Читать книгу How Hard Can It Be? - Allison Pearson - Страница 12

Women Returners. They sound like the ghosts in some horror movie, don’t they? You can practically see the trailer with that grave, apocalyptic, male Hollywood voice booming, ‘Women Returners! They’re back! Rising from the dead and rejoining the workplace! If only they can escape the Mummy’s Curse and rely on someone else to take the lasagne out of the freezer and give Grandma her statins!’

I don’t know about ghosts, but some of the women in our Returners group definitely have a haunted look about them. Haunted by the careers they gave up – in some cases so many years ago that they might as well be a different person altogether. Haunted by all those Might Have Beens. Sally, sitting on my right today, used to work for a big Spanish bank in Fenchurch Street. A small, sunken person in an outsize cable-knit cardigan, Sally only has to say Santander or Banco de España in a perfect Spanish accent and you glimpse the spirited, flirtatious person that she must have been twenty years ago, when she was running her own department with a squad of Juans and Julios doing her bidding. Sally’s nostalgia for those days is so acute that sometimes I can’t bear to watch the dormouse-bright eyes in that lined face. During the group’s first few meetings, Sally was shy, almost painfully reticent, swathed in an unseasonally warm fleece when the rest of us were still in linen trousers and summer dresses.

Kaylie, the group leader – a large, expansive Californian with a wardrobe built exclusively around turquoise and orange (to be fair, it probably worked better in San Diego than it does in East Anglia) – did her best to draw Sally out. By Week Four, Sally volunteered that once her two sons and a daughter had flown the nest (Antonia graduated two years ago; Spanish and History at Royal Holloway), she did think it would be ‘good to get back out there’. Sally said she got a part-time job, which she still has, working as a cashier at Lloyds Bank in the scuzziest street in the pretty, prosperous market town where we meet.

‘You know the one, it’s all charity shops and doner kebabs,’ Sally said. We nodded politely, but we didn’t know it.

Over time, the branch manager began to notice that Sally was unusually competent. (She played down her years in London on her application because she was worried it might look boastful or intimidating and they wouldn’t employ her.) The manager gave her more responsibility: totting up at the end of the day, handling foreign currency. They get a lot of Turkish lira conversions because of the kebab shops.

‘I suppose it is a bit beneath me,’ she told the group, sounding not in the least bit convinced that anything was beneath her, except possibly the ground, ‘but I like my colleagues. We have a laugh. It gets me out of the house. And now that Mike is retired …’

‘You’d like to be at home more?’ Kaylie beamed her best facilitator smile.

‘Oh, no,’ said Sally quickly, ‘now that Mike is retired I want to be at home less. Drives me potty having him in my kitchen.’

‘I know how you feel,’ said Andrea. ‘I sometimes think I’ll go mad if I don’t get out of the house.’ Andrea Griffin joined the graduate training scheme of one of the UK’s big four accountancy firms straight from university. By the time she was thirty-seven, she’d made partner. Not long after, her husband John had his accident; a lorry smashed into his car on a fogbound M11. Luckily the helicopter was available – it’s the same one Prince William pilots now – and they flew him straight to the head injuries unit at St George’s. Took John a year to learn to talk again.

‘The first words that came back to him were the filthiest swear words you can imagine,’ Andrea said. Her freckly chest flushed a little at the thought of her husband, a decent sort who used to say ‘Blimey’ and ‘Well I never!’ at moments of great surprise, reduced to a scowling wreck who told his mother-in-law to go fuck herself. The insurance company finally paid up in January, after a ten-year legal battle, and now that they can afford 24/7 care for John, Andrea can relinquish some of her responsibilities. ‘Started to think it might be nice to use my brain again,’ she said when Kaylie asked us to share what we hoped to get out of the Returners workshop. ‘If I’ve still got a brain,’ Andrea laughed. ‘The jury’s still out on that one. It’s all a bit daunting, to be honest.’

