‘And you go to the gym?’ Yvonne read. ‘Or do you just like watching that too?’
‘No, I really go,’ Clodagh said, on much more solid ground.
‘Although that hardly counts as a hobby, does it?’ Yvonne asked. ‘That’s like saying sleeping is a hobby. Or eating.’
This caught Clodagh on the raw.
‘And you’re a regular theatre-goer?’
Clodagh wavered, then admitted, ‘I’m not really. But you’ve to put down something, don’t you?’ (When Clodagh and Ashling had finally stopped inventing joke hobbies such as rally driving and devil worship, and had tried to assemble a list of real ones, pickings had been slim.)
‘So what are your interests?’ Yvonne challenged.
‘Ah…’ What were her interests?
‘Hobbies, passions, that kind of thing,’ Yvonne said impatiently.
Clodagh’s mind had frozen. The only thing she could think of was that she liked playing with her split ends, peeling the broken bit along the shaft of the hair, seeing how far up it would go. She could spend hours amusing herself thus. But something stopped her from sharing this with Yvonne. ‘You see, I have two children,’ she said feebly. ‘They take up all my time.’
Yvonne flashed her an if-you-say-so glance. ‘How ambitious are you?’
Clodagh recoiled. She wasn’t at all ambitious. Ambitious people were weird.
‘When working at the travel agent’s, what gave you the most job satisfaction?’
Making it through the day, as far as Clodagh remembered. The idea was – and it was the same for all of the girls she worked with – they went in, suspended their real lives for eight hours and poured their energies into enduring the wait.
‘Dealing with people?’ Yvonne prompted. ‘Ironing out glitches? Closing a sale?’
‘Getting paid,’ Clodagh said, then realized she shouldn’t have. The thing was, it had been a very long time since she’d done any kind of interview. She’d forgotten the correct platitudes. And, as far as she remembered, she’d always been interviewed by men before, and they’d been a damn sight nicer than this little cow.
‘I’m not really interested in working in a travel agent’s again,’ Clodagh said. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you got me a job in a… magazine.’
‘You’d like to work in a magazine?’ Yvonne pretended she was finding it hard to stifle a smile. Clodagh nodded cautiously. ‘Wouldn’t we all, dear?’ Yvonne sang.
Clodagh decided she hated her, this powerful, merciless child. Calling her ‘dear’ when she was half her age.
‘What kind of salary did you have in mind?’ Yvonne asked, turning the screws.
‘I don’t… ah… I hadn’t thought… What do you think?’ Clodagh handed the last vestiges of her power over to Yvonne.
‘It’s hard to say. I don’t have much to go on. If you’d consider retraining…’
‘Maybe,’ Clodagh lied.
‘If anything comes up, I’ll be in touch.’
They both knew she wouldn’t be.
Yvonne accompanied her to the door. It gave Clodagh savage pleasure to see that she was slightly pigeon-toed.
Out on the street, in her hateful, ridiculous, expensive suit, she walked slowly to her car. Her confidence was shattered. This morning had been a terrifying lesson in how old and useless she was. She’d hung all her hopes on a job but, manifestly, the world of work was a too-fast place which she didn’t have the skills to belong to any more.
Now what was she going to do?
34
On Tuesday morning, Lisa was pawing the ground and champing at the bit outside Randolph Media, desperate to get in. Never again would she endure a weekend like the one she’d just had. On the bank-holiday Monday, she’d been so bored that she’d gone to the cinema on her own. But the movie she’d wanted to see had sold out, so she’d ended up having to go to something called Rugrats Two, sharing the cinema with what seemed like a billion over-excited under-sevens. She really hadn’t known there were that many children in the world. And how ironic that the people she was spending so much of her time with lately were children…
She glared at Bill the porter, as behind the glass door he jingled his keys to let her in. It was all his fault, the lazy, workshy old bastard. If he’d let her come to work over the weekend she’d never have found out how empty her life was.
‘Jayzus, you’re early,’ Bill grumbled in alarm.
‘Nice weekend?’ Lisa asked acidly.
‘Bedad, I did indeed,’ Bill said expansively, and launched into an account of visits from grandchildren, visits to grand-children…
‘Because I didn’t,’ Lisa interrupted.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he sympathized, wondering what it had to do with him.
