Career Girls

Topaz burst through the door of the President’s Office.

‘Oh-my- God!’ she yelled. ‘Oh my God! I got it! I got it! I can’t believe it! Rowena, you’re a genius. How can I ever repay you? I don’t know what to say!’

She flung herself on one of the faded velvet armchairs, pushing a handful of red curls back from her face.

Rowena turned away from the computer with a sigh. Her delicately pitched letter of invitation to Gary Lineker to come down to Oxford and speak had reached a crucial paragraph. She smiled at her friend. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The Times, The Times! They read the draft, they like it, they want eight hundred words on student benefits! I’m going to be published in a national! Oh babe, I can’t thank you enough,’ said Topaz.

‘Topaz, that’s great. That’s really great. I’m so pleased,’ said Rowena. ‘You’re the best, and they’re lucky to have you.’

‘It’s all down to you. I wouldn’t have got it without you.’ ‘That’s rubbish and you know it. All Dad did was make sure the right person got to read it. Stevens wouldn’t have

commissioned it if it wasn’t any good,’ said Rowena firmly. The two girls glowed at each other..

‘Talent is the only thing that counts,’ said Rowena.

‘In which case, you’ll never have any problems,’ said Topaz.

They made a great team. Everyone said so. They were so unlikely to get along, it was almost inevitable that they should become best friends: Topaz Rossi, the brashest

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loudest, and by far the most attractive American in Oxford, and Rowena Gordon, willowy, blonde, coldly determined, every inch a gentleman’s daughter.

Topaz had interviewed Rowena for Cherwell, the university newspaper, in their second term at college, when her sophistication and poise had taken the Union by storm, winning an election to the Secretary’s committee by a record margin. The American girl had turned up with a paper and pen cordially prepared to hate her guts: Rowena Gordon, another stuck-up British aristo dabbling in student politics before settling down to a suitable marriage. She despised girls like that. They were the enemy, a living reproach to every woman who’d struggled for the right to work for a living.

When she actually saw Rowena, her second impression was worse than the first; she was dressed in an Armani suit that would have cost Topaz her year’s budget, with long, blonde, precision-cut hair, expensive scent, immaculate make-up and delicate gold jewellery.

‘Why do you think you won this election?’ Topaz asked in a bored monotone. . Rowena had looked at her equally coolly. Bloody Amero icans! Look at this girl, those thrusting breasts in a low-cut top, those long legs stretching up for miles into a suede mini at least three inches too short, and a riot of ruby curls tumbling halfway down her back. Swaggering in here like she owns the place. It was obvious how she managed to be a staffer on the student paper in less than a term.

‘Because I worked hard all term, made speeches I believed about, and raised more sponsorship money than anybody else,’ she answered shortly. ‘Why do you think you’re doing this feature?’

‘Because I’m the best writer on the paper,’ Topaz shot back.

For a second they glared at each other. Then, slowly, Topaz smiled and held out her hand.

By the end of the day, both women had made their first ally.

Over the next two weeks, they became firm friends. At first, this amazed other students who knew them; after all, Rowena was cold, reserved and richer than hell, whereas Topaz was a red-blooded ItalianAmerican, sensual, pushy and scraping by on a scholarship.

But their backgrounds were more similar than most people realized. Both of them had already made one major mistake in the eyes of their parents: they’d been born female.

The Gordons of Ayrshire had been an unbroken line of Scottish farmers for more than a thousand years. Give or take a few acres, the Gordon estate and coat of arms had passed smoothly from father to son down the generations, until Rowena’s father, Charles Gordon, had failed to provide a son of his own. There had been three miscarriages, and Rowena was conceived despite doctor’s orders. When Mary Gordon, after all the heartache, was finally deliveredtn Guy’s Hospital in London, her proud husband waited all night in the room closest to the ward, turning over names in his mind - Richard, Henry, Douglas,

William, Jacob. At 3 a.m. the nurse came in beaming.

‘Is he all right?’ Charles asked anxiously.

‘She’s fine, sir,’ the nurse smiled. ‘You have a beautiful baby daughter.’

Gino Rossi would have sympathized with Charles Gordon. He might also have felt a touch of condescension: after all, he already had three fine sons. He was the envy of his neighbours. But he Wanted another, and his wife was getting tired. Gino had already decided this would be the last time for her. When the. baby turned out to be a girl, he felt cheated. What should Gino Rossi do with a daughter? He hadn’t even had any sisters. No, he patted the little infant on the head and left her to her mother to raise. Anna Rossi called her daughter Topaz, after her favourite gemstone, and because she had a little tuft of red-gold baby hair.

Rowena Gordon wanted for nothing. From the moment she was wrapped in her heirloom christening gown of

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antique lace, everything was provided for her. When she was six, a pony. When she was seventeen, a car. In between, the finest clothes, the smartest skiing holidays, ballet lessons, a Harley Street orthodontist and anything else her father could think of. Anything that would allow him to ignore his real feelings for her, the acute disappointment, the sense of betrayal. Until Rowena was six, he merely avoided her. After that, he would either lose his temper over the smallest childish offence, or treat her with cold courtesy. Mary Gordon was no better. She resented her daughter as the reason for her husband’s coldness towards her. When Rowena was sent away at seven to boarding school, she felt only relief.

When Rowena was ten, a minor miracle occurred. Mary Gordon, at the age of forty-one, got pregnant again and carried the baby to term. This time Charles’s prayers were answered: at forty-seven he had fathered a son, James Gordon, sole heir to the estate and the family name. Both parents were overjoyed; the new baby was the apple of their eye, and Charles Gordon never snapped at his daughter again. From that day forth, he simply ignored her.

