‘What was that?’ Mr Blair said, tall over the low desk.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Mair said.
‘I’m glad it is nothing, Miss Beynon,’ he replied, and swept on to his office.
‘Why don’t you leave her alone?’ asked Nancy.
‘She’s still a silly old bitch,’ Mair said, and then got down to her typing. She rarely lifted her head above the machine until lunch time. Mair was like that; she often felt the weight of the world on her back. She was sixteen, and in two years Mr Blair would throw her through the door. Mair knew this, and didn’t care. Nancy was seventeen, and would only have to wait another year. They watched Miss Vaughan hang up her coat, put away her bag, and then the bell rang, and she went off to attend to Mr Blair.
‘D’you think she’ll marry the Colonel?’ Nancy ventured to say, and Mair barked back that she couldn’t care less, and took another glance at the clock, the first of many, and at twelve-thirty promptly she would leave the office and hurry all the way home to Penrhyn Terrace. Mam would fuss about getting her lunch, and she would throw the transistor switch and sink into the chair, and listen to Tom. The world loved Tom, and so did Mair.
‘Did you talk to Mr Wilkins?’ Mam enquired, and Mair said, yes, she had, but it was the same message as last week and last month, the same words.
‘I’ll never get a raise whilst she’s there,’ Mair said, and Mam knew who she was, and said, ‘Come long, get your lunch.’
‘She works for less money than we do, Mam,’ Mair said.
‘You told me that.’
‘I shan’t stay there,’ she said.
‘You told me that, too,’ Mam said, and served her with crisps and fish fingers.
‘I want to go away, Mam.’
Mam sat, studied her. ‘Don’t we all?’
‘You flatten everything I say,’ Mair said.
‘Perhaps he’ll sack Miss Vaughan,’ Mam said.
‘Miss Vaughan might die.’
‘That’s an awful thing to say, dear.’
‘What isn’t awful,’ replied Mair, and increased Tom’s volume, and turned her back on her mother, announcing very directly that she was finished.
‘Your father still thinks you should have stayed on at school,’ Mam said.
‘Aw,’ exclaimed Mair, looked daggers at Mam. ‘What for?’
Mair was sparing of brains, and didn’t mind very much.
‘What for?’ Mam said.
And Mair wished that everyone over sixteen was stone dead.
Hammering away at her machine, Mair thought about yesterday, about Mam, and was reconciled to the fact that tomorrow would be no different. It had taken her some time to get used to Miss Vaughan. ‘Good morning, Miss Vaughan,’ Mair would say, and Miss Vaughan would smile, and say nothing. She was like that. Even Nancy remembered. Unlike Mair, Nancy Evans always had her lunch at the Blue Bird Cafe in the High Street. She ate fishpaste sandwiches and nibbled at digestive biscuits, and often drank three cups of tea. She thought of Miss Vaughan as being rather superior, but would never dream of conveying this to Mair, whose tongue, she thought, was already sharp enough. They heard the door open and close, and Miss Vaughan emerged from the private sanctum bearing a great sheaf of papers, which she shared with both.
‘Type these letters,’ she said.
They took the letters, did not look up, and did not answer her. It caused no concern at all to Miss Vaughan, since she didn’t notice them very often; perhaps Mair and Nancy were there by accident. She then returned to Mr Blair’s office, hovered over his desk, ready to do her duty.
‘Do sit down, Miss Vaughan,’ Mr Blair said, and she sat down, facing the safe, the door of which lay wide open. This safe almost burst at the seams, a rich history of people, dead and alive, town secrets, big secrets, little ones. Miss Vaughan had once been allowed to approach it, and to put away some papers, and had had a shock as she knelt there, feeling something that gave her a slight shiver, so that she turned quickly to Mr Blair, saying ‘There’s something not right in here, Mr Blair,’ and groped, and eventually brought to view the petrified remains of a dead seagull. Mr Blair had simply said, ‘H’m! Toms,’ algebra to Miss Vaughan, but for him just one of the jokes of a very late office boy. And ever since, girls, and girls only, had been the order of the day. The silence of the office was broken only by the crackle of papers. Mr Blair almost lay over the desk, studying them. Miss Vaughan had taken off her spectacles, and was cleaning them when he looked up. The red-rimmed eyes surprised him, roused curiosity.
‘Miss Vaughan!’
Miss Vaughan was stiff, attentive in a moment.
‘Yes, Mr Blair?’
‘Have you been crying, Miss Vaughan?’
She put back her spectacles, and said quietly, ‘No sir, I haven’t.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said, and bent once more to his task.
‘There’ll be the bank, and the post office today,’ he said. ‘Before lunch.’
‘Yes, Mr Blair’, and Mr Blair finished with the papers, sat back in his chair.
‘My wife was really disappointed the other day that you could not come to tea, Miss Vaughan.’
‘I never go to tea,’ Miss Vaughan replied.
And Blair faltered, fragmented the reply. ‘Yes. Of course. Indeed. We understand.’
Miss Vaughan again said thank you, and then got up and went into the outer office.