But on the good side, Lisa thought, as she went up in the lift, she’d made some decisions. If she was going to be stuck in this horrible bloody country, she was going to build up a network of friends. Well, maybe not friends as such, but people whom she could call ‘darling’ and bitch about other people to.
And she was going to have sex with someone. A man, she hastily specified. Never mind the New Bisexuality which she’d profiled in the March issue of Femme – one sheepish snog with a model at the Met Bar had been all she could manage. Like Sensible Chic, having sex with women just wasn’t for her.
That terrible weekend urge to call Oliver was a clear sign that she needed a bloke. Jack, if possible. But, with a hardening of her resolve, she decided if Jack wanted to play Burton and Taylor with Mai, she was going to find someone else. Perhaps that would bring him to his senses. Either way, things couldn’t go on as they were.
Of course, she mightn’t be able to find a suitable boyfriend immediately. But she swore to herself that at the very least before the week was out she was going to sleep with someone.
Like who? There was Jasper Ffrench, the celebrity chef, he’d certainly been up for it. But he was much too much of a pain. There was that Dylan she’d seen with Ashling. He was a babe. Married, unfortunately, so she wasn’t really likely to run into him in a nightclub. Spending the weekend hanging around DIY stores would be a better bet.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said aloud, coming to a halt when she walked into the office. Champagne bottles, mugs, tin foil and wire were strewn everywhere, and the place stank like a pub. Obviously the cleaner didn’t think it was her job to clear up the remains of Friday’s beano. Well, Lisa wasn’t going to wash anything, she had her nails to think of. Ashling could do it.
To Lisa’s jealous contempt, every single other member of staff was late. They’d all had a wild three days. Even Mrs Morley, who, after her couple of mugs of champagne on Friday, had spent the weekend on the sauce.
Now it was payback time – all and sundry were moany and depressed, especially Kelvin, who’d punctured his inflatable orange rucksack with his thumb ring in a tragic looking-for-a-biro accident on Sunday night.
As everyone studiously avoided looking at the dirty cups, comparisons of hangovers abounded.
‘It always gets me more in the stomach than the head,’ Dervla O’Donnell confided to the general populace. ‘Nothing but two rasher sandwiches stops the queasiness.’
‘Nah, it’s the paranoia that does for me,’ Kelvin shivered, flicking a furtive glance at her, then dipping his head down again immediately.
Even Mrs Morley admitted shyly, ‘I feel as though a dagger is being stabbed repeatedly into my right eye.’
Lisa longed to join in and couldn’t. The icing on her pissed-off cake was when Mercedes swanned in, laden with bags covered in airline stickers. Apparently she’d gone to New York, of all places, for the weekend. Spoilt bitch, Lisa thought bitterly. Lucky bitch. And how come everyone seemed to have known about it except her?
Mercedes had been commissioned to bring back several items: white Levi’s for Ashling – apparently they were half the price over there; a Stussy hat for Kelvin, which you couldn’t get in Europe; and a consignment of Babe Ruth bars for Mrs
Morley, who’d been to Chicago in the sixties and had never been able to settle for Cadbury’s since. The lucky recipients fell with glad cries upon their items and money changed hands briskly.
‘I was thinking of killing myself,’ Kelvin cheerfully sported his new hat, ‘but now I’m not going to.’
Lisa watched sourly. She could have asked Mercedes to bring back Kiehl’s body butter. Not that she would have. But she would have enjoyed refusing to ask her.
As well as the requested items, Mercedes brought generous presents for the office – forty flavours of jelly beans, bags of Hershey kisses and armloads of Reece’s peanut-butter cups. But when Mercedes offered her a bag of Hershey kisses, Lisa shuddered, ‘Oh no. I always think American chocolate tastes slightly like sick.’
Mrs Morley – her mouth full of a Babe Ruth – gasped at such sacrilege and, momentarily, Mercedes’ shark-dark eyes bore into Lisa’s. Lisa saw contempt, possibly even amusement in there.
‘Whadever,’ Mercedes deadpanned. And Lisa nearly combusted. Mercedes had been to New York for two days. Two days! And she had a New York accent.
Last of the non-managerial staff to arrive was Trix, contributing considerably to the strong, aromatic mix.
