As Green as Grass by Emma Smith

Author:Emma Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

Well – not quite. There remain various obstacles that must be surmounted. Under the prevailing rules and regulations of a country at war, a person can’t just change jobs on the mere promptings of a whim. Permission has to be sought from the authorities, and a sufficiently persuasive reason given for needing to make the change.

Dr Courtenay, my willing accomplice, arms me with a letter in which he states the medical advisability of his patient, Miss Elspeth Hallsmith, who has recently undergone a surgical operation to remove tubercular-infected glands from her neck, working out of doors instead of, as at present, confined within the four walls of an office.

I forget what sort of a compelling argument Eve submits, she not having the benefit – like me – of genuine TB glands to support her claim, but whatever was her story we are both successful in being swiftly released, and with none of the difficulties we had anticipated, from our War Office contracts of employment.

Thus it is that almost exactly one year after I first arrived in Oxford, supposedly qualified by Queen’s College to set forth on a secretarial career, I say goodbye to dear old Colonel Waring, to Major Deacon, to Captain Scott-Vaisey, and to my fellow wage-slaves, Veronica and Rosemary, who can’t imagine why I should want to leave them and the peaceful beautiful surroundings of Blenheim Palace.

It’s farewell, in 57 Victoria Road, to my peppery host, Major Thompson, and to his gentle sweet wife, and to poor sorrowful David, now to be deprived of those interminable evenings we shared, he and I together, playing games of rummy. And because Damaris de Boulay, staunch companion of countless lakeside marathons, has chosen the Wrens in preference to the GUC, I have also to say goodbye to her – and this I do indeed regret; but it is my only regret. I depart from Oxford otherwise without a single pang. How wonderful that in future there will be no more deadly dull letters to type; no more daily struggling to decipher my own disgraceful shorthand; no more wasted hours and hours of imprisonment in a stuffy little hut deprived of the inspirational vagaries of weather: wind and rain and sunshine.

I’ve escaped! I am free, free, FREE!

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