Elsie Rushall stood by the closed door of her manager’s office, mentally composing herself. After taking a couple of bracing breaths, she squared her shoulders and rapped on the door.
‘What?’ a voice snarled from inside.
Cigarette smoke seeped out when she cracked the door open. ‘It’s me, sir.’ She tried not to cough. ‘Elsie.’
‘Sweetheart! Come in, come in.’
Elsie stepped into the office and closed the door. Clouds of smoke clung to the ceiling and she parted her lips to breathe discreetly through her mouth.
‘Elsie,’ Mr Johnston said. ‘Have a seat, love.’
Her skirt rode up when she sat. Automatically she tugged at it, to keep the hem below her knees.
On his desk, a photo of Mrs Gregory Johnston and two cherubic toddlers angled towards her. Their straw-blond hair was combed to a shine, and Mrs Johnston’s brown waves were tucked neatly around her ears, her blouse collar pressed against her clavicle. Elsie had seen this photo every day and yet, had it ever mocked her before? From the first time she had walked into Mr Johnston’s office, on the day of her interview eighteen months ago, this picture had reminded her of a photograph her mother kept on the mantle in the living room: Elsie’s eldest sister, Rose, eleven months after her wedding with a perfect, bonneted baby in her arms. Model children, dimpled with milk fat and healthful as freshly scrubbed new potatoes. Both Mrs Johnston and Elsie’s sister had been immortalised wearing the same expression: eyes squinting slightly, lips pursed in a knowing smile, smug serenity oozing from the frame.
‘Sweetheart.’ Mr Johnston sparked up another Lucky Strike. ‘What have you got for me?’
She hesitated before handing over the letter. Neatly typed, perfectly punctuated and with impeccable grammar unmatched by her fellow secretaries. After a cursory glance at her letter of resignation, he set it aside.
‘I was expecting this earlier.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Johnston. I was unsure whether –’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he waved his hand, ‘the wedding’s tomorrow, in any case.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Elsie couldn’t help a smile.
‘Congratulations to you both.’ Smoke puffed from his lips and dissolved into the haze hanging from the ceiling.
‘Best wishes, sir.’
‘Come again?’
‘You say “best wishes” to the bride. It’s feared congratulations imply that a bride tricked or won over her groom, as though he might otherwise not have married her.’ She smoothed her skirt. ‘Congratulations are for the groom.’
Mr Johnston laughed. ‘I won’t say I won’t miss you, sweetheart. Now get out of here – your resignation was effective this morning.’
With one final glance at the photograph, Elsie left Mr Johnston’s office for the last time.
In the lunch room, she nibbled at a slice of Sadie’s prize-winning lemon sponge. (Sadie’s sponge had taken out first prize at the local show for the first time that year. In doing so, she’d thumped Mrs Sidebottom from her fifteen-year lemon sponge reign, much to the consternation of Mrs Sidebottom’s staunch troop of supporters.) A handful of the Gawler Town Council’s other secretaries milled about the tea room, having snatched a few minutes from their duties to wish their now-former colleague well in her new life as a married woman.
Dora, widowed when her husband met German machine gun fire at El Alamein, made tea and ranted beneath her breath about archaic laws. ‘Menzies really should do something about that marriage bar,’ she said. ‘Who says a lady can’t have a job and a family? Besides, when all the men went off to fight, who was left to do the hard work here? Me. Us. We women took on the men’s jobs and we did them well. I worked with the Women’s Land Army. Drove a hay-carting truck, fixed the tractor when it broke a fan belt – used Fred the old draught horse’s reins – and we –’
May scoffed. ‘Didn’t you see that poll in Woman’s Day? Six to one are still in favour of it. A woman’s place is with her family. The war’s long over. It’s not proper to take away a man’s ability to support his family. Leave the jobs to the men and we can get on with running our homes.’ Smiling at Elsie, May finished up, ‘I’ll be married in December. Best wishes to you, dear.’
Elsie swallowed her mouthful of sponge. ‘Thank you,’ she said.