The Life and Loves of a She Devil (13 page)

It was from the same motive, the need to be on the safe side, that Ruth presently suggested to Nurse Hopkins that it would be more comfortable if they slept side by side rather than toe to toe. Ruth could put up with uncovered feet, since summer was coming, and would keep Nurse Hopkins warm enough by simple body heat. Nurse Hopkins agreed. The beds were moved, and there was much cuddling, kissing and sexual experimentation between the two women.

‘Women like us,’ said Nurse Hopkins, singing around the hospital, ‘must learn to stick together. People think because you’re not the same shape as other people you’re not interested in sex, but it isn’t so.’

Sexual activity seemed to have a tonic effect on Nurse Hopkins: her menstrual cycle became regular, her eyes brightened, she lost weight, divested herself of many layers of woollies and moved briskly about the hospital.

When Ruth had worked through Bobbo’s files, and put ‘Z’ firmly and gladly back on its shelf, she had the following conversation with Nurse Hopkins:

‘My dear, don’t you ever get bored here? The same screams and yells day after day; the same manic strugglings; the same injections; the same frog-marches to the quiet cell. Nothing ever happens! For the patients it may be eventful, too eventful even: for us it is not.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Nurse Hopkins.

‘Out there in the world,’ said Ruth, ‘everything is possible and exciting. We can be different women: we can tap our own energies and the energies of women like us — women shut away in homes performing sometimes menial tasks, sometimes graceful women trapped by love and duty into lives they never meant, and driven by necessity into jobs they loathe and which slowly kill them. We can get out there into the exciting world of business, of money and profit and loss, and help them too —’

‘I thought all that was supposed to be very boring,’ said Nurse Hopkins.

‘That is just a tale put about by men to keep the women out of it,’ said Ruth. ‘And there waiting too is that other world of power — of judges and priests and doctors, the ones who tell the women what to do and how to think — that’s a wonderful world as well. When ideas and power go hand in hand — I can’t tell you how exciting they find it!’

‘I daresay,’ said Nurse Hopkins, ‘but how do the likes of us get into it?’

Ruth whispered into Nurse Hopkins’s ear.

‘But that would take money,’ said Nurse Hopkins.

‘Exactly,’ said Ruth.

The farewell party for the two nurses was gratifying; tears and laughter flowed free, and wine was rather rashly offered to the patients. A general over-excitement throughout the hospital kept the ETT busy, and Nurse Hopkins’s replacement, a Haitian lady, knelt on a patient so hard that she broke a rib; but the other members of the team thought that no bad thing. If their arrival was feared, rather than looked forward to, they might have to work less hard.

Ruth and Nurse Hopkins found empty office premises down at the far end of Park Avenue, where those at the top end seldom go, for here the tall new gracious towers give way to shabby buildings, and the street narrows and is lined not by the awnings of smart restaurants, but by garbage bags piled high against dirty shop fronts. The telephone exchange is the same, however, at both ends of the avenue, so callers cannot tell whether they are speaking to the rich end or the sleazy end. Here, with Nurse Hopkins’s money, Ruth started the Vesta Rose Employment Agency.

The agency specialised in finding secretarial work for women coming back into the labour market — either from choice or through necessity — women who had good skills, but lacked worldly confidence after years of domesticity. Those who signed on with the Vesta Rose Agency would receive retraining in secretarial skills and what Ruth called ‘assertiveness training’. The agency also organised crèche facilities for the babies and young children of those on its books, and a shopping and delivery service for their convenience, so that workers did not have to shop in their lunch hours, but were able to rest, as male workers are expected to do, and even go home on the bus unencumbered by shopping bags. For these privileges they paid dearly, but were pleased to do so.

Nurse Hopkins ran the crèche on the top floor of the agency building, and if from time to time she used tranquillisers on the more obstreperous children, she was at least trained and qualified to do so, and knew what side-effects to look out for. She and Ruth shared an apartment a block away from the agency.

‘Wherever you go,’ said Nurse Hopkins, ‘I will follow. I have never been so happy in my life.’

