by Rosie Chard
Violet had a high-powered job. She adored its description; the combination of power and height was just what she liked. Promotion had come fast – too fast. Her boss, if you could describe him as a boss if you were freelance, had always fancied her and that extra dab of lipstick had done the trick. She hadn’t noticed the loose button on her blouse until the ink on the contract was dry but so what, she was good at her job, she deserved it. She’d always wanted to be one of those professional women who sit in cafes with their laptops, working. No cramped commute in smelly trains for her. She was one of a different breed. The new species of worker that could be trusted to plan their own day and relied upon to work efficiently in public places, immune to the distractions of the coffee-sipping public.
“Put a sock in it, Brian! He’s just a bloody kid.”
Violet glanced up. It would have to be a very thin waitress who could squeeze between her and the next table, and the adjacent man sat extremely close, his arms circling his plate in a gesture of grim protection. With her finger poised on the start button of her laptop – a bona fide break in proceedings – Violet summed up the scene straight away: irritable father suffering from too much quality time with his children, sullen seven-year-old, dishevelled baby. She was good at summing situations up, always had been. She should have been a lawyer.
She readied a withering smile then abandoned it as a new conversation from the table on her other side caught her attention.
“It’s gonna come back and haunt you, you know.”
“Rubbish, you sound like my hundred-year-old aunt.”
Violet tapped her password out on her keyboard, and then stopped.
“What can I get you?”
A waitress had squeezed herself between the corner of the table and the adjacent man’s elbow.
“Coffee, please. Very hot. And very black.”
The waitress’s pencil hovered above her pad. “What do you mean . . . very black?”
Violet smiled. Always the same. They called themselves baristas but they had no idea that you could never make coffee too concentrated.
“Very strong,” she said. Clarification was her strong point too. She should have been a teacher. She sat back in her chair, relaxed in the knowledge that she hadn’t officially ‘clocked in’ yet, and surveyed the room. Heads bobbed in conversation and fingers eased fragments from between gaps in teeth. Oh, how she loved it. Nothing could beat the atmosphere of the cafe: the battles for the last chair, the bread mopping up gravy, the coats slipping from the overloaded pegs. Nothing could beat the sound of strangers’ voices.
“Is that the local rag you’ve got there?”
Violet didn’t look round.
“Oh, yeah,” a second voice replied. “My mum bought it. I needed something to read on the bus.”
“I can’t stand local news.”
“Why not?”
“It’s so pathetic. Who gives a damn about what the local scouts are up to?”
“Got to admit I like the obituaries.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s hilarious though, don’t you think, the way everyone’s so great when they die.”
“What d’ya mean?”
“Have you ever read an obituary saying no one ever liked him and he was rubbish at his job?”
Two women. They sat directly behind her so Violet could not see them but it was easy to imagine: blonde with highlights, fake leather jackets, friends from way back. Violet thought of her own obituary and let her fingers tap out some words, a warm-up for her working day. Born of Margary and John Veil, in North London on April 1st 1983, Violet Veil, a woman of great intelligence and beauty, will be sorely missed by her many friends . . .
“–Hey, look at this job advertisement, what a doddle,” said the first voice. “They’re looking for . . . blimey . . . good listeners.”
“Counts you out then.”
They both laughed. A baby from somewhere across the room laughed.
“Says ‘no training needed.’ I might give this is a go.”
“Let me see, oh, don’t bother, it’s some fancy research job.”
“Is it? Oh, yeah.”
“Might be a laugh to have a stab at it, though. What’s the phone number?”
“Erm . . . two, two, three, nine, seven, one, four.”
Violet’s fingers tapped on her keyboard as if by themselves . . . who always loved her, and she received many accolades during her long life . . . 020 5555 7296. . . .
CHAPTER
4
I had the bones of it. I’d been up half the night, the latter half when the neighbour’s dog had finally stopped barking and it was so quiet I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I never worked at night normally. I needed my full seven hours, but with the big French coffee press at my elbow and Montreal jazz playing on the radio I wrote out my pitch. Pitch. Such a fantastic word. I couldn’t wait to see Tom Wilson’s face as I slugged my idea across the conference table. It was easy to mock the company, that’s how James and I got through the tedium of the day, but as my idea took shape on the page I felt a touch of affection for the freshness of these thoughts. My proposal wasn’t radical. It wasn’t going to make the front page of The Journal of Social Research, but it might ruffle a few feathers round the table. It might even get me a rise. I didn’t usually work this hard, but my encounter with Sammy had disturbed me. Was I so insignificant that I could be away from work for two whole weeks and people didn’t notice? Even the dramatic and mysterious cause of my absence from the office had failed to penetrate the consciousness of my colleagues and I felt narked and insignificant. My idea had to be one they’d remember me by.
Everyone looked as though they’d been up late as I walked into the meeting room, a stuffy space on the second floor that was always littered with the detritus of the previous gathering. A tray in the middle of the table formed the hub: a single pot of coffee, mugs, milk in cartons, plastic stirrers in a plastic cup and sachets of saccharin, one of which had already been torn and spilt onto the tabletop. Tom Wilson, ever the blunderer, had already knocked over a chair yet he couldn’t help but launch into his opening spiel while still partly beneath the table. His opening sentences, no doubt practiced aloud to Jean the afternoon before, were disturbed by the sound of chair legs scraping on the floor and notebooks being flipped open. I missed it altogether, as I was beneath the table myself, retrieving my pen, but by the time I emerged the great hiatus, as James and I fondly called it, was underway.
