Invisible Women Page 5

  ‘Another long, exhausting day, another thousand dollars,’ she said, arriving just after Tessa and sinking into the sofa alongside her friends. ‘Sorry I’m late, had to deal with Mariusz. Not in that way, Harriet, so you can take that disapproving look off your face.’

  Harriet turned up her empty hands like one unfairly accused.

  ‘I said nothing, I’m not judging you, it’s your affair.’

  ‘Ex-affair.’

  ‘Ah, the reformed sinner.’

  ‘Can you please keep sin out of it,’ said Sandra, ‘we’re not in the Garden of Eden. We have evolved.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Tessa, ‘though, of course, we are the dinosaurs.’

  It was Sandra who had come up with the term. ‘Housewives like us are an anachronism,’ she claimed, ‘in fact we’re practically extinct. The dependent wife should have died out with our mothers’ generation, yet here we are.’

  ‘I think it’s time we dropped that term,’ said Harriet. ‘I don’t like being compared to those huge skeletons in the Natural History Museum.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Sandra from the safety of her tiny physique, ‘I think that’s what we are. Quaint reminders of the prehistoric world. Funny old things who have ended up on the side-lines of the modern world. Hats off to us, I say. Frankly, I can’t think of anything more boring than spending all day at the office. Let the men go out and earn the money.’

  ‘Anyway it’s become fashionable now,’ said Harriet. ‘Look at those gorgeous young things who are only too pleased to give up their glittering careers and live off their banker husbands. Homemakers, they prefer to call themselves now, it sounds better in American.’

  ‘Young and gorgeous now,’ said Tessa. ‘Just wait till they hit fifty, then they might think again.’

  ‘Speaking of old fashioned wives, you’ll love this book I picked up in a second-hand bookshop.’

  Harriet took out a book the size of a cigarette packet, clearly a facsimile of its original, the date 1913 printed below the title Don’ts for Wives.

  ‘Blanche Ebbutt,’ said Sandra, reading the author’s name, ‘she sounds like a porn star.’

  ‘It’s hilarious and full of instruction,’ said Harriet. ‘Listen to this: “Don’t forget to feed the brute well, as much depends on the state of his digestion.” Or what about this: “Don’t think it beneath you to put your husband’s slippers ready for him.” I reckon that all women should be handed this on their wedding day.’

  Sandra took it from her and flicked through. ‘Here’s a good one, “Don’t think your husband horrid if he seems a bit irritable; probably he has had a very trying day and his nerves are overwrought.” That sounds just like Nigel. Oh, and here’s one for me: “Don’t try to excite your husband’s jealousy by flirting with other men.”’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Harriet. ‘I was chatted up in the park this morning by a very attractive young man who invited me for coffee.’

  Sandra’s eyes widened.

  ‘Really? Did you accept?’

  ‘You needn’t sound quite so surprised. And no, I didn’t. I am a respectable married woman, I would never do such a thing, I leave that to you, Sandra. Though of course it’s good to know I’ve still got it. I think he was attracted to my reassuringly conventional clothes, or maybe because he saw me doing the crossword. He looked like an academic type.’

  ‘The same way you wowed Sam with your tweed skirt, back in the day,’ said Sandra.

  Harriet had always been the clever one, a shoo-in for Cambridge while Sandra and Tessa went red-brick. Sandra liked to tease Harriet that she’d only managed to pull Sam in the first term because of the imbalance between the sexes. One woman to nine men in those days, it gave you a massive head start.

  ‘Well it’s not wowing him now,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Do you remember that time we all went up to London to buy something for the school disco?’ said Tessa. ‘Sandra and I bought miniskirts in Chelsea Girl, but you insisted on dragging us into Laura Ashley so you could buy a high-necked modesty gown?’

  ‘To be fair, there was nothing very modest about her behaviour when she was wearing it and got off with Paul Davies,’ said Sandra. ‘Respect to her.’

  ‘It’s the appeal of the demure,’ said Harriet, ‘you need to hold something back.’

