Big Women. Fay Weldon
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hoping to impress, but the news seems only to depress Marjorie Price the more.
‘You are far too qualified for your own good,’ she said.
‘No employer will look at you for fear you’ll take their job away, will bite the hand that feeds you. No man wants a girl cleverer than he, and quite right too. You will become sour and bitter. You will have expectations the world cannot meet. You’re too picky already. A job with prospects! Too picky about jobs, too picky about men. You will end up with the habit of turning things down. You will end up like me. I had a double first in classics from Oxford; now I have nothing. No family, no children, just a card index to love, and not a word of Latin do I remember. What’s a career once you’re over fifty but a glorified job? I’ll be frank with you. I have no time for women’s libbers. They make someone like me feel I’ve wasted my life, following rules they now laugh at.’
‘It’s the married women with children flown the nest who feel that most,’ said Nancy. It was hard to type her fastest and listen to what was being said.
‘Eighty words a minute,’ said Marjorie, ‘but I’ll give you ninety because I was talking. I have so few people to talk to I end up talking at strangers. What’s your shorthand?’
‘One fifty,’ said Nancy.
‘You seem like an honest girl, for all your strange ideas,’ said she of the double first, forty years on. ‘There’s a job round the corner at Medusa Publishing. More women’s libbers. They’re everywhere. Terrible employers. Long hours. Low pay. They call themselves a co-operative. Nice for those who run it – hell for the employees. No one in charge, so no one to blame when you get things wrong. I don’t recommend it.’
‘Sounds wonderful to me,’ said Nancy.
‘It would,’ said Marjorie Price sourly. ‘What makes you think their typing pool is better than anyone else’s? You swim round in the same old water, and not even a passing male to cheer you up.’
And she put the Medusa card away and fished out the one for Battersea Power Station.
‘Don’t let your chances slip by,’ she said. ‘Before you know it you’ll end up like me. Now at Battersea you’ll find some nice young technicians. Always go where the men go. Where there’s power there’s men. Where there’s books there’s women. Not in the top jobs, of course, but doing all the work.’
Nancy said she’d have the Medusa job, thank you very much. Those were the days of full employment, when the employees picked and chose and employers were grateful for what they could get. Those were the days before it was customary for women to go out to work, to snatch the bread from the mouths of family men.
Those were the days when people used typewriters and slipped carbon between sheets of paper; and rolled them in together, trying not to smudge their fingers and everything else in sight. If a typist made a mistake she had to type the entire page again. So very few mistakes were made. Nancy left Marjorie Price, with her double first, picking the black carbon ink out of the letter ‘o’ with a pin kept especially for the purpose. Picking out the keys could be almost as pleasurable as squeezing blackheads.
Nancy went round the corner to a small narrow house in Wardour Street where Medusa had its offices. Wardour Street then as now was a place where US film companies run dour offices, sound studios proliferate, as do whores and their customers, pimps and their friends. At that time Medusa employed between ten and twenty people, on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes the Advisory Board, twelve strong, recruited by Stephanie and Layla, outnumbered the staff. The first revenues were beginning to come in. Some employees had a background in publishing; most made it up as they went along. The process seemed simple enough. You decided what books to print, what you wanted on the cover, found printers to print it, bookshops to stock it, newspapers to advocate it, and some method of collecting the money. One person could do all this, from first principles, but obviously as more books were published some division of labour would sensibly occur. What Medusa would try not to do was fall into hierarchical and bureaucratic mode, typical of male organisations. Men were status-seekers and empire-builders; they shuffled for power one over the other: at all-women Medusa, the ambition was to get the books out to readers, not to win applause.
That some qualities are simply human, not specific to one gender or the other, took time to learn. Put women in a situation where status is possible to achieve and power available, and they too make the most of it. But who at the time knew a thing like that?
Picture Nancy now as she sits demurely on a hard chair, while Layla sprawls behind a desk and Stephie sits upon it and dangles her legs. Such informality is new to Nancy. She is not sure if she likes it. She felt happier with Marjorie Price.
‘I see the Acme Agency sent you,’ observed Layla. ‘It’s our favourite. If you can survive Marjorie Price you can survive anything. She acts as a filter. You say on this form you saved for three years to come to London with your fiance. Why should we be interested in your saving habits?’
‘They loom large in my mind,’ said Nancy. ‘It just sort of slipped in.’
‘Self-centred,’ said Layla. ‘And “sort of” isn’t a good sign.’
‘Give the girl a chance,’ said Stephanie.
‘Girl?’ enquired Layla.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Stephanie.
‘And then this fiancé, this person went home and you stayed on. Why does she want us to know she was once engaged to be married? Typical!’
‘Well,’ began Nancy, but Stephanie interjected.
‘That’s a remark, not a question. Why did he go home and you stay?’
‘For personal reasons,’ said Nancy, crossly. ‘Why don’t you test me on my speeds?’
‘We don’t have a stopwatch,’ said Layla. ‘You have a degree in English Lit, qualifications in book-keeping – I don’t understand all those initials – and secretarial skills. How boring and sensible.’
‘Look,’ said Nancy, ‘I am a boring and sensible person. I have a tidy mind. I like things to be in order. You need me.’
‘You think we’re untidy in here?’ asked Stephanie.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Nancy.
There seemed to be no clear spaces anywhere; it distressed her. Pot plants mingled with unwashed coffee mugs: letters were discarded where they were opened, papers and envelopes meant for the bin lay around on the floor: filing trays overflowed. Clearly anything problematic would sink to the bottom of files and stay there.
‘I don’t think you’re right for us here at Medusa,’ said Layla.
‘But thanks for looking in.’
‘Why won’t I do?’ asked Nancy.
‘Frankly, darling,’ said Layla, ‘you’re right. You’re too fucking boring.’
Nancy stood up.
‘I really don’t like bad language,’ she said. ‘I find it most offensive.’
‘It’s meant to be,’ observed Layla.
‘It’s a sign of an impoverished mind and an impoverished vocabulary,’ said Nancy.
‘That’s better,’ said Layla. ‘We only pay twelve pounds a week. We all get the same.’
‘I don’t see how I’m expected to live on twelve pounds a week,’ Nancy complained.
‘We manage,’ said Layla. ‘We help one another out.’
‘And if things get too bad,’ said Stephanie, ‘Layla pays out a bonus.’
‘I hope they’re tax-effective,’ said Nancy. ‘Bonuses can be tricky, tax-wise.’
‘It’s your job to make sure about boring things like that,’ said Layla. ‘In