Table Two – Marjorie Wilenski (1942)

Recently Dean Street press added another pile of neglected women’s middlebrow fiction to their catalogue, all the titles set around the WW2 period, they all sound right up my alley. Table Two was Marjorie Wilenski’s only novel – set during WW2 in a London office of translators working for a fictional ministry. A very sharply observed bunch of characters, Wilenski recreates the atmosphere of an office in wartime brilliantly, little traditions and petty jealousies set against a backdrop of air raids.

“That summer was the finest summer that anyone could remember in England. The sun shone all day, day after day, and it seemed that there never would be rain. Everyone said all the time “What lovely weather, if only we were able to enjoy it.” For in England everyone feels that they must enjoy a fine day because in ordimry summers more than one fine day at a time is so rare. But nobody was able to enjoy that wonderful series of fine days because it was the summer of 1940 and nearly everyone was working all day and often all night in offices or factories or A.F.S. or A.R.P.,and there were no week-ends and no summer holidays. So in the daytime all the glorious sunshine was wasted and at night the rooms were stifling behind the blackout curtains.”

In the office of the Ministry for Foreign Intelligence is an office of women translators – there are two tables of nine translators, and the never the twain (for what reason nobody knows) shall meet. The women of table two, bicker and fuss, trying constantly to out manoeuvre one another, while completely ignoring their colleagues on the other side of the room, who might as well not exist. These women are mostly middle aged – or approaching it – they are plain or disappointed by life.  

Among them is a fresh air fanatic, a former lady’s companion who simply delights in bad news, regaling her colleagues daily with the latest casualty figures, an honourable, an inept supervisor who relies on her very capable deputy, a chatterbox and a woman who appears to masquerade as a child. Wilenski’s two main characters are sharply contrasted. Elsie Pearne is clever and efficient she has worked hard her whole life in various offices of business at home and abroad. She is though horribly embittered and considers herself far to good to be among these women, most of whom she considers idiots. Anne Shepley-Rice, a cheerful, pretty young woman, her once affluent family fell on hard times and then her mother died. Anne arrives in the middle of an air raid to take up her position in the translators’ office at table two – sitting right next to Elsie – who decides to make a friend of Anne, jealously attaching herself to Anne and spiriting her away at lunchtime each day. Anne is a young woman with no experience of the world of work she takes Elsie at face value, not recognising the bitterness in Elsie – finding her a bit of a funny old thing.

Anne and Elsie’s home lives are contrasted too, although neither of them has much money, Anne has known a better standard of living, and no doubt has the right accent, she is clearly a lady, though this is merely implied. There is a privilege about her which Anne is not even aware of. She is living in the house of a former servant of her mother’s, she is looked after just as she might have been in former times, the landlady looking out for her, fussing over her. When the air raids start, she has a comfortable spot in the cellar, a few feet from someone who cares what happens to her. Elsie is alone in the world, when the air raid siren sounds, she shelters in a cramped little shelter with her landlady and the landlady’s children.

 A new deputy is soon to be appointed in the office when the current one leaves, and Elsie is desperate to be appointed. Elsie loves to talk of her plans to Anne in whom she finds a sympathetic ear, mistaking her natural kindness and sympathy for a close friendship that doesn’t really exist.

One day Anne runs into an old family friend, Sebastian, the son of a wealthy family Anne had known growing up. Initially Anne tries not to get too close to Sebastian, worried her new impoverished status means she is unfit to be as close to him as she would like. It is clear that Sebastian has no such qualms, every time there is an air raid he is in agonies until he finds out that Anne is all right.

In some respects, Anne is just a little bland as a character, and she is far too willing to allow a man to sweep her up and take her off to the country for a rest – still that’s a minor quibble. It is certainly Elsie who steals the show – a really interesting character full of flaws, there are moments when she appears just a little too bleak, but she gets all the best lines.

“”It’s awful to think that there are nine of us here to-day at this table and in six months’ time we may all be dead,” said Miss Purbeck. “There were thousands killed last night, so the bus conductor told me.”

“You certainly are our little ray of sunshine,” said Elsie scornfully.”

As bombs rain down on London with greater frequency, Elsie has decided that maybe she could invite Anne to live with her, and so is brought up short to find herself lunching with Anne, Sebastian and a friend. A toe-curling scene follows in which Elsie drinks too much and speaks very insultingly to Sebastian’s friend.

In some ways not a huge amount happens in this story – but it is in the brilliant portraits of Anne and Elsie’s colleagues that make this so good. Many of the little arguments and petty personalities could quite easily I’m sure be found in almost any office today, possibly in any workplace, the gossipy busybody, trying to find out what’s going on, the importance of morning coffee, the appalled delight when someone gets into serious trouble, I’m sure the author must have taken some of these from life. Elsie could so easily have been just a monstrous creation, but Wilenski stops just short of that – and in her backstory we see something of what made Elsie so bitter.

While this isn’t a perfect novel, it is perfectly entertaining and those who enjoy a novel with a war time setting will like it I am sure, the details of everyday wartime life are particularly good as are the portraits of middle aged, professional women. Table Two is another great addition to the Furrowed Middlebrow series.