  She thought back to her early days with Sam in her room in Corpus; it made her blush to think of it, their hot entangled limbs, no position untried. During one particularly acrobatic session, she’d looked out of her window at the dreaming spires and knew that they had found the centre of things, the whole point of life. Hard to equate with their present relationship of polite evasion.

  ‘Anyway, that’s my news,’ said Harriet, ‘apart from the fact that I’ve just had to rearrange the furniture in Celia’s room as she didn’t like the layout. What we really need to hear about is Tessa’s weekend. Were the flames rekindled?’

  ‘Actually, it was lovely,’ said Tessa. ‘You can’t go wrong with Cornwall, can you?’

  ‘Don’t be anodyne.’ Sandra wasn’t interested in the official version.

  ‘Alright. It was fine, really, but he was a bit of an arse at dinner, making a fuss about the food. As if you have to complain to show how macho you are.’

  ‘And plenty of sex?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Yes, that too.’ Tessa did not care to give bedroom details. ‘Oh, but he did say something that really annoyed me.’

  This was more like it. The women perked up, ready to become indignant. Tessa felt a pang of disloyalty to Matt. She doubted he would find time to sit in a cafe with his friends to share details of annoying things that she had said. But then again, he didn’t really have friends, only colleagues. And anyway, he wouldn’t want to discuss such minutiae.

  ‘He said, basically, that I was lucky to have him—’

  ‘Lucky, lucky girl!’ said Harriet.

  ‘Because, at my age, that is at OUR age—’

  ‘We are in our PRIME,’ Sandra interrupted, pushing up her cheeks in a grotesque approximation of a facelift.

  ‘Once you’re over fifty,’ Tessa resumed, ‘as a woman, you become invisible. Actually, it was me who told him that, I read it in the paper but he didn’t disagree. Unless you’re Sharon Stone or Helen Mirren of course.’

  They thought about it for a moment.

  ‘I actually don’t mind being invisible,’ said Harriet. ‘Don’t you remember as a child wishing you could wear an invisibility cloak and go around where no one could see you and listen to what everyone was saying? Well now we can. We’d all make brilliant spies.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Sandra, ‘I am completely and fabulously visible.’

  ‘It’s true, the builders still whistle at you,’ said Tessa. ‘Or at least one builder does.’

  ‘Whistling’s not the half of it,’ said Sandra.

  ‘How is the snagging going?’ asked Tessa. ‘Or whatever you call it.’

  ‘Oh, you know, one thing crossed off, three more added.’

  They all nodded knowingly.

  ‘I must say though that Mariusz was looking particularly hot this morning,’ said Sandra.

  ‘You’re so inappropriate, that’s why we love you,’ said Tessa, ‘but I couldn’t do what you do, even in the unlikely event of an opportunity presenting itself. I’d just feel so guilty.’

  ‘Guilt is wasteful emotion, said Sandra. ‘As you’ve just pointed out, we’ve got a small window of opportunity here, a few precious years before we become completely invisible to men. Anyway, it’s all over with Mariusz.’

  ‘Cougar!’ Harriet couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Nasty, sexist term. And inaccurate. I don’t rule out older men, and your sons would certainly be out of bounds, Harriet, on the grounds that young men are boring. But you must admit there is nothing as fabulous as that spark of connection, that frisson . . .’

  She exaggerated the accent, it sounded so much better in French.

&n
bsp; ‘ . . . that is the whole point of being alive. You don’t have to take it any further, but if you can’t get that buzz, you’re just . . . dead, aren’t you?’

  She flicked back her blonde hair, expensively cut by Ben in Brompton Cross, and stretched her arms out in front of her, interlocking her manicured fingers, enjoying their envious stares. It was the Chelsea Girl changing room all over again, when she was the only one who really looked any good in the sparkly white trouser suit.

  ‘That’s so reductive, Sandra.’ Harriet was put out. ‘You’re saying that sex is all there is, that a woman must seduce, or else – nothing. What about everything else in our lives? Our children, our husbands—’

  ‘Your dogs?’

  ‘Yes, alright, my dogs. Don’t mock it.’

  ‘I’m not mocking. I’m just saying that’s what makes me feel alive. You have other criteria.’

  They all fell silent. It was no secret that Harriet was no longer having sex with her husband.

