Survivor (19 page)

I know I behaved bad. But I do, I love you. And didn’t mean to harm
you. Please say you’ve forgiven me and write back. Because I’m
off to France now with my regiment. And please send me a photo.

She felt she should be outraged, but
instead she could only shake her head in wonder at his cheek. He’d only
written now because he was scared of what lay ahead of him and wanted to think he
had a girl back home. She didn’t want to be that girl any more, but she
couldn’t help feeling a bit anxious for him.

The next morning, she went out early for
an interview for a job in Baker Street. As she walked there, her mind was on how
different Morgan and Gerald were, yet both were desperate for her to write to them.
If only Gerald set her on fire the way Morgan had, then she would agree to marry him
right now, if he asked. He had all the right credentials – family, education,
prospects – he was excellent company, the kind of man everyone wanted for her.

While she had no intention of writing
back to Morgan – only a complete fool would do that after the way he’d treated
her – she couldn’t help but feel a little wistful when she remembered how
handsome he was, and what a great lover he’d been before he disgraced
himself.

But then, with the war just beginning
and all the new experiences in store for her, perhaps it was a good time to be fancy
free?

Mr Greville came through from his office
and loudly cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. Mariette, who was
typing up a letter to a supplier, looked up at her boss expectantly, while the other
girls in the office stopped what they were doing.

‘Mr Chamberlain has resigned as
Prime Minister,’ he announced with his customary pomposity.

‘Who will take his place,
sir?’ Doris asked. Doris was in charge of accounts and considered herself a
cut above everyone else in the office.

‘It’s sure to be Winston
Churchill, he’s the only man with the right credentials, even if he is
something of a bounder,’ Mr Greville replied. ‘I would imagine that will
be verified shortly. One thing is certain, though, which is that even more uniforms
will be needed now. It’s an ill wind, as they say.’

He disappeared back into his own office,
leaving Mariette thinking that his obvious delight at profiting through war was a
little distasteful.

At the time of her interview to be his
secretary, back in September – eight months ago – the only good thing she could see
about the job was that it took a mere ten-minute walk to get there. A company which
made uniforms sounded deadly dull, the Baker Street office was gloomy, and she
thought Mr Greville was slimy. But she was very aware that
she was young and inexperienced, and that she was
unlikely to get a better offer, so she felt she had to accept it.

Rose had called here once and proclaimed
Greville – who was around forty, with oiled dark hair and a droopy moustache – to be
‘an East End spiv, only one step up from a barrow boy’. Yet, in
Mariette’s opinion, there was no doubt he was a sharp businessman, whatever
his background. Eighteen months ago, he had been manufacturing ladies coats in his
Shoreditch factory, but he’d been quick to tender for government contracts for
uniforms, and then turned over the entire production line to supply them.

Despite all Mariette’s
reservations about the position, it had turned out to be much better than she
expected. She liked both Polly, Doris’s assistant, and Susan, who did the
filing, and her expectations that Mr Greville would be making passes at her within a
week, as he certainly looked that kind of man, were wrong. He had never said or done
anything to her that was improper.

Nor was she bored. She’d imagined
her job would merely be taking dictation and typing up letters to woollen mills in
the north of England. But it soon transpired that there was far more to the job.
Along with having to chase up orders of buckles and buttons, get samples of fabrics,
and many other related tasks, she often had to go to the factory in Shoreditch to
find out how production was going. She took shorthand notes of Greville’s
meetings with senior military personnel, and now and again he would ask her to
accompany him to lunch or dinner with men who would put more business his way.

‘A pretty face and a touch of
class will sway most men,’ Greville said the first time he asked her to
accompany him to the Savoy for dinner. He was to be even more impressed with her
when one of his guests was French and she translated for him.

Mariette knew
she owed the ‘touch of class’ to Noah and Lisette. She could attribute
every improvement in her character since leaving New Zealand seventeen months ago to
their influence. It wasn’t just sending her to college, taking her to the
theatre, or Lisette’s encouragement to be chic and ladylike, it was more that
they’d opened her eyes to her own potential.

