The Trouble with Single Women

by Yvonne Roberts

  ‘Oh, Veronica,’ Fee couldn’t stop herself. ‘Do you honestly think that’s wise? After all you and Les have come through? He’ll be devastated—’

  Veronica smiled. ‘This man is taking me out for lunch. I told him to pick me up from here. I knew you wouldn’t mind. Not now I know you’re in favour of women branching out. Stand Up! Stand Free!’

  Fee groaned. ‘I didn’t say it, the other woman did,’ she moaned. ‘But anyway you’re not free, you’re married . . . Adultery just isn’t your thing.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Veronica chuckled.

  At noon, Les Haslem pushed his way through the crowd to Fee’s front door. When the doorbell rang, she checked from her balcony to see if it was friend or foe.

  The sight of her brother-in-law was not pleasing. Fee visualized fisticuffs between Les and Veronica’s new suitor with a quorum of the regional and tabloid press acting as referees.

  ‘Quick,’ Fee told Veronica. ‘Les is here. You’ll have to hide. I’ll try and get rid of him but promise me that you’ll never put me in the middle like this again. OK?’

  To Fee’s annoyance, Veronica did nothing. ‘Come and sit here,’ she directed Fee, smiling and patting the seat next to her. ‘I’ve got something to tell you—’

  Fee did as she was told.

  ‘It’s Les who’s taking me out for lunch,’ Veronica said simply. Fee could swear her sister was blushing. ‘He’s started to court me again. It’s made such a world of difference. I feel as if I’m being listened to properly for the first time in years. I feel as if I matter to him again.’

  ‘And what worked the miracle?’ Fee asked lightly, trying not to sound cynical.

  ‘After he’d refused to help Jean and I with our business, I had the row with him that we should have had in 1980.’

  ‘1980?’ Fee asked, mystified.

  ‘When I wanted to continue doing the books for him and Les said no. I should have held my corner and I didn’t. And from then on, rather than have a confrontation, I just gave in. The last few weeks with you and Percy and the boys and Jean have made me realize that Les doesn’t always know what’s best either for me – or himself. That I am entitled to my own life too.’

  ‘So I told Les he could either accept that I’d changed and treat it as a plus. Or he could make life difficult for us both and I’d have to think seriously about whether I’d stay . . . I said I didn’t want to be treated like a habit any more.’

  ‘It was as simple as that?’ Fee asked.

  Veronica smiled. ‘Of course not. At first, Les said he hadn’t a clue what I was talking about—’

  She stopped as Les walked into the room, let in by a departing Will Evans. Relief was written on his face. He gave both his wife and Fee a kiss on the cheek. ‘Great film, Fee,’ he lied cheerfully. ‘Didn’t know you had it in you. Although I expect you could do without the mob out there?

  ‘Have you met my new wife?’ he added, winking. ‘That’s what makes a marriage work, you know. Room to let each other breathe, change, allow each other to develop a life of their own. Haven’t I been saying that for years, Veronica?’

  Helen Travers was enjoying a new experience – first in her local newsagent’s and then at her hairdresser’s. She had expected embarrassment, discomfort, even shame. She had even contemplated cancelling her appointment for a shampoo and set.

  After all, it isn’t every day that your daughter’s sexual habits are paraded across several pages of the newspapers and she’s transformed into Public Enemy No. 1. It isn’t every day you have reporters knocking on the door asking for photographs of your daughter as a bridesmaid.

  Helen Travers had outwitted them on that one. She knew their little game. Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride . . . So she’d said no and shut the door firmly in their faces.

  Betty Wilthorne from number 17 across the way had said that the reason all this spinster stuff had become a Talking Point was because it had struck the nation’s nerve.

  ‘Everyone knows that marriage isn’t working and they’re frightened that more and more women are going to be like your Fiona and go it alone,’ she elaborated. ‘And where will the country be then? If it was my daughter, I’d give her a good talking to—’

  No one in the Travers family had ever struck the nation’s nerve before. Vera had only reached the nerve of the immediate neighbourhood. Now, in the high street, on this beautiful Thursday morning, Helen was experiencing a new sensation. It was so potent it even distracted her from the gnawing ache of disappointment which she had carried with her for years.

