Chapter 7
Employment
It was very important that during the first few months in Oxford I
should prove myself capable, and find a job. Any job. We all know
that jobs are not easy to acquire even if you possess a degree, are
under thirty, and have at least 8 O levels and three As. With few
qualifications, being over forty and out of the job market for twenty
years, my chances of landing one seemed slight. But I did get one – in
a University Department. It was for one day a week, sitting in, as it
were, for someone who only wanted to work four days a week. The
title of this job escapes me know but the duties were as follows. I
was in charge of petty cash, I had to type, answer the telephone, try
to find suitable candidates willing to come in to take various tests for
the department’s research work; and I had to water the plants.
The people in this department were very strange, I thought. All the
men looked like academic lumberjacks, resembling the cast from the
film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. They wore tartan shirts, jeans,
or corduroy trousers, and had brown lace-up boots. They all had
beards, John Lennon spectacles, and read The Guardian during the
lunch hour. Left wing intellectuals, mainly, of a very familiar type in
Oxford. I discovered later this breed shouts loudly about their
distaste of capitalism, their dislike of conservatism, their distrust, and
disdain at the way the government governs, while at the same time
enjoying the very things they profess to condemn. Many of them live
in large, detached houses in North Oxford, possess large cars,
employ au pair girls to look after their children, and go on extensive
and expensive holidays abroad in the summer, eulogizing the virtues
of Marxism the while.
The only faintly exciting thing about this job was getting the
payslip. I felt that I had joined the workers of the world and because
of this enjoyed new confidence, and it was encouraging to know I
had got a job within three months of being single. I soon saw that
one day’s work a week was not going to make me rich quickly.
Talking to a secretary in the building who enjoyed her work and was
relatively well paid, it came to me that I should try to reclaim the
typing and shorthand skills I had had twenty-five years ago. So after
five months I packed in watering the plants for the lumberjacks, and
set about finding a cheap typing/shorthand course. Many courses
were advertised, mainly arranged in the evenings at local schools.
They all guaranteed that the student would, or could, be a tip-top
secretary in a remarkably short space of time. I doubted whether I,
myself, could learn any new skill in eight to ten weeks, dimly
remembering that in my original pursuit of secretarial training it was
hard work to get the requisite speeds in nine months, to say nothing
of nine weeks. Enquiring at smart secretarial schools the terms for
brushing up rusty skills, I was informed that for the sum of £800 or so
I could enrol for a ten-week refresher course. I settled for the College
of Further Education which offered a suitable typing course for the
sum of £29 for two terms, twice a week, in the afternoons. The
shorthand refresher was more difficult. I had learned the original
Pitman which, it seemed, was no longer taught. All varieties of new
quick writing were available, but I felt I simply could not tackle them.
In middle age the decline of the brain cells results in waning ability to
memorize, and I was one of those who couldn’t even remember
much in the past when I had the full quota. So, I advertized for a
private teacher who could still teach the shorthand I had learnt in
the 50s. I found one who had retired to a nearby town. We
negotiated, and for the next nine months I drove to her house every
Wednesday morning for tuition. The morning session took an
established routine whereby Mrs H. and I would discuss and view the
gardens’ progress since the last week, make coffee, and then retire
to the dining room for dictation. Unfortunately, I have a deaf ear for
vowel sounds and this, in shorthand, is a complete disaster. The
outline’s placing on the page is indicated by the correct vowel sound
and if you cannot grasp this properly a sentence which should be, for
instance: ‘The rut in the road’ could read ‘the rat in the raid’. The
disasters that might ensue are obvious.
However, some shorthand
returned from twenty years repose and with Mrs H’s encouragement
and some hard work I managed to set down eighty words a minute,
then decided that was probably the limit of my shorthand abilities.
In May 1982, armed with a certificate stating that I could type
thirty-five words a minute without mistakes, and persuading myself I
could, if pressed, manage eighty a minute in shorthand, I started
searching the papers for a suitable job. My job requirements were
that the post would be with quiet, pleasing people, in an historic
building or similar (the sort of office that Barbara Pym’s characters
would work in) on a bus route. I saw one advertized in the local
paper for a ‘Fellows Secretary’ in an Oxford College. The duties, as
stated in the advertisement, sounded within the realms of my
possibilities (although audio typing had not yet come my way) and I
applied for it. I was asked for an interview on a Friday afternoon, just
after lunch. Most Oxford Colleges are beautiful and awe-inspiring,
and this one was no exception. Ever since I had read Jude the
Obscure I felt complete empathy with him over his desire to be at
Oxford University. Now, I felt, too, that being part of a College, in any
capacity would be an incomparable experience.