Back in Russell, her only talents had
been sailing, fishing and sewing. And they hadn’t made her a good
conversationalist because these were her only interests. But Noah’s enthusiasm
for history and world events had rubbed off on her, and Lisette had taught her by
example to be interested in other people. She could now hold her own at a dinner
party; she’d learned to ask the right questions to allow other guests to
shine, which made them think she was intelligent and caring. Once she’d
thought that being reckless was the best way to get attention, but now she found she
got that without even trying.

She could remember waking up in the
mornings, back in Russell, already bored before breakfast because each day was so
predictable. The same old routine, the same faces, the same conversations about the
weather, peppered with a little gossip.

But now she could have a real
conversation with a total stranger on the bus. People wanted to air their horror at
the atrocities in Poland, and praise the courage of the Poles, who had tried so hard
to defend Warsaw. Often these strangers told her that the company they worked for
was moving out to a ‘safe’ place in the country, or young women confided
they were going to join the Land Army or the WAAFs. But whether or not people were
talking about the war in general, or only their small part in it, there was no
doubting the excitement and expectancy in the air.

While there was
still no real evidence of war in London – apart from almost every able-bodied man
being in uniform – it was coming closer every day. In April, Denmark and Norway had
been invaded by the Germans and Noah had said, the previous night, that it was only
a matter of days before they swept through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. He was
seriously concerned for France as their troops were sitting on the Maginot Line of
forts and anti-tank defences, on the German frontier between Switzerland and
Luxembourg, and he couldn’t understand why they were too blinkered to see that
the attack would come through Belgium.

But here in England daily life was still
much the same as it had been before war broke out. Rationing, the blackout and
having to carry gas masks everywhere were all irksome. But so far, the worst danger
Mariette had encountered was tripping up or banging into something in the dark.

She and Rose were anxious about David
and Gerald as they were fully trained pilots now, and they could be called upon any
day to fly against the enemy. Yet whenever they came home on leave, they were always
in high spirits, ready for a night on the town with the girls, and from the stories
they told about their fellow airmen they were having a lot of fun back at the base
too.

Mariette had become very fond of Gerald,
and although she had never once felt a surge of passion for him, she could say she
loved him as the dearest of friends. She liked his company, he was fun, kind and so
easy to talk to, and it made her sad that his kisses left her unmoved. She wished
with all her heart that he could make her feel the way Morgan used to do.

Morgan was somewhere in northern France
now. She had relented and written back to him, purely because she needed to tell him
just how appallingly he’d behaved that night and
to explain that it had killed off any affection
she’d once felt for him.

However, he’d written back to her,
saying he understood her feelings and was ashamed of himself. But he begged her to
write now and then because there was no one else he could expect to get a letter
from.

So she had continued writing because she
felt sorry for him. But his inability to write a good letter was as frustrating as
Gerald’s inability to make her feel lust. Morgan couldn’t convey what he
was feeling – not about her, what he was doing, or even how he was getting on in the
army.

He still claimed he loved her. But she
couldn’t tell if he really meant it, or if he was merely holding on to an
image of her for comfort while he was away.

As for her own feelings about him, they
were confused. She did still think about his lovemaking, and his looks, but she felt
she didn’t really know him.

She did know Gerald. Along with coming
home often and taking her out for dinners and dancing, he also wrote wonderful
letters. He took a real interest in what she was doing; he often slipped in a bit of
poetry that he liked, told her about books he’d read, and there were always
amusing anecdotes about the other flyers. While it was clear he couldn’t wait
to go out on his first mission, he also told her that sometimes he was scared. It
was his letters that had made her see what a good man he was – brave, honest and
very open.

Rose had once said she thought a woman
had a better chance of a long and happy marriage with a man who was
‘suitable’ and her best friend, and she believed people talked a lot of
baloney about falling in love. Perhaps she was right, but Mariette didn’t
think Rose had been ‘awakened’ by a man. Maybe if she had, she might
think differently.

Just after
lunch, and a few hours after Mr Greville had made his announcement about
Chamberlain’s resignation, he called Mariette into his office.

‘I want you to go to Shoreditch
now with some instructions for them,’ he said, putting some papers into a
large Manila envelope. ‘I’ve just received a huge order for more
uniforms, which means the girls there will have to work harder, and longer hours, to
fill it. I’d go to the factory myself to talk to them, but I’ve got to
catch the train up to the mills in Yorkshire and step up my order with them. So I
want you to stand in for me.’

