“Very well,” Mrs. Hill said. “Be it on your own head and don’t blame me if this young woman’s turned away with a rude message.”
“If it is a question of speaking French,” Ivana intervened, because she thought that Hetty was being crushed, “I promise you that the lady or gentleman who requires a reader to speak French will be perfectly satisfied.”
Mrs. Hill sniffed again.
“Pride goes before a fall!” she quoted loftily.
She wrote something down on a card that she had in front of her, paused and then handed it to Ivana.
“That’s the address,” she said, “and this is who you should ask for on arrival. If you’re not accepted, it won’t be worth your while coming back here.”
“I understand,” Ivana said. “Thank you very much for being so kind. I am very grateful.”
She smiled at the woman called Hetty and said to her,
“And thank you so much too. ”
Holding the card in her hand, she walked across the room to the door.
Two more older-looking servants had come in while she had been talking and taken their seats just inside the door.
One was a man and, as she approached, he rose and opened the door for her.
“Thank you,” she said, thinking he looked like a butler.
“Good luck!” he muttered and she smiled back at him.
Going down the stairs, she stepped out onto the pavement and looked round for Nanny.
For one frantic moment she thought that she had disappeared. Then she saw her a little farther down the road, admiring some expensive china in a shop window.
She ran up to her.
“Nanny! Nanny!” she cried. “I’ve been told there is someone who needs a secretary who can speak French.”
“Well, that’s somethin’ you can do, dearie,” Nanny smiled. “So where is it?”
Ivana then looked down at the card in her hand for the first time.
Then she stared at it with an expression of surprise on her face that made Nanny ask,
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I-I suppose it is – all right,” Ivana said hesitatingly, “but – where we have to go is to the War Office – and ask for the Earl of Lorimer.”
“Are you sure?” Nanny queried.
She inspected the card for herself and then commented,
“Well, as it’s the War Office, I suspect they wants secretaries who can speak French to translate messages and speak to the French prisoners.”
“Oh, of course!” Ivana then exclaimed. “And they’ll want people to translate the secret documents they capture on the battlefields and things like that.”
“I don’t suppose that’ll be too difficult a task for you,” Nanny said, “but I don’t like to think of you workin’ alongside a lot of men.”
“Why not?” Ivana enquired of her. “You can hardly expect the War Office to employ only women!”
She was suddenly still.
“I have just thought,” she said in a different tone. “Mrs. Hill said that they had asked for a man. But, as they have been unsuccessful in finding one so far, they – might well give me – a chance.”
It was obvious now that Mrs. Hill had been almost positive that she would be refused the position.
As if Nanny knew what she was thinking, she observed,
“There’s no harm in tryin’ and, if they sends you away, we’ll just have to try another Agency. You can’t expect to land on your feet the first time you takes a jump!”
It was so like Nanny to say something like that that Ivana laughed.
“How do we get to the War Office?” she asked.
“We takes a Hackney carriage, that’s how,” Nanny said, “and no nonsense about it. If we hangs about too long, if I knows anythin’ about those office people, they’ll all be goin’ home and the place’ll be locked up.”
Ivana knew that this was sensible of Nanny. At the same time she could not help feeling that it was rather extravagant to hire a Hackney carriage to take them to the War Office.
Nanny, however, insisted and they found a Hackney carriage waiting at the end of the street.
When they told the driver where to go, he seemed impressed. He whipped up his tired old horse and they set off at a quick pace into Berkeley Square.
Nanny was looking out of the window to see where they were going.
Ivana, however, was holding the card that Mrs. Hill had given her tightly in her hand and praying.
‘Please, God,’ she prayed, ‘please let them employ me. I would do anything – anything rather than have to do what my stepfather – wants of me and go – away with that – wicked and cruel old man.’
Even to think of Lord Hanford now made her tremble again.
Nanny put her hand over hers.
“It’s goin’ to be all right, dearie,” she said, “I feels it in my bones and if the worse comes to the worst, we’ll run away together and scrub doorsteps. It’s somethin’ I’ve done before when I was somewhat younger and I suspects that I can do it again.”
Ivana laughed as Nanny had meant her to do.
“I am sure your doorsteps will be much cleaner than mine, Nanny,” she replied.
Chapter Two
The Hackney carriage finally stopped outside a large impressive-looking building.
For the first time Ivana looked nervous and was feeling nervous.
“Come with me, Nanny,” she begged her.
Nanny shook her head.
“No, dearie,” she said. “That would be a mistake. Secretaries don’t have chaperones with them. I’ll wait out here. We’ll be ever so extravagant and keep the cab.”
Slowly Ivana descended the steps of the carriage and then walked in through the door of the War Office.
A soldier in very smart uniform with highly polished brass buttons was standing beside a desk.
Ivana realised that he was waiting for her to explain why she was there. She held out the card that Mrs. Hill had given her.
He looked at it and, because he was reading it slowly, it seemed as if minutes passed before he said,
“I’ll have you taken to his Lordship.”
He snapped his fingers and another soldier, who looked very young, almost a pageboy, rose from where he was sitting in the background.
“Take this applicant to the Earl of Lorimer,” the first soldier said sharply.
The boy took the card from him and started to walk ahead, obviously expecting Ivana to follow him.
They walked for what seemed to her for miles along corridors, up staircases and along more corridors.
Then they went down some stairs again before they came to what she thought must be the more important rooms on the ground floor.
She was sure of it when she saw two soldiers obviously on duty in the next corridor that they approached.
They walked past them