London Transports

by Maeve Binchy

  “You can give that to Mother,” he had said.

  “Why? I don’t know her. She’d think it was silly,” said Heather.

  “No, first time meeting her, she’d think it was nice,” he insisted. “It’s what people do, honestly.”

  Adam was furious. He hadn’t taken a plant to Heather’s mother because she lived forty minutes away on the tube, because they had gone there for tea one Saturday, because Heather had said that her mother hated airs and graces and he hadn’t wanted to be considered a young dandy. Now it was being used against him.

  He thought about the kind of weekend they could have had if they had stayed in London. The cinema tonight, perhaps, and a fish and chip supper. Saturday morning poking around antique shops and secondhand stalls. Drink a few pints with some of Heather’s friends at lunchtime…the afternoon would pass in a haze of doing up the room they lived in, sweeping the leaves away from the basement gutters; they might carry on with that picture framing; they might go and drink a bottle of wine with other friends until they went to the disco; and instead he had this torture ahead.

  The train stopped and his heart lurched; they couldn’t be there yet. Surely there was another half hour.

  “Are we there?” Heather yawned and rooted for her shoes. She hadn’t a hint of nervousness or anxiety. She reached for his carefully chosen potted plant.

  “Don’t forget your geranium,” she said.

  They hadn’t arrived, but they had reached a situation which called for their having to change trains. That was how the guard put it.

  “Has this one broken down?” Heather asked him.

  “It is a situation where you have to change trains, madam,” he said again.

  “I’d love it if he was in charge of any crisis,” grumbled Heather getting out onto the platform. Her eyes lit on the ladies’ room. “I’ll take advantage of the change of train situation to have a relief of bladder situation,” she said happily and scampered off to the lavatory.

  Adam stood glumly wondering why he thought everything that Heather said was funny and endearing at home in London and he thought it was coarse and offensive when he was starting to get into Mother’s orbit. He leaned against a telephone box waiting for Heather to come back from the ladies’ and for the next train to come and rescue them. On the opposite platform stood lucky people going to London. They would be there in time to go to a theatre perhaps, they might be salesmen coming home from some conference in Brighton. None of them had forty-eight hours of anxiety lying ahead of them as he did. None of them had to worry about Mother asking Heather, “And what school were you at, my dear?” and Louise asking Heather, “You mean you actually sell things to the public? Heavens!” Elsie asking Heather, “Would you like Earl Grey or English breakfast in the morning?” He winced and felt a real pain at the thought of it. And there was no way he could muzzle Heather and ask her to remain completely silent, so she was bound to talk about times when they had both been pissed and to let slip that they had smoked pot, and lived in the same room, and that her father had died in an alcoholics’ home and her stepfather was bankrupt….

  Adam heaved a very deep sigh.

  Love was turning out to be full of problems that the poets and the moviemakers never spoke of.

  Suddenly he thought he couldn’t stand it. Not now, not yet. He wasn’t ready to take the weekend now. Perhaps later when he and Heather were so sure of each other and of their happiness that a weekend like this wouldn’t matter. Perhaps later when he didn’t seem like a small boy wet behind the ears to the Mummy and the Sister and the Old Retainer…perhaps then Adam’s bohemian life-style and friends would be much more acceptable. Perhaps when he was more of a man.

  He knew he had to act in the next minute if he was going to stop the disastrous visit. A quick phone call…he was most most dreadfully sorry but he had just come down with this dreadful flu, and Heather had sent her regrets and would so look forward to meeting Mother and Louise and everyone another time. Yes, yes he could do it now quickly. And to Heather? Well imagine how funny life is! He had just phoned home to explain that they were going to be late and fancy, Mother had come down with this dreadful flu and had been trying to contact him, could they possibly put off the visit? Then he and Heather had only to cross the platform, jump on a London-bound train. In an hour or two they would get off at their tube station and, hand in hand, clutching their weekend bags and the geranium, they would go home…there would be no hurts, no confrontations. Love would remain separate and self-contained. He could be a loving son every second weekend until he was mature and manly enough not to care.

  With one hand on his ear to cut out the noise of the trains he told the tale first to Elsie and, gritting his teeth, trying to put out of his mind her tones of disappointment, he agreed to tell it all again to Mother.

  “We had everything so nice,” Elsie said. “We even had a fire in Miss Heather’s bedroom. Your mother had the chimney swept during the week.”

  Mother was concerned about his imaginary flu, but he had the strangest feeling she didn’t entirely believe him. She gave the merest of hints that she thought something more exciting and glittering had turned up for Adam and Heather.

  “Don’t go out to any parties or occasions now, if you have flu.”

  There was something about the way his mother used the word “occasions” that brought a prickle of tears to Adam’s eyes. It was as moving as Elsie being disappointed not to see Miss Heather’s pleasure at the fire in her bedroom. Mother thought that bank clerks and shopgirls were good worthy people in service industries…but she thought of her son Adam as being “in banking” and she assumed that his nice friend Heather was a young lady who would indeed be invited to glittering functions.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said.

  “Adam my dear, you can’t help having influenza,” said Mother, and he could hear Louise in the background saying, “Oh no, you don’t mean after all this they’re not coming. It’s too bad.”