  ‘Saw your daughter on the telly last night, Mrs T.,’ said Ahmed Patel in the newsagent’s. ‘Bloody good too. Very pretty.’

  ‘Wasn’t that your Fiona on the box, last night?’ asked Mrs Oakford who worked in the chemist’s. Wendy, who worked in the baker’s, commented, ‘On that quiz show, wasn’t she? Very good too. She always was the clever one of your three, wasn’t she?’

  Helen Travers had suddenly become a Celebrity. All right, she was a once-removed celebrity, but it would do for her. By the time she reached the hairdresser’s, she was on the offensive.

  ‘Don’t suppose you saw my daughter last night?’ she asked Shirley, the receptionist. ‘She was on the television. Pity. Never mind, I’m sure you’ll catch her next time she’s on. She’s had loads of offers. She’s thinking about switching careers . . . The female side of the family has always been photogenic, even if I say so myself.’

  That afternoon, Fee spoke to her mother on the telephone. She had expected to be heavily criticized but, to her surprise, Helen was offering a modicum of enthusiasm.

  ‘Have you read any of the papers?’ Fee asked cautiously.

  ‘Yes,’ Helen replied airily, ‘but I never believe a word I read.’

  ‘Did you watch television?’ Fee tried again.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Helen answered cheerily. ‘I thought you looked quite nice, all in all.’

  ‘You weren’t upset?’ Fee asked warily.

  ‘I wasn’t listening to what you said, dear. I was too busy looking at you,’ Helen chided, and added, ‘Tell Claire not to wear that yellow thing on television again. It makes her look awfully peaky.’

  Later that evening, Fee decided that her mother had been right. Claire did look peaky. She sat opposite Fee, eating little and saying next to nothing. She and Clem had joined Will and Fee for a meal. The crowd outside the flat had almost dispersed but Fee had escaped undetected anyway by climbing over several garden fences at the rear of the house. Will had suggested a night out as a brace against what the next day’s press coverage might bring. And to take his own mind off Hannah’s departure.

  After the meal, the two couples walked back to Claire’s flat. Will and Clem went on ahead. Fee mentioned to Claire the attempts by Jean and Veronica to raise funds for an escort agency and their intention to turn it into a service for older women. Perhaps Claire might consider investing?

  ‘Selling sex, you mean,’ Claire commented waspishly.

  Fee smiled. ‘That was my reaction too at first. But it’s not sex they’re offering, it’s company.’

  Claire was unimpressed. ‘Frankly, I find that appalling. Is that what we’re supposed to regard as progress? Women now doing what men have done for centuries – buying flesh to satisfy their sexual appetite? God, what’s wrong with a little restraint now and then? Why don’t we wake up to the fact that just because we want something, it’s not always good for us to have it? I mean, don’t you find it sad, Fee, that, in this day and age, some of us have to buy another person’s company?’

  ‘Yes, I do – but at least it’s an honest transaction, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘But it’s so . . . so . . . so pitiful.’ Claire almost spat the word out. Fee didn’t have to hear the thunder of hoofs to know she’d had enough of Claire’s lack of generosity both to herself, on television, watched by several million viewers, and to others.

  ‘It may be pitiful but it isn’t deceitful, is it? T
ake your relationship with Clem. Don’t you think you might be exploiting him just a little bit?

  ‘Isn’t what you’re doing, to get something you want under the false pretence that you’re in love, a lot more dishonest than a business arrangement in which the terms are clearly understood, payment is made and there’s much less room for the manipulation of another person’s feelings? Or, to put it even more plainly, Claire, are you really in a position to judge anyone else?’

  Claire stopped dead, shocked at Fee’s totally untypical lightning attack. ‘What’s happening to you?’ she demanded. ‘What’s really happening to you, Fee?’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  HARRY MACKLIN, founder of HAH!, broker of hearts, maker of dreams, lord of the lonely-hearts ads, arrived unannounced at F.P. & D. on Friday morning. He was dressed head to toe in his habitual white and was accompanied by his accountant, Serena Alwyn, who was dressed cleavage to calf in embroidered denim, an ensemble that was completed by a pair of high-heeled denim boots.

