“Hey, we don’t do can’t, sweetie. When did we start doing can’t? Can’t is for pussies.”
WAS I SHOCKED by the way Rod talked to me? Actually, you’d probably be shocked by how unshocked I was. Chauvinism is the air I breathe — a bracing blend of Gucci Envy and salty gym residue. Like one of those cuboid amber air fresheners Winston hangs in the minicab, the smell stuns you as soon as you enter the City; it lays waste to your septum before curling into your brain. Soon it becomes the only smell in the world. Other odors — milk, apples, soap — seem sickly and feeble by comparison. When I first came to the City I smelled the smell and recognized it immediately as power.
Truth is, I don’t mind: let them comment on my legs if those legs help keep my children in shoes. Being a woman doesn’t get you what you want within Edwin Morgan Forster, but it enables the firm to get what it wants outside — accounts, a reputation for “diversity”—and they owe you for that. It’s the oldest trade of all and it’s good enough for me. Sometimes I mind for other women, though. For the older ones like Clare Mainwaring in Operations, whose gray hair puts them among the firm’s Disappeared, and for the kids like Momo who think that having an MBA means that guys won’t look up your skirt.
Round here, there are only three kinds of women. As Chris Bunce once explained to me over a drink in Corney and Barrow, back in the days when he was still hoping to get into my knickers, “You’re either a babe, a mumsy, or a grandma.” Back then, I qualified as a babe.
And the equal-opportunities legislation? Doesn’t make it better, just drives the misogyny underground, into the dripping caves of the Internet. Women make jokes about men on the Net all the time — wry, helpless, furious jokes — but the stuff some of the guys send? Well, a gynecologist would need to go and lie down. Let them pass as many laws as they like. Can you legislate for the cock to stop crowing?
The way I look at it, women in the City are like first-generation immigrants. You get off the boat, you keep your eyes down, work as hard as you can and do your damnedest to ignore the taunts of ignorant natives who hate you just because you look different and you smell different and because one day you might take their job. And you hope. You know it’s probably not going to get that much better in your own lifetime, but just the fact that you occupy the space, the fact that they had to put a Tampax dispenser in the toilet — all that makes it easier for the women who come after you. Years ago, when I was still at school, I read this book about a cathedral by William Golding. It took several generations to build a medieval cathedral, and the men who drew up the plans knew that not their sons but their grandsons, or even great-grandsons, would be around for the crowning of the spire they had dreamed of. It’s the same for women in the City, I think: we are the foundation stones. The females who come after us will scarcely give us a second thought, but they will walk on our bones.
Last year, during the photo shoot for EMF’s corporate brochure, they had to “borrow” workers from the sandwich place in the basement to fill in the blank spaces where the women and ethnic minorities should be. I sat in some ludicrous fake meeting opposite a Colombian waitress. Eager and uncomprehending, she wore Celia Harmsworth’s red Jaeger jacket and was instructed to study a fund report. The photographer had to turn it the right way up.
Later, going downstairs to pick up a bagel, I tried to catch the waitress’s eye across the counter, to share a look of girly complicity — Men! What can you do? — but the woman didn’t even glance up from her tub of cream cheese.
4:53 P.M. Got to start work on the pitch for the ethical fund, but distracted by thoughts of Jack, and then there’s Emily’s birthday. Three and a half months to go and my daughter is already counting the seconds. (The desire to get to a birthday when you’re five is as urgent as the desire to miss one when you’re thirty-five.) Feeling like proper organized mother for once, I put in a call to Roger Rainbow, a clown of high repute among the Muffia. Roger’s answerphone informs me he is absolutely chocker every weekend but still has some slots left for Halloween. Bloody hell, it would be easier to book the Three Tenors. Trust me to become a parent in the era when birthdays finally became a competitive sport.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Excuse me. Kate Reddy?”
“Yes?” I look up, and standing by my desk is the beautiful young woman who pressed me so hard at the trainees’ induction before Christmas. Now, as then, she is blushing but there is nothing frail or floundering in her shyness; her reticence seems to have been cast from some fine but resilient metal.
“Sorry,” she says again, “but I understand we’re going to be working together on an — um, final. Mr. Task said he felt I had an important contribution to make.”
I bet he did. “Oh, yes, Momo. It is Momo, isn’t it? I didn’t imagine we’d be working together so soon. It’s certainly going to be a real challenge.” Come on, Kate, give the poor girl a break. It’s not her fault she’s been dumped on you. “I’ve heard so many good things about you, Momo.”
“And vice versa,” she says gratefully, taking a seat. “We all — well, all the women — she gestures across the sea of suits — we don’t know how you do it. Oh, is this yours?”
Disappearing under my desk for a second, she comes back up holding a daffodil.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s broken.”
Thank-you letters, ring Mum, ring sister. HIGHLIGHTS! Complete IMRO forms. See amazing new film — Sitting Tiger? Sleepy Dragon? Trim Ben’s nails, ring Juno Academy of Fitness and book new personal trainer, Pelvic floor squeeeze. Momo list “to do” Emily school applications GET ORGANIZED. Father-in-law’s 65th birthday — tickets for Lion King? Call Jill Cooper-Clark. Social life: invite people Sunday lunch — Simon and Kirsty? QUOTE FOR STAIR CARPET! Note for Juanita. Packing for half term: Roo! Extra towels, nappies, portacot, wipes, Aromatic Anti-Stress pillow, Wellies.
14 Half Term
“KATE, I AM NOT HAVING an argument with you about Wellies.”
“Well I’m having an argument with you about Wellies. Emily is soaking wet. Just look at the state of her trousers. I have to remember everything. Every single thing. And I swear to God there’s no room in my brain for any more information, Richard. I remembered to ask you to check the Wellies were in the car.”
“I’m sorry, I forgot. It’s not a big deal.”
“No, you’re not sorry. If you were sorry you’d have remembered.”
How much do you think the human brain can bear in the way of remembering? I read somewhere that our long-term memory is basically this giant storehouse where all the people and places and jokes and songs we’ve ever known are laid down like wine, but if you don’t visit a memory often enough the route to it is lost, briared over. Like the approach to Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Is that why all fairy tales are about trying to find the way back?
Anyway, my memory’s not what it used to be, but I have to try and remember. Someone has to. What’s that awful word? Multitasking. Women are meant to be great at that. But Rich, if you ask Rich to hold more than three things in his head at once you can see smoke start to come out of his ears; the circuits have blown in there. I’ve heard women on the radio arguing that guys play up how useless they are in order to avoid doing stuff. Unfortunately, extensive scientific trials in the Shattock home have revealed that the inability to remember the dry cleaning and the dishwasher tablets plus the film for the camera is, in fact, a congenital defect, like color blindness or a dicky heart. It’s not laziness, it’s biology.