London Transports

by Maeve Binchy

  “They’ll walk past and come straight on in,” said Sara.

  “Not if I walk after them and ask can I help them. They won’t do it twice, Miss Gray,” said Eve, and Sara realized that most of them wouldn’t even do it once.

  The costing of the partition was not enormous, and it left a reasonable amount for the rest of the furnishings.

  “We’ll have the filing section in my part since you shouldn’t really have to be looking things up yourself, Miss Gray, but it will of course be kept in a very meticulous way so you can always find anything.”

  “What will I have in my part of the office then?” asked Sara humbly.

  Eve stood up and walked around. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, Miss Gray. You are really the ideas woman here. I’m sorry, I know it’s jargon, but that’s what you do for the promotions department. You thought up that whole idea about choosing a holiday from your stars in the zodiac and that worked, you thought of having a travel agents’ conference in that railway station, which suited them all since they had to come from all over the country and go back again by train. You thought up the scheme of having children write the section for children’s holidays, so I think that this is what you should be doing really. Thinking. And let me handle the routine things, you know, the letters about ‘Can you trace what we did about Portugal two years ago?’ If the filing system works properly then anyone will be able to do that for you. I’ll set it up so that at least four fifths of your incoming mail can be handled by any competent secretary. That should give you a great deal more time to do what you are really good at.”

  Sara looked hopeful but not convinced.

  “Me just sit in here with a chair?” She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s on, Eve, I really don’t. You know they’d think I’d gone mad.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting a chair. I was going to suggest a long narrow conference table. Something in nice wood, we could look at auctions or in an antique shop. And about six chairs. Then, for you a small writing desk. Again something from an old house possibly, with your telephone and your own big diary and notebook, a few periodicals and trade magazines or directories you need, that’s all.”

  “Eve, in God’s name, what is the long conference table for? Eve, I am the assistant promotions manager, not the chairman of the board. I don’t give conferences, call meetings, ask my superiors to come in here with the hope of blinding them about policy.”

  “You should,” said Eve simply. “Listen,” she went on. “Remember that children-writing-the-brochure idea? It was marvellous. I’ve been looking through the files, you got not one word of credit, no letter, no mention, no thanks even. I would not be at all surprised if you, Mr. Edwards, and I are the only people who know you thought it up, and the only reason I know is that I see entries in your diary about going to schools and talking to children and spending a lot of your free time working on it. Edwards got the praise, the thanks, and the job, for not only that but for everything you did. Because you didn’t do it right.”

  “It worked, though,” said Sara defensively.

  “Miss Gray, of course the idea worked, it was brilliant, I remember seeing those brochures long before I ever knew you, and I thought they were inspired. What I mean is that it didn’t work for you, here within the company. Next time, I suggest you invite Mr. Edwards and his boss and the marketing director and one or two others to drop in quite casually—don’t dream of saying you are calling a meeting, just suggest that they might all like to come into your office one afternoon. And then, at a nice table where there is plenty of room and plenty of style, put forward your plans. That way they’ll remember you.”

  “Yes, I know, in theory you’re right, Eve…but honestly, I’m not the type. I’m jolly old Sara Gray, with a nice, jolly, hopeless lover who comes and goes at home—and who is gone at the moment. And they all say to themselves, ‘Poor Sara, not a bad old thing’—none of them would take me at a rosewood conference table for one minute, Eve, they’d either corpse themselves laughing or else they’d think I was having a breakdown, they’d fire me. And you.”

  Eve didn’t look at all put out. “I wasn’t suggesting calling a conference tomorrow, I was suggesting having the furniture right. If you are someone who is valuable to the company for her ideas, you should have a space to think up these ideas, a platform to present them on, and the just recognition for them.”

  “You’re right,” Sara said suddenly. “What else?”

  “I think you should get into the habit of having Mr. Edwards and others coming to this office, by appointment of course, rather than you rushing to theirs. It makes you more important. That’s why we need the right furniture. Mr. Edwards has an office like an aeroplane hangar, and very well laid out, I’ve inspected it. But yours could have a charm, it could become the place where ideas were discussed, say on one particular evening a week, a Thursday, before people left. It would be relaxing, and pleasant, and you would be in control.”

  As they talked on, it got darker outside, and they switched on the bright neon overhead light.

  “That’ll have to go for a start,” said Eve. “It’s far too harsh, there’s no style, no warmth.”

  A few times the door had been half opened, but whenever people saw the two heads bent over the desk and lists, they muttered apologies and backed out.

  “I never thought a notice would do that,” said Sara admiringly.

  “Wait till we get things going properly, you’ll be amazed,” said Eve.

  Eve refused a drink, a girly chat, and the offer of a share in a taxi. Instead she took out her notebook again.

  “You should have an account with a taxi firm,” she said briskly. “I’ll set that up tomorrow, when I’m organizing the flowers and your dress allowance.”

  Sara stared at her in the windy, wet street as if Eve had gone completely mad.

  “What are you organizing…?” she began.

  “Plants, flowers for the office, all the male senior executives have them, and they also get a special expense allowance for clothes because they have to travel, it being a travel company, and…”

  “Eve, I’m not a senior executive, I can’t have free flowers paid for by the office.”