‘Cod above,’ Mrs Morley exclaimed, showing an unexpected tendency to play to the gallery. ‘This, ahem, plaice stinks.’
‘Ha ha,’ Trix said scornfully.
This triggered a ton of fish puns.
‘You smell fish-ious, Trix!’ Kelvin exclaimed.
‘Oh, don’t carp,’ Ashling soothed.
‘Shoal-ong, best if you go home,’ Mercedes surprised everyone with.
Kelvin proved to have quite a gift for it. ‘Salmon chanted evening,’ he sang, his arms outstretched, ‘you might meet a stray – ayne – ger.’
‘Here’s another song for you!’ Boring Bernard got things right, for once. Pulling up the collar of his shirt, and despite his red tank-top and suit trousers, he attempted a little jive. ‘Hake, rattle and roll! I said, hake, rattle and roll
In strolled Jack, hands in pockets, wreathed in smiles. ‘Morning all,’ he said cheerfully. ‘D’you know, this place is a shambles.’
Trix turned to him. ‘Jack – yeah, I know, Mr Devine to me – they’re all making fun because I smell of fish. They’re singing songs about it.’
‘What kind of songs?’
‘Go on,’ Trix instructed a discomfited Kelvin. ‘Sing for our glorious leader.’
Kelvin reluctantly obliged.
Jack grinned.
‘And you,’ Trix said to Bernard.
Bernard did a very half-hearted reprieve of his earlier show-manship.
‘That’s not very good,’ Jack said.
Trix nodded smugly.
‘I’ve a better one,’ Jack surprised everyone. Then strutting with surprising grace towards his office, he sang loudly, ‘I’m a SOLE man. Bababopbabop. I’m a SOLE mah-han.’
The office door closed, but they could still hear him making faint trumpet noises within.
Everyone exchanged astonished looks. ‘What the hell’s up with him?’
‘Am I herring things?’ Trix could hardly speak. ‘Was he singing –?’ She stopped in alarm. ‘Shite, even I’m doing it now.’
Ashling’s face drained of animation. She’d only just remembered the drunken relationship advice she’d given to Jack on Friday evening. ‘Oh God,’ she groaned, covering her hot cheeks with her hands.
‘Am I that bad?’ Trix looked hurt. She expected a slagging from most of the others but not from Ashling.
Ashling shook her head. She could smell nothing now, it had all been wiped out by the tide of mortification. She had to apologize.
‘This office is a state.’ Killjoy Lisa began to impose order. ‘Kelvin, can you gather up the empty bottles, and Ashling, can you wash the cups?’
‘Why should I? I always wash them,’ Ashling said vaguely, too trapped in the horror of what she’d said to Jack Devi – Christ, she’d even called him JD!
This jolted Lisa into astonished silence. She glowered threateningly at Ashling, but Ashling was miles away, so she turned viciously on Trix. ‘Right then, fishgirl, you do them.’
Astounded at being spoken to thus by Lisa, who’d treated her up to now as most-favoured, Trix mulishly, resentfully clattered the cups on to the tray, treated each of them to half a second beneath a running tap in the ladies’, then pronounced them washed.
Ashling waited for everyone to settle down to work before she trembled across to Jack’s office, the nerves around her knees jumping.
‘Morning Miss Fix-it.’ Jack was almost skittish as he welcomed her in. ‘Is it cigarettes you’re looking for? Because I’d kind of intended last week’s to be a one-off. But if you insist…’
‘Oh no! That’s not why I’m here.’ Then she stopped, abruptly snagged by his tie. It was covered with bright yellow Bart Simpsons. He didn’t usually wear such frivolous ties, did he?
‘So why are you here?’ His dark eyes twinkled merrily at her. Funny, his room didn’t seem as brooding and gloomy as it usually did.
‘I wanted to say that I’m very sorry for giving you advice on your relationship on Friday. There was, ah…’ she tried for a light-hearted smile, but it came out as a bloodless rictus instead. ‘There was drink taken.’
‘Not a problem,’ Jack said.
‘Well, if you’re sure –’
‘You were right, you know. Mai is a lovely girl. I shouldn’t be fighting with her.’
‘Well, er, grand.’
