‘But, Miss, what if our girls have other ambitions? What if they would like to find some kind of employment? Something to stimulate them.’
‘Oh, my dear girl, employment is only for the poor. Rich girls do not need to work, therefore they do not want to work. Working is an unfortunate consequence of one’s station in life. It is neither attractive nor fun. No, the young women we teach will have no desire to do anything but catch a suitable husband. And that is what we must teach.’
‘Please tell me, I work due to my station in life. Will I ever be able to attract a husband?’
‘Oh, I should say that you will be able to marry well, in the circumstances, fret not. I will teach you how to attract a husband and then you may give up work.’
‘Miss, I would very much like a husband, but I also enjoy working here. I would like to marry, but is it not possible to keep my employ?’
‘Oh dear. I see we have some work to do. If you want to get married, then why would you want to keep working?’
‘I enjoy my work.’
‘Oh, is that all? Do not worry, you shall enjoy being a wife very much more.’
***
Do you know what it’s like to be born in the wrong time? A basic mistake in the year of my birth and the rest of my life was ruined. I should never have been born now. The Jane Austen times would have best suited me, I thought. I would have spent my days playing the piano, sewing, reading and walking. I would have waited for dashing men to court me, I would have married well. Life would have been perfect. I felt as if I had been held in a womb for a hundred years or so. I couldn’t believe that someone had got it so wrong.
There was one silver lining in my cloud, though: I was still convinced that the life I found myself with was not permanent. In fact, it was very, very temporary. The house was nice, Clapham was nice, my friends were nice, most of the time, but I still expected Ben to come back for me, I knew he would. I knew, being realistic, that he wouldn’t come back straight away. When he left and I was still at home, I would jump every time the phone rang and rush every time I heard the doorbell, expecting him to be there, but that was just wishful thinking. After a month or so, I knew he’d realise he’d made a terrible mistake and he’d rush back to me, begging my forgiveness. Although the small sane part of me knew that I was living in Fantasy Land, it wasn’t big enough to kick me into reality. I was firmly ensconced there, and I had no intention of leaving. That was how I coped with my day-to-day life; that was how I coped with London. I got through it by knowing that Ben would rescue me soon, and we’d ride off into the sunset together.
Then it happened. I got a postcard. A postcard with a picture of Ayers Rock, Australia, on it, a postcard from the other side of the world. A postcard telling me that now Ben was further away from me than ever. It came via Thomas and it said, ‘Dear Ruth, having a great time, weather is hot, beer is cheap, lots of culture, from Ben.’ Not even ‘Wish you were here’, not whether he’d climbed Ayers Rock, or even if he’d been there. When that— came, I felt I’d hit rock bottom yet again. He wasn’t coming back and he hadn’t realised he’d made a mistake. To him our relationship was a cheap postcard. I felt such anger towards him. How dare he not come back for me? How dare he subject me to this life? He was to blame for everything and I almost hated him. But I couldn’t hate him because all I wanted was for him to be here, with me, and I had to face for the first time that there was a strong possibility that that was never going to happen.
***
‘Why?’ I asked, I was weepy.
‘Why what?’ Ben said.
‘Why are we over?’ The tears sat still in my eyes but I was ever aware of their presence.
‘Because I told you I’m going travelling.’
God, this man was one pain in the arse. He couldn’t even do a decent job of breaking up with me. God knows how he ever passed a law degree. ‘Ben, I know you’re going travelling and I hate that you’re leaving, but I don’t understand why we have to break up.’
‘What?’ Ben looked confused.
My strength was returning. I loved Ben, I really did, but he wasn’t the brightest man on earth. ‘Listen, Ben, we’ve been together for over two years and now you want to throw it all away. What about me waiting for you?’
I’m not sure what logic in me produced this, but I guess it was that I wanted to stay with Ben, I wanted to be his girl, and if it meant a year without him, well, that would be what it took. A little ray of light returned to me. Ben and I didn’t need to be over, not at all.
‘No,’ Ben replied.
