The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish (2 page)

I was a pupil at the French Lycée in London at the time. Like all young people of my generation, on reaching the ripe old age of eighteen I received my call-up papers. I remember
breathing a sigh of relief when one morning I saw the official envelope with the government stamp lying on the front-door mat, because, not having done a scrap of work at school, I knew I
didn’t have a hope of passing my final exam. This was my get-out clause. In 1940 practically the entire school had been evacuated to the Lake District, and the Lycée handed over to the
Free French Air Force to serve as their HQ. Only one class of sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds was left
in situ,
closeted in a far corner of the building away from the roving eyes of young
Frenchmen who now stalked the corridors. I fell into this category. So, since the arrival of those young men, my studies had been sadly neglected. I’d spent my days roaring round South
Kensington on a motorbike clinging ecstatically to the muscular waist of a Free French airman. The place was bursting with them and we pupils were very few – twenty-four girls and one boy!
The young Frenchmen didn’t have a great deal of choice. Nor could they afford to be too choosy. They had serious competition from the Polish Army, also stationed in South Kensington, not far
from the Lycée. The Poles were terribly dashing in their square caps, long grey overcoats almost sweeping the pavement and high black boots, bowing and clicking their polished heels all over
the place. The Frenchmen rather paled in comparison.

Dear myopic Madame Gautier was one of my teachers at the Lycée. I thought she was about a hundred at the time, but realize now that she can’t have been more than fifty. She always
wore a woolly hat, scarf and gloves and a thick tweed overcoat in class whatever the season, declaring she would never get used to the English draughts. Sitting behind her desk on the raised
podium, she used to stare in bewilderment at the rows of empty desks in front of her and sigh, ‘Oh là là, là là. Où sont-elles passées, toutes ces
filles?’ (‘Where have all the girls gone?’). She didn’t know it, but we were of course perched on those motorbikes, clinging for dear life to Free French airmen, who were
driving us at a crazy rate round the streets of South Ken. Only a few ‘swots’ and Wilhelm, a plump, good-natured German-Jewish boy, remained in class.

Another teacher, Madame Laurent, used to prowl between the desks, noisily sucking sweets. She had a malicious acid tongue and often humiliated me in front of the class, sneering at my clothes,
which were too ‘English’ and lacked French ‘chic’. Her husband had abandoned her and run off to the Lake District with the gym mistress when the school was evacuated there. We
thought her sad situation highly amusing and used to mock her behind her back. Teenage girls can be very cruel.

Volatile Madame van Gravelange was a White Russian, brought up in Romania and married to a Dutchman. She taught us German – in French – and never seemed to know which language she
was speaking. She was very dramatic. Rolling her eyes heavenwards and with much waving of arms, she often shrieked, ‘Noreen, you make me take the ’air out of me.’ I never
discovered whether she meant air or hair!

Poor homesick Señor José Maria (the rest is unpronounceable), who sighed for his native Spain, was only interested in teaching girls who were short and dark with liquid brown eyes.
I was then tall and blonde, so was relegated to the back of the class and totally ignored, though I did learn to sing ‘La Paloma’ !

Madame de Lisle was a kind of school administrator who always wore a fashionable hat both indoors and out. I never saw her without it, though I suppose she must have removed it to go to bed.

And our lovely, gentle
directrice,
a single woman in her forties – what we called in those days a ‘maiden lady’ – had adopted an orphaned French baby. Suzanne
used to sit in her pram in the courtyard, fussed over and petted by us all, until the day a bomb fell. After that, she disappeared. I don’t think she was hurt, merely badly frightened, but
her adoptive mother must have either sent her to the country for safety or kept her with her in her office.

The bomb fell very near the Lycée, and part of the school was hit, but I certainly didn’t realize the danger, nor was I particularly frightened. After the air-raid warning sounded I
had been on my way down the stairs to the shelter in the basement when I heard the ominous drone of approaching enemy bombers. Instead of hurtling down the stairs to relative safety, I stopped on
the half-landing and gazed out of the large window, fascinated. I don’t know what I was hoping to see. Luckily a French airman with more common sense than I saw me, leapt down the stairs and
threw himself on top of me. We both crash-landed in a heap on the floor just as the bomb fell on a nearby building and the window above us shattered into a thousand pieces, most of which fell onto
our flattened bodies.