  ‘How are things between you?’ Tessa asked gently.

  ‘Oh, you know. OK. He’s got a housekeeper, and now a carer for his mother. I’ve got a handyman and generous provider. We function, but I’m not sure how long we can go on like this.’

  ‘You’re a saint,’ said Sandra. ‘Having that woman in your basement. I don’t know how you put up with it.’

  ‘It would certainly cramp your style.’

  ‘It would certainly never happen.’

  Harriet tried, and failed, to imagine Sandra escorting a frail old person into the passenger seat of her primrose-yellow Mini.

  ‘That’s enough about me,’ she said, not wanting to think about Celia any more than she already did. ‘Let’s get back to Tessa and her supposed invisibility.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Tessa, ‘the other thing he said was I had more chance of being hit by a bus than finding a new partner. Statistically proven, apparently, for the over-fifties.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Sandra. ‘You’re a great-looking woman. I’d do you myself if I was a bloke.’

  ‘If you were a bloke,’ said Tessa, ‘you wouldn’t be spending the morning gossiping with your old school friends. You’d be hard at work earning money for your family, like our poor husbands. As Matt never fails to remind me.’

  ‘Not if I was a young man. They’re all on three years paternity leave these days or else primary carers, can you imagine more of a turn-off? Nothing less sexy than the sight of a man pushing a pram.’

  ‘Anyway, that statistic doesn’t apply to us, we’ve already got husbands,’ said Harriet. ‘I prefer the theory that a woman over fifty who gave up her career to raise a family has more chance of being hit by a bus than getting a job that won’t see her being patronised.’

  ‘Oh yawnsville, Harriet, get off your hobby horse,’ said Sandra. ‘Now, anyone fancy a facial? I’ve got a voucher for that beauty salon that’s just opened round the corner. Make a change from the nail bar.’

  As they were leaving, Sandra saw she had a message from Mariusz.

  I am in the Ikea and you miss me.

  She corrected his grammar.

  I miss you, is what you mean

  YES SANDRA!!! I MISS YOU TOO XXXX

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Don’t be out if you can help it when your husband gets home after his day’s work.’

  Blanche Ebbutt, Don’ts for Wives, 1913

  Tessa was hard at work in the kitchen, chopping celery and green olives. It was a relief to be occupied; she’d wasted an hour earlier today at the beauty salon, a den of vacuous women with time on their hands. True, she had emerged feeling cleansed and refreshed, but she could never become one of those high-maintenance types who were always having themselves prodded and rubbed like oven-ready birds.

  The chicken was marinating and she had time to kill before Matt came home, so she made a cup of herbal tea and settled down on the sofa to indulge in her secret pleasure. She knew it was an addiction. The reassuring blue homepage, the licence to snoop, Facebook was endlessly fascinating. It was also a buffer against her loneliness: if she was feeling a little low, she could just lose herself in the stream of updates of other people’s lives, invariably more fabulous than her own.

  Her son Max wasn’t a Facebook user, he considered it an invasion of privacy and a vehicle for boasting. He was right on both counts, she thought as she opened her laptop, especially the boasting, and the worst offenders were the middle-aged. Too old to compete in photogenic terms, they instead bragged about their families and careers. Here we go, Cal Thompson could always be relied on to share the details of his dynamic schedule: ‘five days, three continents, four happy clients and a great webcast on entrepreneurship’. Oh do fuck off. Eighteen people claimed to like this, no doubt his sycophantic junior colleagues. Tessa especially enjoyed the social braggers. William X, a successful man of letters, is ‘wondering in which order he should attend the three parties he’s invited to tonight’. Tosser.

  She reached for a sip of tea, it was all entertaining fun, but she wasn’t sure how many people used it the way she did, to find out who her most ghastly ‘friend’ was. She scrolled down to a magnificent torso shot of a young gay man, stripped to the buff and glowering into the lens, provoking appreciative comments from his friends: ‘miao!’ and ‘woof!’ So it was OK to make sex objects of young men the way you weren’t supposed to with girls any more. Tessa had a lot of gay friends on Facebook, sharing the details of their glamorous lives. Lucky them: untrammelled by children and bourgeois expectations, here were men of her age whooping it up, making the most of each day. Why didn’t we all live like that? Ah, but here there was trouble in paradise. Her friend Alan Doulton was bristling with indignation at a critic who had failed to appreciate the genius of his novel. Huffy old queen, she thought.