The interview was short. (At the time I didn’t know that most
academics have absolutely no notion of how to converse or
communicate easily with their non-academic fellow men, and that
they even seem to have some difficulty with each other). I was asked
why I had applied for the job and explained my Jude feelings. The
Bursar explained the salary scale. My empty secretarial record for
the past twenty years apparently put me on a Scale 2 basis, a salary
which is somewhere comparable, I discovered, to that obtained
working on the sweet counter at Woolworths four days a week. The
College Secretary, a woman, was also present at the interview, and
she seemed to be on my side.
I did hear afterwards that she had
described the said post as a job which a trained monkey could well
do, and perhaps in me she saw such a one. The following day I had a
letter offering me the job. I accepted, then had ever increasing
anxiety about it all. My first OU exam was in October, involving hours
of study, and the thought of that and learning the names of twenty
seven Fellows, and the office routine, in addition, seemed all too
much. I panicked and cancelled the acceptance. But this was not to
be. I was persuaded that I would manage very well (remember the
monkey) and on the last day of August 1982, I started. The Fellow’s
Secretary’s office was a large cupboard off the Principal’s Secretary’s
office, and that is where I spent my days for the next year.
I had forgotten during my years as a housewife about office life –
its trivialities, its jealousies, and its absurdities. In this College these
took place in exactly the same way as they do everywhere else.
Everyone, in whatever pecking order, worries about their own
prestige and importance, to themselves and to everyone else. The
largest worry is, it seems, that the boss/master/chief/bigwig might
not appreciate the sacrifices, hard work and late hours put in by
subordinates who recognize their own worth, but who are frantic
that it might not be recognized by high-ups or at any rate those
higher up than themselves. And it was from this particular worry that
the tension in my office arose. The College Secretary, instrumental in
hiring me, had been at the College for many years. She felt herself,
I’m sure, to be absolutely everything the academic staff could wish
for – an agony aunt, a confidential friend, a nanny, a dining
companion and primarily, of course, an efficient and reliable College
Secretary. In short, indispensable.
Throughout history many wars
have fought and lives lost over territorial rights and in offices, if
territories are not clearly defined, although lives are not actually lost,
tempers frequently are. The above College Secretary would not, or
could not, delegate any interesting or responsible work. Underlings,
viz me, were left therefore with copy typing, checking lists, or filing
student application forms, all which could have been done by the
aforementioned monkey, as she rightly observed. She was also a
woman given to dramatics. She swirled a lot, rushing hither and
thither tearing at her hair and making pronouncements of a vaguely
threatening nature about what she was going to say to this or that
don when next encountered. When faced with him however, she
never did, as far as I know, say anything of the sort.
One of my duties was to type letters from an audio machine. My
previous secretarial work had not included this skill but after several
attempts to coordinate the taped message with the foot pedal, and
then to type correctly what the voice dictated, I mastered the art.
The Fellow who dictated these letters was delightful, with a luxurious
voice, pleasing to the ear. In fact, this Fellow was altogether most
pleasing and I believe most of the female staff ( I can’t say for the
one female don) were secretly in love with him. He behaved in a way
that was Christian and altruistic. He was always polite, always kind
and helpful wherever he could be, to anyone, regardless of where
they came in the hierarchy. If I sound over-enthusiastic about this
man, perhaps it is because these qualities were so apparent in him,
whereas in others they were remarkably lacking.
It was difficult to resume a secretarial role again after the very
different one as the lady of the manor in the intervening years. The
secretary’s role, I declare, is both humble, subservient and
indiscriminate. A secretary can be anyone from seventeen to
seventy-one. She should be able to type, take shorthand, and make
the tea. She can have no previous experience or many years
experience. She can be efficient or inefficient. But basically, she is
just the secretary, and when she leaves someone as good or bad will
fill her place. She has as little personal identity as a forgotten wife.
The optimum hope, I suppose, for a single (or married) secretary
could be to marry the boss. Otherwise, having come to grips with the
particular office she is in and its own routines, Shangri-la has been
reached.
