Invisible Women

by Sarah Long

  ‘More democratic than that: I’m reaching out to my team, rather than leading them.’

  ‘I can just picture you all sitting round in a circle, reaching out to each other.’

  ‘You make it sound like an evangelical church!’

  ‘That’s what it is really. The corporation is the new church of Christ. With the late Steve Jobs as its prototype Messiah.’

  ‘Now you’re being silly.’

  ‘Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as the apostles,’ Tessa continued, warming to her theme. ‘With their sainted wives, of course, giving away their billions to make a better world. Then little Martin Sorrell and Stuart Rose at the far end of the table, who else could we have, who could be Judas?’

  Matt pushed his plate away, and stood up.

  ‘Glad you think it’s funny,’ he said. ‘I’ve got work to do, unfortunately. I’m trying to get my presentation sorted for our away-day. Sorry about Ian and Lily, can we reschedule?’

  ‘Of course we can. As long as you’re feeling strong enough to cope with his promotion.’

  ‘Strong as an ox. I was a bit tense this morning, but I’m back on top now! And I’m seeing my life coach tomorrow, that always gives me a lift. You should think about seeing her yourself, I think you’d find it helpful.’

  He went out, leaving Tessa free to read the text that had been burning a hole in her pocket.

  Sorted quicker than I thought. Flying to Holland next Weds, then heading to UK on Friday. Fancy having lunch or dinner some place? Promise not to stand you up x

  Next Friday. When Matt would be talking hot air at his think-tank, droning on deep into the night at the bar with his fellow gas-bags.

  Before she could change her mind, she texted back.

  Friday dinner sounds great.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Don’t omit to fill your life with plenty of outside interests . . . Nothing induces dullness, and even illness, so easily as lack of congenial occupation.’

  Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives, 1913

  The Hunterian Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was Harriet’s idea. ‘We should take advantage,’ she said, ‘living in London. We’ve got all these marvellous places to visit and yet we always end up in the same cafe, and I want to feel I’m getting out properly.’

  ‘Reminds me of the old days, it’s like coming into an office,’ said Tessa, as they signed in at the reception desk. ‘I’m getting a bit of a flashback.’

  ‘God forbid it should come to that,’ said Sandra. ‘Parasites, scroungers and bums, bring it on.’

  ‘Dependents and spongers,’ said Tessa.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You left that out. Helen Gurley Brown actually defined a housewife as a parasite, a dependent, a scrounger, a sponger or a bum.’

  ‘Whatevs. Let’s go straight to the syphilitic skulls.’

  They took the lift and walked past the glass cases displaying floating human organs and medical horrors better suited to the back room of a teaching hospital than as light entertainment for casual visitors.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Sandra, when they arrived at their destination, ‘literally pock-marked all over, as if worms have been eating into it.’

  The three women gathered round to get a better look at the skull ravaged by sexually transmitted disease.

  ‘Very Shakespearean,’ said Harriet, ‘reminding us that this is what’s waiting for us all.’

  ‘Not now, not with antibiotics,’ said Sandra, ‘the wages of sin aren’t quite what they were. Let’s move on to the foetuses.’

  They gazed in silence at tiny, perfect human beings, pickled in homely looking jam jars. In a larger, rectangular display case, five foetuses were suspended together, as though in a dance routine, mouths gently open, hands dangling in front of their pelvises, as if to preserve their modesty. Tessa shared the thought that they’d make a lovely boy band. Harriet said it took her back to her own pregnancies, the time when her body had purposefully hosted the growing embryos who were now big people who occasionally came back to see her.

  ‘That’s enough weirdness,’ said Sandra, ‘let’s just take in the Irish giant, then call it a day.’

  The seven-and-a-half-foot-high skeleton of Charles Byrne stood in commanding position, looking even taller beside the doll-like bones of the Sicilian Fairy sharing the case with him.

  ‘He died of the drink at twenty-two,’ said Sandra. ‘Too much stress, apparently, being in freak shows. I Googled him, there’s a campaign to have him freed and buried at sea, like he wanted. It says if you press your ear to the glass, you can hear him whisper “let me go.”’

