Coronet Among the Weeds

by Charlotte Bingham

  I was in the middle of writing this novel when I met a swoony man at a party. It was one of those literary parties where everyone spends the whole time asking you if you can write. And you spend the whole time telling them the plot of some corny novel you’re writing, and then they tell you the plot of the corny novel they’re writing. That’s all that happens. It’s just everyone going round telling each other their plots. I was in the middle of listening to someone’s plot when I noticed this neck. I think you can tell what a man’s like just by looking at his neck. This neck was pretty good. And so was the man actually. He had a Grecian nose and very brilliant eyes. I suppose those sort of eyes are old hat. But you know the kind that look at you. I mean you really know they’re looking at you and no one else. Most people’s eyes could be looking at anyone. It’s unusual when people look just at you.

  He wrote scripts for movies, this man. He didn’t tell me about them, but I think they were good scripts. We went out to dinner after this literary party. Honestly, he was fascinating. I mean once he started looking at you you’d be all mesmerised. Say you were taking a mouthful of soup, if he started looking at you, your spoon would get stuck. Absolutely frozen in your mouth. You didn’t want to be mesmerised but you just were.

  Once he took me to a concert at the Festival Hall, and I felt extraordinary sitting next to him. He kept his eyes on the orchestra and you really thought he was going to turn them to stone. I used to wonder if he had an aunt who was a witch. It wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if he’d been a black magic dabbler. It really wouldn’t. He was very imaginative of course. I mean he could talk away and interest you and he had a chin. It’s marvellous going out with a chin when you hardly ever do. Also when you were with him everything was very exciting. Even walking along a road. When you walked along a road with him it was really exciting. Not just exciting but sort of vital.

  You couldn’t fall in love with him though. He was fascinating, but you couldn’t love him. You were mesmerised. It was a good thing actually, because it turned out he was married.

  I didn’t know he was married. He didn’t tell me for ages. It didn’t shock me. Him being married. I think he wanted it to. I don’t know why. It was the way he told me somehow. Actually I was steaming up his car window and drawing faces on it when he told me. So I went on steaming it up and drawing faces. Then I just said I didn’t think I could go on going out with him. He said, ‘Why?’ So I said it was against my principles. I’ve never found out what principles are exactly, but, if I’ve got any, not going out with married men is one of them. I’ve got one girlfriend I don’t think has ever been out with someone single. She says married men are more mature. They understand her better. Also they’re more experienced. Anyway, old married boot was a rotter. Not fundamentally decent. It was a good thing I wasn’t in love with him. I might have been mad about him. I mean it wasn’t his fault I wasn’t.

  I was a bit preoccupied with weeds actually. I suppose it was because I wasn’t working or anything. You get a bit one-track-minded. Everyone’s got to be mad on you or you nearly die. The thing is you keep hoping that one of these weeds will turn out to be a superman. There was one man: I thought he was a superman for three days. Honestly, I was swooning about him for three days. He rang me up all day long and we used to talk for hours and hours. It really got my father down. I don’t know what he’d have done if I’d been mad on him for more than three days. It was pretty embarrassing when I wasn’t mad on him the fourth day actually. I don’t know why but suddenly I just wasn’t. He asked me if I loved him in a coffee bar, and I said yes, with my fingers crossed under the table. I don’t think it’s a lie if you have your fingers crossed. And I couldn’t say I wasn’t. I really couldn’t. Not when I’d been mad about him just the day before. You feel such a twit.

  It was a shame I wasn’t in love with him longer, because he was nice. He was very d. indeed and not a bit a rotter. I didn’t actually tell him I wasn’t in love with him; he just sort of gathered. I think really what it was, it was his trousers. I didn’t look at his legs the first three days. He was quite amusing so there wasn’t any need to. I mean if someone’s talking away to you, you don’t usually look at their legs. Then when I saw him the fourth day I suddenly noticed. His legs I mean. Well, not his actual legs, but his trousers. They were huge square things. Enormous square baggy billowy things. I couldn’t love him any more after that. I wanted to but I just couldn’t. For heaven’s sake, they were like the things my father wears. My father’s all right, but not even his best friend could say he had swoony legs.