Within a month or so of its opening the Vesta Rose was functioning efficiently and was even in profit. The women on its books — and they emerged out of the suburbs on bus and train by the hundreds — were grateful, patient, responsible and hardworking; and for the most part, after a little training by Ruth, regarded office work as simplicity itself; as should anyone who has dealt daily with the intricacies of sibling rivalry and the subtleties of marital accord, or discord. Vesta Roses, as they came to be called, were soon in great demand by employers throughout the city; the agency even enjoyed a little fame; it was held up as a success story; an example to the weak-willed and complaining, what women could do if they really tried, if they hadn’t been fortunate enough to marry well! Vesta Rose herself remained elusive, and although she was prepared to give an occasional telephone interview to the press, she would never appear in person, nor permit herself to be photographed. Nurse Hopkins did all that part of it, and did it very well.

‘You see!’ said Ruth, ‘how little need there was to hide yourself away from the world.’

‘But I needed you,’ said Nurse Hopkins, ‘before I could do it People aren’t meant to be on their own.’

Within six months Ruth had placed typists, secretaries, bookkeepers and catering staff in most spheres of city life. Clients appreciated her guarantee to replace unsatisfactory staff at two hours’ notice but seldom had to make use of it, so dutiful and grateful were this new breed of Vesta Roses. The agency took only five per cent of their wages, plus additional charges for child-minding, shopping — and, as time went on — a laundry and dry-cleaning service. There was no suggestion that they should claim their rights as Women with an upper case ‘W’, and insist that their menfolk take an equal share in child-minding and household chores — merely an understanding that this end, though laudable, was for most women too remote to be attainable, and that in the meantime practical help was essential, if the woman was to continue with her traditional role of homemaker and also earn. Their husbands would come home from work, dinner would be set before them, clean shirts laid out for them, the television set to the programme of their choice, and the flow of the household continue as it had always done. That way contentment lay, if not justice, and the turning of the man to the woman in the peace of the marital bed, and her to him, was perhaps all the compensation required for the evident injustices of married life in the modern world.

Every week, when her staff arrived to take their wages, minus five per cent — or sometimes as much as fifty per cent if they had made use of all the agency services — Ruth would chat with them, one by one; discuss their troubles, try to solve them: find out a little, or sometimes a lot, if she was interested, about the firms they worked for. Sometimes she would ask for a few discreet services which they were happy enough to fulfil, and which could reduce the commission payable quite substantially.

Ruth had to wait eight months before someone rang from Bobbo’s office. She used the time to start what banks call a ‘little healthy movement’ in the joint account which she and Bobbo had once enjoyed, until his removal of all but a few cents of the funds therein shortly before the burning of the matrimonial home, and which had lain quiescent since. That is, she paid in, sometimes by cheque, by post, and sometimes in cash, and in person, a hundred dollars here, a thousand dollars there, out of funds legitimately hers and raised from the Vesta Rose business, and would on occasion withdraw twenty dollars here, fifty there, in cash or by cheque, using Bobbo’s name. Once she withdrew two thousand dollars from Bobbo’s deposit account, signing in his name, and paid it into the joint account; that required further nocturnal visits to Bobbo’s office, and more work with Tipp-Ex when his three-monthly bank statements came through. However, the office junior at the bank was a pleasant young woman, Olga, from the Vesta Rose Agency, who had an autistic child in the crèche cared for by Nurse Hopkins, and so was anxious enough to be helpful: it was she who moved Bobbo’s current account statement card from the once-monthly section to the three-monthly, thus saving Ruth considerable work and anxiety. It was Olga, also, who ensured that the joint account statements were simply lost from the post and never reached Bobbo.

When Bobbo’s office rang the agency it was to require the services of two reliable, well-qualified women — a part-time secretary for Wednesdays, and a girl to help out on Mondays and Fridays — days spent by Bobbo at the High Tower. Could the Vesta Rose Agency, with its reputation for reliability, help?

Of course! Ruth sent Elsie Flower for the Wednesday job. Elsie was little and sweet and, in looks, rather similar to Mary Fisher. She had little hands which flew over the typewriter, and her neck bent prettily over the machine. She bowed her neck as she bowed her mind, as if for ever expecting some not altogether unpleasant blow to fall. She was bored with her husband — she had told Ruth so. She was in the mood for adventure. Ruth thought Elsie would do well enough for Bobbo.