The room we meet in is in the modern annexe of the old town library. What it lacks in atmosphere it makes up for in strenuous attempts to remove actual books from what one poster depressingly calls ‘The Reading Experience’. Why is everything in here on a screen? I remember how Emily and Ben adored their bedtime stories, then gulped down Harry Potter, even making us queue up at midnight outside the local bookshop to buy the latest instalment. Now they are practically soldered to their keyboards. Emily might still pick up a novel from time to time and breeze through seventy pages before something more compelling intervenes – usually a make-up tutorial on YouTube by Zooella or Cruella or someone. She’s obsessed with make-up. Ben is wary of anything too long to be read on the screen of a phone.

The decor in here is that folksy Scandinavian look which seems to have taken over all British public spaces. There is a noisy pale-wood floor and uncomfortable, sloping bony chairs with leaf-print cushions and matching pale-wood arms. The coffee from the machine by the entrance is disgusting, so people pick one up from Caffè Nero next door. Sally brings a flask and so does Elaine Reynolds (mum of belfie-tracker Josh). We’ve been meeting here every Wednesday afternoon for five weeks now. There were fifteen of us to begin with, but two women swiftly decided it wasn’t for them and then, a fortnight ago, a third dropped out because her daughter was hospitalised with anorexia after failing to meet her weekly outpatients’ target of 0.5 kg weight gain.

‘Of course, it doesn’t rule out Sophia going to Oxford,’ Sadie said, as though there might actually be someone among us who urgently needed reassurance on that score. Sophia was already garlanded with 10 A*s at GCSE, as we’d been told several times, and her mother clearly saw the girl’s stint in an eating disorders unit as a minor bump on the road to academic glory, rather than a possible hint that it was precisely that route which had brought about her recent crash.

‘They can still sit their exams in there,’ Sadie continued. ‘There’s no problem with that. I’m making sure Soph gets her AS coursework in on time. Compare Atonement with The Go-Between. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it? I’m reading both novels, of course, so I can help the poor darling as much as I can.’

Everything about Sadie, from her figure to her dark bobbed hair, from her matching taupe bag and loafers to her South African accent, was clipped, with no unnecessary waste. The person she most reminded me of was Wallis Simpson – immaculate without being in any way appealing. Or human. I found myself wondering what it must be like to have such a controlled and controlling creature as a mother. Looking across the circle, I could see that Sally was having exactly the same thought. She rolled her lips back and forth as if she were setting lipstick on an invisible tissue, and her eyes glistened with what might easily be mistaken for concern, but was actually closer to disdain.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure about joining the Returners. I mean, I’ve never cared for the lazy assumption that women have shared preoccupations and views, like we’re some kind of endangered minority group. There are good, decent and feeling women, sure, millions of them, but there are also Sadies who would leave your child for dead by the side of the road if it meant getting an advantage for her kids. Why do we insist on pretending otherwise? Just because she has ovaries and a vagina (probably steam cleaned), doesn’t make Sadie my ‘sister’, thanks very much.

Like so many of the all-female events that I’ve attended, there is something mildly apologetic about Women Returners. With no men in the room, we are free to be ourselves, but maybe we are so out of practice that we tend to overshoot and end up giggling like nine-year-olds or, inevitably, talking about the kids we actually have. Women get so easily bogged down in anecdote; instinctive novelists, we make sense of our lives through stories and characters. It’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t make us any good at single-mindedness, at shutting out the day-to-day stuff and going for what we want. Imagine a group of men ending up talking about their wife’s mother’s heart bypass. Never happen, would it?

Today will be different, however, because a man, a well-known employment consultant called Matthew Exley, is here to talk to us about how best to market our skills. ‘Call me Matt’ is clearly enjoying being the only ram in a flock of ewes. He begins with some research. Studies show, Matt says, that if ten criteria are listed for an advertised job and a man has seven of them, the man would be willing to ‘have a go’. By contrast, if a woman has eight, she will say, ‘No, I can’t possibly apply for the job because I don’t meet two of the criteria.’