  What that man did do, though. He cured me of having a complex about my hips. I’ve got these huge hips. No really. Enormous. And he liked them. I mean, he said they weren’t ugly a bit, and suddenly I didn’t mind about them anymore. I did before. I used to keep my coat on for hours and hours because I thought everyone would die if they saw them. At parties I’d keep it on the whole evening in case no one would talk to me if they saw them. And I did anything to make people walk out of restaurants in front of me. No really. I’d say anything rather than have them walk behind me, and if they did I could feel their eyes boring into my back. And I thought they probably felt terribly sorry for me, and went on seeing me from pity. But that man he even went on liking them after he’d seen me in a swim-suit. ’Course he might have been blind with love, but I was too thrilled to think of that. It’s marvellous when you stop minding about things. ’Specially about your hips. Anyway, they’re such big things to mind about. Honestly, you should see them.

  9

  I think me being hours on the telephone to that man really got my father down. Anyway he decided that finally he had to get me off his mind. And earning money. So he wrote to this office he knows very well and said, did they want any more secretaries? And they said yes. So I filled in all those forms they make you fill in. You know. What sex? What sex are your parents? Are they sure? Are you a vampire? All that. Then this woman wrote and asked me to come for an interview. Only because she knew my father I think. Anyway I went.

  Interviews are just as bad as you think they’re going to be. First of all you don’t know what to wear and then when you get there you can’t remember whether you ate onions for lunch, so you spend the whole time mumbling sideways in case you did. Then you know you’re going to hiccup so you have to cover it up with a coughing fit and they ask you if you’ve had a medical, and, if you haven’t, look doubtful about whether you’re TB. And, when they tell you about what sort of job it is, you know you’re going to hate every minute of it. And they usually say they only take on nice girls. So you try and look madly nice and know you’re going to loathe all the other nice girls. Sometimes I think I’d rather be a tart than go to another interview. Still, I suppose even if you’re a tart you have to be interviewed by a pimp. So you’re back where you started.

  By the time they said yes they would have me, it was the last thing I wanted to do, be a secretary in that old office. I nearly died when they said they’d have me. Still, my father was pushing really hard, so I’d had it. Anyway there’s always the chance you might get run over on your way there. Or have a heart attack on the bus.

  The first morning I went there that’s what I did. I sat on the bus praying I’d have a heart attack. I didn’t have one though. I spent most of the morning filling in more forms and then they sent me off to have lunch with this girl. I didn’t know what to say to her. We had this ham salad so I talked about ham for quite a lot of the time. I could see she wasn’t interested in ham, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Then we stomped along to this room where all these secretaries worked. And she introduced me to them all, one by one. They all tried to look as if they weren’t very interested, but I knew they were. Not nice interested either. I knew they were all hating me before I even said hello, because they knew who my father was. Honestly, you die inside when you know people are hating you, because nothing you say seems to sound all right. So you end up not saying anything. Just s
miling vacantly at your typewriter.

  This girl who was in charge started telling me very quietly in a corner what the work was about and what I had to do and everything. But I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. The thing was she was saying all these things very quietly into my deaf ear. I’ve got this deaf ear, and when people say things very quietly into it I can’t hear a thing. I didn’t dare say I couldn’t hear a thing she was saying. I thought she’d probably think I was being too grand to listen. So I sat the whole afternoon nodding and agreeing and not hearing a word. Honestly, it was really embarrassing. ’Specially the next morning when I couldn’t understand a word of what I was doing.

  The first week they didn’t put me to work for anyone. They just gave me things to type and letters to copy. That was embarrassing too, because I could only type terribly slowly because I hadn’t done a job for such ages. And I knew they were all watching to see how fast I was going. So after every two lines I’d look round and give this shaky laugh. You try it, honestly it’s no joke. Typing and giving shaky laughs all day long. You just think you’ll never be able to stop. You think you’re going to be there sweating and typing for the rest of your life. No really. Your whole life.

