Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (3 page)

It was a glorious October morning, the air crisp and the sky cloudless, the kind of morning which absolutely demands that you don your brand new, bright red trenchcoat and enormous Marc Jacobs sunglasses even though it is only six fifty in the morning and the sun is barely up yet. Although I was unable to wedge myself onto the first two Northern Line trains to arrive at Clapham Common, I was still
ahead of time when the third one arrived and, miraculously, I was actually able to get a seat, on which someone had kindly left a copy of
Metro
, allowing me to catch up on world events before I got to the office.

I was just flicking through the paper reading yet another Cheryl Cole story (the only woman in Britain, Ali once said, who has worse taste in men than I do), when, between Oval and Kennington, the train came to a sudden, shuddering halt. The lights dimmed. They came back up again. The temperature began to rise. I wriggled out of my coat, accidentally elbowing the portly middle-aged lady to my left and provoking an exasperated, exaggerated sigh.

I read
Metro
from cover to cover (Jude’s right, there really isn’t that much of interest in it), including all the horoscopes. ‘
Geminis in love
’, of which Dan is one, ‘
face a turbulent week ahead
’, apparently. While Virgos like me are ‘
going to get their just rewards
’. Sounds ominous. Fourteen minutes later the driver read out an incomprehensible announcement. Probably something about signal failure. It’s usually signal failure. A few minutes after that the train began to move again, lurching forward painfully at walking-while-carrying-heavy-shopping pace.

By the time we made it to Waterloo, where I change to the Waterloo and City line, I was already running late. By some truly amazing feats of contortion (those Yogalates classes at Holmes Place must be paying off) I managed to squeeze myself onto the next carriage, bracing myself against the door and craning my neck
to avoid having my face pressed into the sweaty armpit of the man in front of me. This, part two of a three-part journey to work, is usually the low point.

Part three I like. In fact, I must be the only person I know who actually enjoys their commute, or at least a part of it, to work. I love sitting at the front of the DLR train as it rises up out of the gloom of Bank station into bright sunshine, trundling along above the streets of East London like a particularly slow and not especially frightening roller coaster. I love the view across the water from West India Quay towards the forest of steel and glass towers rising up from the Docklands. I like riding the super-fast lift to the forty-second floor of One Canada Square, the tallest of Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers and home to Hamilton Churchill’s equity trading floor. This is the kind of place I dreamed about working when I was growing up: not that I pictured myself as a PA, obviously – I didn’t really know what I wanted to be. But I knew
where
I wanted to be: I longed to be somewhere like this, somewhere noisy and glamorous and frenetic, a place where important, consequential things happened, a place a long way from suburban Kettering.

The second I went through the doors of our open-plan office, I regretted the choice of bright red trenchcoat that morning. Against a sea of men (and a couple of women) in sombre dark suits I stood out like a beacon. Or a red rag to a bull.

‘What the fuck time do you call this, Cassie?’ he yelled at me before I’d even made it to my desk.
My boss, ladies and gentlemen, the charming Mr Nicholas Hawksworth, fifty-something divorcé, father of two and all-round bastard.

‘It’s ten minutes past eight,’ I said politely, flicking on my computer.

‘Don’t be fucking smart with me,’ he snapped. I was
telling the time
, for God’s sake, how is that being smart?

‘Where the hell is that analyst’s note on Vodafone? It was supposed to be on my desk first thing this morning.’ Well, at least he’d switched from ‘fuck’ to ‘hell’ – it usually meant he was calming down. I followed him into his office.

‘I put it on your desk last night – on the left . . .’ I looked down at his desk. He’d plonked his newspaper down on top of it. ‘It’s under the
FT
,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s no bloody good, is it? Get me a coffee, will you? And when I say I want something on my desk first thing, that’s what I mean. Not the night before, not that afternoon. All right?’