Nobody ever wanted to go first in Wilson Inc. or Wink meetings, as we named them, thinking we were funny. We felt a certain creepiness about anyone showing too much eagerness, a hangover from our school days, so we all held back while Tom Wilson scanned us eleven eminents until he caught someone’s eye. Although ‘going first’– in retrospect – meant your audience wasn’t entirely comatose, and noting there was only one pot of coffee on the scene and not a biscuit in sight, I cleared my throat.
“William,” said Wilson, fixing me in his gaze, “fire away.”
I stood up and focused on Sammy. I’d been to the public speaking class in the company’s Keep the Home Fires Burning sessions, a much-loved baby of Wilson, and now tried out my points in groups of three. “This company is very good at social research. It’s very good at qualitative research. But it’s not a great player in the digital age.” I paused, and rearranged my body into the ‘audience encapsulator’ stance – point seven on the course. “We need to forget human beings altogether.”
Someone sniggered.
“Aren’t human beings rather our bread and butter?” said Wilson from the important end of the table.
“If I may finish.” I beamed a seamless meld of humility and superiority in his direction. “What I mean is, we don’t need to waste time on meeting real people, paying their expenses, heating rooms. We can do all our research online. It’ll be groundbreaking.” Wilson had a misshapen smile pinned to his face.
“And, it’ll be fresh.” I glance
d round the table. My eye itched; I scratched it.
EVE stepped into the launderette. Thresholds always reminded her of how tall she was, but she managed not to stoop and slipped smartly in with great accuracy and the mindset of a shorter person. A woman was reading the notice board and as Eve headed for her spot on the bench she noted the curl on the back of the reader’s hair. The notice board, the place where the inexplicable met the improbable, was overloaded with tatty bits of paper, all pinned on top of one other, vying for the customers’ attention. The management sometimes attempted to clear a space for important information and once had even tried to refer to the customers of the launderette as ‘clients.’ They had a sign printed specially to hang at the top of the board, but it had caused a mini revolution, the man with the giant jeans pronouncing ‘clients go to lawyers’ offices not bloody launderettes,’ and the skinny woman with the improbably small bras actually ripping it off the wall and throwing it into the bin where it sank without trace beneath the mini packets of Tide and bobbles of grey lint. But that was a rare blip in the usually melancholic and hushed tone of the place. There was something soothing about the quietly whirring underwear and silent folding of shirts so most people did not speak, preferring to sit quietly on the bench between washes or gaze sadly out of the window like worn-out mannequins. Yet, when someone did speak everyone listened. They all pretended not to; they studied their newspapers, they separated black socks from white, but with all her experience, Eve knew they were all absorbing every sigh, every sucked-in syllable, every last word. And when the last word came, with the lowering of pitch and the chug of wet clothes returning to the fore, the launderette’s customers would continue in their own worlds as if nothing had happened.
But Eve never continued. After every little exchange between customers, she’d think a measured thought, take a small intake of breath, do a quick assessment – sex, age, social class – then turn to her subject. ‘No problem is too big’ was her favourite opener. How she liked that turn of phrase. She always felt pleased with the way it suggested her competence and had a tinge of friendliness, yet left room for a dignified departure should a problem – one that needed solving anyway – not actually exist. And most times it didn’t exist, the problem. More often as not she’d be met with a bewildered stare or a falling smile or, on bad days, told to ‘mind your own bloody business, you bloody cow.’ But occasionally – and this is what made it all worthwhile – her subjects would turn to her with a look of relief on their faces and she’d take them aside, usually to the nook beside the oldest washing machine that rattled like a horse trapped in a suitcase, and commence one of her little ‘chats.’ In less time than it takes to cupboard-dry a full load of clothes she would identify where the worry lay, outline a plan of action, and, if time and circumstance allowed, pull the appropriate leaflet from her bag and slip it into her client’s hands.
Her training as a counsellor had begun at keyholes many years earlier when she had monitored the disintegration of her parents’ marriage via the aperture in the lounge door. There she discovered there was no need to view the actual scene when she could glean everything by listening to the creak of her mother’s handbag as she fished out yet another handkerchief and hear the top of her father’s whisky bottle twist open, again and again, and again. But she was an innovative child and with a solution to her parents’ woes sitting sour in her mind she had begun to write notes. Slipped anonymously into her mother’s pockets, beneath her pillow, into the back of her drawers, Eve’s advice marked the beginning of a vocation. She had been born to dispense it. She had dispensed it ever since.
Eve didn’t actually need to come to the launderette, she owned a perfectly good washing machine at home, its detergent drawer unsoiled, its pristine drum still a spic silver, but this place was special. Here, against the gentle rhythm of rinsing knickers and shrinking sweaters, she could focus on the sporadic snatches of conversation and give people the benefit of her experience at will. Even if people didn’t say much in the launderette, when they did talk it resonated; it became a little play, a clean-smelling stage with a captive audience.
