Pushing small haloes of smoke into the air through her plump red lips, Elsie realised with horror that history was repeating itself: she was turning into her mother, a timid little Victorian creature who had married on the eve of the Great War. Elsie, born a drearily predictable nine months after the Armistice, imagined her mother passing those four long years, rocking in her wicker chair by the fire, eternally knitting scarves and socks for the men in the trenches. Doing her bit.
The brace around Elsie’s heart tightened. It wouldn’t be like that for her. It wasn’t already; it was very different. She turned and there it was, on the mantelpiece. It had arrived last week when she had been in the kitchen boiling the whites. The door knocker had resounded and she’d dithered about whether or not to answer it, convinced that it had been the Kleeneze man back again with his wretched set of dusters and brushes. But it hadn’t been him, it had been the telegraph boy. All that she could now recall of him was the red piping on his navy uniform cuff as he handed over the telegram and had asked if there was a reply. No reply. What could she have said? Thank you, War Office, for informing me that my husband is missing, presumed killed on war service.
Elsie held the cigarette to her lips perfunctorily, but breathed around it. She had guessed, of course, even before the telegram had arrived. ‘Tens of Thousands Safely Home Already,’ the Daily Express headline had shouted from their edition of 31st May. ‘Many more coming by day and night.’ But Laurie did not come. The follow-up letter, as promised in the telegram, had revealed nothing more. And that was the last that she had heard. Missing presumed killed.
She let the burning cigarette fall to the floor, turned back inside and shut the door.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Elsie closed her wide blue eyes, trying to unclench her heart; but it refused. The pathetic helplessness of her situation echoed in the repetitive metallic striking of the grandfather clock in the hallway, each strike gaily announcing the death of more of her life.
The first thing that her eyes settled upon, when she finally reopened them, was the ceramic sign hanging just above the stove. The Devil makes work for idle hands, it warned. To people visiting Bramley Cottage it was simply a light-hearted wall adornment, but to Elsie it represented so much more than that. She wasn’t silly, she had been able to see the look in her mother-in-law’s eyes when she had unwrapped it on her last birthday; it was a look that had unquestionably summarised the wifely expectations placed on Elsie. It had been a warning to uphold her marriage vows, no matter what.
Elsie calmly stood, pulled the sign from its nail, carried it into the hallway and smashed it into the circular glass face of the grandfather clock. Shards of glass and pottery crashed noisily to her feet. She drew a quick breath and smiled.
The ticking had stopped and finally, the clamp on Elsie’s heart loosened.
She knew what she had to do next.
Passers-by—predominantly men in dark suits and bowler hats, carrying briefcases—slowed their pace to an admiring gait, taking in the long rainbow-like line of colour that snaked its way below the tall grey building on the corner of Kingsway and Aldwych in central London.
Elsie, sighing noisily, side-stepped from her position in the queue and collided directly with a plump man, whose bulbous eyes had been riveted to a group of giggling girls just up in front of her.
‘Pardon me, Miss,’ he apologised, pulling a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbing his forehead as he stumbled on his way.
‘Men,’ the woman directly in front of Elsie said, turning with a smile. ‘So incredibly primitive.’ She pursed her lips and exaggeratedly placed a hand on her tilted hip. ‘Of course, that’s why I dressed to impress.’ She tossed her head back and her perfect red lips parted to release a gravelly burst of laughter.
‘Me too,’ Elsie admitted with a smile. She had worn her best outfit: a simple mustard skirt, worn just below the knee with matching boxy jacket with padded shoulders. It was complemented by black leather gloves and a veiled hat, which was set at a fashionable slant. ‘Though I rather think we weren’t the only ones,’ Elsie added, casting her eyes back and forth over the line of women.
‘What are you here for?’ the woman asked, in her plummy voice.
‘Women’s Auxiliary Air Force,’ Elsie stated, a sheen of pride coating her answer.
‘Oh, me too.’
Elsie suddenly saw herself in a detached view, as if from the ogling stare of one of the men across the street. She was so terribly ordinary. And, in comparison with the others around her, so terribly young. The woman in front of her, dressed in a similar outfit but in a powder blue, must have been in her early thirties. And that group of women in front her—how old were they? Certainly older than she was.
‘Violet,’ the woman introduced, extending her black-gloved hand to meet Elsie’s. ‘Violet Christmas. Absurd name—you don’t need to say.’
‘I think it’s a lovely name,’ Elsie said with a grin. ‘I’m Elsie—Elsie Danby…’ She faltered at her error. ‘Elsie Finch,’ she corrected, her face hot with a wash of embarrassment and shame at forgetting.
Violet nodded her head in understanding. ‘Like that, is it?’
‘My husband—Laurie—he’s missing in action. Lost at Dunkirk.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Violet said. ‘And now you want to do your bit for your country?’
‘Yes,