I remember getting up, rather dazed. I don’t think I even thanked him for saving me from what could have been a very disfiguring if not fatal accident. I just tottered down to the entrance
hall in time to see the
proviseur
(headmaster), Denis Saurat, being carried on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. It was mid-morning, and we were all sent home. But I didn’t go
home. Delighted to have an unexpected free day, I spent the afternoon wandering around London, returning home later than I usually did, full of my adventures, to find my mother, who had heard on
the lunchtime news bulletin that the Lycée had been hit, frantic with worry. The telephone lines to the school had been down, and she had been unable to obtain any news of me. Naturally she
thought the worst. When I was late home, her fears had been confirmed, and she was about to scour the local hospitals, convinced that I was one of the casualties. I almost had been! I shudder now
to think what dreadful injuries I might have sustained had it not been for the airman’s rapid intervention. But at the time I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

I regretfully left this idyllic situation when my call to salute the flag gave me the choice of working either in a munitions factory – an idea which did
not
appeal – or
joining the armed forces. Deciding that if I couldn’t beat ’em I’d better join ’em, I marched to the recruiting office to enlist in the Women’s Royal Naval Service, as a Wren
– partly because I come from a naval family, but mainly because I liked the hat. I found it most seductive, and one’s legs were shown off to much better advantage in sheer black
stockings than in the thick woolly khaki or dull blue ones issued to the unfortunate women recruits to the Army or Air Force.

When I went to sign on, however, a vinegar-faced woman told me tartly that the only vacancies in the Wrens were for cooks and stewards. My hopes took a rapid plunge. This was not at all the
future I had fantasized over. The idea of spending the rest of the war making stews and suet puddings was not the glamorous image I intended to present to the waiting world. Vinegar-face seemed to
gloat over my crestfallen appearance. ‘It’s either that or a munitions factory,’ she threatened. Her voice, like an umpire’s whistle, rang a death knell in my ears. The
future looked very bleak. I knew there was no point in arguing, so I asked for time to consider. She sighed exaggeratedly and glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s almost lunchtime.
Make up your mind and come back at two o’clock,’ adding menacingly, ‘Otherwise I’ll put you down for a factory.’

Like a beaten dog, I slouched from the room and out of the building and teetered glassy-eyed down the street, convinced that, because of her decision not to allow me to lead my country to
victory, there was now no hope for Britain.

‘Hey there, you look as if you’ve lost half a crown and found sixpence.’

I raised my eyes. It was my friend Tilly. I immediately cheered up. She had been at the Lycée with me and was great fun.

‘What’s up?’ she smiled, linking her arm in mine and propelling me along Holborn.

I told her of my tragic situation. She was sympathetic, but didn’t seem to find it as dramatic as I did. In fact, she laughed, which didn’t help.

‘Come and have a cup of coffee in the canteen. We can talk it over.’

‘What canteen?’ I asked suspiciously, envisaging the British Restaurants the government had patriotically set up and which served cheap, unappetizing meals and grey stuff in thick
white cups referred to as ‘coffee’.

‘The BBC, down the road at Bush House. I’m on my way there now. I work in the German section. The French Section is just across the corridor, I’m sure they’d give you a
job.’

My spirits immediately rocketed. I hadn’t thought of the BBC. What an opportunity. Blow the hat.

Settling me at a formica-topped table in the BBC World Service’s underground canteen with a cup of coffee, which looked and tasted like coffee, and a currant bun, Tilly disappeared to make
enquiries. I was fascinated. All around me interesting-looking people were jabbering away in a variety of languages. They seemed very friendly and smiled at me as they passed with their trays. The
canteen was crowded, and a young Norwegian asked if he could share my table. He and I were getting along very nicely, practically on first-name terms, when Tilly returned.

‘Mission accomplished,’ she announced, her dark-brown eyes shining. ‘One of my friends is secretary to the head of the French Section. She spoke to him about you, and he can
see you now. I’ll take you up.’ She linked her arm in mine again and made for the lift. ‘It’ll be fun having you around,’ she smiled. Tilly was always smiling.
‘This is a great place to work.’