I took a deep breath. This was either going down in history as one of the most difficult break-ups or the longest. ‘Why, Ben, why? Don’t you love me? Why don’t you want me?’ I was tired and I felt a little tear escape. The silence lasted for what seemed forever. I was concentrating on not crying: I looked at the sky, so clear, so dark, so enveloping, so warm, so cold, so big, and I looked around the steps we stood on, steps we had stood on a thousand times before – I think we even kissed on these steps. I could hear shrieks of laughter in the distance as the graduation ball was still in full swing. I could hear music. But none of it felt real. All that was real was Ben, my love and me, and even that wasn’t real any more either.
‘We’re young, Ru, too young to settle down. I wasn’t ready for all your plans, they scared me, and I don’t want to go away for a year and come back to find things still the same. I need to go away and I need a fresh start.’
I was fast running out of energy. I still wanted to know why he hadn’t told me before, or why he felt this or when he felt this, or if he even loved me, but I didn’t seem to have any strength left. It was shock I was feeling, momentous shock and I just didn’t know how to deal with it. I didn’t know how I’d ever deal with any of it.
‘So, you don’t want to be with me.’ It was time to cut the crap.
‘Ruth, I just need to be on my own. I’m young.’
‘Yes, Ben, you are.’ The tears were rolling down my cheeks and everything looked hazy. I couldn’t focus on Ben, on anything. I felt scared and I felt nauseous.
Ben looked awkward but he moved towards me.
‘Did you ever love me – do you love me?’
‘Yes, I did, Ru, course I did, but it’s just … Do we have to do this?’ Ben looked so out of his depth, but I guess that was because this was one of the longest conversations he’d ever had.
‘Yes, we do.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I want to kill you.’
Ben turned from his fashionable purple colour to a green shade of white. ‘I want us to stay friends.’
That did it. Those were the last words I heard before I threw up all over Ben’s shoes. I didn’t even realise what I’d done until it was too late. He jumped back, looked horrified, turned greener. He kept looking from me to his shoes to me again. I stood still, recovering, taking deep breaths and trying hard not to be sick again. We stayed like this for ages. All I could hear was my breathing.
‘I’m going now. I need to clean up.’ Ben looked at me with a sort of smile, a scared, sad smile. He walked away, just like that.
‘Ben, don’t, please don’t.’ I don’t know if he heard, I don’t know if I was whispering or shouting because I couldn’t hear myself. I watched him go, walking the way he always did, the way I loved, slowly, with his head bowed. I guessed he was still looking at his newly decorated shoes. I sat down on the step and I stopped fighting as I let a torrent of tears cascade down my face.
***
I knew that there had been crises far worse than mine, unimaginably worse. I knew that there were a lot of people in this world with a zillion more problems than me. But this was my crisis and to me it was serious. I might feel guilty about those other people, but I was still damn well going to have my crisis. Once it was over, if it was ever over, I might look back and think I overreacted, or behaved really stupidly at times. Then I did not want to have to admit that I was a mad, obsessive cow, nor did I want
to be told that. When I was feeling really bad, and letting everyone know, Jess always said, ‘At least you’re not starving and homeless and friendless and family less’ and I’d look at her as if she was the most evil person in the world, because one thing you don’t want to do when you’re in a crisis is feel sorry for anyone but yourself.
And to end the crisis, what would I need? Ben, an official status as a non-career woman, a home and some money. That was all it would take. I wanted the world to say, ‘It’s OK. Just because you’re a woman, you don’t have to have a career.’ I wanted men to say, ‘If you want to work, fine, but if not, then we’ll take care of you.’ Anyway, that was all I needed. I knew my wishes weren’t shared by everyone and that was fine. I thought that if that was the case I might have more chance of getting them. Less competition, that sort of thing. Jess didn’t think I was an individual, she thought I was a wimp. I always ran after men and I always did as I was told. She said that was what happened with Ben. But I knew that was not how it was. Our relationship was never like that. Jess and I always disagreed over things like that. She wanted me to be like her. I wanted her to stop being quite so like her.
***
It was time for me to start the process of forgetting Ben. He was gone (can you believe I’m saying this? No, nor can I), I had to start accepting that and to make matters worse I still hadn’t sold anything at work, I wasn’t even close to it, and my boss was starting to get a bit worried about me. My motivation was at an all-time low. I decided to seek help from my friends.
