by Maeve Binchy
‘Geoff. Geoff White, for Christ’s sake, who is that?’
‘I am Miss Gray’s secretary. Mr White can you please tell me your business. You’re taking up a lot of time.’
She didn’t actually lie when Sara asked had Geoff phoned. She said that a totally inarticulate man had called but it could hardly have been Geoff. Sara had only paused momentarily to wonder. She had spent five days at a sales conference in Paris, and had told Eve excitedly how she had been asked to address the meeting twice about new brochure ideas. Mr Edwards – or that buffoon Garry as she was now calling him – looked positively yellow with rage. He had tried to make a pass at her which she had rejected with amazement and something akin to distaste. Eve was full of praise.
Next day Sara said: ‘The inarticulate man must have been Geoff. His things were in the flat, but I couldn’t bear to be woken at three a.m. with champagne and tears and all, so I bolted my door and didn’t hear whether he called or not.’
Eve nodded in her cool way. She wanted to hear no more, not one word of Sara’s private life. Yet she looked pleased. Things were going as hoped for. Sara was now too busy to worry about Geoff, and soon she would be too confident to accept his amazing behaviour which was already a legend in office gossip. The new Sara would either throw him out or make him behave in a civilised way. Very satisfactory.
The weeks passed again. By now it was already office gossip that Sara would shortly take over from Garry Edwards. People who hadn’t rated her much before, were saying now that she had been holding back. Others said that she was always brilliant and that it was only a matter of time before it was recognised.
Garry Edwards blew it. He tried to drop Sara into great trouble for one of his own mistakes. Unlucky Garry Edwards that he had joined battle with Eve’s filing system, the relevant documents were produced in a matter of minutes; quite obviously Sara had dealt with the problem, had recommended a correct course of action.
It was shortly after this that Eve asked Sara to come into her small cubicle and go over the filing system with her.
‘Let’s do a test,’ Eve said. ‘Suppose you had to find Press Comment on Senior Citizen Campaign, where would you look?’ Sara checked first under ‘publicity’ then under ‘Senior Citizens’. It took her five minutes.
‘It’s too long,’ said Eve firmly. ‘Perhaps you should have a look for something every day for the next month or so. Just to familiarise yourself.’
‘You’re going to leave me aren’t you?’ asked Sara.
‘I think so,’ said Eve.
‘It’s not the year, it’s not even half a year,’ Sara complained.
‘But there’s nothing left to do, Miss Gray. We get you a new efficient typist, we both explain to her and to Simon what the routine is, you’ll be leaving shortly anyway for Mr Edwards’ job, we’ll just make sure that any changeover here goes smoothly.’
‘Can’t you come with me, upstairs?’ Sara nodded in the direction of the promotions manager’s office. ‘Please.’
‘No, you can do it better on your own really. And it’s better for you.’ She was like a swimming instructor encouraging a bright but apprehensive pupil.
‘The office, Eve, how will I do up the office so that it’s like this . . . I mean I hate his furniture, I hate his style.’
‘You choose, Miss Gray. A few months ago you wouldn’t even have noticed his office or his style.’
‘Eve, a few months ago you know very well nobody would have noticed me.’
‘You underestimate yourself, Miss Gray. Shall I advertise for a secretary, I’d be happy to advise you on any points during any interview.’
‘God, yes Eve,’ Sara looked at her. ‘I won’t keep asking you but you know there’s no problem about salary.’
Eve shook her head.
Sara put her face into a bright smile. ‘In a few months I suppose I’ll get a telephone call from some bewildered woman asking me do I know Eve and can I possibly recommend her insane notions.’
Eve looked solemn. ‘Well, yes, if you don’t mind. I should like your name as a reference.’
‘And I’ll say Miss whoever you are. . . Eve is not from this planet. Let her have her way with you and you’ll be running your company in months.’
Eve stood up briskly. ‘Yes, if you think it was all worth it.’
Sara put out her hand and held Eve’s arm.