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Harriet, briskly. ‘Now, can we just squeeze in Churchill’s dentures?’

  By the time they made it out, they were all feeling a little queasy and ready to be revived in the cafe where they could get down to the proper business of the day, which was exchanging their personal news.

  ‘So guess what!’ said Tessa. ‘I’m meeting John at the airport on Friday. We’re going to drive out for dinner in Oxfordshire. I can’t believe how excited I am!’

  ‘That sounds dangerous,’ said Harriet. ‘Does Matt know? Dinner’s not quite the same as lunch, is it? Especially when it’s out of town. It sounds terribly illicit.’

  ‘Harriet, your middle name is sensible!’ said Sandra. I think it sounds great, where are you going?’

  ‘Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.’

  Her heart had leaped with excitement when John had suggested it. ‘Sure will be fun to drive out together,’ he’d said.

  ‘Yes, very nice’ said Sandra. ‘People who aren’t used to luxury hotels like it because it makes them feel at ease. Bit suburban, with slightly tacky statues in the garden. Lots of overweight women poured into taffeta when I was there. Good veg patch.’

  ‘A hotel!’ said Harriet. ‘That sounds very compromising, how will you get home?’

  ‘Who says she’s coming home,’ said Sandra. ‘Maybe she’ll make a night of it.’

  ‘Actually, Matt’s away on Friday,’ said Tessa. ‘He’s got a brainstorming thing.’

  ‘Well there you are!’ said Sandra.

  ‘But of course I’ll come home, what do you think I am?’ said Tessa, her indignation all the greater as the thought had crossed her mind.

  ‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ said Sandra. ‘But you haven’t heard my story yet.’

  She told them about Mariusz’s drama.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Harriet, ‘she’s been playing him at his own game. Still, he can’t complain. Pot, kettle, black.’

  ‘Not quite!’ said Sandra. ‘A discreet infidelity is not the same as pretending your partner’s the father when he’s not! He was so upset, understandably.’

  ‘Did you minister comfort in a motherly way?’ Tessa asked.

  ‘I did. In fact, I’ve never felt closer to him.’

  Harriet and Tessa exchanged a look.

  ‘I’m feeling a bit left out here,’ said Harriet. ‘You two and your exciting lives. Whereas all I’ve got to look forward to is taking Celia for her chemo.’

  ‘You’re a saint,’ said Sandra, hoping to be spared any further accounts of Harriet’s hospital trips. As if life wasn’t depressing enough, without evidence of disease and decay being thrust down your throat.

  ‘Well I think you do a fantastic job,’ said Tessa, ‘I hope I get a daughter-in-law like you, one of these days.’

  ‘So do I!’ said Harriet, ‘I mean, not like me, but someone caring. Wouldn’t that be marvellous, to have a couple of lovely girls in the family? Sam met Alex’s girlfriend in New York who seemed very nice, so fingers crossed.’

  ‘Come on, girls, don’t talk like this!’ Sandra banged her coffee cup on the table. ‘Living out your lives in service to your ageing parents and waiting for your children’s weddings? That’s no way to behave.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Harriet, ‘but that’s how it seems to me right now. I’m a 19
60s stereotype, fussing about my family because I’ve nothing else to think about. Worst of all, it’s self-inflicted; nobody forced me to give up my career. I’m a casualty of the feminine mystique, but I did it to myself.’

  ‘Oh yawn, let’s not hark back to Betty Friedan,’ said Sandra. ‘The problem that has no name actually isn’t a problem at all. We’re bloody lucky to be rich housewives. Who wants to go out there and do a boring job?’

  Harriet didn’t reply. She was thinking back to her time in chambers; the excitement of getting to grips with a new case, absorbing the facts, the adrenaline rush of getting her angle.

  ‘Sandra, that is a passionate defence of laziness,’ said Tessa, ‘but you’ve actually got a job, if you can call it that. So of the three of us, you’re the only one who’s gainfully employed.’