Yes, of course
, I thought as I descended the lift to go to the Caffè Nero round the corner (there’s a Starbucks in the building but for some reason Nicholas won’t drink their coffee),
God forbid I should be too efficient
. The thing is, I am efficient. I’m good at my job. Punctual (well, almost), organised, resourceful and very presentable, I can type one hundred words per minute, draw up elaborate charts in PowerPoint and remember every meeting he’s going to have this week without looking at the diary. And I pick up his dry cleaning. I’m indispensable. He wouldn’t survive a day without me.

Today, though, it felt as if he would happily go the rest of his life without ever laying eyes on me again. There was the lateness issue, the craftily concealed analyst’s note, and then the coffee I got him was insufficiently strong (it’s not as though I make it, for God’s sake) so I had to go back and get another one which was then insufficiently hot. I thought he was going to throw it at me – I kid you not, legend has it he did just that to a previous assistant. I was saved by his mobile ringing, where upon he spent the next ten minutes giving his ex-wife a load of abuse about the fact that his younger son had failed to make the school rugby team. Why exactly that was her fault I couldn’t quite work out. Then he couldn’t get an email to send (my fault, naturally), the dry cleaners had failed to get a mark out of his favourite shirt (why did I insist on taking his clothes to the worst cleaner in London?) and how on earth could he be expected to read the speech I had typed up for him for the analysts’ dinner next Thursday when the font was so ridiculously small? I didn’t bother to point out that it is the same font I have used for every single speech I’ve typed up for him since I came to the company. What would be the use?

The only things he didn’t blame me for were that morning’s one and a half per cent fall on the FTSE and the previous evening’s four–nil drubbing of Chelsea by AC Milan, but these events only darkened his mood further. So when the food and beverage director from the Hempel rang to confirm arrangements for the party and some idiot on switch board put them
through to Nicholas’s direct line I thought he was going to have an aneurysm.

‘In my office, Cavanagh. Now.’

I trailed in, my heart sinking into my shoes.

‘Yes, Nicholas?’

‘I’ve just had a call from the Hempel,’ he said, his voice ominously low and even.

‘Oh, God, why are they calling you? I didn’t give them your number.’

‘I don’t know why they’re fucking calling me. I do know that the price they have quoted for this bloody party tomorrow is nowhere near what we agreed. Nowhere near!’ He was yelling now. The other PA on the floor, Christa Freeman, glanced over nervously. ‘How could you sign this off with out checking with me first?’

‘Nicholas,’ I said, my voice trembling just a little, ‘I know it’s slightly over budget but I did go to a number of places and there were cheaper quotes but they simply weren’t the sort of places that would impress our clients. This is one of the best hotels in London, it has a great reputation . . .’ I was rambling hopelessly. ‘I can show you comparative quotes,’ I said.

‘I honestly don’t have time for that. The markets are in fucking freefall, for Christ’s sake, and you want me to start planning parties? That’s what I asked
you
to do.’ Some of the traders were rubber-necking now. Nicholas’s tantrums are legendary.

‘Nicholas . . . I . . .’

‘You’d better hope that this is a success, Cassie. This
better be the best bloody party we’ve ever thrown. I mean that. This needs to make the
Vanity Fair
Oscars party look dull.’

So, no pressure then.

Back at my desk I went over the party plans again and again. If I’m completely honest, it wasn’t just Nicholas who I was looking to impress. It mattered to me that Dan thought I’d done a good job, too. And while it may sound ridiculous, it mattered to me that all his trader buddies thought I’d done a good job. I have no problem with what I do – I don’t think there’s any shame in being ‘just a PA’, but I often get the sense that his friends see me as, well, a bit ditzy and pointless. Which is completely unfair. I have opinions about world events. I read the news papers. OK, I mostly read
Metro
and occasionally the
Sunday Times
style section, but I can name at least four members of the Cabinet and probably one or two of the Opposition front bench. I can point to Syria on an unmarked map of the world. I might not understand how a derivative works, but neither do they. Not really. They’re just salesmen.