  One thing about this office. They had terribly long coffee and tea breaks. Not just a cup at your desk, you went to this room and sat at tables and everything. ’Course the first week I was there no one much spoke to me, so I went to coffee and tea every day with these same two girls. It was much worse than typing. Honestly, I used to sit there longing to be back sweating at my typewriter. The thing was I knew they were just dying to get me out of the way and say a few splendidly catty things about me and my typing. Only they couldn’t because I was there and they were meant to be seeing I had someone to have coffee with.

  You should have heard what they did talk about, these two girls. It was fantastic – day after day. They talked about how they washed their cardigans. And once they’d washed them they asked each other if they’d shrunk, and whether they should iron them. It wasn’t that they couldn’t talk about anything else, they just didn’t want to. If I sort of murmured about something else they carried on talking about these old cardigans as if I wasn’t there. Once I asked one of them if she had a boyfriend, and she looked so offended you’d think I’d asked her something much worse. It Though actually it’s often the po-type girl that’s mad about sex. They sit about looking very respectable and the next minute they’re buying a smock.

  ’Course it’s the old, old story when you get bags of women all working on top of each other. They just sit about knitting and talking about each other. If they haven’t much imagination that’s all they can think of doing. And once they’ve been doing it for a long time they couldn’t stop if they wanted. Also they get this thing, like people in prison. They mind passionately about the tiniest things. Even things like whose turn to shut the window. And quarrel like anything for hours before they decide. It really matters to them whose turn it is. I don’t think it does in the beginning, but I suppose after a bit they just get like everyone else. And they are in a prison. Only not the kind you can get out of.

  None of these women liked me. I didn’t really blame them. I don’t think I’d have liked me if I’d been them either. It was awful at first because it was so lonely. When you’ve been a failure you mind about people not liking you. It really worries you. Because you’re just a different kind of failure. But still a failure. Do you know I used to sit having coffee with those women, and sometimes I really wondered if we were all speaking English. No really. I could have been speaking Eskimo for all they knew or cared. And the awful thing was there were so many of them, and only one of me. You can scream with laughter if you’ve got someone else, but it’s practically impossible to laugh by yourself. Every now and then I did though. Very privately behind my typewriter. But it was hardly living it up. I mean I can think of things I’ve done that were gayer.

  Still, you can only mind about things up to a point. Once you’ve really done your nut about them, they cease to matter anymore. Even being lonely you get like that. You mind like anything, then suddenly it just seems splendidly funny and you’d rather die than not be alone among a lot of tiny-minded women. I got more and more eccentric when I was in that office. I had to prove the whole day long that I wasn’t like them. Honestly, I’d have gone about naked to prove to myself I wasn’t. Because every now and then I used to have awful nightmares that I was like them. Or I was becoming like them. Or I would become like them any minute. I’d wake up and find myself knitting and talking about Miss Smith’s green hair. Gradually it would creep up on me. I wouldn’t know it was happening but one day I’d wake up and I’d be a petty old thing sniping away making some poor little spotty secretary’s life a misery. That’s a feminine art that some women have to perfection. It’s funny, it’s nothing you can put your hand on. They don’t swear and scream at you, but very quietly they make you depressed. And yet you couldn’t say what it was. You really couldn’t. It’s like that tap-dripping torture. I mean, what’s an old tap dripping anyway?

  Though it was all right for me. I had a cushy time of it compared to some people. I had weeds and parties and jokey parents and no spots. But imagine what it’s like if you’re weedless and parentless and you go home to your bed-sitter in the evening, only to eat, sleep, and then take the Tube again to face tiny minds for another eight hours. And on top of that you’ve got some old bitch sniping away at you. And you can’t get another job, because you’re afraid. I could have left any day, I only didn’t because I wanted to prove I could stay in a job. I mean you feel sorry for those bitches till you see them torturing little asthmatic secretaries with runny noses. Hell, I was fair game.

