Allison Pearson - I Don't Know How She Does It

One Saturday last autumn, I got back from a Boston trip to find Richard in the hall, all set to take our two out to a party. Emily, hair uncombed, appeared to have a dueling scar on one cheek — it was ketchup from lunch. Ben, meanwhile, was bent double, wearing something very small and dotted in apricot that I didn’t recognize. On closer inspection, it turned out to be an outfit belonging to one of Emily’s dolls.

When I suggested to my husband that our offspring looked as though they were going out to beg on the Underground, Rich said that if I was going to be critical I should do it myself.

I was going to be critical. I would do it myself.

To: Candy Stratton

From: Kate Reddy

Simply marvelous day so far. Have just shown breasts in error to head of investment & the troops. Chris Bunce came up to me afterwards and said:

“You were a total pro in there, Kate, with knobs on.” Laughed like a drain and said something about putting me on his website. WHAT WEBSITE??

Plus Abelhammer has invited me for rendezvous in New York.

Why men all bull and cock?

To: Kate Reddy

From: Candy Stratton

Hon, don’t worry, U hve trrifc tits. Penis Envy is So Yesterday. Hallo Boob Envy!

Bunce is piece of shit. His website will be Jerkoff Central.

Hope U R going to meet up with the Hammer Man in NYC. He sounds Gr8.

I H8 U when U act British. Candida Thrush xxx

1:11 P.M.Lunch with Robin Cooper-Clark and a new client, Jeremy Browning, at Tartuffe. Located in the penthouse of a building overlooking Royal Exchange, the restaurant has the kind of hush that, outside a monastery, only money can buy. This must be the silence they call golden. The low seats are scooped out of toffee leather and the waiters arrive on castors. The menu is my least favorite kind: chops for chaps with no concessions to the female palate. When I ask our waiter if there’s a salad I could have he says, “Mais oui, madame,” and offers me something with gésiers in it.

I nod uncertainly and Robin gives a little cough and says, “Roast throat, I believe.” How can anyone swallow a throat?

I say that I’d like the salad, but could they please hold the throats. On Robin’s lips there is an Alec Guinness ghost-of-a-smile, but the waiter is not amused. Red blood is the currency of the neighborhood.

“Any relation of the Worcestershire Reddys?” Jeremy asks, as Robin consults the wine list. Our client must be in his early fifties, but he’s in good shape and he knows it: ski-bronzed from the neck up, gym-bulked shoulders, succulent with success.

“No. I shouldn’t think so. I’m from a bit farther north.”

“The Borders?”

“No, more Derbyshire and Yorkshire. We moved about.”

“Ah, I see.”

Having established that I am no one worth knowing and no one who will know anyone worth knowing, our new client feels safe to blank me. Over the past decade, my country has become a classless society, but the news has been slow to reach the people who own it. For men like Jeremy, England still ends at Hyde Park, and then there is Scotland, where they go to kill things in August. The North, that great expanse of land between SW1 and Edinburgh which is best crossed by plane or at night in the sleeper car of a fast train, is a foreign country to them. Jeremy Browning’s forebears may have conquered India, but you wouldn’t get them going to anywhere as remote as Wigan.

Robin would never — could never — treat me as Jeremy does, but then he’s spent the last twenty years with Jill, who knows in her bones that snobs are a joke and that, in every sense, women mean business. I get a real kick out of watching my boss on these occasions. Convivial, clubbable and effortlessly smarter than any of his clients, he nonetheless has a way of making them feel as though they’re the captain of the winning team. Seeing me sidelined by the Browning version of events, he gently but firmly tries to draw me back into the conversation. “Now, Kate here is the high priestess of monetary policy; she’s really the person you need to explain the mysterious workings of the Federal Reserve.” And then, a few minutes later, when our guest has a mouth full of squab: “Actually, Jeremy, Kate’s funds delivered our best returns in the past six months, at what’s been a pretty bumpy time for equities by any standards, wouldn’t you say so, Kate?”

I love him for it, but it’s no use. There are some men who will always prefer to deal with another man, any man, rather than a woman, and Jeremy Browning is one of them. I can see him struggling to place me: I’m not married to him, clearly I’m not his mother, I didn’t go to school with his sister and I’m sure as hell not going to go to bed with him. So what, he must be asking himself as he chews on his pigeon, is this girl doing here? What is she for ?

I’ve been observing this for more than ten years now and still I’m not sure I understand. Fear of the unknown? After all, Jeremy was packed off to a boys’ school at the age of seven; he went to one of the last all-male colleges; his wife, call her Annabel, stays home with the sons and heirs and, privately, he thinks anything else is some kind of crime against the natural order of things.

“Sorry, could I possibly have my wine back?”

Jeremy is tapping me on the sleeve. I realize that I have been pushing my neighbor’s glass towards the center of the table to prevent accidental spillage: a reflex from being with Emily and Ben.

“Gosh, I’m terribly sorry. When you have children you always think people are going to knock things over.”

“Oh, you have children?”

“Yes, two actually.”

“Not planning any more, I hope.”

This hangs in the air — this presumption that my fertility is part of his fiefdom, that he’s paying me to be his alone, not to be carrying the young of a rival male. I feel like returning the compliment and kicking him so hard under the table that he’s unable to have any more kids of his own. But the phrase “crushed balls” tends not to look good on the client report.

“Naturally,” I say, clearing a throat from my lettuce. “You will be my top priority, Jeremy.”

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Further to your communication on borrowing limits, I attach some thoughts on LOANS. Not my thoughts, I’m afraid, although they come pretty close to some of my own about the person who manages my fund.

It is no gift I tender,

A loan is all I can;

But do not scorn the lender;

Man gets no more from man.

Oh, mortal man may borrow

What mortal man can lend;

And ’twill not end tomorrow,

Though sure enough ’twill end.

If death and time are stronger,

A love may yet be strong;

The world will last for longer

But this will last for long.

To: Jack Abelhammer

From: Kate Reddy

Thank you for your thoughts about the LOAN. As your fund manager, I should point out that the value of your investment can go up as well as down. The market is quite depressed at the moment, but I will be in the US soon and may be available to discuss raising levels of exposure.

It’s a beautiful poem. K xxxxx

3:44 A.M.Have left the children alone asleep in the house and just popped in to work. Stuff to do. It can’t wait. I won’t be long. Twenty minutes, maybe forty tops. They won’t even notice I’m gone.

The office is silent except for the sighs and shunts of machines making machine love to each other in the half-light. With no distractions, I work with great efficiency; figures swarming beneath my hands, an army of ants marshaled into platoons. File quarterly fund report, put screen to sleep and steal back out of the building. Outside, the City is in a postnuclear dawn — a warm gust of wind, some dancing litter, sky the color of saucepan. Spot a cab, fuzzy yellow light on the horizon. I wave as it approaches. It does not stop. Another cab sweeps past, blank as a hearse. Frantic now. Third cab nears. Step out into the road to make it stop. He swerves to avoid me and I see his big pocked mushroom face mouthing through the glass. “Yew stew-pid cow,” he spits out. “Cancha fuckin’ look where ya goin’?”