‘I know you hate people prying but why, just why? You’re far brighter than I am, than the woman in the bank, than the other woman – the one you told to have dinner parties. I mean, why don’t you do it. Why don’t you do it for you. You know better than any of us how to get on. It’s like a kind of crusade for you but you stay in the background all the time. I don’t know what you’re at. What you want.’
Eve shrugged politely. ‘I like to see you do well, Miss Gray, that’s enough reward for me. You deserve it. You were being passed over. That wasn’t just.’
Sara nodded. ‘Now I promise, all the rest of the time you are here, I’ll never ask again. Never. Just tell me. Why this way? If you feel there’s discrimination against women there must be better ways to fight it.’
Eve leaned against the beautiful table and stroked it. ‘If there are I can’t find them. I simply know of no better way to fight it than from within. You have to use the system. I hate it but it’s true.’
Sara didn’t interrupt. She knew that if Eve was ever going to say anything it would be now. She let the pause last.
‘How do you think I, as a feminist, like asking intelligent, sensitive women like you and like Bonnie Bernstein in the bank, and Marrion Smith in the ministry to dress properly? As if it mattered one goddamn whether you wore woad to the office . . . all three of you are worth more than any man I ever met in any kind of business. And I could say that for seven or eight other women, too. But women don’t have a chance, they don’t bloody know . . .’
Sara sat breathless.
‘It’s so unjust.’ Eve stressed that word heavily. ‘So totally unjust. A married man has a woman to look after his appearance and his clothes and his meals and his house, a woman does not. A single man has a fleet of secretaries, assistants, manicurists, lovers to look after him. A single woman is meant to cope. A man is admired for sleeping with people on his way up, a woman is considered a tramp if she does. A man . . .’ She paused and pulled herself together, almost physically. ‘Miss Gray, you must excuse me. I really don’t think I should be taking up your time with all this. I do apologise. I feel ashamed of myself.’
The moment was gone, the spell was broken.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll tell me why you feel like this? I mean was there some experience in your life, Eve, you are so young, too young to be bitter about things.’
Eve looked at her. ‘No, of course I’m not bitter, I’m very constructive. I just try to get some justice for strong, good women who deserve it. When I’ve got it I move on. It’s very satisfying. Slow but satisfying. Now, about this advertisement. I don’t think we should phrase it “travel business”, it will attract the kind of woman who thinks in terms of cheap flights and free holidays.’
Sara played along. She owed Eve that much.
‘Oh yes, of course. Let’s word it now, and put it in whenever you want to. The later the better of course. You know I don’t want you to leave here ever.’
‘Thank you very much, Miss Gray. But I think really if you agreed I’ll get it into tomorrow’s papers.’
Sara looked up.
‘So soon?’
‘There’s a lot to be done,’ said Eve.
EUSTON
Elizabeth marvelled at the changes in Euston. She remembered the station much more clearly as the fairly gloomy and barracks-like place where she had gone with Mother and Father to meet Dara each year when she came over from Ireland on holiday. And here she was years later in the huge revamped place with its shops and its flashing lights and escalators waiting for Dara again. Dara who could well afford to fly but who decided that i
t would be more fun to retrace the old tracks and come on boat and train; Dara who had always made the holidays turn into technicolour for Elizabeth, the only child; Dara who was so quiet and gentle but somehow managed to make things cheerful in a house where there was little love; Dara who had been able to say things to Mother and Father even after one of their dreadful rows –something that would ease the atmosphere – while Elizabeth would sit mute and tight-lipped, afraid that by opening her mouth she would drive her parents further from each other than they already were.
Even after the divorce, when she and Dara were fifteen, there had been a visit. Mother and Elizabeth had waited in this very spot and when Dara got off the train and ran up to them, she had hugged Mother and said, ‘You poor old thing, it must be desperately lonely and sort of low for you these days,’ and Mother had hugged her back and cried. Mother crying in public and hugging Dara.
Elizabeth had felt her heart lift for the first time since the divorce. Dara always had this gift of saying what people didn’t say and it all worked perfectly.