  I nearly went to live with an awful smooth man from working in that office. Honestly, I was mad. I mean if you’ve got to live with someone it really shouldn’t be some awful smooth slug. It was all part of proving madly that I wasn’t becoming a net-curtain semi-detached typist. I wanted to be a bosomy sex symbol. One of those women from movie posters: ‘Men loved and hated her. She was fire to the blood. No man had been known to forget her.’

  I don’t know why I even felt tempted to live with the slug. Except he wanted me to. But mostly when people ask me I shriek with laughter. I didn’t with him. He was the first weed who even tempted me. And yet I didn’t love him in the least. I suppose I was flattered at being fire to someone’s blood. Even a smooth slug. And he couldn’t have been smoother. Honestly, everything about him. He was good-looking, but in a very smooth way. He was smoothly intelligent, smoothly amusing, smoothly attentive. He had a smooth car and a smooth flat and he smoked smooth cigarettes.

  Also he was smoothly seductive. He made you feel very silly because you wouldn’t sleep with him. Not furious or anything. Just very silly. Actually it’s funny about when men are trying to seduce you. You think up every reason. Like you’re religious, your mother wouldn’t like it, you respect them too much, all the corniest things. And the one thing you never think of is, you’d rather die than sleep with them and they make you feel quite sick anyway.

  But this smooth man didn’t make me feel sick. That was the trouble. It would have been easy if he’d made me feel sick. Not only didn’t he make me feel sick, he made me laugh. When people make you feel a little foolish and make you laugh too it seems stupid. Particularly sometimes when you feel sad about not finding another superman. It was Migo who stopped me turning into a smooth mistress of a smooth slug. She said, imagine if I got smoothly pregnant and had to get smoothly married and live smoothly ever after in that smooth flat. I couldn’t take that. I really couldn’t. Imagine having a smooth breakfast every morning. And watching him eat smooth boiled eggs. It would kill me.

  Then Chloë came to work in this office. She was at school with Migo and me. She was going to be an actress, but she couldn’t stand everyone stabbing everyone in the back. Anyway that’s what she said. So she got down to being an old secretary like me. It made it much better, C
hloë being there actually, because she was pretty jokey. She couldn’t do shorthand to save her life, and I don’t think she knew how to wash a cardigan either. We both worked for two people in the same room, and we’d have secret signs to each other when we were taking dictation. Endless sunny afternoons we’d sit pretending we were in bikinis gambolling on beaches with bronzed men. That’s one thing; if you’ve got imagination, they can never really stop you dreaming. It takes a bit of imagination to pretend you’re on a beach when you’re doing shorthand.

  It really wasn’t bad being in that office with Chloë. Once you’ve got one other person to laugh with you’re all right. That’s the worst thing, whatever you’re doing, not having someone to laugh with. I should think hell would be all right if you had some other sinner to joke with. You could spend the whole time screaming with laughter at the devil. I bet he’s an awful ham anyway.

  Chloë went on being very jokey till she fell in love. She fell in love with this frightfully rich man. I felt sorry for her, because it’s practically impossible to be jokey when you’re in love. Admittedly she wanted to be in love. Most girls do. They don’t feel all right unless they’re in love or having a broken heart. Chloë never really wasn’t in love or broken-hearted when I knew her. When she first started working in that office with me she was broken-hearted. She was being gay and jokey to cover up that her life was ruined. Then once she’d fallen in love again she was happy. She’d got something to suffer about. She used to stay at the office being overworked when he wasn’t taking her out. She sat looking noble and carrying bravely on with shorthand in spite of everything, ages after we’d all gone home. And she used to lean against the filing-cupboards and sigh. She always looked as if she had drapey things on. She didn’t actually. Only scarves and things tied round her which she spent the whole time looping about. ’Specially on her extra droopy days.