1974
Everything
about London was grey, thought Jane as she walked to the underground station on
a Monday morning - the people, the streets, the houses, the sky. She couldn’t
remember when she last saw the sun, or a piece of greenery, or someone dressed
in a bright colour. She’d hated that about London when she first arrived to
work here, and she hated it now, two years later.
No
wonder she escaped most weekends and visited her parents in the country, even
if she then had to endure her mother’s recital of everything that was wrong
with Jane. Her hair was ‘unflattering’, ‘greasy, ‘straggly’. Her skin was
‘pasty’ or ‘spotty’. Her clothes were ‘ghastly’.
This time she’d brought Jane’s father into
it too. Apparently he ‘thought she was much too fat’. Jane was surprised he’d
even noticed her but it made her sad that he was against her too. Even though
he never said anything, she’d always imagined that he was on her side.
As usual,
Kelvin and Alan were talking about sex when she arrived at the bank. The focus
of their attention today was the Sex Maniac’s Diary that sat across
the join between their two desks. Jane had never looked at it herself, not even
in secret, but she thought it contained humorous cartoons of different sexual
positions, and today’s was obviously a good one.
She
ignored the men – which was difficult as her desk butted on to the ends of
theirs - and concentrated instead on putting her bag in the bottom drawer of
her desk
‘Good
weekend?’ asked Kelvin.
‘So-so,’
said Jane. ‘Went to see my parents. You?’
Kelvin
chortled and made a face at Alan, who gave one of his sardonic smiles in reply.
Jane knew what that meant. Kelvin had been off with one of his girlfriends. As
he’d explained to Jane, he and Sylvia had married young because their daughter
was on the way and now they had to ‘make up for lost time’.
‘Sylvia
as well?’ Jane had asked.
‘Oh
yes,’ he’d replied.
Alan
was no better, although more reticent. It was Kelvin who’d told Jane that when
Alan’s wife went away he made a point of sleeping with as many different women
as possible. Jane wondered if Alan’s wife knew.
‘I might
wander down to Companies House this morning and do some research,’ she
announced at coffee time. (Thank goodness it wasn’t her job any more to make
the coffee and take it round. It had been nerve-racking entering the dealing
room and having thirty or so young men swivelling from their screens to look at
her, not to mention the wolf-whistles and the ribald banter.) ‘Anything I can
do for you two?’
‘Ooh
yes,’ they said, scrabbling through mounds of papers.
She’d
commented once on the state of their desks and they’d roared with laughter.
‘We’re
the creatives,’ said Kelvin. ‘We’re allowed –’
‘Supposed,’
interjected Alan.
‘-
supposed to leave our desks untidy.’
They
did make a good double act, not least because of their appearance, Kelvin being
short with long blond hair and Alan tall with short dark hair. Once she’d
thought they were fun.
Writing
reports on businesses didn’t seem that creative to her but perhaps it was so in
comparison to the rest of the jobs at the bank. And what did she know? She
couldn’t even read a balance sheet. She disappeared to Companies House as often
as possible simply so that she didn’t have to sit at her desk pretending to
work. She might have been a Trainee Research Analyst, but no one was training
her. Sometimes she even regretted not being a secretary any more. At least she
was good (goodish) at that.
She was almost certain that Kelvin had
wangled her the job but, if so, why wasn’t he helping her more? Even if he’d
done it in order to keep her near rather than to help her in her career, he was
still going a strange way about it.
‘Cellars
at lunchtime?’ called Kelvin as she left.
‘OK,’
she said.
She
didn’t know why he bothered to ask as they hardly ever didn’t go to the wine bar. Alan used to
come too but he stopped a few months ago. He was obviously more sensitive than
she gave him credit for.
It started one day when she was standing at the photocopier and
Kelvin slid up behind her and put his arm round her waist.
‘When are you coming to Paris with me?’ he
asked.
‘Who’s
paying?’ she said, trying to give a jokey answer to what she thought was
run-of-the-mill flirting. God knows, she had enough of it to deal with. It
wasn’t a very good joke but it was the best she could do at short notice.
‘Me
of course,’ said Kelvin.
And
then she knew he was serious.
Kelvin
soon guessed she’d never slept with anyone before. He called her ‘vierge’,
which sounded a lot less embarrassing than the English equivalent. And he never
pushed her, unlike most men. But perhaps he didn’t need to, what with all his
other opportunities.
They
had nice times together. They went to plays and concerts and exhibitions. They
discussed books and films. He really cared about art, like she did, and like
most of her family and other friends didn’t. For them it was entertainment, it
was Culture. They consumed it because it was fashionable.
The
fact that he was nine years older than her gave him a certain glamour. He knew
things she didn’t. He was worldly.