  ‘True, so I have! Megan turns out to be the ideal client, bags of cash and zero taste. In fact, I’m going to meet her right now, so I’ll love you and leave you.’

  She left the cafe and Tessa and Harriet watched out the window as she unlocked her bike and jumped on the saddle with the youthful ease of a schoolgirl, swinging her elegant bag across her shoulder.

  ‘Look at her, she looks about twelve, doesn’t it make you sick?’ said Tessa, knowing that Harriet would understand it was a compliment.

  ‘And actually got a job to do, lucky her,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Can’t you go back to work in your chambers?’ Tessa asked, ‘wouldn’t that be the just the thing for you?’

  ‘Of course it would, but it’s out of the question. Why would they have me when they’ve got hordes of bright young things they can choose from?’

  ‘I understand completely,’ said Tessa. ‘I’ve got to find myself something to do. I spend so much time living in a bubble in my head, worrying about the kids and now fantasising about a boy I haven’t seen for thirty years, honestly it’s pathetic . . . Then there’s Matt, I’m really starting to feel his resentment. And I resent his resentment, if I’m honest.’

  ‘So you should! You had a deal, he was delighted to have you picking up the pieces at home when it suited him. He can’t just move the goalposts later on when he decides he’s fed up with it.’

  ‘He’s been seeing this life coach who’s giving him all these airy-fairy ideas about the wonderful future he could be having. Whereas any fool can see his best bet is to carry on as he is.’

  ‘You’re not stopping him from doing anything though, are you?’

  ‘Apparently I’m a dead weight. If I was out there earning my keep, he’d be free and happy.’

  ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’

  ‘That’s cheerful!’

  ‘Aeschylus. I take great comfort from the Greek dramatists, don’t you? When I’m folding Sam’s underpants into his drawer and thinking how I got the top first in my year and now it’s come to this, I find it helpful to remember that happiness is at best an illusion.’

  ‘I like what Goethe says. “Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls. And we push it with our feet when it stops.” In other words, we’re programmed to think we haven’t found happiness, and deliberately make it unobtainable.’

  ‘The only ball I run after is the one I throw for my dogs. More of a stroll than a run. I’m sorry Matt’s taking it out on you, I don’t get that from Sam. He loves his work, especially the amount of time it takes him away from home, leaving me to look after his mother. So at least I don’t get the guilt thing from him.’

  ‘Never mind guilt, you don’t really get anything from him, do you?’

  ‘Separate lives,’ Harriet sighed. ‘We still get on, it’s not like we don’t have plenty to talk about, it’s just a bit hurtful that he doesn’t want to have sex with me. I know I’ve lost my looks, I’m fifty for God’s sake, but all the same.’

  ‘He’s not exactly Adonis himself, is he?’ said Tessa. ‘And you’re a fine-looking woman, so stop doing yourself down!’

  ‘Thanks, Tessa. Right, enough of this gloomy talk,’ she said, ‘we’ve got our weekend in Gloucestershire coming up.’

  ‘Of course. Looking forward to it. Haven’t been for ages.’

  Harriet had a village house in the Cotswolds where they often used to spend their weekends together. Bundling the children up in their pyjamas on the back seat of the car, ready for an easy transfer into bed after the Friday night drive. They would share the chores of bath time and tea time, enjoying the communal life before returning to London and their nuclear family units. Then the children grew up and became less amenable to spending time with the offspring of their parents’ friends. Harriet had decided it was time to revive the tradition, without the ‘children’ who were now adults, and had invited Tessa and Sandra and their husbands for a weekend of fresh air and country pursuits.

  ‘I feel bad I haven’t invited you for so long,’ she said, ‘only Sam’s been so anti-social, I knew he’d pour cold water on the idea if I suggested it.’

  ‘It’ll be great,’ said Tessa, ‘we’re really looking forward to it.’

  She knew Matt would enjoy trawling the estate agent’s windows in the high street, calculating what kind of pile he could acquire by trading in their London house.

