New Kid On The Blog

Taken from Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes

To cut the story short, Clodagh was bored with her life and contemplated going back to work. During her shopping trip with Ashling ...

'I am very busy,' Clodagh acknowledged. 'Apart from a couple of hours when I go to the gym, I never have a moment to myself. Mind you, it's all inconsequential stuff; changing clothes that's been puked on or having to watch Barney video after Barney video ... Although,' she said, with a glint in her eyes, 'I've put an end to Barney.'

'Sometimes,' Clodagh sighed, heavily, 'I just wonder, what's the point? My day is filled with ferrying Craig to school, Molly to playgroup, Molly home from playgroup, Craig to his origami lessons ... I'm a slave.'

'But bringing up kids is the most important job anyone can do,' Ashling protested.

'But I never have any adult conversation. Except with other mothers, and then it's all so competitive. You know the sort of thing - "My Andrew is much more violent than your Craig." Craig never hits anyone, while Andrew bloody Higgins is a junior Rambo. It's so humiliating!' She fixed Ashling with a bleak look. 'I see magazine articles about the competitiveness of the workplace, but it's nothing compared to what takes place in the mother-and-toddler group.'

*****

Pushing open the door of the city-centre employment agency, fear and excitement manifested themselves in Clodagh's trembling hands. She stopped before a young girl with a pale-haired chignon, whose fresh, apricot-bloom skin was smothered with heavy foundation.

'I have an appointment with Yvonne Hughes.'

The girl stood up. 'Hello,' she said coolly, with surprising confidence. 'I'm Yvonne Hughes.'

'Oh.' Clodagh expected someone a lot older.

Then Yvonne gave her the mother of all firm handshakes, as though she was in training to be a male politician. 'Take a seat.'

Clodagh palmed over her CV, which had got slightly bent in her bag.

'Now let's have a look.' Yvonne had a delicate, very deliberate way with her hands. She kept stroking the CV with the pads of her splayed, child-like fingers, flattening it out, straightening it up, realigning it with the edge of her desk. Then before she turned the page she took a moment to grasp the corner of it between her thumb and forefinger and did a brief frenzy of rubbing just to make sure she hadn't picked up two pages at once. For some reason, this really irritated Clodagh.

'You've been out of the workplace for a long time?' Yvonne said. 'It's ... how many ... over five years.'

'I had a baby. I never intended to stay away so long, but then I had another child, and the time never seemed right until now.' Clodagh defended herself in a rush.

'I ... seeeeeee ...' Yvonne continued to toy with Clodagh's nerves as she studied her career details. 'Since you've left school, you've worked as a hotel booking clerk, receptionist at a sound studio, cashier in a restaurant, filing clerk in a solicitor's office, goods inward for a clothing company, cashier at Dublin zoo, receptionist in an architect's firm and a booking clerk at a travel agent's?' Clodagh had made Ashling put down everything she'd ever done, just to show that she was versatile. You stayed ... three days at Dublin zoo?'

'It was the smell,' Clodagh admitted. 'No matter where I went I could smell the elephant house. I'll never forget it. Even my sandwiches tasted of it ...'

'Your longest stint was at the travel agent's,' Yvonne interrupted. 'You were there for two years?'

'That's right,' Clodagh said, eagerly. Somehow she'd moved forward so that she was sitting on the edge of her chair.

'Were you promoted in that time?'

'Well, no.' Clodagh was taken aback. How could she explain that you could only be promoted to be a supervisor and that everyone both despised and pitied the supervisors.

'Have you done any of the travel-agency exams?'

Clodagh nearly laughed. The very thought! That's why you leave school, isn't it? So that you never have to sit another exam?

Yvonne twiddled her fingers in the air, before bringing each one down separately, to deliberately, hypnotically stroke the page flat again. 'What software did you use there?'

'Ah ...' Clodagh couldn't remember.

'Have you typing and shorthand?'

'Yes.'

'How many words a minute?'

'Oh, I don't know. I just type with my first two fingers,' Clodagh elaborated, 'but I'm very fast. As fast as some people who've done a course.'

Yvonne's child-like eyes narrowed. She was annoyed, although not to the extent that she would have you believe. She was just playing, having fun with the power she had. 'So I take it that you don't actually have any shorthand?'

