A Girl in Wartime by Maggie Ford Page B

the results could be studied and discussed. Tests, she supposed, but either she could do it to their satisfaction or she couldn’t, and several times she had to stop herself coming out with that very remark, but it was better not to antagonise these people.
    It still had not been properly specified what she was doing; all she now seemed to be doing was sitting at a desk filing various bits of correspondence. Either she could do the job she’d been hired to do, or she couldn’t, and it was about time they made up their minds about that. She said little of this to her parents, who now saw her in a new light – their youngest daughter in an office earning far more than she’d done sticking boxes together in some factory. Mum was proud of her, Dad too in his way.
    â€˜How’d you get on today, love?’ Mum would ask each time she came home from yet another trial day. And what could she say? She herself was not being told anything much beyond that they would study her drawings and let her know the moment they came to a decision.
    â€˜Not bad,’ she would lie, with no idea whether she’d done well or not.
    Dad hadn’t been much help. ‘You want to tell ’em to stick their bloody job up their you-know-what if they’re goin’ to go on messing you about.’ She had ignored that advice. She needed to keep this job.
    But in all this time she’d not once been asked to seriously prove her worth outside of the office. There was, it seemed to her, a distinct doubt that she would ever be an asset to the editorial department. Today as she sat idle, her present spate of filing done, she took up a pencil and a sheet of clean cartridge paper and gazed around the department for a likely subject to sketch.
    Stephen Clayton was having a word with John Carver, one of the editorial staff, who was seated at his desk a few feet from hers. With her eyes darting between the pair and her sheet of paper, she’d began to sketch, her pencil moving with decisive strokes. It wasn’t so much the seated man, but the one standing that interested her. Seldom did she have an opportunity to do a sketch of Stephen Clayton; he was either half-obscured behind the glass of his office or moving at a brisk pace through the editorial department on his way to somewhere or other. But now was her chance to catch his likeness more seriously. She could feel her heart tightening with hidden excitement as she drew his face; she felt almost heady. She needed to be on her guard though in case the two men noticed what she was doing. It was so easy for one of them to look up and catch her.
    Her pencil moved swiftly over the white surface of the paper, her eyes glancing up briefly, then looking down, her brows drawn into a frown of concentration. Soon a sketch of Stephen Clayton was forming, conjured up by a strong sense of excitement – a sensation that made her breathing quicken, her senses whirl – a feeling she realised was far stronger than that which she’d been vaguely aware of for a long time. She was in love: secretly she was in love with Mr Stephen Clayton.
    But he wasn’t in love with her. He couldn’t be – he was her better and elder. And even if that weren’t the case he was most likely married. He’d never mentioned a wife and, of course, she could never ask him. But one thing she was determined to do was to show him her completed sketch of him and John Carver, provided he stood there long enough for her to finish it. That he was half turned towards her was an asset. His face, seen at a three-quarters angle, was perfect; his expression was faintly animated, though she had no idea what the two were discussing. She had completed the sketch just seconds before he suddenly looked up in her direction.
    Seeing her concentrated look, he smiled. Pencil still in hand, it had to be obvious what she had been doing and she felt her cheeks colour. Hastily she dropped the pencil on