  Fiercely he told himself that it was better this small hurt than two days of misunderstanding and misery. Then Heather came swinging easily along the platform.

  “Any news on the train?” she asked.

  He told her about his sudden call, his mother’s flu, her deep regrets, he added that there had been a fire in her bedroom. Heather looked at him levelly.

  “Yes, really, a fire in your bedroom, Mother had got the sweep to come in and do the chimney specially during the week,” he said, desperate that she should understand how much welcome had been prepared. After Elsie and Mother’s pain he couldn’t bear it if Heather were flippant.

  “I see,” she said at last.

  “So, we can just go back, back to London, we can cross the footbridge there,” he said, reading the sign aloud.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Heather.

  “And we’re really only losing the cost of the ticket,” he said, eagerly looking at her. “That’s all we’re losing.”

  “Sure, Adam,” she said, but he knew from her voice that he was losing a great deal more. He had known that from Mother’s voice too. For once in his life, Adam wondered if there were a danger that he might never grow up.

  King’s Cross

  * * *

  Eve looked around the office with a practical eye. There was a shabby and rather hastily put together steel shelving system for books and brochures. There were boxes of paper still on the floor. There was a dead plant on the window, and another plant with a “Good Luck in Your New Job” label dying slowly beside it. The venetian blind was black—there was so much clutter on the window ledge it looked like a major undertaking to try and free the blind. One of the telephones was actually hidden under a pile of literature on the desk. In the corner was a small, cheap, and rather nasty-looking table…which would be Eve’s if she were to take the job.

  And that’s what she was doing now as she sat in the unappealing room…deciding if she would take the job of secretary to Sara Gray. Sara had rushed off to f
ind somebody who knew about holidays and luncheon vouchers and overtime. She had never had a secretary before and had never thought of inquiring about these details before she interviewed Eve. She had pushed the hair out of her eyes and gone galloping off to personnel, which would undoubtedly think her very foolish. Eve sat calmly in the room waiting and deliberating. By the time Sara had bounded back with the information, Eve had already decided to take on Sara Gray. She looked like being the most challenging so far.

  Sara heaved a great sigh of relief when she heard that Eve would stay and work with her. She had big kind brown eyes, the kind of eyes you often see shown close up in a movie or a television play to illustrate that someone is a trusting, vulnerable character and therefore likely to be hurt. She looked vague and bewildered, and snowed under. She sounded as if she needed a personal manager rather than a secretary—and this is where Sara Gray had hit very lucky because that’s what Eve was.

  From the outset she was extraordinarily respectful to Sara. She never referred to her as anything but Miss Gray; she called her Miss Gray to her face despite a dozen expostulations from Sara.

  “This is a friendly office,” Sara cried. “I can’t stand you not calling me by my name. It makes me look so snooty. We’re all friends here.”

  Eve had replied firmly that it was not a friendly office. It was a very cutthroat company indeed. Eve had asked Sara how many of the women secretaries called their male bosses by their first names. Sara couldn’t work it out. Eve could. None of them. Sara agreed reluctantly that this might be so. Eve pressed home her point. Even the managers and assistant managers on Sara’s level were not going to escape, they all called Sara by her first name because she was a woman, but she felt the need to call many of them Mr. After two days Sara decided that Eve must be heavily into Women’s Lib.

  “There’s no need to fight any battles on my behalf, Eve,” she said cheerfully. “Look at how far I’ve got, and I’m a woman. Nobody held me back just because I’m a downtrodden put-upon female. Did they? I’ve done very well here, and I get recognition for all I do.”

  “Oh no, Miss Gray, you are quite wrong,” said Eve. “You do not get recognition. You are the assistant promotions manager. Everyone knows that you are far better and brighter and work much harder than Mr. Edwards. You should be the promotions manager not the assistant.”

  Sara looked upset. “I thought I could say I’d done rather well,” she said.

  “Only what you deserve, Miss Gray,” said Eve, who seemed to have acquired a thorough familiarity with the huge travel agency and its tour operations in two days. “You should have Mr. Edwards’s job. We all know that. You must have it. It’s only fair.”

  Sara looked at her, embarrassed.

  “Gosh, Eve, it’s awfully nice of you, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it. You’re amazingly loyal. But you really don’t know the score here.”

  “With great respect, Miss Gray, I think it’s you who don’t know the score,” said Eve calmly. “It is absolutely possible for you to have Mr. Edwards’s job this time next year. I’ll be very glad to help you toward that if you like. I have a little experience in this sort of thing.”

  Sara stared at her, not knowing what to say.

  “Miss Gray, I’m going for my lunch now, but can I suggest you do something while I’m gone? Can you telephone one or two of the people on the list of references I gave you? You will notice they are all women; I’ve never worked for men. Ask any one of them whether she thinks it’s a good idea to trust me to help. Then perhaps you might add that you will keep all this very much in confidence…”

  “Eve,” interrupted Sara, her good-natured face looking puzzled, “Eve, honestly, this sounds like the Mafia or something. I’m not into power struggles, and office backstabbing…I’m just delighted to have someone as bright and helpful as you in the office…I don’t want to start a war.”

