge of north-country common sense, wondered if England really ought to pay her thirty-five and sixpence weekly for such easy work; but the serious air of her superiors reassured her. At first, for days and days on end, she copied on to cards, from flimsy printed sheets, the
names, addresses, salaries and departments of all the new employees whom the Ministry was so rapidly taking on. It was really amazing how many new employees the Ministry seemed to require, thought Laura, as her clear, delicate, artistic script, of which she was decidedly proud, degenerated into a sloppy scrawl as she wrote on rapidly. Then suddenly it was decreed that all the cards should be typed; they were typed in the special typists' department, somewhere upstairs in the vast warren, and now Laura's duty was first to check, and then to sort, them. Checking was dull, but the sorting first of some forty thousand cards by department, so that statistics could be prepared, then of a duplicate set alphabetically so that they might be filed away in the index cabinets, was excellent fun. At least, it was fun for the first few days; Laura was quick with eye and hand, and soon became the department's star sorter; but after one had sorted eight hours a day for a week, and then volunteered to sort all day on Sunday, sorting became hard work. One's shoulders, arms and fingers ached with dealing out cards, and one loathed the letters of the alphabet quite passionately. Certain letters, such as B, C, H, S and W, began names far more frequently than others; after a time this became a personal insult, an impertinence, on their part, so that one slapped the many B's down irritably. And then there was Mc, Mac, and M'. The less said about people who call themselves M', said Laura grimly to herself, the better; such affectation! There was a great urgency about this sorting, a great pressure put on all the staff to finish it, so that a really complete record should exist of every employee in the Ministry. Since Laura was not living with her family, and had no domestic claims, she was free to work as long as she chose; accordingly she put in a very considerable amount of overtime. It was an immense pleasure to her, when volunteers were called for, thus to be able to decide for herself that she would work late, without any fear of domestic scolding.

As a result, Laura gradually won a reputation at the Ministry
as a friendly, helpful, obliging creature; for she was always willing to come early and stay late, take duty on Bank Holiday, work on Sundays, and have her lunch when it suited other people, all without any grumbling. She also acquired a reputation for courage; for when the ominous whisper went round,
a daylight airraid is expected
, Laura seemed unmoved, and on the single occasion when the warning was implemented and the raiders came near enough to Charing Cross to be dangerous, as the staff was marched off to the basement Laura became particularly bright and jolly. When informed, in a complimentary tone, of these alleged good qualities by her official superior on the occasion of being granted a half-crown rise, Laura was shocked and ashamed, for she knew herself neither obliging nor brave; she was simply so deeply happy that late hours, irregular feeding and air-raids could not ruffle her.

For she was in London, she was free, she was far away from Blackshaw House; she was working, being of use in the world; she was actually paid money for her work, in a little pay envelope every week. It was her own money, her own time—she could spend them as she liked. London was darkened without against the menace of the air, but it was brilliant enough within to dazzle Laura's scanty leisure. Most of the finest pictures were stored away, unfortunately; but there was always the Victoria and Albert Museum; and there was the theatre, and the Opera—a seat in the gallery at Covent Garden cost only one-and-six—and once a ballet at the Coliseum. There were the busy streets, the jolly motor-buses; the grey river flowing, the barges, the restless, ever-changing crowds. Movement, bustle, life—and Laura free to walk in it; ah, that was grand!

Sundays were particularly attractive. To begin with, it was delicious not to have to gall one's conscience by attending Church. Then on Sundays Laura was often invited to the Duchays', and heard talk of pictures, books, music, the theatre, science. It was delicious to set off in the afternoon to go out to friends to tea,
just as all the other people in the bus were going out to friends to tea. To find oneself doing the things that other people did, and liking them—how rare for Laura, how delightful! It made her feel at home in the world, as if she really had a place there. Mr. and Mrs. Duchay were kind to Laura in a remote, impersonal way; they thought her rather uncouth, but found her naive enthusiasms refreshing. Sometimes they kept her to supper, and talked to her with a cool friendliness of herself and her abilities. Then she travelled home late on the top of a bus, dark, swaying, full of dimly seen strangers, infinitely romantic. Sometimes she returned earlier to the hostel, and having consumed a pallid meal, sat in her own bed-sitting-room, drawing. To put some coppers (money of her own earning) into the gas-meter, and light her fire, and watch it spring up red and glowing; to take out her drawing-board and sketch the faces of people she had seen in the streets that day, or remembered at home in Yorkshire; to feel that nobody would interrupt, that there was nobody within two hundred miles to whom she owed a duty; to feel that in this peace her talent grew, that one day it would find a full expression— that was grand! Yes, Sundays, leisure, they were glorious.

But Mondays were glorious too. To wake on Monday morning and know that Work—useful work, real work, work for which one was positively paid, awaited one; to be contributing something to the world, to be independent, self-supporting—yes, that was glorious too.