‘You see, the thing is I hate my job and I hate working. I’ve got no desire to make a go of it, I want to leave and I want never, to have to work again.’ That just about summed it up.
‘Ruth, I thought that by now you might have got some ambition. Even if your first job isn’t right, don’t you want to find something you do like?’ Sarah was obviously appalled by my attitude.
‘No. I want to get married,’ I said.
‘God, Ru, people like you put the women’s movement back a million years. People fought for the rights you’ve got. They burned their bras, chained themselves to railings and you just want to get married.’ Jess was quite cross.
‘I didn’t ask them to,’ I said.
Jess gave me a dirty look. ‘That’s a stupid thing to say.’
‘I thought the whole thing was about giving us choice, Jess. This is my choice. I just want to get married,’ I defended myself. Jess gave me another dirty look.
Sophie tried to pacify things. ‘Some people are not meant to be ambitious. I think that’s OK.’ She got a dirty look too, and promptly shut up.
I didn’t feel like the others at all. Maybe I was the odd one, but I still thought I had a valid point. I didn’t have a thing I loved, like them, and I didn’t want to devote my life to something just because that was what I was supposed to do. ‘I work to earn money, but I don’t really want a career. I want to find someone to love and take care of him. That’s my ambition,’ I said.
‘Ruth, we’re approaching the millennium, I wish you’d stop behaving as if it was the 1950s,’ Sarah said.
The horror expressed by everyone was based on a view totally opposite to mine. I was a minority. Being a minority can make you feel very alone.
As far as I could see, working held little attraction. So you got a job, you worked really hard, they gave you promotion, you worked even harder. Your colleagues were your competition, your boss your aspiration, and you had constantly to pay attention so you didn’t get left behind. For what? A good salary and a company car. Where was the fun in that? You spent your life stressed, worried and with ulcers. You see, in my world, work wasn’t stressful. I didn’t get worried. If I got fired I’d have a party. But, like I said, I was a minority. Jess said my forte in life was to start the women’s regression movement, extolling the virtue of looking after men, the whole thing women had worked so hard not to do. Women had value now, they had independence, self-esteem. Apparently I was trying to destroy all that was good. But I thought that was a little harsh. I didn’t want to make women want to stay at home, just make it not so bad for the ones who did. Like me.
‘I blame men,’ Sarah said.
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘Everything. The reason women have to work so hard is because men tried for so long to keep us in the kitchen, and now we’ve proved ourselves, they still make us work twice as hard as them.’
‘You’re so right. Men used to have it all and they still do. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. That’s why you really aren’t doing us any favours, Ru.’ Jess was excited.
‘Oh.’ I felt suitably chastised. Then I thought about it. ‘I blame men too,’ I said.
They looked at me.
‘Really?’ Sarah asked.
‘Most definitely. When we were fighting so hard for the right to work if they’d told us that working is a shitty existence and really stressful perhaps we’d have listened to them. But instead they fought us, we won, and now we have no choice but to earn our own living because men spend their money on fast cars, slick clothes and womanising. They could at least have given us a warning,’ I said.
Jess looked as if she was going to kill me.
‘How can you talk such crap?’ Sarah looked pretty much the same.
‘Ru, you’re not being remotely amusing. OK, we’ve accepted that at the moment you have no ambition, but please do not belittle the women who do. Now, go and make some coffee.’
I slunk off to the kitchen. Even I knew when I’d gone too far.
We are supposed to want it all. In theory it should have been easier for me. I didn’t want it all, just a little bit. But the little bit I wanted seemed to be the hardest to get. Society had high expectations of me, but in return I was offered no assurances of happiness. It wanted me to achieve, but would not guarantee my reward. I didn’t think I’d ever live up to those expectations but, then, society hadn’t lived up to mine.
I returned with the coffee, but the conversation was still going. I was beginning to regret ever having said anything. My chat about my job crisis had turned into a lecture about how odd I was.
‘Ru, I made my list today,’ Jess said.
‘What list?’ I asked.
‘My aims list, my list of things I want to do by the time I’m thirty.’