She is also the butt of many a smutty joke. An American man,
working in an Oxford University, told me what he thought to be a
hilarious story of how he came by his secretary. Sorting through
hundreds of applicants applying for the job, he short-listed five. After
interviewing them all he had no notion of which one to choose. They
all had good references and, apparently, equally good secretarial
skills. So, he enlisted the help of a male colleague. “Which one do
you think I should choose?” he asked. “Well, if it were me,” said his
friend “I would choose the one with the biggest tits.” That was the
way his present secretary got the job, which obviously proves skill
and hard work doesn’t always gain just rewards. Not if you are flat-
chested anyway.
The job itself was dull and routine, as I suspect most jobs are
where responsibility or initiative are unnecessary. But I dreaded the
moments when the routine was altered, and I was summoned to
take down letters in shorthand. These were dictated by dons who
specialized in obscure subjects with pertinent, obscure vocabularies.
As my shorthand was never strong and flowing, words like
macroeconomics, renaissance, rigorous, trenchant, staunch and
many others, completely flummoxed me. Returning to my office I
knew that transcribing my scribbles would be much more than I
could manage. Sometimes I took the shorthand home and tried to
decipher it at the kitchen table. I would in desperation ring my friend
Judy, who works in another college office, and ask her what she
thought my outlines could possibly be. Or did she, by any chance,
know anything significant that had happened in Venice or Florence
circa 1300? She valiantly gave me support but at the end of the
evening, after hours of trying to make sense of it all, the result was
usually totally incomprehensible. With this particular, precise prose,
so familiar to academics and less so to the rest of us, there was
absolutely no chance of substituting in my own words what I could
not decipher. In my youth I worked for an advertising executive
whose downfall was drink. I tumbled to the notion that if I persuaded
him to dictate his letters after lunch when he had consumed large
quantities of alcohol, he became both incoherent and forgetful. I was
then free to type his letters as I wanted to, since he could not admit,
sober the next morning, that he couldn’t remember what he had
dictated the day before.
The world of an Oxford College has frequently been likened to an
extension of boarding school, where certainly, until recently, most of
the students had spent their formative years. As I went to boarding
schools myself I know the truth of this statement. It has identical
debits and credits. The overriding credit must be, surely, its
institutional predictability. The soothing security of knowing, for
example, that unless imminent nuclear war is declared, lunch will be
served at 12.45 prompt, every day, and dinner at 7.30. A College has
its own life, and its own life stories. Scandal and gossip whirl about
here in the same way that scandal and gossip whirl about in
Ambridge, Coronation Street, Dallas, or any other community. On the
debit side, I suppose, are its limitations, its total inability for
flexibility. Some of the dons seemed to have little outside interests.
The College is their entire world.
They were a strange lot, really, the dons. One of them was
frequently to be seen in a deer stalker and cape, although the
nearest grouse moor was over 500 miles away. He usually took
himself off to a nearby tavern for fortification at lunch time,
returning in the afternoon with a somewhat merry heart. If he was
then met over the photocopying machine, pinches and hugs might
be enjoyed (or might not). There was the homosexual don who
darted about the covered market with a wicker basket for his
shopping. There was a charming one; an attractive one fancied by
many a girl student, and one who was frightened of women,
although he seemed to like them, neatly balanced by one who was
not frightened of women, but who didn’t seem to like them. And
then there was a foreigner. In order to do my work fairly a form of
queuing was required. As I worked for so many people a system of
first come first served was invented, and work put in the In Tray was
done in order of accession. The English race are known to be good at
queuing. They stand placidly in orderly lines, not pushing aggressively
as witnessed abroad. The foreign don in my College being no
exception to the rougher methods of queuing employed abroad, did
not care in the least about the devised system for work order, he
wished his work to be done immediately. Absolutely at that moment.
If I had not been in the position of secretary, which is no good
position to argue from, I might, when he had got into one of his
rages, have told him to sod off. That very phrase I was obliged to use,
finally, to a misguided don who offered me a drink of Champagne the
day before I left, ostensibly to thank me for the work I had done over
the year. Previously a reticent chap, I had thought, once in his rooms
he flung his arms about me and suggested all manner of romps that
he thought I might enjoy, or anyway that he might. “American
secretaries enjoyed romping,” he said. Disentangling myself I asked
whether he flung himself upon his female students. “Certainly not,”
he said, “what a horrifying idea.” Students are one thing, secretaries
very much another, was the implication – I reacted with ‘sound and
fury’.