  “Who said anything about a war, Miss Gray? It’s very subtle, and very gradual and—honestly the best thing is to telephone anyone on that list, it’s there in the file marked ‘Personal.’”

  “But won’t they think it rather odd. I mean, I can’t ring up and ask them what do they think of Eve trying to knock Mr. Edwards sideways so that I can get his job.” Sara sounded very distressed.

  “Miss Gray, I have worked in five jobs, for five women, I chose them, they thought they chose me. At the very beginning I told them how a good assistant could help them get where they wanted. Not one of them believed me. I managed in a conversation like this to convince them to let me.”

  “And…what happened?” asked Sara.

  “Ask them, Miss Gray,” replied Eve, gathering her gloves and bag.

  “They won’t think I’m er…”

  “No, all of them—except the first one, of course—rang someone else to check things out too.” Eve was gone.

  Sara wondered.

  You often heard of women becoming a bit strange, perhaps Eve was a bit odd. Far too young to be menopausal or anything, heavens Eve wasn’t even thirty, but it did seem an odd sort of thing to suggest after two days.

  Was there a wild possibility that she might have had a secret vendetta for years against Garry Edwards, the plausible head of promotions, who indeed did not deserve his job, his title, his salary, or his influence, since all of these had been made possible only by Sara’s devoted work?

  Sara reached for the phone.

  “Sure I know Eve,” said the pleasant American woman in the big banking group. “You are so lucky, Sara, to have her. I offered her any money to stay but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said her job was done. She acts a bit like Superman or the Lone Ranger, she comes in and solves a problem and then sort of zooms off. A really incredible woman.”

  “Can I…er…ask you what problem she…er…” Sara felt very embarrassed.

  “Sure. I wanted to be loans manager, they didn’t take me seriously. Eve showed me how they would, and they did, and now I’m loans manager.”

  “Heavens,” said Sara. “It’s a teeny bit like that here.”

  “Well naturally it is, otherwise Eve wouldn’t have picked you,” said the loans manager of a distant bank.

  “And how did she…um…do it?” persisted Sara.

  “Now this is where I become a little vague,” the pleasant voice said. “It’s simply impossible to explain. In my case there was a whole lot of stuff about my not getting to meet the right people in the bank. Eve noticed that, she got me to play golf.”

  “Golf?” screamed Sara.

  “I know, I know, I guess I shouldn’t even have told you that much…listen, the point is that Eve can see with uncanny vision where women hold themselves back, and work within the system without playing the system properly so—she kinda points out where the system could work for us, and honestly, honey, it worked for me, and it sure as hell worked for the woman who Eve worked on before me, she’s practically running industry in this country nowadays. In her case it had something to do with having dinner parties at home.”

  “What?” said Sara.

  “I know, it sounded crazy to me, too, and I got real uneasy, but apparently she needed to show people that she could sort of impress foreign contacts by having them to a meal with grace and style and all pizzazz in her country home. Eve sort of set it up for her with outside caterers and it worked a dream. You see, it’s different for everyone.”

  Sara was puzzled. She walked down to the local snack bar and bought a salami sandwich. She ate it thoughtfully on the road coming back to the building. In the lift she heard that Garry Edwards was going to a conference in the Seychelles next week. It was a conference for people who brought out travel brochures, a significant part of promotions for any travel firm. Sara had done all the imaginative travel brochures, Garry Edwards had okayed them. Yet he was going to the Seychelles and she was eating a tired salami sandwich. When she opened her office door Eve was sitting there typing.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “Whatever it is, play golf, give fo
olish dinner parties…I’ll do it. I want his job. It’s utterly unjust that he’s going to that conference, it’s the most unjust thing I’ve ever known.”

  “He won’t be going to it next year,” said Eve. “Right, Miss Gray, I have a few points ready to discuss with you, shall we put this sign on the door?”

  “What is it?” Sara asked fearfully.

  “It merely says, ‘Engaged in Conference,’ I made it last night.” Eve produced a neat card which she then fixed on the outside of the office door.

  “Why are we doing that?” whispered Sara.

  “Because it is absolutely intolerable the way that people think they can come barging in here, taking advantage of your good nature and picking your brains, interrupting us and disturbing you from whatever you are doing. We need a couple of hours to plan the office design, and it’s no harm to let them see immediately that you are going to regard your job as important. It may only be half the job they should have given you, but don’t worry, you’ll have the right job very soon.”

  “Suppose that the really big brass comes along, or Mr. Edwards, or you know, someone important.” Sara was still unsure.

  “We are having a conference, about the redesign of your office.”

  “But there isn’t any money to redesign it…even if they’d let me.”

  “Yes there is, I’ve been up to the requisition department, in fact they looked you up in the book, and wondered why you hadn’t applied. Whenever you’re ready, Miss Gray, we can start.”

  Together they worked out how the office should look. It was a big room, but it was in no way impressive; apart from the inferior furniture, its design was all wrong. Eve explained that a separate cubicle should be built for her near the door. Eve should act as a kind of reception area for Sara, she should call through to announce visitors, even though it was only a distance of a few yards.