Elsie Sees It Through

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

LONDON, WEDNESDAY 28- JULY 1943

A young woman is finishing work at noon. She stops typing her last document, puts it to one side and tidies her desk. Into the top drawer, she places her notebook and personal papers; her bits and bobs and a written reminder of something she must do on the next day. Then she rises from her desk and walks out to the ladies’ room, where she pats her long hair into position, pulls a face in the mirror and decides to add a little lipstick. She applies it, then puts her bottom lip over her top to smooth it and ensure that it is not too little and not too much. Then she reverses the lip movement. She has a round face, with slim, dark eyebrows but not, she decides, an unattractive look. Fairly ordinary, maybe, but her shoulder-length light-brown hair sets it off and her eyes, a greeny-grey colour, are quite striking. She has been told that frequently. Satisfied, she moves to go but thinks about how long she will be out in the street and decides to sit on the toilet. When she finishes, it takes only a minute to wash her hands, take a last look into the mirror and leave the room. Walking across the corridor slowly she notes the time on the big ticking clock on the wall and moves towards the room opposite her own. The prospect of an afternoon off is appealing and she has decided to spend it walking around town. Two things are nagging away at her ever-active mind, her mother’s health – always precarious – and something her friend Julia said last night. This, though, is not the time to be thinking about that. She enters the office.

“I’m just off on my way now, Mr Simpson,” she says.

“Yes, all right, Elsie,” he replies without looking up from his desk. “See you in the morning.”

She smiles. All at once, she takes in the room with the faded sunlight on the window sill which she can see clearly outside; the mixture of dust and recent tobacco smoke still lingering on the air and the heavily built form of Mr Simpson sprawling in his large chair, his look of concentration as he stares at his papers, his fancy waistcoat. All this she sees without consciously realising it and proceeds down the stairs to the reception area. Then she leaves the building.

At first, she had been surprised when Mr Simpson told her she could have the afternoon off. She told him she was quite happy to work on. Again, she smiles. If Simpson was giving her an afternoon off, it was because he wanted her in all day Saturday; she knows that. It has happened before. Today is Wednesday, tomorrow he will tell her it is for urgent war business, and she will have to come in. All day. The typing of important army contracts that must be watertight. And she will have to come in at least an hour earlier than usual. She knows the drill.

Elsie begins to walk along the Strand towards Trafalgar Square. It is a warm day, hot, muggy and dusty. The sky is a greyish white with patches of blue. Sunshine breaks through intermittently, at intervals. She is jostled suddenly by an airman who is engaged in animated conversation with another man in uniform and he barely notices her. She is suddenly amid a flurry of people, soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians, all in a rush. Time to grip her handbag tightly as you never know in these situations. Walking on, she passes the Tivoli cinema and notes that there are a good number of people on the move. More military personnel of all shades than civilians, although the latter stand out for their lack of colour in their drab suits or dresses, coats and shoes. There are, she notices and not for the first time, many foreign soldiers and sailors, their uniforms showing where they come from by the changes in style or design or the shoulder badges that say Canada or Australia or, sometimes, other locations such as Poland. A bus draws up noisily by her side at a request stop and two people alight. Elsie frowns as she glances across at the bus. She still can’t get used to seeing all the windows blocked up with harsh green netting, leaving only a small triangle of glass for passengers to look through. It is, her uncle has explained to her, a precaution against bombs and explosions sending shattered glass flying everywhere and causing yet more injury to pedestrians. Logical really, she says to herself, although she still cannot get used to it.

The thought of her mother’s declining health surfaces again, unbidden, into her thoughts. It was the reason she had to turn down the chance of sharing a spacious bedsit with Julia. She could never leave her mother on her own. Never ever. And what was Julia’s response? That she’d have to face up to it sooner or later? Face up to what? Leaving her mother or, more likely, moving in with Julia? Well, it is not going to happen, and Julia must think what she likes. It isn’t that her relationship with her mother is bad, it certainly is not. Both are strong characters with definite but often conflicting ideas about how a house should be run. Elsie well remembers being pushed and prodded into tidiness, as a young girl but it was a lesson well learned, even if her own ideas went further than her mother’s ever had. Well, if things need doing at home, she will see they are done. If only her mother would let her get on with it and not keep complaining and bitching constantly. She, Elsie, will have her way in the end, just see if she doesn’t.

At Trafalgar Square, the fountains are sending up white sprays of water, the pigeons are circling in the air ready to land and many are already on the paving stones. Suddenly there is a drone of aircraft from above, and Elsie looks up nervously, as she and everybody does these days. She sees two low-flying silver British fighter planes with the red, white, and blue markings of the RAF clearly visible. A sigh of relief at a time when the sound of aircraft inspires fear and loathing. Always. The little boys watching the pigeons and feeding them, even though the sign says this is f*******n, have looked up swiftly, noted the aircraft make and carried on with their pigeon-watching. Elsie stands, watching the people and birds all around her for a few minutes and then walks away and crosses the road. She wonders how she will fill the next few hours, because she has made no plans. She will not go home, though. There are better ways to spend an afternoon off than listening to the endless nagging, or complaining, or both, of her mother. She wonders, as she does frequently now, why she is still living at home at the age of 30. She smiles ironically as she recalls that it was originally because she did not want to leave her mother on her own after her father died. And when the war broke out, there was even more reason to stay, turning down the very first offer of a rather nice bed-sitting room found by her friend Julia, that they could share.