That day the launderette was busy. There was only one spot left on the bench and Eve, after loading up the remaining washing machine, squeezed herself between two girls in their twenties, both with neat hair and tinkling bracelets. It seemed to make no difference that she sat between them as they talked across her, more noisily than her usual subjects. And they laughed loudly, the woman on her left actually jogging Eve’s shoulder as she threw back her head at a joke that Eve didn’t understand. Eve was glad they were happy, but suddenly they grew serious, their voices lowered and their smiles dropped off their faces. Eve got up to remove her washing from the washer and piled it into a free dryer. By the time she returned to the bench the gap had closed and the girls’ voices had sunk to a whisper. But whispers were no problem for Eve. Doglike, she could tune into different frequencies with ease, and as she sat on the end of the bench, listening to a long story – of what she classified as woe – she felt concern bubbling up inside her.
“Might I suggest a visit to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau,” Eve said, as if to the air.
“Sorry?” said the closest girl.
“The Citizen’s Advice Bureau, they’ll be able to sort you out. I’ve heard of this sort of problem before. Best to let the professionals deal with it.” She bent down, deftly pulled leaflet 20E out of her bag and placed it gently in the girl’s hand.
“Oh . . . thanks.”
It was as easy that. Sometimes.
Eve got up off the bench and pulled her clothes out of the dryer, folded them up and put them into her washing bag. Both girls looked up at her as she swept by so she couldn’t hold back, she just couldn’t resist throwing out one of her metaphors, the coup de grâce of an expert counsellor. “After all,” she said, turning to face them, “with a mad dog in the street why go outside with bare legs?”
Without waiting for a reply she opened the door and hitched her washing bag onto her shoulder. Then she heard it. Someone had switched on the big dryer, the noisy daddy, but she still overheard a fresh remark from beside the noticeboard.
“Hey look, there’s something interesting pinned up on here. A job advertisement – they’re looking for listeners, would you believe. ‘Good ones,’ whatever they are.”
Eve lowered her bag, turned and went back inside.
CHAPTER
5
So much for going first. I’d managed to relieve the itch in my eye with a wet tissue dabbed on my lid, eaten three sandwiches and wolfed down a Kit Kat since the office meeting ended, but none of it eased the feeling in my stomach. Tom Wilson was hopeless at socialising with his staff, but when it came to shooting down ideas he was the king. Rather than sending a ripple of interest around the table my proposal had been pitched back at me with the force of a Surrey fast bowler and I spent the rest of the session being held up as the low standard by which all others would be subsequently judged. I’d always thought of myself as a forgiving sort of bloke, but it was hard to stop the resentment simmering, especially when Sammy Gringold’s lame plan for narratology was held up as a model of initiative. James had stood up for me of course. He’d tried his hardest to second my ideas, but Wilson was too busy complimenting the genius of his new protégé to notice.
I was back at my desk, getting ready to do some therapeutic Internet browsing when I noticed all sorts of strange tabs crowding the top of the screen. Amongst the ads for taxidermy and blogs for hot rod cars there was one that caught my attention, mainly because it sounded like something out of the 1950s. For me that was the greatest decade; I felt I should have been a teenager back then. I had narrow feet that would look particularly good in winkle-pickers and the square sort of body born to be encased in high-waisted swimming trunks. But most of all I liked the conspiracy theories of that era, the deeply unethical government manoeuvering and dodgy data in secret files. But when I opened the tab I found it was an article about so
mething else. Something that had begun much earlier. I read.
‘Founded in 1937 by three young men, Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge, and Humphrey Jennings, Mass Observation aimed to create an ‘anthropology of ourselves.’
“Hey, James, have you been using my computer?
“No.”
“Seen anyone else messing around with it?”
“No. Why?”
“There’s a bit of a trail up at the top.”
James frowned. “I haven’t seen anyone.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry you got the grilling earlier,” he said. “Wilson can be a bastard.”
I took my eyes off the screen. “Couldn’t have been worse, could it?”
His smile shorted. “Forget about it. Wilson will be throwing another sound bite at us before Sammy’s had time to alphabetise his new files.”
“Yeah.”
I clicked on the rogue article again and re-read the title.
Mass Observation. An Anthropology of Ourselves.
STANLEY thought he should have known that something was up. Beryl’s eyes were extra beady that morning. She watched him as he walked into the kitchen, chuffed as hell and cocking her head in that irritating way of hers, as if she knew something he didn’t. Trouble is she often did know something he didn’t. That’s what got to him. When his bank account went into the red she whistled at the sight of the letter in his hand before he’d even got it open. And then there was the time he couldn’t find his glasses anywhere because he was wearing them. Oh yes, she spotted that right away.
Anyway, that morning, she had attitude. She looked him straight in the eye with that know-it-all way of hers and refused to shift when he tried to open the cage door. He clacked his lips together in the way she liked, but still she wouldn’t budge. “Have it your own way,” he said, turning his back on her. He put the kettle on and dropped a teabag into a mug. When he looked back Beryl was watching him.