‘Now, ladies, what do we think this is telling us?’ Matt beams encouragingly at his flock. ‘Yes, Karen?’

‘I’m Sharon,’ says Sharon. ‘It’s telling us that women tend to undersell themselves. We underrate our capabilities.’

‘Spot on, Sharon, thank you,’ says Matt. ‘And what else can we deduce? Yes, the blonde lady over there?’

‘That men generally assume they’ll be good at things they’re rubbish at because their experience of the workplace proves that mediocre men are consistently given positions beyond their capabilities, while highly able women have to be twice as good as a man to have any chance of being given a senior position for which they are infinitely better qualified?’

Every so often at Women Returners, I’m sorry to report that a cynical, world-weary and, quite frankly, abrasive voice ruptures the happy bubble of feelgood reinvention and shared sisterhood.

‘Ah.’ Matt looks to Kaylie for support in dealing with this party pooper.

‘C’mon, Katie,’ smiles Kaylie valiantly with her too-white teeth. (You guessed it was me, didn’t you?) ‘I think you’re kinda taking all the negatives onboard. We’ve talked before about how women are tough on themselves. I know how perfectionist you are, Katie. What Matt is trying to say is that we need to give ourselves permission to think that, even if we’re not the perfect candidate for a job, then being a seven or eight instead of a ten may be good enough.’

‘That’s right,’ says Matt with obvious relief. ‘Your CV doesn’t need to be a perfect fit to have a shot at a job.’

‘Sorry, but I think what Kate was trying to say …’ It’s Sally speaking now. The group turns with interest to its shyest and most tongue-tied member. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think what Kate was saying is that the reason men have a lot of confidence applying for jobs is because the odds were, and to some extent still are, heavily stacked in their favour. They think they have more chance of succeeding because they actually do. You can’t really blame older women for having low self-confidence when that reflects the opinion the world has of us.’

‘I hear you, Sally,’ says Matt.

(In my experience, ‘I hear you’ is a phrase used only by those who are completely deaf to any sound but their own voice.)

‘But things are much better than they were even five years ago,’ he goes on. ‘Employers are much more aware of the qualities that women returners can bring to the office. You will all have noticed that work–life balance has moved up the political agenda and many firms are beginning to see that a more, shall we say, enlightened approach to taking on older females, who have taken time out from their careers, may not damage their business. Quite the contrary, in fact!’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ says Sally uncertainly. ‘My friend’s daughter took nine months off work from an investment fund with her second baby and no one batted an eyelid. That would have been unheard of when I was at the bank. Even four months’ maternity leave … Well, your job might still be there when you got back, but someone else would have the title. You might be allowed to assist him. My bank sent me to the Middle East when my boys were very small, to see if I would give up, probably.’

‘When I told my boss I was pregnant with my second,’ Sharon chips in, ‘he went fucking mental. He said, “But, Sharon, sweetheart, you’ve already had a baby.”’

Everyone laughs. The secret, subversive laughter of the servants below-stairs at Downton Abbey discussing their masters’ funny little ways.

‘Listen, guys,’ says Kaylie, ‘I think Katie is being way too pessimistic. Like Matt says, firms are more open than ever to the idea that activities outside of the office can give you transferable skills. Seriously, the Mum CV is now a big thing in recruitment.’

I look around the circle at the women’s eager faces. They nod and smile at Matt, grateful for his assurances that the employment they left during the years of raising children will welcome them back, that the ‘skills’ of nurturing and running a small country called Home are transferable. Maybe that’s true if you’ve been out of the loop three years, five max. Privately, I think the ones who are in the worst position are those who kept no work going at all, who gave up every last bit of personal independence. When the chicks fly the nest, at eighteen, they take with them their mother’s reason for being. And the women turn to look at the men they’ve lived with for the past twenty-four years and they realise the only thing they have in common any more is the kids, who have just left home. The child-rearing years are so busy, so all-consuming it’s easy to ignore the fact your marriage is broken because it’s buried under the Lego and the muddy dungarees and the PE bags. Once the kids are gone there’s no place for your relationship to hide. It’s brutal.