Interspersed with the frantic bouts of sorting work there were at first spells of complete inactivity, when the whole section hung about, waiting for more cards to come down from the typists. Then one went to the canteen for coffee, sat over one's meals longer than the specified time, or simply lounged at one's desk, gossiping with the other clerks. Laura disliked these periods of inaction, and was glad when presently she was given another job to occupy her spare time. This was the indexing of every item— speech, question or mere allusion—referring to the Ministry in
the proceedings of the House of Commons. It was her first acquaintance with Hansard. Every morning her superior in this work, a Civil Servant over the military age, scanned rapidly the Hansard of the day before, and marked the relevant passages with blue pencil; it was Laura's task to index these under every imaginable heading, with every imaginable cross-reference. She enjoyed this work; partly for its brisk exercise of her faculties, partly because it seemed to bring her into touch with real things. A heading, for example, under which Laura entered references constantly was:
dilution of labour
. She began to perceive that Mr. Armistead's constant harassed fury since the outbreak of War about the employees of Blackshaw Mills was not just Papa making a fuss about the mill, but a specimen case of a huger problem; the skilled men were at the front, their places had to be taken, the Trades Unions, fearing for the post-war status of their fighting members, objected to being flooded by unskilled labour which had not undergone the required apprenticeship, and fought against dilution with all their power in order to keep it within reasonable bounds; the workers were all tired out anyway, the cost of living rose constantly and they knew themselves indispensable; so did their masters; the Government anguished for guns and shells; consequently, the words
strike, lockout, bonus, dilution, welfare, profiteer
formed a perpetually recurring pattern through the columns in the blue-backed books, and Laura began to have a vision of industrial England as the Minister of Munitions saw it. The purpose of this indexing soon became clear to Laura, and made her proud to be concerned in it. Every day a batch of questions was asked in the House concerning the Ministry. Every morning the Minister's secretariat was convulsed until the answers to these questions had been prepared, ready for Mr. Churchill to deliver in the House that night. Sometimes Laura's indexing positively furnished an answer; it was a proud day for her when the Minister referred a questioner to “my reply on November 19th,” the connection having been traced by Laura's index.
Once, when her superior was away ill, she was obliged to trace a reference, and take it up to the sacred suite, herself; and actually found herself, trembling with fear and joy, in the very presence of the Parliamentary Secretary. She took pains after this to write to the Member for Hudley and secure entrance one evening to the Ladies' Gallery at the House of Commons, where, with her face pressed eagerly against the grille—for though women had recently been enfranchised, they were still segregated from their elected representatives in an apartment like a harem—she heard speeches from members she could not see. In spite of this rather damping experience she wished very heartily that her main work lay in Hansard rather than in cards.

Presently the work of sorting the cards was completed, and statistics began to be compiled from them. Laura, whose work was considered reliable, was put on to check the figures of some of the other clerks. She sat all day with huge sheets, many-columned, before her, checked categories and added numbers, so that the Ministry might know how many persons it employed and how much it paid them. (There was a rumour that this task had been undertaken at the instigation of the Treasury, whither high officials repaired one afternoon a week to ask for money.) Until the present compilation was complete, no fresh information could be added to the cards, and flimsy sheets lay stacked about the room awaiting entry. This congestion was not due to any lack of system or any sloth on the part of Laura's section, which worked at high pressure on a strictly planned scheme day in day out, but to the continual amazing inflow of new staff to the Ministry. Nevertheless the growing piles of reports unentered, indicating a growing unpunctuality in the statistics, worried the conscientious Laura almost intolerably; she ate, slept and dreamed of figures and cards.

In 1918 came the influenza epidemics and in one of these Mrs. Hinchliffe died. Laura was sorry, for Mrs. Hinchliffe had shown her many kindnesses, but life was such a rush nowadays that she
had little time to mourn. She wrote condolences to Grace and Mr. Hinchliffe, and urgently begged Gwen to send flowers in her name, but she could not, of course, leave her work in the Ministry to go to the funeral. Indeed Grace herself had difficulty in getting away to the funeral; she was now running the whole history department at Henshawe single-handed, working day and night, her senior having collapsed after the death of his son at the Front.

One afternoon about a fortnight later a messenger girl approached Laura's desk, and handed her a visitor's form. The name read:
Corporal L. Armistead
.

“Ludo!” cried Laura, bounding from the room.

There in the corridor stood Ludo, his velvet eyes shyly beaming. Laura flung herself into his arms, and they enjoyed a long wet kiss. People who passed by, carrying files of papers importantly under their arms, looked the other way considerately; they were all well accustomed to the sight of a girl rapturously greeting someone in uniform. Ludo cheerfully agreed to wait the half-hour till Laura should have finished her “card-playing”, as he called it, and sat in the corner scanning an issue of Hansard. His opinion of the Mother of Parliaments seemed to be low; “they talk an awful lot of rot there,” he said when Laura rejoined him; “if they had an hour in the trenches every day while a strafe was on, instead of sitting tight in their cushy jobs at home and spouting their heads off, something might be done towards winning the War.”

“How
is
the War going on, Ludo?” asked Laura anxiously.

Ludo looked grave, and gave a short dry cough. “Well—a lot of people have had their leave curtailed,” he admitted.

A discussion now arose as to where they should dine and what theatre they should visit. As Ludo was not now an officer, certain limitations, to which neither referred, were imposed on their arrangements, but fortunately Laura was able to speak with some authority on seats and means of communication.

“Quite the Londoner, aren't you?” commented Ludo, surveying
her with affectionate admiration when at last they were seated in the dining-room of the Strand Palace Hotel, where it seemed he was staying. “But you look tired.”

“Do I?” said Laura, surprised.

“Yes. You mustn't make yourself ill, you know,” urged Ludo, coughing.

“It's sad about Mrs. Hinchliffe, isn't it?” said Laura, her thought making a natural transition.

“What about Mrs. Hinchliffe?” asked Ludo quickly with a startled air.

“Why, Ludo—she died ten days ago. Influenza turned to pneumonia. Didn't you get my last letter?”

“No,” said Ludo gruffly. There was a curious expression on his face; if the emotions had been relevant to the occasion, Laura would have judged him to be feeling at once relief and disappointment. He made some enquiries about the manner of Mrs. Hinchliffe's death.

“But it's strange you didn't get my letter,” said Laura. “At least, it's not at all strange, really, seeing that there's a war on, but usually you seem to receive them so regularly.”