Generalizing about any group of people being one particular thing
viz all West Indians are lazy, all gypsies are thieves, all Frenchmen
are good in bed or whatever, is obviously ridiculous. Some
secretaries are promiscuous, I daresay, but then so are some
duchesses, and princesses. And some students. Others are not so. It
ought to be the individual, the individual that John Stuart Mill and
Thomas Carlyle so rightly and rigorously defended at the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution, that should be taken into account – not
who you are because of what job you do, or do not do. Most people
spend their lives doing jobs, through necessity, which they do not
wish to be doing. But these individuals are no less deserving of
courtesy and consideration because they are less fortunate in ability
or in birth, than those who had had better luck.
Before I started the job I had had a private bet with myself that I
could stay in it for a year. And I did. But being a secretary wasn’t
quite me, my skills, it appeared did not lie in the typing direction and
I admitted total defeat in shorthand. So, one year to the month later
I left, and I expected the Fellows were pleased, hoping that someone
more able would replace me. My overall reaction on leaving the
College was one of affection. As I am hopeless at goodbyes I
requested no leaving party. But the Senior Tutor who presented me
with a beautiful print of the College, a bedside clock, and a £15 book
token so overwhelmed me with the generosity of the Fellows I sat
down in the now familiar and rather dear cupboard, and wept.
Mindless jobs are only made bearable, even enjoyable perhaps, by
any fondness you may feel for your work colleagues. I was sad to say
goodbye to the Principal’s Secretary who had helped me on many
occasions, and who had become a friend. And I was sad to say
goodbye to the Principal of the College, who was, on reflection, the
kindest man I had met in Oxford, or perhaps anywhere.
The conclusion I came to about jobs, is that it is not the mechanics
but the dynamics that count in the end. Not so much the speeds, the
skills, the technology, and the qualifications, but the human factor.
The personal touch. Human complexities ever elude, and I had not
even imagined I would be so affected on leaving the friends, the
familiarity and security of a College world.
* * *
I got a part-time job in the autumn of that year as an
Accommodation Officer in a private Tutorial College. My boss, the
director, was one James Bunting. He was the antithesis of university
academics, jolly, chatty, and relaxed. He actually persuaded me that I
could manage more than the accommodation side of things. Totting
up the accounts and working out the VAT was really very simple he
said. I had had no maths tuition after the age of thirteen and the
thought of my calculating, working out VAT and tackling accounts
seemed outrageously funny and quite impossible. I couldn’t even do
my tables. Anyway, after discussions, I agreed to deal with the
accommodation and, in addition and in trepidation, to pay the
tutors’ fees. This did involve calculation, VAT, and accounting. Once
these last three mysteries had been fathomed I found ‘figures were
fun’.
Being the Accommodation Officer meant meeting and getting to
know landladies – landladies prepared to welcome students the
Tutorial College was trying to cram with knowledge which had
previously eluded them. The result of poor teaching, or, more likely,
truancy when they should have been working, was, for these
students, failed A and O level examination papers. Thus, they needed
to retake. Their parents, anxious that they should have every
opportunity to get to university or ‘get a good job’ or at least ‘get on
in the world’ were prepared to pay exorbitant sums to this end.
It was my job to visit and appraise the landladies and then,
knowing the students, judge which one would fare best with which
landlady. Virtually all the ladies I used had the same qualities. They
were friendly, kind, and motherly. They enjoyed looking after the
students and the students, in their turn, grew fond of them. There
was much evidence of this from the many postcards’ placed amongst
the wedding photographs, I saw on their mantelpieces, sent from all
over the world. (Good for the Entente Cordiale). One favourite
landlady was Vietnamese and had been a ‘boat person’. She told
horrifying tales of days at sea, with virtually nothing to eat and with
no idea what welcome there would be when, and if, they arrived at
Hong Kong. She told of the bodies of the dead, some of them her
relations, who had died from illness, or just plain starvation, who
were thrown overboard.
After spending several months in a camp in
Hong Kong, she had asked to come to England. Arriving on English
shores she spoke only Vietnamese, but by the time I met her she had
learnt to speak perfect English, and had married a Javanese whom
she met in a restaurant he owned. So, there she was, as near as a
Vietnamese can get to an English housewife, hanging up her washing
in the back garden of a terraced house, a long way from Vietnam.
