Venus Envy (2 page)

‘You’re late,’ the receptionist said coolly when I burst through the brass doors into a huge marble fantasy from Wall Street.

I panted and dripped in front of her. Three coats of Sure antiperspirant had, despite all its promises, let me down. However, in this dress the odds were stacked

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against it. My reflection in the dark glass behind her desk was red faced and sweating. My lipstick had already vanished and my under-eye concealer was glowing white like those sunblock streaks on Aussie cricketers.

‘Sorry, it was the traffic and the—’

‘We work to quite a tight schedule here, Miss Wilde,’ the receptionist said nastily. ‘You’ll be reporting to Jenny, Mr Mahon’s first assistant. Her office is on the fourth floor directly you step out of the lifts.’

‘Thank you,’ I muttered. I strode towards the lifts

purposefully. Grace, Alex, grace and strength.

‘Oh, and Miss Wilde?’

‘You can call me Alex,’ I Said kindly. Ha, ha, score

,one to me, snotty cow.

‘Very well - you’ve got a ladder in your tights, Alex.’ The lift doors hissed softly shut in front of my mortified face. The mirrored walls confirmed this was not just sadistic wishful thinking. Yes, Jacob could have climbed to paradise up the ladder in my new Fo, gal tights.

When the doors opened again I was stumbling bare

feet back into teetering heels, one sweaty pair of ripped tights clutched feebly in my left hand.

A severe and impeccable matron in a Jaeger suit was

standing in front of me with a thunderous frown.

‘I am Jenny Robins,’ she said crisply.

‘Hi.’ Desperately I looked round for somewhere to

stuff the tights, but there wasn’t anywhere, so I dropped them into my handbag. ‘I’m Alex.’

Over the next two hours I learned several things, x) I hate typing, z) I can’t spell - ‘For goodness’ sake, Alexandra, excited, not exited. Professor has one “f “, I thought it said on your CV that you have a degree?’

3) Where the coffee machine is located; also, the stain freshly spilled coffee makes all over light beige c.arpet.

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‘Clumsyt Clumsyl’ Jenny shrieked, when she rounded the corner and saw me on my hands and knees trying to wash the carpet in Fairy Liquid and Evian from the fridge.

‘Sorry.’ I felt near to tears. I was sweating buckets in my horrible dress, I was spilling things and ripping things like Mr Bean in a skirt. I couldn’t even type well enough to be a secretary’s secretary, and now I had spilled espresso on their carpet at the first attempt. ‘It gushed out all boiling—’

‘It’s hot. Coffee is supposed to be hot,’ snapped Jenny, ‘and what on earth are you doing? That’ll make it a thousand times worse.., and Mr Mahon’s Evian! Who told you you could open the executive fridge? Do you know how particular he is about his water? Reallyl’

I rocked back on my heels. In the gleaming front surface of the executive fridge I saw my own flushed face, with light-brown tendrils of fringe plastered wetly to my forehead.

At that moment the door opposite us swung open and a procession of heavyset bean-counters in Savile Row suits marched out. Most of them gave me amused or disapproving stares as they stormed past, mouthing off about ‘equity derivatives’ and ‘December 5os’ and the like. Her face a mask of horror at being so exposed, Jenny yanked me to my feet by the shoulder. She had a.strength that would have done credit to a drill sergeant. Or alternatively, my mother.

As the last of the meeting rounded the end of our corridor, Jenny turned on me with a face that suggested I had just finished the shortest spell of employment Hamilton Kane had ever seen.

‘Alll-exandra,’ she began, my name rolling furiously off her tongue, ‘I must say I have never—’

At that moment the door swung open again. A much younger, much taller man, in a flashy navy suit that

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looked like it came from Alexander McQueen or someone, a man with thick black hair that curled just below his collar in the most engaging manner, a tanned man with incredibly white teeth that were grinning at me in the most friendly way, and a pair of moss-green eyes that were twinkling at me like one of Keisha’s gold watches, propped himself against the doorpost and extended me a firm hand.

‘Miss Alexandra Wilde, is it-yourself?’ he asked merrily. His accent was as soft as Irish mist. I thought Celtic gold harps, I thought babbling brooks, I thought glossy-coated Red Setters bounding across Galway moors, or something like that. I also thought, my mascara is running and I want to kill myself.

‘It is. Yes,’ I stammered, and seeing Jenny’s thunderous face, I added, ‘uh, yes, sir.’

