Their Finest Hour and a Half (2 page)

‘Be my beau?'

‘Excellent.'

‘I can hear you wheezing from right over here.'

‘Can you? Oh yes.' He stopped jigging and sat down, and then, as the exertion began to catch up with him, braced his hands on his knees and breathed effortfully for a while, neck sinews straining. ‘Got a bit carried away . . .' he said, between inhalations. ‘. . . been dreading it . . . thought I'd get home duties . . . be posted to some lousy hole . . . brother's got asthma . . . C1, he's not so bad . . . in Caithness now . . . guarding an underwear dump.'

‘Not really underwear?'

‘Protective clothing . . . Underwear's a better . . . What's the word? Pay off.'

‘I think perhaps you should stop talking for a while.'

‘Sound bad?'

‘Terrible.'

‘Okeydoke.' He jerked a thumb towards the window. ‘When's your . . . ?'

‘Eleven o'clock – I'd better get on.' She glanced at her notepad again.

‘New copy?' asked Donald.

‘Yes.'

‘Ivy and Lynn?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can I read it? When you've done?'

She nodded, and then, because it seemed possible that he would literally rather die than shut up for thirty seconds, she wound the carbons into the Underwood and began to type straight from her notes, changing the odd word as she went along.

Catrin sat back and flexed her fingers. Six months before, when conscription had started to nibble away at the junior roster of Finch & Caradoc, her secretarial duties had been expanded – first to include sub-editing, and then copywriting – and she'd been handed the poisoned chalice of the So-Bee-Fee account, with its stolid pre-war emphasis on gigantic joints of meat and dim but eager kitchen maids.

‘Try and come up with something more modern . . .' had been Mr Caradoc's vague brief, and she'd decided upon two protagonists not much older than herself: busy young housewives with too much to do and no time to do it in, the type of women whose beauty regimen would comprise a couple of hairgrips and a dab of powder. Colin Finch's prototype illustration had shown a pair of elaborately coiffured matrons, drooping languidly beside the kitchen table as if unable to support the weight of their Parisian daywear. ‘But
no one
wears gloves to make pastry,' she'd protested, and Colin had shrugged and carried on drawing Lynn's diamanté stole-clasp. Since then, by a slow process of attrition (or ‘nagging' as Colin called it), her creations had edged a little closer to reality, and she'd become quite fond of the pair of them – of Ivy, in particular, who was always stuck for dinner ideas and whose husband revealed a new, and irritating, food fad every other week. (‘
Bert's told me he's never liked curly kale
', ‘
Bert asked why we have to have potatoes quite so often
', ‘
Bert's had enough of mince, he says
.' )

‘Do the manufacturers mind that?' asked Donald, who had partially recovered, and was wheezing gently over her shoulder. ‘Saying that there's no So-Bee-Fee in the shops?'

Catrin looked up at him. ‘You mean you haven't had Mr Caradoc's little lecture yet?'

‘Lecture about what?'

‘About Haz-Tam? The wonder grate-cleaner?'

‘Never heard of it.'

‘Or Kleeze? Stain-remover?'

‘No.'

‘Or Effika? Brimmo? Kalma-tina?'

‘You're inventing them.'

‘No, really.' She slid the pages out of the typewriter and clipped them together with one of the six paper-clips still left in the office. ‘According to Mr Caradoc they were in every housemaid's cupboard until the Great War and then the Kleeze factories stopped producing Kleeze and began churning out left-handed swivel-loaders or whatever-it-was and it didn't occur to anyone that, by the time it was all over, people would have forgotten they'd ever used Kleeze.'

‘You mean they'd forgotten the ease that came with Kleeze?' said Donald, happily, sitting down again and swinging his feet on to the desk.

‘So what Mr Caradoc says we have to remember is, that it's our duty to our clients to keep the memory of their products alive, whether or not they're available in the shops. Which, in the case of So-Bee-Fee, they're not. At least for a month or two.'

‘Why not?'

‘They've diverted the main ingredient into gravy for the forces.'

‘And by “main ingredient” they mean . . . ?'

‘Burnt sugar, Mr Caradoc says.'

‘Not beef?'

‘No.' She paused. ‘There's no beef in So-Bee-Fee.' The thought still had the power to embarrass her, though it made Donald laugh. ‘I'd better dash,' she said, getting up.

‘Good luck, then. I suppose.'

‘That's a bit half-hearted.'

‘I don't want you to leave, do I? It's nice having a girl around.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Especially one like you.' He turned puce and made a great business of fishing in his pocket for a cigarette, and Catrin climbed the stairs to what Colin Finch liked to call his studio, and knocked at the half-open door.

‘Come!'

He was standing in bulky silhouette against the window, gazing out at the plane trees of Fitzroy Square. ‘Want your opinion, young lady,' he said, without turning, his voice stuck in a key of perpetual melancholy. ‘The Female Viewpoint. Take a look at the sketch.' Catrin went over to the drawing-board and inspected the pneumatic blonde ATS girl straining her buttons at the wheel of a truck.

