The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish Read Free Page A

he can
see you now. I’ll take you up.’ She linked her arm in mine again and made for the lift. ‘It’ll be fun having you around,’ she smiled. Tilly was always smiling.
‘This is a great place to work.’
    I thought the Norwegian looked disappointed when I got up to leave. I was too. Never mind, I consoled myself, I’ll meet him again when I’m on the staff.
    I got the job. To start immediately. All I needed was the approval of the Labour Office.
    Euphoric, I raced back to the Labour Office, clutching the papers the Head of the French Section had given me, requesting that I be allowed to take up employment there. But the office was just
closing.
    ‘Come back at two o’clock,’ Vinegar-face snorted, firmly locking the door behind her.
    Believing I had won, I was prepared to wait and savour my victory. Drifting into the nearest British restaurant, I was served a lump of indifferent cottage pie and some soggy cabbage by a WVS
volunteer who called me ‘luv’. (The Women’s Voluntary Service was a band of worthy middle-aged ladies who wore a grey uniform with an unflattering flat hat and valiantly served
their country.) Having demolished my cottage pie, I still had almost an hour to waste, so I attacked a treacle pudding, and even drank a cup of tepid grey coffee.
    I was waiting on the doorstep when Vinegar-face returned and unlocked the door. I followed her impressive silhouette – she was built like a battleship – and sat down triumphantly in
front of her desk, deciding to be magnanimous. After all, I had won – or so I thought. She took no notice of me. She disappeared behind a curtain to make herself a cup of tea, returning with
it steaming in her hand, but didn’t offer me one. I didn’t care. My beautiful future was stretching out before me. I could put up with her acid remarks for a few minutes longer. When
she finally stopped slurping, she looked up and jerked her head in my direction. I passed the papers across the table for her to sign. She glanced at them and slashed a red pencil across the
application with the word ‘refused’ written in caps. I gasped.
    ‘Not a reserved occupation,’ she snapped, and handed them back to me.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ I spluttered.
    ‘It’s . . . not . . . a . . . reserved . . . occupation,’ she enunciated, syllable by syllable, obviously convinced I was a halfwit. ‘I should have thought what I said
was perfectly clear.’ She sighed deeply before dredging up a few more syllables. ‘You . . . can’t. . . work . . . for . . . the . . . BBC,’ she ended triumphantly and paused
to gloat over her victory before dealing her final blow. ‘It’ll have to be a factory.’
    ‘But
why
can’t I?’ I snapped back, seeing her select an ominous form from among the pile on her desk. It had something about ‘munitions’ written across it
as far as I could make out, since I had to read it upside down. The milk of human kindness I had decided to pour out on her now disappeared down the drain with remarkable speed.‘
Why
can’t I? My friend from the Lycée is already working there. If she can,
why can’t I
?’ I was now beside myself with anger and disappointment. She looked at me
coldly. ‘She’s doing in the German Section exactly the same job as I would be doing in the French,’ I fumed. That last remark was my undoing.
    ‘Ah,’ she trumpeted, her false teeth leaping to attention like recruits on parade. ‘An enemy alien.’
    ‘Tilly an enemy alien,’ I shot back. ‘What nonsense!’
    ‘What nationality is she?’ she barked.
    ‘Nationality?’ I stammered. ‘Well, I suppose she’s British.’ We had been such a hotchpotch of nationalities at the Lycée, nobody ever thought about it.
    ‘You
suppose’,
she said sarcastically, ‘but you don’t
know.’
    ‘It never occurred to me to ask her. She speaks English as well as I do, I assumed . . .’ My voice trailed off, terrible doubts about Tilly slithering into my mind. I began