I thought the Norwegian looked disappointed when I got up to leave. I was too. Never mind, I consoled myself, I’ll meet him again when I’m on the staff.

I got the job. To start immediately. All I needed was the approval of the Labour Office.

Euphoric, I raced back to the Labour Office, clutching the papers the Head of the French Section had given me, requesting that I be allowed to take up employment there. But the office was just
closing.

‘Come back at two o’clock,’ Vinegar-face snorted, firmly locking the door behind her.

Believing I had won, I was prepared to wait and savour my victory. Drifting into the nearest British restaurant, I was served a lump of indifferent cottage pie and some soggy cabbage by a WVS
volunteer who called me ‘luv’. (The Women’s Voluntary Service was a band of worthy middle-aged ladies who wore a grey uniform with an unflattering flat hat and valiantly served
their country.) Having demolished my cottage pie, I still had almost an hour to waste, so I attacked a treacle pudding, and even drank a cup of tepid grey coffee.

I was waiting on the doorstep when Vinegar-face returned and unlocked the door. I followed her impressive silhouette – she was built like a battleship – and sat down triumphantly in
front of her desk, deciding to be magnanimous. After all, I had won – or so I thought. She took no notice of me. She disappeared behind a curtain to make herself a cup of tea, returning with
it steaming in her hand, but didn’t offer me one. I didn’t care. My beautiful future was stretching out before me. I could put up with her acid remarks for a few minutes longer. When
she finally stopped slurping, she looked up and jerked her head in my direction. I passed the papers across the table for her to sign. She glanced at them and slashed a red pencil across the
application with the word ‘refused’ written in caps. I gasped.

‘Not a reserved occupation,’ she snapped, and handed them back to me.

‘I don’t understand,’ I spluttered.

‘It’s . . . not . . . a . . . reserved . . . occupation,’ she enunciated, syllable by syllable, obviously convinced I was a halfwit. ‘I should have thought what I said
was perfectly clear.’ She sighed deeply before dredging up a few more syllables. ‘You . . . can’t. . . work . . . for . . . the . . . BBC,’ she ended triumphantly and paused
to gloat over her victory before dealing her final blow. ‘It’ll have to be a factory.’

‘But
why
can’t I?’ I snapped back, seeing her select an ominous form from among the pile on her desk. It had something about ‘munitions’ written across it
as far as I could make out, since I had to read it upside down. The milk of human kindness I had decided to pour out on her now disappeared down the drain with remarkable speed.‘
Why
can’t I? My friend from the Lycée is already working there. If she can,
why can’t I
?’ I was now beside myself with anger and disappointment. She looked at me
coldly. ‘She’s doing in the German Section exactly the same job as I would be doing in the French,’ I fumed. That last remark was my undoing.

‘Ah,’ she trumpeted, her false teeth leaping to attention like recruits on parade. ‘An enemy alien.’

‘Tilly an enemy alien,’ I shot back. ‘What nonsense!’

‘What nationality is she?’ she barked.

‘Nationality?’ I stammered. ‘Well, I suppose she’s British.’ We had been such a hotchpotch of nationalities at the Lycée, nobody ever thought about it.

‘You
suppose’,
she said sarcastically, ‘but you don’t
know.’

‘It never occurred to me to ask her. She speaks English as well as I do, I assumed . . .’ My voice trailed off, terrible doubts about Tilly slithering into my mind. I began to wonder
how many more of Hitler’s personal friends had crept into the Lycée. Then reason came to the rescue, and I cheered up. Not Tilly! It wasn’t possible. She was far too jolly.

Vinegar-face had her pen raised ready to despatch me that very afternoon to a factory.

‘Tilly was born in Germany,’ I panted earnestly, forcing a smile and hoping to awaken a spark of human kindness in her. But her spark, had it ever existed, had gone out. ‘Her
parents sent her to England to live with a family in ’33 when Hitler came to power. She’s Jewish,’ I added lamely, and immediately realized I’d said the wrong thing.
Vinegar-face’s eyes narrowed. She was certainly a member of Oswald Mosley’s Fascist gang. I could see her sporting a black shirt and marching resolutely behind him carrying a banner,
her arm raised in a Nazi salute.