Another one, Mrs Adams, had no children but a quantity of large,
rather fierce cats. Her house was immaculate, everything shone and
sparkled. Her husband had won a variety of sports prizes which were
proudly displayed everywhere – silver cups, silver shields, and silver
plates. Mrs Adams was only allowed to house female students
because her husband, a British Leyland worker, said he would be
“ribbed by his mates at work if he left her alone with a male
student’’, Perhaps he was right to be cautious because she was very
pretty. Then there was rather a sad lady who lived on a council
estate, had two small children and a large dog which she kept in the
kitchen. Her problem was loneliness. She wanted a student for
company much more than for the money. But I think having to
contend lonely landlady, children, and the dog, whilst trying to study,
was all too much. No student stayed with her for long.
Money appeared to be of less importance than other things to the
landladies. They liked having a young person to care for, to cook for,
and to talk to. They lived vicariously through the tempestuous
lifestyles of the students. Their rewards were in being of comfort
when love and passion were searing student’s hearts, advising in this
or that capacity, or just being the necessary listening ear at the end
of the day. Indeed, my landladies were made of the proper stuff.
The students, on the other hand, were less wonderful. Most of
them were lazy, stupid, and rich. They had come to Oxford to have a
‘good time’ and were not particularly interested in, or anxious about,
their work. One affable Old Etonian, aged about 17, seemed
incapable of being more than fifteen minutes without a cigarette. As
smoking was banned in the College he spent quite some time puffing
in the lavatory, and instead of attending tutorials he attended
betting shops. It came as no surprise that at the end of four months
work (?) the result of his retake was dismal. No tears, though. His
father was going to get him a job either way.
A preponderance of these students had materially everything
money could buy. What many of them seemed to lack was anyone to
love or care about them. These poor creatures rushed about
hedonistically, in and out of different bars and different beds. They
drank too much and were generally quite unable to structure their
own lives now they were free from school rules or parental care. The
‘poor little rich girl/boy’ syndrome attracts little sympathy when
compared with real deprivation, but there was something sad about
them. Perhaps it was simply that they were not loved – and it
showed.
The tutors whose duty it was to force facts and figures into these
unresponsive minds were very different characters. They were
hardworking, clever, and poor. They were always looking for work,
and for food. I had to arrange various evening entertainments, to
which both the students and tutors were asked. These were
supposed to be drinks with a few delicacies on sticks, such as morsels
of blue Brie cheese, or small chipolatas. Scant plates of nuts or
savoury biscuits were also strewn about. I would set the scene for a
dignified, intellectual-type evening, but my plans were always
thwarted. The doors were due to open at 7 o’clock. But at three
minutes to seven all the tutors were lined up outside looking like a
Harrods sale queue on the first day, extremely anxious to get in. No
greetings were uttered. No introductions took place. No bright light
conversation drove away Jane Austin or Scott-Fitzgerald, as I had
envisaged: simply, a stampede for the cheese and chipolatas. In half
an hour there was absolutely nothing left – every plate deserted,
every stick on its own again. This phenomenon happened every time.
The Tutorial College employed a brilliant English tutor and Latin
scholar, one John Farquhar. He was one of four children of Southern
Irish parents, who had moved to Liverpool after the war, and where
his father subsequently drove cranes. After winning various
scholarships he went to Liverpool University and got a First in
Classics. At twenty-one he came to St. John’s College to research for
a D.Phil. One evening I organized an outing to Stratford, for pertinent
students of English Literature and interested tutors, to see Hamlet. I
drove there with John Farquhar and two students. He entranced and
enlightened us with the intricacies of the many plots and sub-plots
that were to unfold. He described Hamlet’s agonies, his unhappiness,
and his hatred for his stepmother. He talked of Ophelia and Gertrude
as if he knew them personally. And Hamlet came alive.
What could
have been a long (four hours) evening, and if you are not familiar
with certain Shakespeare plays it can be very long, was instead a
delightful and enjoyable one, due to new comprehension of the play.
But with real women, with flesh on their bones and blood in their
veins, John was tongue-tied. In the pub, or at one of our social
evenings, he rarely, if ever, spoke. I have met several brilliant
scholarly people in my Oxford wanderings, and it seems, they have
considerably more understanding and empathy for fictional
characters, than they have of their fellow men.
Trilby, a lively feminist white Jamaican, was the PA and secretary. I
had thought myself quite worldly wise until I met Trilby, but this
obviously was not so. Her use of four-letter words was proficient,
particularly during the graphic descriptions of her multifarious sex
life. She delivered speeches on anti-apartheid matters at the Co-Op
on Wednesday evenings, or organised marches through Oxford on
Saturday mornings. But she was amusing, an appealing Peter Pan.