Ashling left, feeling – perplexingly – almost worse than before she’d gone in. As she emerged, Lisa stared hard at her.
Shortly afterwards a courier arrived bearing the photos from the Frieda Kiely shoot. Mercedes tried to grab them, but Lisa intercepted her. She tore open the jiffy bag and out fell a heavy, floppy pile of glossy shots of models with turf stains on their faces and straw in their hair, prancing around the bog.
Lisa flicked through them in ominous silence, separating them into two unequal piles.
The smaller pile contained a picture of a dirty, dishevelled girl wearing a slinky evening gown teamed with muddy wellies, her bare legs streaked with mud. The same girl clad in an exquisitely tailored suit, sitting on an upturned bucket, pretending to milk a cow. And another model in a short, tight, silver dress, allegedly driving a tractor. The larger pile contained airy-fairy shots of girls in airy-fairy frocks dancing about an airy-fairy landscape.
Lisa picked up the much smaller of the two bundles. ‘These are just about usable,’ she coldly told Mercedes. ‘The rest are pants. I thought you were a fashion journalist.’
‘What’s wrong with them?’ Mercedes asked, with menacing calm.
‘There’s no irony. No contrast. These…’ she indicated the pictures of the floaty dresses. ‘… should have been shot in an urban setting. The same girls with the same dirty faces and mad frocks, but this time getting on a bus or getting money from a cash-point or using a computer. Get on to Frieda Kiely’s press office. We’re going to shoot this again.’
‘But…’ Mercedes glowered blackly.
‘Go on,’ Lisa said impatiently.
Everyone else in the office suddenly found their toecaps very, very interesting. No one could look at the humiliation, it was too horrible.
‘But…’ Mercedes tried again.
‘Go on!’
Mercedes stared, then grabbed up the photos and banged to her desk. As she passed, Ashling heard her mutter, ‘Bitch,’ semi-under her breath.
Ashling had to agree. What was Lisa like?
The atmosphere was toxic with tension. Ashling had to open a window, even though the day wasn’t warm. Some fresh air was needed to cleanse the ugly mood.
The only person in good form was Jack. Occasionally he emerged from his office, blithely oblivious to the tension, conducted his business, bestowed grins all round, then disappeared again. Slowly the poison dissipated, until everyone except Mercedes felt alm
ost normal again.
At twelve-thirty, Mai arrived. She gave a general greeting then asked to see Jack.
‘Go on,’ Mrs Morley nodded perfunctorily.
Everyone sat up in glee as the door closed behind her.
‘That’ll wipe the smile off his face,’ Kelvin observed.
Trix almost went around selling hot dogs, so festive and ringside was the air.
But no fighting broke out and they emerged serenely, very much together, Mai smirking beside Jack’s bulk as they left the office.
Everyone exchanged startled looks. ‘What was that all about?’
Lisa, about to leave to inspect the bedrooms at the Morrison for their ‘sexiness’ factor, was abruptly stricken with privation. She had to sit down and swallow hard to try to dislodge the cold, hard sensation of loss. But what was the problem? She’d known he had a girlfriend. It was just with all the squabbling they’d done, she’d never fully taken it seriously.
Ashling was also a little nonplussed. What have I done?
When Lisa booked a taxi to take her to the Morrison, she asked – with mild embarrassment – for Liam. She’d started doing that lately. She could only suppose that she liked Liam, with all his salt-of-the-earth Dublin chat.
By the time she arrived at the hotel she’d taken her upset about Jack and Mai and reconfigured it into something manageable. Hadn’t she promised herself only that very morning that she was going to bag herself a bloke? And that it didn’t have to be Jack. Not yet, in any case.
‘Where do you want to be dropped, Lisa?’ Liam interrupted her thoughts.
‘Just up here, at the building with the black windows.’
There was a young man, decked out in a beautiful grey tailored suit, loitering by the front door of the hotel.
‘Ah, look, love,’ Liam’s voice softened. ‘Your fella’s waiting on you. And all done up like a dog’s dinner in a whistle and tie. Is it your birthday? Many happy returns of the day. Or is it your anniversary?’
‘That’s the doorman,’ Lisa muttered.
‘Is he?’ Disappointment made Liam very high-pitched. ‘I thought he was your chap. Ah well. D’you want me to wait for you?’