She misses her father she always has, ever since the day he died. Always will, she acknowledges. He it was that encouraged and nurtured her love of books and music. Elsie reflects that it was her father’s sudden and unexpected fatal heart attack that heralded the beginning of her mother’s gradual retreat from an active role in running the house. But, if she relinquished most of her active participation, she more than doubled her criticism, complaints and insistence that Elsie was incompetent.

A little circle of people, some in uniform, are waiting outside the National Gallery to enter for the lunchtime concert. Elsie has fond memories of lovely music there, watching Myra Hess, Benjamin Britten and others playing. Peter Pears and Kathleen Ferrier singing. The enclosed, crowded room, the sombre faces of the men and women in the audience and the rich, emotive music swelling up in the warm, charged atmosphere. A Mozart sonata rising to a brief crescendo and fading down again, gently. Not today, though; this is a day for walking and thinking. And reflection. Discovery perhaps? Elsie gazes speculatively ahead towards theatreland. Where to go next?

She walks on, up the Charing Cross Road and then cuts through to Leicester Square. More people are on the move now, some walking slowly, others seeming to be driven by an urgent desire to reach a destination. Elsie moves slowly round the square, turning left before reaching the Odeon cinema and walking up past the people in the centre and past the Leicester Square Theatre. In the distance, she hears an ambulance bell and wonders if a bomb has dropped suddenly, miles away. She does not recall hearing it, but the sounds of the city are all around, some near, some far and constantly supplying a symphony of noise. She stops walking, pauses. She proceeds into the square and sits on a seat looking out towards the Odeon. Time for reflection. Where is she going? Not just on this casual afternoon walk but for the rest of her life? She feels reasonably content, work is going well and she enjoys it. Life at home can be irritating at times with Mother the way she is but they get along somehow. Most of the time. Just the one, particularly close friend, Julia and they go back many years, to school days, indeed. Julia can be possessive, smothering almost sometimes. Julia can be a little embarrassing at times, too, but Elsie can handle her, no problem there. She smiles. After all, she is reliable, loyal, always there for when she needs a friend most.

No male friend on the horizon, though. She frowns. Perhaps in good time, who knows? She doesn’t, that’s for sure. Not that she has ever had or desired much communion with men or boys. A smile returns on her face. Well, no point looking into the future because you can’t see anything there. Looking ahead, across to the other side of the road, she sees the milk bar. Then the Empire cinema and the little Ritz theatre next door. She walks on and joins that pavement. It is crowded, perhaps the most packed of all the streets she has passed since leaving her office. Far more people, more beige and plain grey clothing and the usual assortment of army, navy, and air force personnel. The sudden rumble of a heavy truck passing, together with another aircraft passing overhead, intensifies the noise level and causes Elsie to blink and feel a momentary spasm of fear. It is all right, she convinces herself, just traffic and sundry noises but she is nervous when hearing loud sounds, as everybody is now. As everybody has been since being pounded by bombs falling, night after night after night. Houses destroyed. A gap in a large terrace of Georgian or Victorian houses with a huge pile of rubble where a house used to be. New houses crooked and wrecked like piles of twisted masonry and firewood.

Elsie shakes her head, and a little voice inside tells her to think about something else. She walks past the milk bar and the Empire and recalls that the hugely popular film, Gone With the Wind, has been showing there for more than two years. A glance to her left tells her that it is now showing at the little Ritz cinema, so it must have transferred there at some point. She hasn’t seen it as she objected to paying the much higher charges for seat prices for that film. She knows, too, that it runs for more than three hours and that is longer than she feels comfortable, in a cinema. She keeps on walking, past the Warner cinema farther down the road and back to the Charing Cross Road.

It isn’t just the sights and sounds of London’s West End that fascinate Elsie. It is the odours, many and various. The blast of perfumed, warm air that emanates from a side door of the Warner cinema as she passes by, looking along the alleyway at the side. The rush of neutral air that comes from the entrance to the Underground station as she walks past it. Then there are the fresh, temping food smells from the restaurants. The fresh coffee odours. So much to take in being in Central London, really. She passes the advertising hoardings and briefly notes the encouraging words and pictures that want her to buy Sharp’s Toffee and Peek Frean’s Crispbread. Or should she purchase some Vani-Tred shoes? They look much more comfortable on the hoarding pictures than the ones she is wearing now. Or a pair of Dolcis shoes? And the stockings and underwear from Morley look very luxurious and comfortable. Maybe she should settle for a bottle of Wincarnis Tonic Wine to take home for supper tonight? She smiles. A flippant thought, that.

Walking on, she passes the last of the hoardings which offers less frivolous and selfish advice. The long, ugly face of the Squander Bug, all fierce, sharp teeth and bulging, manic eyes and underneath the picture she is implored not to waste money on things she doesn’t really need but to buy war bonds and savings certificates to help the war effort. We must all, Elsie intones under her breath, help the war effort. She would like to make a bigger contribution, if only she could.

Ten minutes later, Elsie, rather tired and dusty, warm and with the realisation that her feet ache somewhat, is aware that she is very thirsty. Up ahead she notices a canteen.