  Contrary to appearances, they had not come to duet for a Country ’n’ Western special. On the contrary, they had come to perform a spot inspection on the state of health of the springster – that upwardly mobile, deeply attractive, genuinely gregarious human being who was so busy achieving that he or she had little time to seek out a soulmate.

  What Harry Macklin wanted to know from F.P. & D. was – had the springster been sprung? And to what effect?

  He wanted to hear that F.P. & D. had not only pinned down the species but, more importantly, that Ms Fiona Travers had also discovered how to tickle the springster’s fancy sufficiently so that he or she would shamelessly spend money on the business of love.

  Gerry Radcliffe knew this and he was flustered. He was so fundamentally flustered – he had not expected to have contact with Macklin for at least another fortnight – that he was even too preoccupied to travel the valley that was Serena Alwyn’s cleavage.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Fee,’ he exploded in Fee’s office while Macklin and Serena Alwyn were given coffee in the boardroom. ‘What do you mean, we’re not prepared?’

  ‘No, Gerry, what I said was that you are not prepared,’ Fee replied evenly. She was still smarting from the latest dose of hostile press coverage in which she had yet again been castigated for what she hadn’t said. This time by a posse of female columnists who managed to be even more judgemental than Claire. But then they were being paid by the poisoned word.

  Fee continued, ‘My report has been ready for a week, but you said Diana wanted to make some changes. It’s those changes that haven’t been included in the report. So that’s why I’m telling you, you’re not prepared. I am.’

  A smile spread across Gerry’s face. ‘Bugger the changes. Stick with what you’ve got, kid. Are you able to do a presentation now? I know you haven’t had time to prepare properly but can you do it? For me?’

  Fee examined her boss, sweaty and agitated. He was dressed in the vibrant clashing shades of a fairground merry-go-round – tie, shirt, socks. When she had first come to F.P. & D., she’d regarded his colourful clothes as a visible sign of the liveliness and originality of his mind. Now, they just seemed a case of bad taste. Fee recognized that she no longer cared about her job, nor did she respect Gerry Radcliffe.

  Job and boss represented good money – but in other terms both amounted to, quite literally, a fuss about nothing. And Fee knew she was reaching an age when she wanted her work to amount to a lot more than ‘nothing’, however well paid. But for now she’d play Gerry’s game.

  Fee spoke crisply. ‘I won’t do it for you, Gerry, but I will do it for a rise.’ She glanced at her watch, to reinforce the message that time was at a premium. ‘A rise which brings me into line with what Diana is now earning will be perfectly adequate, thank you very much.’

  The mock-up of the commercial went well.

  Fee had put together an ad. for television to convey HAH!’s change in the market. Working with Will Evans’s team, she had devised a message that was simple but dramatic.

  Glimpses of the lives of five men and five women, aged thirty-five to sixty, were revealed – in work, with friends, with family and alone.

  Then ten faces appeared on screen simultaneously. The viewers are told that four out of these ten people are single and want to find a partner – but have a life so busy that it’s difficult to find the time or the opportunity.

  ‘Can you guess which four?’ asks a voice. Six faces dissolve, leaving the four least stereotypical candidates.

  The commercial ends with a tease. ‘If you thought that was a surprise . . . you’ll never guess how they found their ideal partner—’

  ‘We run these as tasters,’ Fee explained. ‘We don’t give an answer until we’ve got interest nicely built up through the media, billboards, TV. The first point we have to establish is that the most surprising people, highly eligible people, not just nerds, find it difficult to meet others.

  ‘The second point is that we need to develop a different brand name and logo, something more oblique, for the new market you’re seeking.’

  ‘Oblique?’ Harry Macklin asked, mildly concerned about the consequences of this line of thought. He had just rebuilt his outdoor swimming pool in the shape of two interlocking hearts. ‘Oblique? You mean like a zigzag or something?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Fee smiled. ‘A zigzag would do perfectly. It means nothing and so it can come to mean everything.’