Mariette wasn’t sure what he meant
by this, and her blank expression must have told him as much.

‘For goodness’ sake, Miss
Carrera, surely that isn’t difficult to understand? I want you to give them a
pep talk to make sure they understand that their work is vital for the war effort.
Now can you do that?’

Mariette gulped. The factory girls were
a hard lot, and they were unlikely to appreciate anyone telling them they’d
got to work harder, and for longer hours, especially if that person was an office
worker who was younger than most of them and who knew nothing about sewing uniforms.
But she was touched that Greville thought her capable of doing it, and she was
delighted to have an afternoon in the East End.

Rose couldn’t understand why
Mariette liked going there – she shuddered at the very thought of the overcrowding,
disease and poverty – but Mariette understood now why Morgan had said she needed to
see it. Living in St John’s Wood, and mixing only with the wealthy and
privileged, would have given her a very narrow view of London.

However, her first reaction had been one
of sheer horror. She had known in advance that whole families sometimes lived in one
room, that a single outside lavatory and one tap
might serve twenty or more people, and that most of them
had appalling diets.

But what she saw during that first visit
was hopelessness. There were dirty, grey tenements with even greyer washing hanging
across the fetid yards, where little sunshine ever shone. She saw ragged children
with pale faces and hollow eyes sitting listlessly on doorsteps. A careworn mother
struggled home with an ancient pram loaded not only with a baby but a toddler, a
sack of coal and a bag of washing too.

That day her stomach had been turned by
the smells, and she’d had to avert her eyes from a severely crippled man who
was being dragged along in a soapbox on wheels by a girl no more than seven or eight
years old. She had wanted to run back to St John’s Wood, where she felt safe
and secure, and she couldn’t understand why Morgan thought she ought to visit
such a place.

Yet months later, after many more visits
and having got to know many of the staff at the factory, some of whom lived in those
same tenements that she’d found so repulsive, she had a different view.

They might have very little, and many
lived in conditions which were terrible, but they weren’t downtrodden. Against
all the odds, most managed to keep themselves, their children and their homes
surprisingly clean. She’d heard talk of rats and bedbugs, and how living in
such close proximity to others meant that they knew their neighbours’ bodily
functions as well as they did their own. But these were things they laughed about.
And laughter, it seemed, was as important as food and drink in the East End.

Mariette saw the people she’d got
to know as brave little terriers, prepared to take on another dog twice their size.
She admired the factory girls, who sang as they worked, made jokes about everything
and shared what they had. She saw
how
neighbours looked out for the elderly, the sick and other people’s children.
There was a camaraderie there that Mariette had never experienced before. Sometimes,
she almost wished she could be one of them because they struck her as far more
genuine and warm-hearted than some of the people she’d met through Rose and
considered to be friends.

‘You can do this, Miss
Carrera,’ Mr Greville said. ‘You are good with people, and I have been
told that many of the women at the factory like and admire you. So don’t let
me down!’

‘I’ll try not to, Mr
Greville,’ she said, and went back to the general office to get her jacket and
handbag.

Mariette wished she’d had the
nerve to speak out and say that the women might be more inclined to help him out if
Mr Greville was kinder to his machinists, if he took into consideration the fact
that many of them had small children and ageing parents to take care of along with
their job. But Mr Greville was a hard man – only a week ago, he’d sacked a
woman for taking home scraps of wool to make a patchwork blanket. The scraps would
only have been thrown away, they were no good for anything else, but he’d felt
he had to make an example of her.

Mariette caught the underground to
Bethnal Green station and then made her way to Greville’s factory. For once,
she wasn’t noticing the mean little houses or the dank, musty smell that
wafted out of open doors. She was too intent on thinking about what she could say to
inspire the machinists to want to work longer hours.

Greville’s factory blocked off the
end of a short street lined with small terraced houses. It stood behind tall iron
gates, giving the ugly stone-built factory the look of a prison or a Dickensian
workhouse. In fact, it had been built in the
1800s as a slaughterhouse. The front, which must once
have been where the animals were herded, ready to be slaughtered, was now a loading
bay. With its soot-blackened stonework, and the rusting hooks and pulleys that had
been left behind, it still retained a sinister appearance.