by Adele Parks
‘If she was she didn’t mention it,’ Jessica admits.
‘Listless? Unable to concentrate?’
‘No.’
‘Sweaty feet?’
‘Georgina! As if anyone ever talks about such things.’ Actually pregnant women do, and about excess hair growth, and skin flaps and loose vaginas, amongst many things. I’ve forgotten what passes as an acceptable level of familiarity.
‘Haemorrhoids?’ I ask, hopefully.
‘What are haemorrhoids?’
‘Piles.’ I blush. The English term is much more disgusting than the US one.
‘Oh, goodness, Georgina, is there any call for you to be so bestial? Don’t tell me you have piles.’
‘Not me, no. But some women do get them,’ I lie hastily.
‘Oh, there was one thing.’
‘Yes?’ I hope for a grim morsel of consolation.
‘She says her nails are growing at an extraordinary rate and she’s spending a fortune on extra manicures.’
Big shame.
It’s obvious that Freya is having the pregnancy that was intended for me.
I can’t help but think that pregnancy is some sort of device to expose me. To show me up for what I am (a five and a half out of ten), not what I’ve become (the quintessential twenty-first-century woman).
Desperately, I try to find someone else to talk to who will serve as a diversion. Is that thingy? Oh, what’s her name? She won the Barclays Businesswoman of the Year Award last year. I went to her wedding, so I should be able to remember her name, it’s err… thingy… It can’t be her, can it? Has she lost weight? She can’t have, she had none to lose. I smile at her. It’s the smile I’ve perfected to ensure that if she does cut me dead then I can catch the eye of a passing waiter and take a glass of champagne, thus not losing face. She throws back a half smile, betraying that she can’t quite place me, then quickly (but not quickly enough) breaks into a genuine grin.
‘George, darling, how lovely to see you.’ Air kiss, air kiss.
‘You know Jessica.’ It’s as near as I can get to an introduction, as I still can’t remember her name. Bloody pregnancy spongie-brain.
‘Of course.’
They smile and shake hands.
‘I almost failed to recognize you.’ The words are out of Ms Barclays Businesswoman of the Year’s mouth before she can calculate their damage. The thing is, she’s quite a decent woman and wouldn’t deliberately hurt me. She blushes. ‘You’re blooming.’ We both know this is a lie, especially when she adds, ‘A spring baby, how adorable. I think you are so brave coming out. When I was reaching the end of my pregnancy I wouldn’t be seen dead.’
The baby isn’t due until the end of August. I don’t say as much but instead mutter something unconvincing about water retention.
‘But you are well, generally?’
‘Oh yes, absolutely fine. We’re thrilled.’
She nods, smiles, looks over my shoulder and then makes her excuses and goes on to find someone more useful to talk to.
‘Slept with one of the judges to get that award,’ comments my mother loyally but untruthfully.
It’s not accurate to say that everyone fails to recognize me; some do, and these ghouls take great delight in swarming in for a closer look – my size can be established from a distance, but the poor condition of my skin can only be vouched for on near inspection.
‘Darling.’ Air kiss, air kiss. ‘You look so well.’
Everyone knows that ‘well’ is a deliberately facile code to crack. It means anything on the scale from plump, fleshy, corpulent, chubby, obese, right through to lard-arse.
‘I didn’t even have an inkling that you were married, let alone pregnant,’ smiles Mindy, a vague acquaintance of mine whom I have bumped into at several parties over the years.
‘And, Mindy darling, how is your husband? Remind me, is this number three or number four?’ asks Jessica, the very picture of innocence. She draws Mindy to one side and whispers, ‘Tell me, do you recycle your gowns?’
‘George, sweetie. I see you are pregnant. How very year 2000. It’s not like you to be so appallingly behind the times,’ smiles Dulcie. It’s true. At least if I’d had a baby in 2000 I’d have been in good company. Last year everyone was at it –Madonna, Cherie Blair, Catherine Zeta Jones, even Zoë Ball managed to make the deadline. Having a baby in 2001 obviously isn’t a fashion statement; it’s simply a contraceptive gaffe and no amount of insisting on my part that we are thrilled will convince otherwise.