'Well, I suppose, but I could always ... No,' Clodagh admitted, having run out of energy.

'Have you any basic word-processing skills?'

'Ah, no.'

And even though Yvonne knew the answer, she asked, 'And you're not a graduate?'

'No,' Clodagh admitted, fixing Yvonne with one normal eye and one red-veined one.

'OK.' Yvonne exhaled long-sufferingly, licked a finger and used it to smooth down a ragged corner of the CV. 'Tell me what you read.'

'How do you mean?'

There was a pause, so tiny it barely existed, but Yvonne had created it to convey what a hopeless idiot she thought Clodagh was.

'FT? Time?' Yvonne prompted. She didn't exactly sigh, but she might as well have. Then she added cruelly, 'Bella? Hello!?'

All Clodagh read were interiors magazines. And Cat in the Hat books. And occassional blockbusters about women who set up their own businesses and who didn't have to sit through humiliating interviews such as this one when they wanted a job.

'And I see you count tennis among your interests. Where do you play?'

'Oh, I don't play.' Clodagh gave a near-teenage giggle. 'I mean I like watching it.'

Wimbledon was about to start, there had been lots of pre-transmission publicity on telly.

'And you go to the gym?' Yvonne read. 'Or do you just like watching that too?'

'No, I really go,' Clodagh said, on much more solid ground.

'Although that hardly counts as a hobby, does it?' Yvonne asked. 'That's like saying sleeping is a hobby. Or eating.'

This caught Clodagh on the raw.

Clodagh wavered, then admitted, 'I'm not really. But you've to put something down, don't you?' (When Clodagh and Ashling had finally stopped inventing joke hobbies such as rally driving and devil worship, and had tried to assemble a list of real ones, pickings had been slim.)

'So what are your interests?' Yvonne challenged.

'Ah ...' What were her interests?

'Hobbies, passions, that kind of thing,' Yvonne said impatiently.

Clodagh's mind was frozen. The only thing she could think of was that she liked playing with her split ends, peeling the broken bit along the shaft of the hair, seeing how far up it would go. She could spend hours amusing herself thus. But something stopped her from sharing this with Yvonne. 'You see, I have two children,' she said feebly. 'They take up all my time.'

Yvonne flashed her an if-you-say-so glance. 'How ambitious are you?'

Clodagh recoiled. She wasn't at all ambitious. Ambitious people were weird.

'When working at the travel agent's, what gave you the most job satisfaction?'

Making it through the day, as far as Clodagh remembered. The idea was - and it was the same for all of the girls she worked with - they went in, suspended their real lives for eight hours and poured their energies into enduring the wait.

'Dealing with people?' Yvonne prompted. 'Ironing out glitches? Closing a sale?'

'Getting paid,' Clodagh said, then realized she shouldn't have. The thing was, it had been a very long time since she'd done any kind of interview. She'd forgotten the correct platitudes. And, as far as she remembered, she'd always been interviewed by men before, and they'd been a damn sight nicer that this little cow.

I'm not really interested in working in a travel agent's again,' Clodagh said. 'I wouldn't mind if you got me a job in a ... magazine.'

'You'd like to work in a magazine?' Yvonne pretended she was finding it hard to stifle a smile.

Clodagh nodded cautiously.

'Wouldn't we all, dear?' Yvonne sang.

Clodagh decided she hated her, this poweful, merciless child. Calling her 'dear' when she was half her age.

'What kind of salary did you have in mind?' Yvonne asked, turning the screws.

'I don't ... ah ... I hadn't thought ... What do you think?'

Clodagh handed the last vestiges of her power over to Yvonne.

'It's hard to say. I don't have much to go on. If you'd consider retraining ...'

'Maybe,' Clodagh lied.

'If anything comes up, I'll be in touch.'

They both knew she wouldn't be.

Yvonne accompanied her to the door. It gave Clodagh savage pleasure to see that she was slightly pigeon-toed.

Out on the street, in her hateful, ridiculous, expensive suit, she walked slowly to her car. Her confidence was shattered. This morning had been a terrifying lesson in how old and useless she was. She'd hung all her hopes on a job but, manifestly, the world of work was a too-fast place which she didn't have the skills to belong any more.

Now what was she going to do?