‘Do you think she's attractive?' asked Colin.

She hesitated; although Colin always asked for opinions he never really wanted them unless they chimed absolutely with his own.

‘Yes . . .' she said.

‘Yes, what? Spit it out.'

‘Yes . . . in a bit of an obvious sort of way.'

‘Whorish, you mean?'

‘No. Not as bad as that.'

‘Tarty?'

‘Well, maybe just a little. Who's it for?'

‘McLean's. “Molly Brown's McLeaned her Teeth Today.” Is she a McLean's sort of girl, I wonder?'

It took her a second or two to phrase a tactful reply. ‘To be honest, Colin, I'm not sure that anyone's going to be looking at her
teeth
.'

He sighed. ‘What bitches women are. You've brought your copy?'

She handed it over. ‘I'll have to leave now, I'm afraid.'

‘And why's that?'

‘My interview. I'm sure I'll be back by early afternoon, though.'

He turned to look at her. ‘What interview?'

‘With the Ministry of Information. I showed you the letter last week.'

‘Oh God,' he said, savagely, ‘so you did, I forgot. Yet another conscript for the slogans department.'

‘Do you think that's what I'll be doing?'

‘More than likely. “Keep Mum and Eat More Prunes.” Though you'll probably spend most of your time typing memoranda. “
Dear Cecil
,” – he assumed a high, prissy voice – “
yours of the first inst, I shall look into the matter of the amendment to Clause 9 of Form 3/B7 just as soon as the international situation permits
 . . .' ' ' He turned back to the window and laid his forehead against the glass. ‘Soon there'll be no one left to write copy,' he said. ‘Goods will be sold from giant cardboard boxes stamped “Rice” or “Hair oil”. Buxom Molly Brown will be replaced by a label saying: “Clean Your Teeth by Order of the Minister for Hygiene.!”' He sighed again, misting the windowpane in front of him.

‘I really had better go,' said Catrin, after the moment of introspection had stretched out to half a minute.

‘Best of luck, then,' said Colin, insincerely. ‘Don't trip over any red tape.'

*

From a distance, the Ministry of Information looked almost elemental, a chalk cliff rearing above the choppy roofs of Fitzrovia. From the main entrance, where Catrin stopped to tweak one stocking so that the darn was concealed by her coat, it looked more like a vast mausoleum.

‘Authority?' said the policeman at the door, and Catrin handed over her letter (
H/HI/F Division, Room 717d, Swain
) and was nodded through.

Room 717d had clearly been part of a corridor before three sections of plywood had transformed it into a space only just large enough to hold a desk and two chairs. Catrin had been waiting there alone for nearly ten minutes when a young man whose name she didn't quite catch poked his head round the door, checked that she was unoccupied, and proceeded to sit down, open a file and – without explanation or preamble – read her a series of jokes. Each time he finished a punchline he looked at her sharply, hoping, presumably, for laughter, but since his delivery possessed all the comic flair of a platform announcer it was hard to oblige, and Catrin could feel her mouth stiffening into a dreadful fake grin. ‘Just one more,' he said, after the fourth. ‘An ARP warden goes into a butchers and looks at what he's got on the slab. He's got liver, he's got kidneys, he's got sheep's hearts and he's got a lovely great tongue. “I'm going to get you summonsed,” says the warden. “Why?” says the butcher. “I haven't done nothing wrong.” “Oh yes, you has—”' The young man frowned, and there was a pause while he re-read the line, lips moving soundlessly. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said, ‘these are, of course, transcribed from actual conversations, hence the ungrammatical element which does tend to make them rather difficult to read. So anyway, the butcher says “I haven't done nothing wrong”, and then the warden says, “Oh yes, you has, you haven't put your
lights
out.”'

He sat back and gazed at Catrin expectantly. There was a long moment. ‘Did you understand the pun?' he asked, frowning.

‘Yes, I did.'

‘You understood that “lights” is a synonym for some form of offal? Lungs, I believe.'

‘Yes.'

‘And therefore the warden's final comment is a play on the ARP's habitual call to “put your lights out”.'

‘Yes.'

‘But you didn't find the joke amusing?'

‘Not really, no. Perhaps . . . in context.'

‘In a more jovial forum, such as a public house, you mean?'

‘Yes, maybe.'

He made a note. ‘And would you say that your opinion of the authority and/or ability of air-raid precaution wardens would be adversely affected by hearing this particular piece of humour?'

‘I don't think so, no, but then my husband's a part-time warden.'

‘I see.' He made another note. ‘And if this particular piece of humour was broadcast on the wireless, do you think that would affect your opinion on the authority and/or the ability of the BBC to—'

The door from the corridor opened suddenly, admitting two men. ‘Off you go, Flaxton,' said the younger and better-looking of the two, ‘no one wants to hear your jokes.'

Flaxton slammed the file shut and stood up. ‘We all have work to do, Roger,' he said, with something akin to a flounce. ‘
Morale
happens to be mine, whereas
undermining
morale appears to be yours.'