‘Dulcie, darling, have you seen the “art”, that’s with an “f”. Absolutely appalling, entirely emperor’s new clothes, don’t you think?’
Dulcie looks furious. ‘Actually, you may not be aware, but Hermia Vicci is my partner.’
My mother flashes one of her most charming and flirtatious smiles. ‘Oh, I do apologize.’ The Machiavellian smile almost convinces me that she’s sorry. Almost. ‘What do I know? I’m sure she’ll be an enormous hit.’ We move on.
My mother is reassuringly rude throughout the evening, she sends back the champagne, insisting it is Asti spumante, orders Krug for herself and cranberry juice for me. On my behalf she bats back the slights, the snubs and implied insults like the true pro she is. She also insists that we circulate constantly and fires instructions at me such as ‘chin up’, and ‘don’t let that smile falter, not for a nano-second.’
I repeat, no fewer than fourteen times, that I’m ‘thrilled, absolutely thrilled’. It’s an exhausting evening but I’m grateful.
We find the time between vol-au-vents and catty comments to catch up on the family news. I establish that my father is accompanying Jessica on this shopping trip to New York and is currently preparing himself and his credit cards for the inevitable battering by spending a restful evening at his gentlemen’s club. My brother is pursuing the unlikely profession of DJ; Jessica comforts herself with the fact that it is no more unlikely than all the other professions he’s tried since being sent down from Durham ten years ago. He’s been a film extra, a musician, a car mechanic and a gardener, to her certain knowledge. A ‘courier’ in South America, and an ‘escort’ in Las Vegas, to mine.
‘And that thing with the cameras, how did that go?’ I have no idea what Jessica means. She elaborates, ‘What’s it called? The scan.’
‘Oh, it’s tomorrow.’
‘Do you want me to come along?’
‘I thought you were flying out tomorrow.’
‘I am, but I can change it if need be.’
I’m touched. ‘No, don’t worry. I’m sure Hugh will be coming along.’
‘I hope it’s all good news. Not twins.’ My mother grins mischievously.
At eight-thirty Jessica concedes that I’ve done enough. She puts me in a taxi and comments, ‘Now that wasn’t too bad, was it?’
It was bloody awful but, because we both know it, neither of us is prepared to admit it. I wind the cab window down and ask, ‘Did I ever like those people?’
‘I doubt it,’ she smiles.
I catch her hand and squeeze it. ‘Thanks, Jessica.’
She returns the squeeze. ‘That’s what mothers are for, George.’
17
Week 12
It is important to involve your partner in the miracle that is happening in your body. He can be a big support to you. This can be a time of communication and growth in your relationship. But you may have to work a little to make your partner feel that he is part of what is happening to you.
More jobs, I sniff resentfully.
Hugh can’t join me for the scan; he’s too busy. I try to understand, he is very important. And, anyway, who needs all that hand-holding nonsense?
Every other pregnant woman in the room, apparently.
I hate doctors’ waiting rooms. They are so embarrassing. The lack of reading matter forces you to notice the other patients. (I don’t count dog-eared copies of magazine as reading matter; was there ever anything charming about puff-ball skirts?) A number
of the patients are in an even more distressing state than me. Their arms are hanging off, or they are sneezing so much that they’ve obviously got bubonic plague. I try not to sit too close to anyone else in case I leave the surgery with something awful. Really, couldn’t they have made an effort? I have. I’ve put on a pair of trousers that fasten and I’ve wiped the puke off my shoes. After all, the poor man has trained long and hard to get where he is now, and he doesn’t want to have to look in more dirty or badly presented crevices than absolutely necessary. Couldn’t they have brushed their hair, taken off their slippers, closed their mouths? What does it take to apply a little bit of lipstick? Also, I find those posters of rotting vages completely offensive.