  And then she turned to the chief object of her obsession. Lola now had 1,245 friends and 3,680 photos of herself, though sometimes it was hard to distinguish her in the crowd of slick-haired good-timers huddled together. She looked happy though, and gorgeous as ever. Tessa clicked through the photos, looking for evidence of any special relationship she should know about. Lola hadn’t mentioned anyone, but sometimes a picture could speak a thousand words. Who was that tall boy looking down into her face as though she were the most fascinating person in the world? She clicked on his profile to find out more.

  Her research was cut short by the sound of Matt’s key in the lock. She guiltily closed her browser and returned to the reality of her dinner preparations.

  *

  While Tessa was enjoying a leisurely afternoon at home, Matt was having a horrible day at the office. Not for the first time, he was being chastised for inappropriate behaviour by the woman he liked to term the Chief Behaviour Officer or Little Miss Spoilsport.

  ‘Obviously I was JOKING!’

  He raised his hands in the manner of a man delivering a joke and stared at the plain face of the HR woman. Why were people in Human Resources always so unattractive? No chance of anyone sexually harassing her, that was for sure.

  ‘I was being IRONIC’ he continued.

  ‘So you don’t deny you sent this email?’

  She pulled out a paper from the file of evidence on the desk in front of her and began to read it out.

  I’ve got a hot new temp (raising standards!) Feel free to help yourself.

  ‘That’s the way I talk with Roger, it’s an in-joke between us that we talk like a couple of blokes from a 1970s sitcom. We’re not SERIOUS!’

  ‘I’m afraid the temp doesn’t see it that way, she’s too young to remember seventies sitcoms.’

  ‘She wasn’t supposed to see it, this was a private email to Roger. Not my fault if she read it over his shoulder, she should have minded her own business. Anyway, she should be flattered. It’s the other girls who should take offence, the ones I imply are less hot. If anyone was going to get upset, it should be them . . .’

  Human Resources was scowling at him now. Felicity, he re
membered her name now, as in Felicity Shagwell in Austin Powers, how mightily inappropriate.

  They were sitting in one of the meeting rooms dropped into the open-plan offices, a goldfish bowl where everyone could look in and wonder what was being said. Through the soundproof glass Matt caught sight of the temp in question, the little minx, carrying her coffee on an unnecessary detour so she could watch his discomfort as Felicity continued her assault.

  ‘I’m talking to you off the record here, Matt, I’m trying to guide you. Call it re-education if you like, but you’d better listen to me. You can’t go around referring to colleagues as being “hot” and talk about “helping yourself” like she’s a piece of meat.’

  She’d got the wrong end of the stick, as usual.

  Matt took a deep breath and tried to explain.

  ‘I meant helping yourself in the work sense, obviously! No point in paying for a temp I’m not using full time. And you tell me why women come to work in tight little mini-skirts and stilettoes if it’s not to look hot? They might also be clever and great and efficient and lovely, but those clothes are chosen to look HOT because that’s how women want to look!’

  He took in her brown knitted jacket and mannish trousers.

  ‘If they can,’ he added, unwisely.

  She looked at him in contempt.

  ‘This may be impossible for you to understand, Matt, but there are some women in the twenty-first century whose self-esteem is not rooted in how they look.’

  ‘And good for them! I wouldn’t be making jokes about someone dressed in drab, sensible clothes. As it is, I am acknowledging the efforts of a pretty girl to . . . showcase her talents!’

  Felicity slipped the paper back into the file.

  ‘As I said, we’re not taking it any further at this stage, this is strictly off the record. But if I were you, I’d show a bit more contrition and think seriously about changing your attitude.’

  I’m not having it, thought Matt, I’m not having this ghastly woman haul me over the coals for a throwaway private remark. Human bloody Resources. He remembered when they were called Personnel, just glorified secretaries who wrote down when everyone was on holiday.