  “As assistant manager you are technically a senior executive. The other two assistant managers are elderly men who have been pushed upstairs, so if you equate your title with theirs then you can have flowers, nothing extravagant, about six nice flowering plants. I think we can choose them from a brochure, they’ll arrive tomorrow.”

  For the first time for a long time Sara sat back contentedly in her chair at home and didn’t think about Geoff and wonder when his new obsession would end. Often she felt lonely and sad during his absences, so that she would hide from the feeling by having the television on or listening to music for long hours. But tonight she just sat calmly drinking her tea and looking into the fire. Eve’s arrival meant that a lot of the tension in the office had been eased. It was like someone massaging your shoulders and taking away the stiffness—you didn’t know how tense you had been until the massage was over—Eve was going to make things a lot better, and she was going to force Sara to take herself more seriously too. It was a bit exciting in a way.

  Next morning was a Friday and Eve wanted to know whether Sara had any important plans and engagements for the weekend. Sara shrugged. “I was going to sort out those figures for Mr. Edwards, you know the ones he wanted on the breakdown of age groups on the coach holidays. We need to know where to direct some of the coach tour promotions this year.”

  “Oh, that’s done,” said Eve. “I did it this morning, I saw his note. I’ve two copies here for you to sign, one for Mr. Edwards and I thought you should send one to the head of marketing, just to let him know that you are alive and well and working harder than Mr. Edwards.”

  “Isn’t that a bit sneaky?” asked Sara, looking like a doubtful schoolgirl.

  “No, it’s standard office procedure. Mr. Edwards is the sneaky party by not
acknowledging your part in all the work that is being done.”

  With a weekend free Sara agreed happily to go to look at secondhand furniture and office fittings. Eve had already organized the office partition, and it began with great hammering and activity after lunch.

  “I suggest you go and check out a few new outfits for yourself, Miss Gray,” said Eve. “You can’t possibly work here with all this noise.”

  “Could you come with me, I’m not exactly sure what I…?”

  “Certainly, Miss Gray. Can you wait five minutes while I tell these gentlemen I shall be back in two hours to see how they are getting on?”

  Eve managed to make three large men look as if they knew she was going to have them fired unless the partition was perfect. Then she went to the shop with Sara.

  There was a brief objective discussion about what clothes Sara already possessed. Eve explained that she had seen only two tweed skirts and one black sweater in the three days she had been working there. Shame-facedly, Sara said she thought there were a couple of other sweaters and perhaps two more workable tweed skirts.

  Eve seemed neither pleased nor put out; she was merely asking for information. In the store she suggested three outfits which could interchange and swap and make about a dozen between them. They cost so much that Sara had to sit down on the fitting-room chair.

  “I took the liberty of getting you a credit card for your expenses, Miss Gray,” said Eve. “I rushed it through, and what you are going to spend now is totally justifiable. You have to meet the public, you have to represent the company in places where the company may well be judged by the personal appearance of its representatives. What you are spending on these garments is half what Mr. Edwards has spent in the last six months, and you have been entitled to expenses of this kind for over a year and never called on them.”

  By Monday Sara could hardly recognize either herself or her new surroundings. On Eve’s advice she had had an expensive hairdo; she wore the pink and grey wool outfit, put the pink cyclamens on her windowsill near the lovely old table with its matching half-dozen chairs which they had eventually found for half nothing since it was too big for most homes, and nobody except Eve would have thought of it as office furniture.

  Eve was living in her purpose-built annex surrounded with files and ledgers. She had just begun to compile a folio of Sara’s work so far with the company, a kind of illustrated curriculum vitae which would show her worth and catalogue her achievements. Nobody was more surprised than Sara by all she seemed to have done during her years in the company.

  “I’m really quite good, you know,” she said happily.

  “Miss Gray, you are very good indeed, otherwise I wouldn’t work with you,” said Eve solemnly, and Sara could detect no hint of humour or self-mockery in the tone.

  Towards the end of the second week, Eve pronounced herself pleased with the office. She had bought an old coat stand which ideally matched the table and chairs, and on this she urged Sara to hang her smart coat so that the whole place just looked as if it were an extension of her own creative personality. If anyone gasped with amazement at the changes in the room, Sara was to say that there was all this silly money up in requisitions for her to decorate the place, and she did hate modern ugly cubes of furniture so she had just chosen things she liked—which had in fact been cheaper. People were stunned, and jealous, and wondered why they hadn’t thought of this too.

  Remarks about her appearance Eve suggested should be parried slightly. No need to tell people that she now had regular twice-weekly sessions with a beautician. Eve had booked her a course of twenty.

  So on the second Friday of her employment Eve came into Sara’s part of the office and said she thought that they were ready to begin.

  “Begin?” cried Sara. “I thought we’d finished.”

  Eve gave one of her rare smiles. “I meant begin your work, Miss Gray. I’ve been taking up a lot of your time with what I am sure you must have considered inessentials. Now I feel that you should concentrate totally on your work for promotions and let me look after everything else. I shall keep detailed records of all the routine work that I am doing. Each evening I’ll leave you a progress report, too, of how I think we have been getting on in our various projects. These I think you should take home with you or else return to my personal file. We don’t want them seen by anyone else.”

