Memory Lane
Sixty years ago on 19th September 1956 I showed my little green cardboard staff pass at the back door of Lancaster House. It was the start of the second Suez Canal Conference. I was working for a temp agency before starting my first job as a bilingual secretary. This assignment was a great surprise – the Foreign Office must have been desperate to find staff at short notice. Security measures were discreet: I saw none.
In a shabby back room confident women settled themselves at typewriters, pairing up with stenotypists, all seasoned professionals. ‘Find a partner’, said one, indicating a bewildered French girl brought over from the Quai d’orsay in Paris. Like me she was ignored by the old hands. She was given her number in the rota of stenotypists who went into the conference hall to note down the French translation from earphones. After a few minutes they rushed back to dictate from strips of symbols for their typist to rattle down, then they rejoined the circus. Each set of typed notes was collected to be re-typed on stencils, printed and given to delegates the same day. We couldn’t keep up, my partner couldn’t read her notes through her tears. School prefect principles about fair play and taking care of the weak were still strong and I demanded we be given experienced colleagues.
Mine, Sabine, shiny bandbox Parisienne, was worldly wise and happy to be sent to London. We walked in Green Park at lunchtime. On the second day my father joined us. Afterwards Sabine said, ‘Your Papa is un bel
homme. It would be fun to be his mistress. Is she in town ?’ My commuter father went home weary each evening to his dinner, kept ready over a pan of hot water by my mother. Then he would smoke his pipe and doze. ‘He hasn’t a mistress.’ ‘Of course he has, all men of that age do. It’s restful for their wives. And your brothers, young men have to learn.’
I wasn’t much affected by the political turmoil surrounding those days at Lancaster House. But the backroom chaos and this intriguing brief encounter stay in the memory.