And something happened to her when he
touched her.
But
she couldn’t forget that he was married and that what she was doing was sinful.
And sometimes she noticed cruel lines running from his nose down either side of
his mouth.
At the Cellars she knocked her glass and spilt some wine over Kelvin's trousers.
He leapt up, brushing the liquid off.
'You stupid cow,' he shouted. 'Now I'll have to get these cleaned.'
It was the first time she'd ever heard a man speak to a woman like that.
At the Cellars she knocked her glass and spilt some wine over Kelvin's trousers.
He leapt up, brushing the liquid off.
'You stupid cow,' he shouted. 'Now I'll have to get these cleaned.'
It was the first time she'd ever heard a man speak to a woman like that.
‘D’you
know what we three have in common?’ said Kelvin mid-afternoon, looking up from
his reference books.
‘Do we
have anything in common?’ said Alan.
‘We’re
all class rebels,’ announced Kelvin.
That
was a new idea.
The
two men seldom talked about their families. All she knew was that Kelvin came
from near Newcastle and Alan from Leeds and that both had been to university.
They hadn’t said which ones but Alan had let slip once that when he was a
student he was a communist. She presumed he wasn’t one now. How could he be and
still work at the bank?
By
contrast, Kelvin wanted to know everything about Jane’s background and was
always offering to accompany her to the parties of rich friends and relatives.
She didn’t often let him – there was something about his eagerness she didn’t
like - but whenever he did he took great delight afterwards in unpicking the
hosts’ taste or lack of.
Were
they rebels, or simply ambitious?
Was
she a rebel, or simply a misfit?
She
went back to her reading. She was trawling through the satirical magazine Private
Eye for gossip related to their work. It was the only part of the job
she could do.
‘Hey,’
she said, as a name jumped out. ‘That’s my uncle.’
She
showed Kelvin and Alan the article. Her uncle was making lots of money
‘asset-stripping’, which as far as she could gather meant buying up ailing
companies and selling off the profitable bits. Private Eye was
saying something rude about him.
As
one, Kelvin and Alan burst out singing.
Bankers’
nieces seek perfection
Expecting
all the gifts that wise men bring.
She
recognised the lines as coming from a song by Bob Dylan, one of Kelvin’s
favourite musicians. She liked Dylan too, but not this in relation to her. The
backgrounds of Kelvin and Alan didn’t matter to her so why should hers matter
to them? She was Jane, not some ‘banker’s niece’. She was hurt. She’d thought
they were friends and equals.
Or perhaps she was suffering from a deficit
of humour.
Nor did
she ever feel safe, she realised, as she walked back from the Underground in
the evening, remembering the man standing next to her on the train who’d pressed
himself against her slightly too much, and thinking of the men who tailed her at night and
all the flashers and gropers she’d had to contend with over the months. She now understood Mr Turner's poem.
Every day she wanted to leave, but she didn’t know where to go, what to do instead. She felt as if she’d exhausted all possibilities. She’d failed at everything: her education, her career, her looks, her relationships.
Every day she wanted to leave, but she didn’t know where to go, what to do instead. She felt as if she’d exhausted all possibilities. She’d failed at everything: her education, her career, her looks, her relationships.
Sometimes she was tempted to run to the
other side of the world, and join Fee in New Zealand.
Kelvin
called it love and wrote her poetry. To her it was more like being lost in a mire
with every step taking her deeper into danger.
On his twenty-eighth birthday Kelvin took her to a new Thai restaurant, the first in London. They sat alone in the stark red and black interior.
On his twenty-eighth birthday Kelvin took her to a new Thai restaurant, the first in London. They sat alone in the stark red and black interior.
‘You’ll
never sleep with me, will you,’ he said.
It
sounded like a challenge – or an ultimatum – and she realised that she just wanted
it all to be over.
Back at her house – so empty now without
Fee – they lay on her bed as they had so many times before, but this time she
let herself go.
She
understood straight away that she knew nothing. She hadn’t expected it to hurt
so much, and she couldn’t believe that someone would make so much effort just
for her. She wondered where the pleasure came in.
Afterwards
he looked down at her with a smirk and said, ‘How does it feel to join the
ranks of the great unwashed?’
A
black shutter slammed down on her life. She’d been conned. This was her latest
and worst mistake. It was something she could never undo.
He
leapt off the bed and started dressing.
‘Where
are you going?’ she asked.
‘Home,
of course,’ he said.
When
he was gone she sat in the bath watching her blood seep into the water.
Back
in her room she played over and over the Nina Simone record that Fee had left
behind for her. ‘Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas.’
She was hurtling down a bottomless black hole and only the music stopped her
disappearing for ever.