  Sara nodded her thanks. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed with gratitude for this strange girl who was behaving not as a new secretary but as if she were an old family retainer blind with loyalty to the young missie, or a kindergarten teacher filled with affection and hope for a young charge.

  She felt almost unable to express any of this gratitude because Eve didn’t seem to need it or even to like it.

  “Are there any, er, major projects you see straight-away?” she asked.

  “I think you should look for an assistant, or a deputy, Miss Gray,” said Eve.

  “Eve, you can’t go, you can’t leave me now!” cried Sara.

  “Miss Gray, I am your secretary, not your assistant. I certainly shall not leave you for a year. I told you that. No, you need to train someone to do your job when you are not here.”

  “Not here?” Sara looked around her new office, which she was beginning to love. “Where will I be, why won’t I be here?”

  “Because you will be away on conferences, you will be travelling abroad to see the places the company is promoting, and of course, Miss Gray, you will be taking your own vacation, something you neglected to do last year I see.”

  “Yes, but that’ll only be a few weeks at most. Why do I need to have an assistant, a deputy? I mean it’s like empire building.”

  “You’ll need to train an assistant to take over when you get Mr. Edwards’s job at the end of the year. One of the many reasons why women fail to get promotion is because management can say that there is nobody else to do their job on the present level of the ladder. I suggest you find a bright and very young, extremely young, man.”

  “But I can’t do that. They’d know I was plotting to get Garry Edwards’s job.”

  Eve smiled. “I’m glad you are calling Mr. Edwards by his first name at last, Miss Gray. No, you need an assistant to do your work for you while you are away, of course. Otherwise, if this whole office is seen to tick along nicely without you in your absence, people will wonder why your presence is so essential. If, on the other hand, it turns into total chaos, they will blame you in absentia. So you need a harmless, enthusiastic, personable young man to sign letters, which I will write, and to postpone anything major until your return.”

  “Eve, why do you have to go away in a year?” Sara said suddenly. “Why can’t you stay and together we’ll take over the whole place. Honestly it’s not impossible.”

  “Oh, Miss Gray, there’d be no point in taking the place over. It’s not what either of us want, is it?” asked Eve, accepting naturally that it would be perfectly feasible to take over the largest travel company in Britain if she put her mind to it.

  “You never tell me what you want,” Sara said, impressed by her own daring.

  “I like to see women getting their work recognized. There’s so much sheer injustice in the business world—I mean really unjust things are done to women. I find that very strange. Men who can be so kind to stray dogs, lost strangers, their own children, contribute generously to charities, and yet continue appalling unfairness towards women at work.”

  She stopped suddenly.

  Sara said, “Go on.”

  “Nothing more,” Eve said firmly. “You asked me what I wanted. I want to see that injustice recognized for what it is, and to see people fight it.”

  “You should write about it, or make speeches,” said Sara. “I never even saw it in my own case until you came. I do agree now that I’ve been shabbily treated and now I’ve got a bit of confidence to demand more. And that’s only after ten days with you. Think what success you’d have if you were to go on a lecture tour or on television or s
omething.”

  Eve looked sad.

  “No. That’s just the whole trouble. It doesn’t work that way, damn it. That’s why it’s going to take so long.”

  Politely she extricated herself from further explanations, from any more conversation, from having a drink at a nearby pub with Sara. She had to go home now.

  “You never tell me about your home,” said Sara.

  “You never tell me about yours, Miss Gray, either,” said Eve.

  “I would if I got a chance,” Sara said.

  “Ah yes, but you and I would not get on so well if I knew about your worries and problems!”

  Sara took it as a very faint warning. It meant that Eve didn’t want to hear about Sara’s problems and worries, either. She sighed. It would have been very helpful if Eve could apply her amazing skills to Sara’s disastrous relationship with Geoff. He had been gone now three weeks. No, it couldn’t be three weeks. It was. She could hardly believe it. The last ten days had passed so quickly she had scarcely missed him. She was so stunned by this that she hadn’t heard what Eve had said.

  “I was only saying that I left your invitation for the supper party tomorrow night there on your desk,” Eve repeated as she gathered up her things. “I hope you enjoy it. I heard that all senior executives were normally invited to meet the chairman and board members so I made sure your name was on the list. Nice chance to wear that black dress, too, Miss Gray, I expect you’re thinking.”

  Sara’s eyes were big with gratitude. As if by magic Eve seemed to have known that another lonely weekend was looming ahead. But she knew not to admit to any emotion.

  “Great. I’ll go in there and knock them dead. And on Monday we’ll be ready to begin the campaign.”

  “Excellent,” said Eve. “I suggest you find out whether any of the board have young and hopefully stupid sons who might want to start in the business. As your assistant, you know. We need someone rather overeducated with no brains.”

  “What are you going to do for the week-end?” asked Sara.

  “This and that, Miss Gray. See you Monday,” said Eve.