For the Monday and Friday job, Ruth sent Marlene Fagin. Marlene had four teenage sons by three different fathers, all disappeared, and so was particularly grateful for the agency’s shopping and delivery service. The sheer weight of food for five — and they were particularly fond of Coca-Cola, which is a heavy substance to carry about in quantity — had exhausted her as no office work ever could. She was perfectly prepared to render whatever small book-keeping adjustments in Bobbo’s books Ruth required, especially as sometimes Ruth remarked that delivering to the outer suburbs — where Marlene lived — could never be economically sound.

On the first Friday when Elsie came to collect her wages, Ruth asked, ‘And how was your employer?’

‘Saucy,’ said Elsie. ‘And with his lady friend’s photograph looking on!’

‘How saucy?’

‘He put his hand through my hair and said how silky it was.’

‘Did you mind?’

‘Should I have?’ Vesta Roses liked to take instruction from Ruth. It paid. Sometimes she would waive commission altogether.

‘I always think,’ said Ruth, ‘one should meet experience as it comes, and not turn away. Life’s short. The things one regrets, I find, are not the things one did, but the things one didn’t do.’

‘I see,’ said Elsie, gladly. Sometimes all a woman needs is permission.

Marlene reported the following week that Bobbo’s office was bubbling with gossip about Elsie and the boss and that she’d stayed after hours on Wednesday night.

‘I know,’ said Ruth. ‘She’s put in a claim for overtime.’

And so Elsie had, and so she did for the ensuing six weeks, and on the seventh, when she came to collect her wages, she said to Ruth, ‘It’s more than just sex. You’ve no idea how nice he is. How terribly, terribly special!’

‘Is it love?’

Elsie bit her lower lip with little pearly teeth and cast down her blue eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But oh, he’s such a wonderful lover!’

‘What about your husband, Elsie?’

‘I love him,’ said Elsie, ‘but I’m not in love with him. If you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, I do!’ said Ruth.

‘But I don’t know what he feels about me,’ said Elsie.

‘Have you told him — what’s he called, Bobbo? — what you feel?’ asked Ruth.

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ said Elsie. ‘It’s not like that. He’s so, somehow, important.’

‘But so are you,’ said Ruth. ‘Tell him you love him or he may think this is the kind of thing you do all the time. He may not know it’s important to you.’

‘But I don’t want to frighten him off,’ said Elsie.

‘Now, how could telling him the truth do that?’

The next day Bobbo himself rang through and asked for a replacement for Elsie, under the agency guarantee.

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Ruth, in the voice of Vesta Rose, one of extreme gentility and rather high-pitched. ‘Might I ask what the trouble is? Her speeds are excellent. She is very well recommended.’

‘That is as may be,’ said Bobbo, ‘but she is over-emotional. And under the terms of your guarantee, may I remind you, no questions are asked but a replacement provided.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Ruth.

‘Don’t I know your voice from somewhere?’ he enquired.

‘I hardly think so, sir,’ said Ruth.

‘I know what it is,’ he said. ‘You remind me of my mother.’

‘I am glad to hear it, sir,’ she said. ‘Now, if you’d be so kind as to ask Mrs Flower to call in at our office —’

‘She’s gone already,’ said Bobbo, ‘in floods of tears. God knows why. I suppose you don’t have any men on your books?’

‘No, sir.’

‘A pity,’ he said, and rang off.

Elsie came weeping to Ruth. She had told her husband, she said, that she was in love with Bobbo and her husband had said ‘That’s the last straw’ and left. She had told Bobbo what had happened and how much she loved him and he had said ‘But this is blackmail!’ and told her she was fired, that he had no time for histrionics in the office, there was too much work to do.

‘I would have thought,’ said Elsie, ‘you could get on in the world by sleeping with your boss. That you’d get a rise, or extra leave, or promotion or something. But you don’t. You just get fired quicker. I’ve made such a mess of my life.’

‘Life is all lessons,’ said Ruth. ‘The thing to do is to learn by them. I suppose really you’d like to make a new start.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Elsie, who hadn’t until that moment.

‘Somewhere far away, and peaceful, and full of handsome men, like New Zealand.’

‘I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand,’ said Elsie. ‘But how would I ever afford the fare?’