Sophie and Sarah congratulated her.
I was confused. ‘So is this list thing common?’
‘Yes, of course. We’ve all done one,’ Sarah said.
‘Even you, Soph?’ Sophie nodded.
God, this was bad.
‘Anyway, I’ve done mine and I think you should do one,’ Jess said.
‘Come on, Jess, tell us.’ Sarah looked excited. She sat up straighter on the sofa.
Jess beamed. ‘Well, I’d like to be promoted from junior account executive to account executive at my six-month review, then after a year senior account exec, then account manager by the end of the next year, or six months if I move companies, and by my third year I’d like to be a senior account manager. Then I want to move swiftly to account director. I plan to move companies and have picked out my next two. By the time I’m thirty I’ll have a board position. I’ll drive a flash sports car, have men flocking around me and I’ll own my own flat, somewhere nice, like Fulham, and I’ll have a wardrobe full of designer clothes.’
‘That’s great, Jess, really focused,’ Sarah said.
I thought it sounded complicated and exhausting, all those different ‘account’ titles, God, it sounded awful. Jess looked smug. But I hadn’t got a list and everyone was looking at me accusingly. ‘Ah,’ I said triumphantly, ‘you’ve all made a list because you know what careers you want. Seeing as I haven’t got a clue what I want to do, you can’t possibly expect me to make one.’ Now it was my turn to be triumphant.
‘Um, that’s true,’ Jess concurred. She and Sarah looked at each other.
‘OK, so we have to go back a stage with you. What we can do is make
a list to identify your chosen career.’ Sarah could be determined sometimes. My heart sank. ‘Listen, Ruth, now that you know your current job isn’t right, before you leave we have to find you one that is,’ she told me, and went to get a pen and paper.
We started making a list of everything I enjoyed. Then Sarah crossed out any references I’d made to Ben and going to bars. It was a thin list ‘For God’s sake, Ruth, there’s nothing here. Unless you count watching TV and cooking as career options. And you can’t even cook.’ Sarah was angry.
‘Ruth, you’ve got to make some effort. You may think you can make a career out of missing Ben but you can’t. You’ve got to get on with your life.’ Jess was angry.
Sophie came and put her arms around me. ‘Babe, it will be OK, we’ll help you, promise, we’ll find you something.’
I decided then I liked Sophie best.
‘I know, I’ve got it.’ Sarah jumped up.
‘What?’ I was scared now.
‘I know this woman – she’s a career counsellor.’ Sarah looked smug.
‘What’s a career counsellor?’ I asked. It sounded awful.
‘A professional who helps you focus on your abilities and what you enjoy in order to find out what job you’d be suited to. She’s very good, she’s bound to be able to help you. I’ll make you an appointment.’
‘So she won’t ask me about my childhood?’ I asked.
‘No, silly, she’ll just talk you through what you enjoy. Then she’ll give you some career options, maybe some you didn’t know existed, and she’ll help you to get a job in the area you’re interested in.’ Sarah was looking determined.
I really didn’t want to see this woman. ‘You know something, I made a mistake. I actually quite like my job, I think I’ll give it a bit longer. If it really doesn’t work out then I’ll see the career counsellor. Thanks, you guys, you’ve really helped me loads.’ I ran from the room before anyone could say anything.
***
After upsetting Sarah and Jess, I thought I’d do the grown-up thing and work things out for myself. Everyone else had, so I should have been able to. First I gave serious consideration to my current job. There was no one in the office I liked, apart from Brian and he wore cardigans. I hated selling, I was bad at it. I hated my boss, especially as lately he had devoted his day to motivating me and, well, that was it. I couldn’t stay there much longer. But I would stay until either they fired me or I had worked out where I could go from there. I had to lie down. I had to think. Do I really want a career? Well, perhaps. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve given it much thought. I picked up Ben’s photo. ‘Did you take my ambition away?’ But, as nice as it would have been, I couldn’t blame Ben. I couldn’t remember when I was ever interested in doing anything other than men. Ha, not even as a baby. When I was a baby I spent hours eyeing up boy babies in their prams.
Rubber Gloves or Jimmy Choos? Page 7