During that particular visit Dara had suggested that she would like to see Father. Dara said she had a present for him from Ireland. Mother had pursed her lips and looked disapproving. Elizabeth had feared that everything was going to turn sour again. ‘Aw, come on out of that,’ Dara had said. ‘Now for the rest of your life you can’t be expecting that nobody except Elizabeth is going to want to be friends with both of you. It’s not a battle for us.’
And because of Dara the visit to Father had been marvellous instead of stilted, and Dara had said ‘Aw, come on out of that, of course you’ve got a new lady friend, why can’t we meet her? It’s silly to ask her to be out all day, or hidden away as if she were in disgrace.’ So Father, delighted, had suggested that Julia join them for lunch, and it had been a memorable meal with wine and a sip of brandy afterwards, and Dara said that there was no purpose in carrying tales from one household back to another, it only made things worse on everyone . . . and with her carefree attitude she had brought some kind of happiness into that troubled summer also.
Dara lived in Ireland with an old grandmother, a housekeeper and a gardener. Her parents, who had been friends of Mother and Father in the old days, had been killed in a car crash and so now Dara’s life was a matter of cycling to a local school each day, coming home and making sure her hands were nice and clean and that she came in to lunch or dinner when the gong sounded. She told her old grandmother little tales about what happened at school or with her friends, or during the holidays about what she had read. She seemed to lead an idyllic existence, wandering around the countryside exploring and reading in her large sunny bedroom which looked out on purple mountains. Once a year she came to spend two weeks in London, her annual treat.
The friendship lasted long after schooldays. Dara had trained as a nurse in an Irish hospital at the same time as Elizabeth was doing her training in London. They still holidayed in each other’s homes, and as they became more adventurous they even went as far as Spain and Italy together. When Dara’s grandmother died there was even talk of her coming to London to share a flat with Elizabeth but she said she would miss the purple mountains and the narrow roads, which she now drove along in her little car instead of pedalling on her creaking bike.
There was also a question of Dara marrying some doctor near-by. Elizabeth had become very excited about this and hoped the romance was going well.
‘Do you think he’s interested? Do you really think he’s contemplating it?’ she had asked Dara eagerly when she went to spend a spring week in the Irish countryside and had met the handsome doctor two or three times.
Dara had astonished her by saying: ‘Oh, that’s not the point. I mean it’s easy enough to make him interested, it’s just that I don’t know yet if I want him or not. That’s the only problem.’
Elizabeth had been mystified. She assumed in some vague way that Dara must be talking about sexual favours, but despite their years of friendship this was not an area that they discussed. The young doctor was dropped from conversation and from Dara’s life, and always Elizabeth had a suspicion that Dara may have loved him a lot, but had failed to attract him. That her conversation had merely been bravado. Still, Dara seemed to have few regrets. She had transformed her grandmother’s crumbling old house into an excellent old people’s home. The housekeeper and the gardener lived there in style and comfort to work out their old age in payment for all they had given to the place. This gave Dara a very high reputation in the community. Many a young one who came into money might have been hoity-toity, but Miss Dara was different. A very kind young woman indeed. She employed a small staff, all of whom seemed to have been chosen on grounds of their pleasant personalities. It wasn’t surprising that the place had a waiting list of several years. Dara kept a supervisory eye on the place but she still worked some hours in the local hospital and still took time to travel. People often wondered why she didn’t marry. By the time she was thirty-five they assumed that she was a career woman. It couldn’t be from lack of suitors or opportunities.
Elizabeth, too, wondered from time to time, why Dara had never married. But it had not been a serious worry. She assumed it was because of the gentle fulfilling pace that Dara’s life always seemed to have been lived at. She had never been searching or seeking. She was always perfectly content with her lot. That’s what had made her such a delightful companion. Perhaps these Irish men who must surely have fancied her had been too diffident, too unsure in their own minds about the whole concept of marriage to force Dara to change, to insist that barriers be broken down. Dara would have made a great wife and sailed through all the storms of matrimony, Elizabeth sighed as she waited at the station.