I had my tonsils taken out privately. In Harley Street everything is a little more discreet. The walls are white, and the only things hanging are tasteful reproductions of Monet’s waterlilies. All the patients were immaculately presented and wore the uniform of the rich: white shirts tucked into dark jeans, lots of gold jewellery, flat navy shoes, and sunglasses resting on top of recently highlighted hair (this was just the men).
It’s a straightforward procedure, the scan. Once you’re past the full bladder/empty bladder dilemma. The books say a full bladder is necessary for best pictorial results. As usual, the books are woefully out of date. The doctors now use cameras that prefer not to have a filter of urine between lens and alien, but I only discover this after having kept my legs crossed for three hours in the waiting room. Then I endure the indignity of emptying my bladder in an aluminium loo whilst the midwife waits for me next door; she has nothing more to do than listen to my wee splash against the pan. Oh joy. Then she puts a freezing cream on my stomach and rubs a microphone-like device over the Mount Everest bulge.
It’s amazing.
The alien thingy, it’s amazing. I’m surprised that, at the right angle, the alien thingy looks recognizably human. I can definitely make out its head bent over its chest, and I can see its arms and legs.
It can swim.
And mine is particularly athletic.
18
Increasingly, work is hell. I work in a glass office that looks out on to long rows of desks, piled high with PCs, identical except for the screen savers. The thirty-odd account handlers sit, stand and shout at each other from these desks for eight hours a day and more. This used to be my idea of heaven. I can see who and what is coming and going on, up and down. However, now that the thing coming up is my breakfast, the open-plan structure is a disaster.
Brett, Karl and Drew charge into my office and catch me stuffing a cream-cheese bagel into my mouth.
‘You shouldn’t be eating that,’ comments Brett. I’m not sure if he means because it’s unpasteurized cheese or because I’m the size of a house.
Ostensibly, we’re meeting to discuss the agenda for our strategy meeting for our pitch meeting, for a toilet-tissue account. It’s a high-profile pitch as this business is worth a media spend of an astounding six million: the agency would take approximately 10 per cent of that in revenue.
However, the boys have little interest in ‘Puppy Salience’, ‘Puppy Love’ or ‘Puppy Metaphor’, the attributes the existing incumbent agency exploits so magnificently. They’re irked that I won’t play Fantasy Football but insist on sticking to the point instead.
‘The client says he considers the current ads to be strategically sound,’ I offer.
‘He means boring,’ Karl dismisses.
True, he probably does; traditionally this is a business where one thing is said and something altogether different is meant, but the ritual of at least appearing to believe what is said must be observed.
‘And well branded,’ I add.
‘He means very boring,’ dismisses Brett. As Creative Director he sees branding as a heinous crime – ‘Intrusive branding is diametrically opposed to creativity.’ The others make noises of agreement.
‘It’s imperative that we remember that creating, fashioning, forming a brand, a mark of ownership, a seal, a name, can be a near-religious experience. A veritable adventure,’ comments Drew, as he nods sagely.
Everyone in the room nods too, except me. I feel as though I’m back in Freya’s art gallery. I’m not sure he’s said anything at all but, if he has, he’s just said the opposite to Brett, so why is Brett nodding? There’s a board at one end of the room on which Karl has written the words Prominence, Commotion, Style, Elegance, Divertissement, Well-being, Negotiate, Personal, Amour, Culture and Accessibility. We all stare at the wash-down whiteboard and nod some more. The words are not relevant to our discussion. It’s an old trick – whenever we meet we write some hocus-pocus on the board. In this way we are free to discuss the fact that Dave in production is shagging Cindy, the receptionist, or whether a Stella Artois is a cleaner drink than a Budweiser Budvar, whilst giving the impression that we are brainstorming the brand’s properties. I wonder why Dean has never noticed that it’s always the same words, irrespective of whether we are supposed to be branding an insurance company or a loo roll.
‘Look, this pitch doesn’t have to be so hard,’ grumbles Karl. ‘We’ll end up doing what we always do. Show a few of the ads we’ve made for other clients, make some short, pithy generalizations, show some dull charts demonstrating that we’ve done the number-crunching, add a line or two ‘in summary’, and then present the creative solution, which is all anyone is ever interested in anyway.’
