‘Take a seat, please, Julia,’ Mrs Hathaway encouraged, her pleasant, professional tone not giving away anything.
Still, Julia rushed into a long flowing excuse for why she was late. ‘I am so sorry I wasn’t here on time, I had to see John off today, you see.’
For a moment the woman looked puzzled and then shook her head. ‘Yes, yes. I remember you telling me yesterday. It’s not about that.’
Julia sat down with a sense of dread. This must be about her work. Her mind had been so full of John leaving and her children being left fatherless she had been preoccupied. Had she made mistakes?
‘I hope everything is okay with my work,’ she continued, anticipating anything her supervisor had to say. ‘I have been a little distracted lately with everything going on in my family.’
The woman smiled and raised a hand to stop her. ‘We’ve all been distracted, Julia. There’s a war going on. No, this has nothing to do with that.’
Julia noticed Mrs Hathaway seemed nervous. She rose and walked to the window, playing with a silver cross on a chain around her neck as she stared out, apparently trying to find the right way to put what she needed to say. Julia hoped to God she wasn’t being sacked. But the next words out of her supervisor’s mouth took her by complete surprise.
‘Julia, we have something we want you to do. The higher-ups have been on to me, and they need another girl. They asked me to send the best I’ve got.’ She swivelled on her heels and peered directly at her. ‘And that, of course, would be you. You’re the fastest in the pool by far and the most accurate. I know I can always count on you. This afternoon you need to go and meet with a Mr…’ She strode to her desk to review a note she’d placed there. ‘A Mr Woodbridge. They’re going to ask you a series of questions and have you take a typing test, and if it all works out, you’ll be doing some work for them.’
Julia began to panic. She loved the office she worked in and had a number of kind work colleagues. Though she wouldn’t call them close, they were familiar to her. She’d already felt so much emotion today, the last thing she wanted was her nice, secure, easy job to change into anything more uncertain. ‘Another office?’ she enquired meekly. ‘Will I still be in London?’ The panic was evident in her tone.
Her supervisor shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you any more than that. You need to go up and see him this afternoon at one o’clock. If it all works out, I can tell you more about the situation later. Go back to work now and try to put it out of your mind till then.’
Julia nodded, taking the piece of paper that was handed to her with the unfamiliar name scrawled on it, and felt apprehensive. Returning to her desk, and even with her supervisor’s urgings, she was unable to put anything out of her mind. She typed away absently, considering a thousand different scenarios this could mean, and none of them felt good.
At break time the girls were eager to know what was going on but Julia was none the wiser than they were. When she asked if any of them knew a Mr Woodbridge, they all shook their heads. ‘She was waiting for you for about twenty minutes, pacing up and down in front of your desk. Whatever it is, it must be important,’ surmised one of them.
At a quarter to one, she left the typing pool and climbed the stairs to the number of the room she’d been given, on a floor where many of the prime minister’s own staff worked. Finding the correct door, Julia’s heart was pounding as she knocked on it, and from beyond it a polite upper-class voice reached out to her. ‘Come in.’
Inside was a neat-looking man with a balding head sitting behind an enormous mahogany desk. He peered up at her over the top of his half-rimmed glasses. ‘Ah, Mrs Sullivan,’ he announced, as though he already knew her, but they had never met. ‘Come on in and sit down.’ She did as he asked and sat down in front of the desk, hovering on the edge of the seat, one of her fluttering hands nervously smoothing down her skirt. ‘Did Mrs Hathaway tell you anything about the position?’
Julia shook her head. ‘She just said she would tell me more once I’ve been through a test.’
The man nodded his approval. ‘All right, then we’ll get started, shall we?’
Julia nodded.
‘First of all, I have to ask you a series of questions, and I need you to answer them as honestly as possible. Then I need you to do a typing test, a shorthand test and a transcription test. All of those skills will be needed for this particular job.’ He must have sensed her apprehension because glancing over at her his businesslike expression softened and his tone mellowed. ‘Mrs Hathaway tells me you’re the best they have down there. I’m sure you’ll do fine,’ he added, encouragingly.
Taking a document from a file, he started to ask her a number of questions. Many she’d been through in her first security check a year before. Questions such as: did she have any family that had ties to the IRA or was she affiliated with any pro-German societies, or did she have German relatives? As she answered them all, a little bemused, he looked at her attentively for each response as though checking carefully that she was telling him the truth.
Finishing the questions, he made a mark on the form and then asked her to sit at a typewriter at a small desk in the corner where he instructed her to type a letter copied from another written document. He started a stopwatch and Julia began typing. It was a straightforward letter of request, something similar to those she had to type every day. As she finished it, she rolled it out and handed it to him.
After that he tested her shorthand skills, which she was the most nervous about, because it wasn’t her greatest strength, then Mr Woodbridge asked her to add another sheet of paper to the typewriter. She did as she was told and noted that her hand was still shaking as she rolled the barrel and wedged the paper down inside. Julia wished she knew what this was about. He then dictated a letter at quite a rapid speed, but Julia kept up with ease. Transcription was one of her strengths, and her mind was able to process well ahead of her fingers, so she never really had to stop and ask him to repeat anything. He spoke for about three minutes and then stopped. As he reached his hand towards her, she rolled out the paper, and he reviewed everything for a few minutes that felt like an eternity.
She sat there, apprehensively chewing on her cheek. Nothing to keep her attention but the movement of the black Gothic hands and the thrum of the large mahogany wall clock as it ticked methodically, the faint smell of polish from the wood of the desk, and the constant buzz of the traffic outside. He finished reading, took off his glasses and beamed. ‘I think you’ll do fine,’ he said. ‘You’re definitely very fast. Mrs Hathaway was right.’ He took out a stamp and stamped the three pieces of paper and added them to a file. ‘If you could go back to Mrs Hathaway, she’ll furnish you with the details of your new assignment. Tell her you passed the test with flying colours.’
Julia acknowledged his words with a little frustration that she still didn’t know what this was all about. As she stood to leave, she was aware her whole body was trembling. At the door he called out to her.
‘Julia.’
She turned.
‘Thank you for all your hard work, I’m glad you’re on our side.’
She allowed herself a small smile.