‘Call me that, and I’ll be turning around to look for my father. Mr Mahon, if we’re being formal. But Seamus, otherwise.’

‘OK,’ I said miserably.

.’Mr Mahon,’ said Jenny, her face tight with emotion, ‘I’m afraid Alexandra has—’

‘Ah yes, I see the problem,’ Seamus soothed her. ‘What a bother that infernal machine is. The coffee comes out far too hot. Anyway, the cleaners’ll get that out, Jenny, so I’ll tell you what, you grab a mat to lay over the stain and that’ll be grand.’

I must have looked like a death-chamber prisoner hearing the phone ring,, bbcause Seamus took one look at my face and coughed gently.

‘And Jenny, do you have those letters done?’ ‘Well.’ Jenny went back to her desk and picked up one neat sheaf. ‘These are the ones I typed for you, the priorities.’

‘Thanks.’ He flicked through them rather intently for such a laid-back-looking guy. ‘And the recruitment offers?’

here was a pregnant pause. It might actually have been expecting quads.

‘Those,’ Jenny said heavily, ‘were being typed by Alexandra.’

She grabbed a much smaller, second sheaf of letters. Covered with angry scrawls in green biro.

Seamus flicked through my attempt at gainful employment. His lip twitched.

‘Jenny, you’re an angel, so you are,’ he said, though unless he was thinking of the Angel of Death I’d like to know which one he had in mind. ‘Why don’t you get cracking on the Mandarin spreadsheets, while I try and explain all the madhouse rules to Alex, seeing as she’s new to the team?’

I breathed out a deep sigh of relief. I still had my job. My father would not scream at me. My mother would not have o cancel her golf sessions with Fiona Kane.

Then I felt a wave of depression seize me as I realised what I was being grateful for these days.

‘Very well, Mr Mahon,’ Jenny snapped, and slunk back to her desk like a Dobermann cheated of its dinner.

‘Come in, Alex. If it’s OK that I call you Alex?’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, wishing tremendously that he would give me five minutes to repair my face.

No sooner was this thought formed in my head than my boss stopped again, regarded me considerately and said, ‘Only first you’ll be wanting to dab that coffee off that lovely dress.’

I fled to the ladies’ in one second flat, to face the greatest disaster area outside of central Bosnia. My runny mascara was giving me an ‘eighties Goth vibe, my blusher had sweated off and my teeth were dotted with lipstick, from all that chewing my mouth in naked terror I’d been doing. Hurriedly I washed my face clean of all make-up products; better to go bare faced than court disaster twice. Then I tried to dry my

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stick); forehead with paper hand-towels. I thought about sticking my head under the hand-dryer to try for a quick blow-dry effect, but with my luck today Jenny would just walk right in and have a heart attack.

I gazed at the results. Neater, but still horrible. Black jersey dress and naked face reminiscent of a scrubbed, chubby schoolgirl. I yanked my clammy hair back from my forehead and tied it into a viciously tight ponytail that yanked up the skin at the corners of my temples.

Let’s face it, I was just not cut out to be a corporate slave.

I ran back to Mr Mahon’s office before he got up a search party for me. It was a daunting office, with 1floor-to-ceiling windows affording a magnificent view over the City of London. Various domes and spires peered serenely out behind New York-style skyscrapers. The office itself was peppered with enough computers to launch a NASA satellite and covered with enough Bokara rugs to please an Arab Sheikh. I wondered idly whether if I breathed enough of the air in here, would my own tiny bank balance grow any bigger.) The flowers on his desk were the kind of twiggy, leafy affair that says ‘designer florist’; the Wall Street Journal, probably flown in that morning, rested comfortably on his antique mahogany desk …

I gulped. My mistyped letters were laid out before Mr Designer Everything of the twinkly eyes. I was being weighed in the balance, in this Temple of Mammon, and I knew I was going to be found wanting.

What would Keisha do? Actually, at this point, Keisha would most likely light up a fag without asking, blow a stream of smoke in the boss’s face and then swing her Manolo Blahnik heels up on his desk. Keisha, when she used to be a temp, regularly used to get up from her desk in the middle of the afternoon

without a word to anybody and go and get her nails done. Nobody fired her, but then again, nobody would dare. Whereas I was the working world’s equivalent of the seven-stone weakling on the bodybuilders’ beach. I sort of begged to be reamed out.

Seamus Mahon leaned forward. I could see he was shocked by the web of green ink that represented my first morning on the job.

‘Alex Wilde,’ he said, ‘now would that be any relation to Kim?’