I sigh a lament at his cavalier attitude, and a little bit of me also sighs because he’s probably right.
‘Don’t you miss the days when we just sent George in, and she so set their rocks on fire that it didn’t matter what she said?’ teases Brett.
I treat him to a weary look.
After about fifteen minutes, it’s decided that the best plan is to have a Pre-meeting to discuss the long list of possible agenda items and narrow them down and then have a meeting to discuss the agenda for our strategy meeting for our pitch meeting, for the toilet-tissue account. It’s agreed that the best time for this meeting is tomorrow lunchtime, and the best venue is Mezzo restaurant. The current meeting is adjourned and the boys go back to their offices feeling that they’ve done a good day’s work.
I’m less confident.
I often think that I chose the wrong career. Well, rather, I ended up in the wrong career. ‘Chose’ is far too active a verb to describe how I ended up in advertising. I suppose I should be grateful that Hugh wasn’t interested in joining NASA or the armed forces. Although there would have been an undeniable cachet telling people at parties that I was an astro-physicist and Hugh certainly would have looked cute in uniform. Advertising is meant to be a laugh, everyone in the industry knows that. The only people that ever take advertising seriously are the moral brigade, who regularly object to ads for underwear. Everyone else sees the job for what it is; a great way to avoid growing up but at the same time making more money than you would make if, say, you’d stayed on at university to do a PhD.
Not me.
I haven’t got the je ne sais quoi. I’m simply not chilled. I try to be (which is certainly my first mistake). I really wish I could perfect that fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-write-the-strategy-in-the-lift-on-the-way-up-to-the-clients’-office-put-the-whizz-in-spin-doctor-bullshitter approach. But I can’t. I really do think it’s immoral to fill in your own questionnaires as a basis to recommending a creative direction to the client, call it research and charge them thirty grand for the pleasure. I can’t agree that the only work that is ever ‘on strategy’ is the work created by those who can advance my career. Nor is my best friend Alberto, the office administrator, just because he has the keys to the stationery cupboard and the corporate drinks fridge (to be honest, he’s a git).
I work really hard to keep my head above water. I am the only person I know in the industry who has actually read Levitt, Kotler, Ansoff and Porter. I know the difference between sales volume, net sales volume, sterling sales at RSP, gross contribution, net contribution and break-even
point. Moreover, I do care about our clients’ profit margins. I’ve worked on creative award-winning businesses. I’ve worked with the world’s best photographers, directors and film editors. I’ve helped create brand equity on a number of household names. I don’t simply use acronyms such as ECR, FMCG, FMPG and KVI as a way of confusing the person I’m presenting to; I use them because these words are basic currency. I understand the importance of agency culture, a fat expense account and a big Christmas party. I’m firm but fair with all my staff and I never resort to political shafting. Yet, despite all this, I live every day thinking someone is going to find me out.
Find out that I’m not effortlessly chic, but that I spend half my salary on face creams and half my life in the beautician’s. That my personal trainer terrifies me, that my personal shopper exploits me, that I don’t even like avocado, never mind caviar, and, worse still, I don’t even know the proper pronunciation of Renaud Pellegrino. I mean, is it ‘green-o’ or ‘grin-o’?
It’s a terrifying way to live.
The people I work with are entirely Jekyll and Hyde. Affable and amusing company at dinner parties, unscrupulous, greedy and insecure during office hours. A noxious cocktail. It strikes me that some of the most dangerous people in London work in advertising. It’s populated by those who were born at the end of the baby boom and then suffered over a decade of Thatcher rule – how can they be anything but self-centred and overly ambitious? Therefore my falling pregnant, and suddenly doing convincing impressions of a dizzy Sigourney Weaver from Alien, is seen by most as a huge opportunity to supplant me.
Returning from my lunch hour (spent in the bathroom), I find the office deserted.
‘Where is everyone?’ I ask Julia. I notice that there is a huge box of Jelly Belly Beans on her desk. Without waiting for an invitation I start to hoover them up, red ones first.