James, Trilby, and I got on so well. It was the first place in Oxford, I
knew, where laughter was de rigeur. After the students had gone
home and there was nobody about, James, an actor manque, and
excellent at the Yorkshire accent, did some quality imitations of Les
Dawson doing the Northern Mill Girls or Peter Cook with his ‘miles of
boring space’ sketch. But perhaps to be successful at business you
have to be less carefree than we were, because at the end of the
year the College closed. Tutorial Colleges had mushroomed up all
over Oxford, competition for students was fierce and the shoestring
budget broke. James went out of business and Trilby, and I were out
of jobs.
I had, nonetheless, proved to myself, in this job, that I was capable
of hitherto unknown abilities. I had conquered the calculator, and
now understood Value Added Tax, and some easy accounting. For
someone who had thought two years previously that counting the
change in my purse was a fairly arduous task, I felt suitably proud of
myself.
So many of us do not know of what we are capable, since we are
seldom put to the test. When, through necessity or courage or
whatever, we try something new and seemingly impossible, it comes
as a lovely surprise that, on the contrary, it is not only possible, but
exhilarating, rewarding, and fulfilling. In this job as Accommodation
Officer I found it to be so.
* * *
Staying in a country hotel on a November weekend in the
Cotswolds, I was suddenly inspired to be a hotel receptionist. In this
particular hotel a roaring log fire burnt in the grate, and the whole
reception area seemed welcoming and cosy. An ancient black
telephone sat on the desk, presumably to take the bookings, and a
large bound book for arrival signatures. That seemed to be all. The
receptionist was busily reading a book and I realized I envied her job.
On returning to Oxford, aglow with enthusiasm, I scoured the
papers for a similar occupation for myself. I rang the Job Centre,
where incidentally they had a vacancy for a still-room maid in a
smart hotel in Woodstock, which they were finding difficulty in
filling. The job was from 6pm until midnight, six nights a week at a
rate of £1.20 per hour with one tea break – the sort of conditions
that makes unemployment seem desirable. I then telephoned
possible hotels in the town and in the peripheral countryside
(remembering the Cotswold hotel) – but had no luck. A few weeks
later I heard of a vacancy going in an Oxford hotel and rang
immediately. I spoke to the proprietor who asked me to start
evening work the following night.
The first disappointment on arrival was a glance at the reception
area. It was set up in a sort of cupboard. This was practically filled
with a large, grey menacing telephone machine which incessantly
winked and blinked red and green lights indicating constant use from
callers and guests. The desk I had envisaged was simply a ledge, and
no bound visitors’ book either. The hotel owner, a middle-aged jolly
woman, introduced herself, eyed me up and down, and then
announced that I was not to be the receptionist, but hotel cook. My
heart turned cold: me, the cook? Cooking has never been my forté. I
have been known to dissolve into hysterics at the thought of six to
dinner, with all day to arrange it. While all this was running through
my mind we descended into the basement. Entering a small room I
saw a large variety of brown nylon overalls (with white collars) in
heaps all over the floor. Find one to fit, the woman said, then come
up to the kitchen quickly because guests start asking for dinner after
6.30. it was then 6.05. I was overwhelmed with that strange feeling,
now frequently experienced, of total unreality. What on earth was I
doing here, sorting out a suitable brown nylon uniform to wear in the
position of cook in a 2-star hotel in the City of Oxford where I had
come to seek academic excellence?
For some reason I had decided to bring a wig with me. Perhaps I
thought that, should I have had the occasion to venture into the
hotel kitchen, the smell of burning chip fat, absorbed into my hair,
would be very nasty for days to come. I struggled into a uniform that
smelt strongly of tobacco, donned the wig, and with beating heart
went to find the kitchen. There, I stammered to the proprietor that I
wasn’t much of a cook. Not to worry, she said, that was if no
importance. If I could read, boil water, and switch on a microwave
oven, then I had all the requirements necessary. She then showed
me a large deep freeze in which all the food was kept. Duck à
l ’Orange, Mixed Grill, Pheasant, Chicken Mornay, all choices, all
there, everything a gourmet could want, frozen into unrecognizable
cold flat slabs, sealed in plastic bags. The system of cooking was as
follows. Boil a large pan of water and leave it on the stove, boiling.