  They said their goodbyes and Tessa walked slowly towards the tube, eavesdropping on the conversations of students as they flirted in small, self-conscious groups. Max’s college was only up the road and she had the crazy idea that she should call in and surprise him, maybe they could have lunch together. When he started school as a painfully shy four-year-old, she had once driven up at lunch time and parked outside the playground. Like a private detective, she had sunk back in her seat and spied on him, watching out to see if he was playing with the others. She could still feel the stab of pain at the sight of him walking by himself, away from the fun and games, a small, lost soul. She needn’t have worried, he was confident enough now, and far too busy for lunch with his underemployed mother. You give them life to set them free, and that was how it should be.

  As she left the tube at South Kensington she found a voicemail from Matt, suggesting they meet at a restaurant that evening. He said he wanted to talk about the future. Or rather, The Future, she knew from his serious voice that he meant it in the capitalised sense because he must have just had his meeting with his Life Coach. Money for old rope in Tessa’s opinion, but what did she know?

  *

  Harriet let herself into her house and was greeted by Celia calling to her up the stairs.

  ‘Is that you?’

  Who else did she think it was?

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Can you come here?’

  Harriet went down to Celia’s bedroom. She was quite settled now and had arranged photographs and knick-knacks around the place, giving it the atmosphere of a room in an old people’s home.

  ‘I’m glad you’re home at last,’ said Celia, rising up from her chair with surprising alacrity and walking over to her wardrobe.

  ‘I ordered these shirts from Uniqlo, but you’ll have to send them back. These styles are no good for me, I don’t know why they make them so tight.’

  She threw them on to the bed.

  Harriet took a breath. ‘I’d better get going on lunch,’ she said. ‘Kedgeree?’

  ‘Ooh, yes,’ said Celia happily, ‘but make sure you don’t overdo the cayenne pepper, like you did last time.’

  Be gracious, Harriet said to herself as she went back up the stairs, and just be grateful it’s not you. She had been reading Philip Larkin’s letters and recalled the one about widows living effortlessly on, cackling in their NHS specs and teeth and wigs, while their shadowy husbands lay effaced in dingy cemeteries. If only Sam’s father were still alive, then he could be dealing with Celia and offering sartorial advice. But he had been absorbed by Alzheimer’s, distilled into a sweeter version of himself – they said it intensified your true character – before dying and leaving Harriet to cope with the aftermath.

  She put three eggs
on to boil, filled the rice machine and pulled the haddock fillets out of their plastic wrapping. Her future as a carer flashed before her eyes: producing beige, digestible meals, making the bed with plastic under-sheets and efficient hospital corners, hosing down Celia when she could no longer manage herself. It wasn’t pretty.

  *

  Matt had chosen his favourite Knightsbridge brasserie for them to meet. It was exactly how a French restaurant should be, as he liked to point out to Tessa, and all the better for being in London where people were livelier than in morose old Paris. She was seated first, facing the door, so was able to watch him arrive, appearing from behind the deep-crimson velvet curtain like a pantomime villain in his dark clothes.

  He swung his man-bag, heavy with documents and God knows what, under the table, and looked at her, appraising her outfit.

  ‘That top doesn’t owe you a penny.’

  ‘Joseph classic. Timeless, just like me.’

  He glanced at the menu.

  ‘I’m going to start with Jesus from the Pays Basque. What a sausage. You having your usual?’

  ‘Of course. Warm garlic and saffron mousse with mussels.’

  Matt turned his attention to the wine list. As he discussed it with the waiter, Tessa inspected the liver spots on the back of her hands. She should invest in some special hand cream that promised to make them go away, to banish these small brown reminders that she was getting on.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to come here at such short notice,’ Matt said, as though he was opening a meeting.

  Tessa laughed.

  ‘I managed to clear my diary, thanks for inviting me. Why the formality? I get the impression this isn’t just, let’s go out to dinner for the hell of it.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  Matt shook his head, and stared at her beneath the emphatic frames of his Prada glasses. Soho House twat, Tessa thought, but immediately banished the unkind thought.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Future recently, as you know. And I had such a great meeting with Trudi today, I wanted to share it with you immediately. Much better to be off-site when you’re thinking outside the box. Look at this.’