At least my freelance stuff gave me a slender handrail to hold onto in a rapidly changing jobs market. Plus, I’m one of the younger ones here, and even I will have to lie about how old I am to stand a chance of getting back into my industry.

I think of how I felt sitting in Gerald Kerslaw’s office with my own ‘Mum CV’. Watching his eyes flick down my activities outside the office for the past six and a half years. Work for the school, work for the community, for the church, backbone of society, carer for young and old. I felt small. I felt diminished, irrelevant, unregarded. Worst of all, I felt foolish. Maybe ‘Call me Matt’ is right and attitudes are changing, but, in my line of business, a forty-nine-year-old who’s been out of the game for seven years might as well walk through the Square Mile ringing a bell and shouting, ‘Chlamydia!’

Matt asks for one final question and I raise my hand. Bravely, he picks me. ‘As ageism is clearly a major problem in the workplace, whether we like it or not, would you ever recommend that those of us who are in our forties, fifties and sixties should lie on our CV?’

His brow puckers, not with genuine thoughtfulness but in that mature frown which men adopt to indicate that they are busy pondering. If he had been wearing glasses he would have pushed them to the end of his nose and looked over them in my direction.

‘Lie?’ Nervous neigh of laughter. ‘No. Although I wouldn’t necessarily foreground your age. There’s no requirement to write down a date of birth any more. Put it this way, I certainly wouldn’t make your age an issue if it doesn’t need to be. Or the particular years when you were at school and university; people can count, you know. Anyway,’ (a consoling smile), ‘I wish you all the very best of luck.’

I’m putting my card in the machine to pay for the car park, when I feel a hand on my arm. ‘I just wanted to say well done in there.’ It’s Sally the mouse.

‘Oh, thank you. You’re very sweet, but I was awful. Much too cynical. Kaylie’s trying to give us all a boost and there’s me sounding off about institutionalised sexism like Gloria Steinem with rabies. Just what everyone needs.’

‘You were telling the truth,’ Sally says, cocking her head to one side in that intelligent, birdlike way I’ve noticed.

‘Maybe, but who wants the truth? Highly overrated, in my experience. It’s just … Oh, look, I went to a headhunter in London the other day to see if he could come up with anything for me. It was … Well, he made me feel like some hideous old peasant woman turning up to flog goat turds in Fortnum & Mason. It was terrible. Funny thing is, I didn’t even want to come to our group in the first place. You know that saying about not wanting to belong to any club that would have you as a member? I thought it was all a bit pathetic. I mean, Women Returners?’

‘Revenant,’ says Sally.

‘Sorry?’

‘The French for ghost is un revenant, which literally means ‘a returner’. One who comes back. As in, from beyond,’ she says.

I told her that was spooky. She laughed. She said ghosts generally are spooky. I said, ‘No, I meant it’s such a coincidence because I was only thinking earlier that returners made us sound like we were back from the dead; I didn’t know it was French for ghost.’ She said her French was rusty – shameful really when she had half a degree in it. I said, ‘Don’t worry, you sound like Christine Lagarde to me.’ I said sometimes I felt like the ghost of my former self. There was no way back to that person I used to be. That it was all over for me. ‘Not for you, Kate,’ she said. And we kept talking and talking, and we would have liked to have gone for tea at some point, but it turned out we both had dogs we had to get back for and then it turned out that we walked our dogs in the same country park and so we went and collected the dogs and walked them on our favourite walk together and sat on our favourite bench at the top of the hill. And that was how Sally Carter became my very dear friend.