Similarly, fill two large saucepans with cooking fat, boil and leave
boiling. Switch on the microwave oven. The guests came in swiftly at
6.35pm. I wondered if they were regulars who knew what to expect.
If the request was Duck à l ’Orange (or anything else) I ran to the
deep freeze, selected the correct frozen packet, threw it into the
boiling water, the frozen chips into the boiling oil, and yesterday’s
vegetables into the microwave oven to heat up. That was the simple
dish. The more complicated mixed grill, for instance, needed a little
more dexterity. Before putting some of it into the boiling water, I had
to extract the sausages and chops to immerse them into the second
saucepan of boiling fat. The next two hours of the evening are a sort
of haze in the memory, in more ways than one. The heat in the
kitchen was probably about 90°, the atmosphere hot, dank and
misty, making it difficult to breathe. My mind was in neutral.
Actually, a certain intelligence is needed to remember how long each
of these revolting creations had been boiling, sizzling, and reheating.
I suppose it must have been about 9 o’clock when the rush stopped
and the commercial travellers slipped out of the hotel, hoping, no
doubt, for a victorious evening where the bright lights beckoned. The
washing up then had to be done, mostly by hand. At 10.15 I was told
I was now to assume bar duties. The bar itself looked like a scene
from a B-movie where the gangsters meet to discuss the Final Plan,
masses of red lights, and overflowing tin ashtrays. The smell of stale
tobacco and beer was suffocating. I remember thinking: I can’t leave
now, this nightmare has got to end at 11 o’clock, so I agreed to
become the barmaid. The only customers were two fairly drunken
Turks, who indicated with much arm waving and flashing of gold
teeth that they wished their glasses to be replenished. Two Kirmizi
Saraps, they said. I stared in horror at the hundreds of different
bottles containing all sorts of incredible alcoholic beverages, and
wondered which could possibly contain Kirmizi Sarap. Somehow, by
pointing and gesticulating, I managed to get the drinks organized.
But then came a new worry: How did I open the till? It was locked,
and I had no key. By this time I was feeling a little like I imagined
Alice did when the car kept appearing and disappearing – slightly
mad, a little hysterical. A mirror at the end of the bar revealed my
appearance, the wig askew, nylon overall sticking darkly to me,
sweat pouring down my face. A humorous thought struck me. In
contrast to my evening in the sleazy bar off the Woodstock Road,
that very night my sister was dining at Kensington Palace with
Princess Margaret. I thought God’s purpose for us, individually, was
not so easy to follow at that moment. Before I left at 11.00 pm I had
to return to the kitchen for one more duty: the floor had to be
washed. Finally, exhausted, and smelling strongly of chip fat, I was
allowed home. I had earned £8.
* * *
I did try for several other jobs, without success. I went for an
interview at the local newspaper. They were looking for a telesales
person. The man who interviewed me was the stereotype of a
newspaper man as portrayed in all television series. He had no charm
whatsoever, talked very quickly out of the side of his mouth, and
chain smoked. His telephone rang every two minutes and to each
caller he spoke briefly and brusquely. An imitation of Humphrey
Bogart perhaps.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, when he had asked my age “we do
like younger female staff’’,
“Why?” I enquired innocently, “are they better at telesales in
some way?”
“Oh God no” he said, “they aren’t better at telesales; but of
course they are better to look at, so that keeps the male staff happy
and then they are better at the telesales.” Ah well….
Looking back, I wonder whether my anxiety to get a job was to
prove something to myself, or for the money, or the experience of
what? The answer was probably a culmination of many things. The
longed-for and looked-for separate identity women so much wish
they had, and believe is not to be found in being a housewife, but
can be found in a job. Any job. With a job comes a wage and that
produces some independence. A certain pride is felt in being chosen
for a job and a certain satisfaction in executing your duties.
The main reason that people go to work, according to statistics, is
for the money. Nothing more. If they had a choice, it appears, they
would not work where they do work; in fact, they wouldn’t work at
all. For people in the strong position of having a job it is easy to
envisage the delights of endless free time. This idea is, of course,
rubbish, as hours of time stretching away into the distance without
any particular way of filling them is both frightening and depressing.
I think people do need rules, structure, and discipline for a contented
life and a job, by its nature, determines these.
Working again after twenty fallow years was exciting. The jobs
themselves were irrelevant. But acquiring them was the first step to
restoring confidence and achieving independence – two major goals
in my single life.
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