  Harry Macklin frowned. ‘People like to understand what they’re seeing. They don’t want messages they have to unravel. Life is too much like a crossword puzzle as it is, I’m not sure—’

  ‘Harry, you know you’re always the same when it’s time to try something new.’ Serena Alwyn nodded in Fee’s direction. ‘I think—’

  She stopped because Diana Woods had placed a second cassette in the video recorder and was indicating that she expected everyone’s attention.

  ‘If you’ve got anxieties, Mr Macklin, I think that’s very understandable,’ her voice oozed sympathy. ‘May we show you one alternative possibility?’

  The cassette proved to be the original commercial that Fee had criticized. She opened her mouth to speak, but Gerry shook his head. Harry Macklin watched the ad. – figures running along the beach, violin strings and sat for several minutes without comment. Then, abruptly, he rose to his feet.

  ‘I’ll buy the second,’ he said curtly. ‘But add another fifteen years to their ages—’

  An hour later, in his office, Gerry Radcliffe put up a hard struggle. At length, he tried to convince Fee that F.P. & D. was a team, and that it didn’t really matter that Diana Woods had been unprofessional.

  It didn’t even matter that, according to F.P. & D.’s research, her ‘concept’ would bomb more dramatically than chocolate-flavoured crisps. If that was what Macklin wanted, that was what he would get.

  ‘But it makes it look as if we don’t do our homework correctly,’ Fee protested. ‘Diana had no right to undermine us . . . And we have a responsibility to use our research appropriately. Otherwise why bother with research at all? Why not just give a client any old crap they want – and smile when they lose every penny they’ve got? What about professional ethics, Gerry?’

  Gerry pondered the situation. What he had not yet told Fee was that two companies had made contact that morning, offering large contracts to research sections of the market which might attract mature single women – on the understanding that Fee Travers would be involved.

  He gazed at Fee balefully. How could this woman continue to bang on about professional ethics and standards and responsibility when there was so much damn money to be made?

  Then, he saw the light. As a matter of fact, Fee herself had switched it on for him earlier that morning. ‘OK, OK, OK.’ He slapped both his hands down hard on his desk, like a demented domino-player. ‘You’ve got it. A seat on the board. Same salary as Diana. No more arguments. Now, can we get on with the business in hand?’

  Wil
l Evans lay with his feet up on the sofa in Fee’s office and watched bemused as she cleared her desk.

  ‘You are mad,’ he said. ‘You’ve gone completely barmy. You’re the only woman I know who is offered promotion and uses that as a reason to resign. What is going on?’

  ‘I’m beginning to see sense,’ Fee answered. If she’d known the relief that resignation would bring, she would have gone months ago. Except then she would probably have lacked the courage.

  ‘For once I’m doing what I want to do, not what everybody else thinks is best. And you’ve no idea how wonderful it feels—’

  Fee emptied the contents of her desk drawer into the perspex waste-paper basket. ‘I don’t like the job any more,’ she said. ‘I was brought up to believe that if you’d got a job, you hung on to it, come what may. But why? Why if it brings out the worst in you and everyone else?’

  Will grunted. ‘Forty ain’t an easy time to start again,’ he commented bluntly.

  ‘Thirty-eight,’ Fee corrected. ‘Just thirty-eight. I want to stop and really think about what to do next. I want to satisfy myself that I’ve done as much as I can to find Rita . . . I might even invest in Jean’s and Veronica’s business . . . who knows? If I do, I’ll still have enough to take three or four months off. Most people never have that privilege—’

  ‘Most people would be too bloody scared to do it, in case they never worked again,’ Will commented. ‘I’ve got to admit you’ve got guts. And to think you don’t even have a man to fall back on.’

  Fee threw a cushion at his head.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  GILL BOOTH always knew that she was at her best when handling adversity – not her own, but other people’s. Persephone was to spend Friday night at Fee’s. Fee phoned on Friday afternoon and explained that, as she had unexpectedly liberated herself from her career, she could collect Percy earlier, after school.

  Gill had, of course, insisted that Fee come round immediately to be comforted. On arrival, Fee had looked disgustingly cheerful. Gill nevertheless saw it as her duty to prepare her for the worst. ‘Watch out for depression,’ she warned, spooning tea-leaves into the teapot.