.Rowena accepted her parents’ attitude. Things were the way they were, and no amount of wishing would change it. Her reaction was simple: from now on, she would be in control. She would shape her own world. She would rely on herself.

The grades she was earning at school ceased to be an effort to win their love. Now they became a passport to college. University meant independence, and independence meant freedom. And Rowena discovered something else: she was good at work. She was, in fact, the brightest girl of her year. It was a new revelation. Rowena worked coldly and with complete dedication until she topped the class in everything except art. She had her rivals, Mary-Jane and Rebecca, happy, pretty girls who were much more outgoing and popular than her. They provided a benchmark. They were the ones to beat. IfRowena got only 74 per cent in an exam, she didn’t mind, providing Becky and Mary-Jane got only

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73 per cent. She discovered she would rather come top than get an A. In most cases she did both.

Across the Atlantic, little Topaz Rossi was also disappointing her family. Where Rowena became arrogant, cold and withdrawn, Topaz threw tantrums, burst into tears and demanded attention. Like the unruly mop of red curls she was sprouting - nobody knew where that came from, as Gino remarked-the girl was proving rebellious. She flirted with boys, her poppa hit her. She started to wear makeup, her room made her go to Mass every day for a month. Her morn tried to love her, but she was worn out. And Topaz was so different! She refused to learn to cook! She wanted a career, like she couldn’t find a nice boy, looking like she did! What was wrong with the child, didn’t she know she was a girl?

Topaz burnt with the injustice of it. In truth, she was more like her father than any of his sons; smart, feisty, passionate when angry. She was so-desperate for them to love her. Or at least understand! She was making the best grades in grade school! She was making the best grades in high school!

When Topaz was sixteen, her parents ordered her to quit school and come help in the shop. She refused. She wanted more. Her teachers thought she could get a scholarship to Oxford University, no less. She wanted to make something of herself.

Sullenly, Gino refused his permission. All Topaz’s tears were to no avail. Deep down inside, he knew he was wrong, that if Emiliano had been offered such a chance he would have burst with pride, but he was angry. Why did the Lord give him three ordinary sons, no better than the next man’s, and suddenly this wild little daughter, who made straight As in courses her brothers couldn’t even spell? What business did she have, being brighter than her family?

Gino was jealous for his sons. He was jealous for himself. No, he refused permission. She should not take this exam. At eighteen, she would help her mother.

Topaz felt her tears and rage crystallize into a hard

diamond of fury. So be it, she thought. If her father turned his back on her, she would turn from him. She took the exam in secret and, as she had known they would, they awarded her the bursary.

Two days later she packed up her few decent clothes, kissed her brothers and mother goodbye and got in a cab for JFK. Her father refused her his blessing.

Though her heart was breaking, Topaz hardened her face. Very well. From now on, she was on her own.

For both girls, Oxford was the Way out. In that glorious summer, the beautiful old city nestling in the heart of the soft Cotswold hills represented an opportunity to make a name for yourself. If you were doing it properly, Oxford was a dress rehearsal for real life.

Topaz and Rowena were doing it properly.

‘ Topaz wanted to be a journalist more than anything else in the world. She wanted to talk to everyone and see everything and serve it back up to the public in graceful phrases and snappy paragraphs, underneath a photo of herself and a byline. She would make them laugh, and shock them, and make and break people, and change perceptions. She wanted to give people spectacles, so that when they looked through them they would see life the way s.he did. She would expose, observe, amuse and enlighten. And make a ton of money doing it.

When Topaz arrived in Oxford, she staggered up the staircase to her room, unpacked her clothes and made a cup of coffee. Then she went down to the porters’ lodge at the college entrance, signed her name in the register of new undergraduates, and examined the sixty-odd leaflets stuffed into her pigeonhole from university societies desperate to get freshets - as the new batch of students were traditionally termed - to sign up. One of them was from Cherwell, the student newspaper, advertising for volunteers. Topaz folded the little sheet of paper and tucked it neatly in her purse. She threw everything else away without looking at it.

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Rowena Gordon was just as sure about what she wanted to do, but she knew Oxford wouldn’t give her much help with it. She wanted to go into the record business. Over her last two years at school, Rowena, the icy blonde who was famous for never even looking at a boy, discovered rock and roll. It was the first thing she’d felt moved by. The wild, dark rhythms of the music, the blatantly sexual lyrics, the dangerous looks of the musicians - it scandalized all her friends, but it excited Rowena. Hard rock was a world of its own, a totally different world to the one she was used to. It made her feel strange.

Her parents heard about her passion from the housemis tress, but could hardly believe it. How could their trouble free girl possibly be involved in that kind of trash? So the teacher kept her counsel, disapprovingly. It didn’t do to upset Mr Gordon. But having known Rowena for some years, she sensed in the girl what her parents did not; a disturbirtg sexuality buried in that virgin flesh, in the new sashay of her long, slim legs, and the promise of her soft, plump lips.

Rowena was intelligent, and she kept her ambitions to herself. Music would have to wait until she’d graduated, and meanwhile, there was Oxford to attend to.

Her first term, Rowena, newly up at Christ Church, joined the Oxford Union. It was the most important society in Oxford, and so Rowena Gordon intended to be President.

Three-quarters of all Undergraduates were members of the Union. It owned its own buildings in the centre of the city, and possessed a Cheap bar and cocktail cellar that were always packed out. It was regarded as a nursery for Britain’s political elite - prime ministers and cabinet members from Gladstone to Michael Heseltine had been officers and presidents. The programme of speakers and events for Topaz and Rowena’s first terms had included Henry Kissinger, Jerry Hall, Warren Beatty and the Princess Royal within the space of eight weeks.