And there were many. Oh dear Lord, there were many. It was a simple fact that when you get married there are not enough hours in the day. Nothing more or less. There are not sufficient slots of time to be a wife, full of interest and concern, and dying to make love, and up to date with every aspect of Derek’s work in research. To be a mother, wiping dirty faces, washing clothes, playing creative games, spotting incipient infections, participating meaningfully in the playgroup scheme, arranging baby-sitters that will get on well with the children. To be a worker, to put in thirty-eight hours a week in the nursing agency. To be a home maker, that awful American word which seemed to cover a full-time job polishing, shining, making curtains, cooking, entertaining, gardening. Even if she slept only two hours a night, Elizabeth thought, it would be too much. There were not enough hours.
She needed the job, they both needed her to have the job. Derek’s job was not well enough paid for the kind of lifestyle they wanted. Anyway, she liked the job. What she didn’t like was the constant guilt, the foolish wearying feeling of being behind at everything. She hated taking the children’s mending to work to try and do it in the crowded bus, but where else could she find that spare half-hour? She hated shopping at lunch hour, she hated having to rush and pick the children up from a neighbour’s house and have them at home demanding her time and attention before she had time to unpack the groceries and have a shower. It would only take her half an hour, that extra half-hour would give her so much more freedom and energy, but it was impossible. Her bus passed the neighbour’s house at five-thirty so it made sense to pick the children up there and walk the ten minutes home with them rather than coming back and having an extra twenty minutes added to the evening at the other end of a half-hour’s peace at home. Or so Derek had said. Derek came home at seven, when the house was invariably a mess, the children and herself locked in some struggle about bed, toys, bath, supper. It had become so wildly unsatisfactory that Elizabeth was feeling severe strain, and because of her small medical knowledge she knew it was teetering near the edge of a breakdown.
She wrote it all out in a long letter to Dara, wondering whether she should just collapse and let it all take care of itself. Dara said she would come for a month. Elizabeth could spend a week in a nursing home, two weeks in a health farm a
nd one week at home picking up the threads.
‘I’ll come at the beginning of February,’ Dara had written. ‘By March 1st you will be right as rain.’
It was as if a Messiah had announced an imminent coming. Elizabeth was happy already.
When Dara came bouncing up the ramp, her short brown hair ruffled and attractive, Elizabeth felt an almost physical pain of relief. Here was the one person who would make the household happy again. The great restorer of peace as she had been in Mother and Father’s time, doing it over twenty years later for Elizabeth herself. She hugged her and clung to her with tears starting to flow.
Dara was obviously startled to see her friend in such poor shape. She put her hand professionally on Elizabeth’s forehead.
‘I see I’m just in time,’ she said. She waved them into a taxi airily. ‘You’re in no shape to battle with the tube, silly,’ she said. ‘Anyway we can make our plan of campaign in comfort. Have you booked the nursing home?’
‘Yes,’ gulped Elizabeth. ‘I think they must think I am not all there. It’s very dear.’
‘That’s my wedding present to you, I never gave you a proper one,’ said Dara. Elizabeth had a vague memory that Dara had given her some huge fluffy towels but she said nothing.
‘Now, the health farm the next week.’
‘Yes, yes. I booked it. I know you said to take it from Mother’s legacy, I have. Do you think two weeks is too long?’
‘No,’ said Dara. ‘Now Derek. Have you told him yet?’
‘Well, yes and no,’ said Elizabeth, her face becoming twisted in an effort to explain.
‘That means no,’ said Dara.
‘He’d think I was silly, he’d think I was weak and self-indulgent.’ Elizabeth began to stutter in her eagerness to defend Derek’s attitude. ‘You see, I’ve been so hopeless recently. So tired. And so complaining. I don’t want to let him think he married a dud.’
‘Tell him your doctor insisted on it,’ said Dara. ‘I’ll back it up, and say in my professional opinion, which is true by the way, I never saw anyone so much on the verge of collapse. I’ll run the house, mind the kids, give Derek his bowl of porridge now and then, and when you come back glowing and well you’ll be as right as rain.’