‘Sorry?’ I asked blankly.

‘Sure, you know her, so. “We’re the kids in America,”’ he whistled tunelessly. ‘You look a little like her.’

Great. Now I look like a frumpy washed-up early ‘eighties i.con. Why not just say I look like Roseanne Barr and have done with it.

‘No,’ I said, as coldly as I could, but it washed right over Seamus Mahon.

‘These letters, Alex. They’re not actually spelled right.’

I blushed with mortification.

‘But that doesn’t really matter.’ His Irish lilt was creamy as the head on a pint of Guinness. ‘If you press -‘ he showed me a simple little thing on his keyboard - ‘it’ll check the spelling for you. And correct it. It’s wonderful, what they can do with technology these days.’

‘Oh,’ I said weakly. Why, why hadn’t Jenny told me that? My boss was clearly some kind of Nazi, longing for me to screw up so she could have this delectable creature all to herself.

Although, looking the way I did, the field was effectively clear for her anyway. I might actually have predicted something like this. I looked so fat, and so ugly with my unprotected face and no tights and

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clammy hair, I was bound to meet the most devastating man I’d ever laid eyes on. In fact, I’ll tell you the surest way I know to flood your life with desirable men. Put on ten pounds, break out in spots and/or varicose veins, and have a hair-colouring disaster that leaves you with green streaks round your ears. Then Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford lookalikes will suddenly appear magically from every corner, like the mice

coming out of the mouse organ .in Bagpuss.

‘I’ll remember that,’ I said.

‘How about I call one of the computer boys and ask

him to help you round all the shortcuts? Jack?’ he asked, punching up a few numbers on his space-phone. ‘Could you come up here and talk to my new assistant? Show her the ropes, like.’ He listened to the other end whilst smiling engagingly at me, then laughed. ‘That’s right enough, there, Jack. I’d say she is. Now you take very good care of her, you hear? She’s new. And she’s Fiona Kane’s pet project.’

He hung up. Embarrassment flamed through me.. G,reat, just great, so everybody knew I was here

because of the spurious golf-club connection.

‘Thanks, Mr Mahon.’

‘I thought we said Seamus,’ he reproved me, smiling kindly at me as I fled his office.

And that was it. High-powered suits and skirts ran

back and forwards through our corridor all day, paying homage to Jenny as she ushered them into the inner sanctum. Clearly Danny Boy was a very powerful, sought-after whizz-kid type. His clout was proven by.the nerd who rushed up the stairs and was waiting by my cubbyhole the second I got back, explaining all the word-processing functions to me in patient, idiot proof language. I tried hard to pay attention, I really did. I mean, if you had a boss like Seamus Mahon, you didn’t want to be letting him down.

At six o’clock the door to the inner sanctum was still

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firmly closed. I wouldn’t be getting any more of his time tonight.

‘You can go home,’ Jenny said acridly, ‘and I expect to see you here in good time tomorrow and I expect you to be appropriately dressed. With tights.., and,’ she added in a low hiss, leaning forward, ‘behave properly around Mr Mahon.’

‘He’s wonderful, isn’t he?’ I said dreamily.

The look on the old bag’s face suggested she’d just sucked ten unripe lemons.

‘Well,’ she said heavily, ‘Mrs Mahon is a wonderful lady. Such style. Such poise. Good night, Alexandra.’

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Married. Of course he was married. My heart, I’m afraid to say, plummeted right into my boots. I know that’s pathetic, after five minutes’ acquaintance, but I really felt like I was being robbed. Wouldn’t all the scripts say Seamus should be mine? I mean, when you really feel you’ve.hit bottom. When you’re chained to ,the rock and the fire-breathing dragon is crawling round the next hill - or in my case, when you’ve given up any pretence at talent and you’re reduced to taking jobs from your mum and dad, and moving into a flat with your annoying, incredibly beautiful little sister and the white knight turns up on his charger to rescue yo.u, isn’t it fairly understood that the said white. knight should be single?

You couldn’t have hit any more bottom than me that Monday morning. Well, I suppose you could, technically, you could be selling the Big, Issue outside pubs in Camden and carrying a can of Tennant’s and a filthy dog on a string. But to be honest, I felt like I was at bottom. With the typing, and the lateness, and the dress, and the mascara, and the tights, and the coffee. And the Evian. And then to have Seamus so soothing, putting a mat over the stain and protecting me from Jenny and so forth. Plus, being all flash and successful. With those eyes. And that voice.