Not that I would ever say that to their faces – a lot of them really do think they’re God’s gift. I remember the outbreak of unbearable smugness in the office when it was revealed, a few months ago, that scientists at Cambridge had discovered that the higher the testosterone level a trader had in the morning, the more money he was likely to make that day. So not only could the day’s most profitable trader crow about how much money he’d made, he could also crow about
having the biggest balls. One night in the pub, I pointed out that studies also linked high levels of testosterone with slow social development in childhood and baldness in adults. That didn’t go down very well.

I really admire what Ali and the other handful of women on the floor do, but I can’t say that I envy them. They have to work seventy-hour weeks in what is sometimes an unbearable environment – the stories you hear about misogyny and bullying in the City are fairly accurate. The pretty girls spend their time fending off unwanted advances and the less pretty girls have to put up with incessant cruel remarks. I am fortunate enough never to have been the object of either – the fact that I’m Dan’s girl friend probably has something to do with it, but it’s also because I’m ‘just a PA’, a person of little consequence and no threat to anyone’s ego.

Today, egos were taking a pounding all over the place. By mid-afternoon the FTSE 100 had fallen by more than a hundred points and the Dow Jones was down nearly half a per cent. The atmosphere in the trading room was fraught, even more so than usual. A lot of the traders, who like to pride themselves on their poker faces, were starting to look very nervous. By the time the London market closed at four, the FTSE had fallen another hundred points and nervousness had given way to what looked a lot like panic. I caught Ali’s eye just after the market closed; she gave a sad little shake of her head. Not a good day.

I didn’t get to speak to Dan, although he did wave half-heartedly from the other side of the floor as he
was heading off out the door. I couldn’t tell at that distance whether his expression was similarly gloomy. But he rang me a little while later from the pub.

‘How’d you make out?’ I asked, with some trepidation.

‘Better than a lot of the guys. Not too bad actually. Turns out my decision to short HBOS was a stroke of genius. You OK? It seemed like Nick was in a foul mood.’

‘You have no idea. You going to be there long? Maybe we could go and get some dinner once I get out of here.’

‘Cass, I really can’t tonight. It turned into a late one last night and I’m shattered. And I want to be on form for your soirée tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you, promise. This weekend, I’m all yours.’

Yeah, about that . . . I couldn’t face telling him that our plans to spend the entire weekend in bed, guzzling champagne and strawberries and generally being debauched, were going to have to be put on hold.

Disappointed that I wasn’t going to see Dan that night, I decided to head home via the DVD place on the high street. I was in the mood for historical romance, preferably involving Rufus Sewell or Orlando Bloom ripping someone’s bodice off. The arrival of Nicholas, brandishing a sheaf of papers, drove such thoughts straight out of my head.

‘Do you know who the chief executive of Private Capital Trust is, Cassie?’ he asked me, perching his not inconsiderably sized arse on the edge of my desk.

‘No, Nicholas,’ I replied, ‘I can’t say that I do.’

‘Well, do you know what he looks like?’

Of course I bloody don’t, you moron, I’ve just told you I don’t know who he is
.

‘No, I don’t, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, you should. When the guests arrive at the party tomorrow I want you standing at the door, looking fetching in some little black dress or other, greeting everyone by name. If you think you can manage it, you might want to add in some small talk, nothing too inane, but don’t overstretch yourself. Here’s the list. Names and photographs, with some brief biographical details. Some of them will be bringing wives, girlfriends and mistresses. Probably not all three at once. Well, hopefully not, anyway. I don’t have
their
names and pictures, obviously, so you’ll just have to try and negotiate that minefield as gracefully as possible. OK? Right, well, have a good evening.’

My heart sank. There were close to two hundred names on the list, the vast majority white, male and somewhere in their forties of fifties. They all looked exactly alike. They all looked like Nicholas.

Several hours later I passed out on the sofa and dreamed that I was on the judging panel of a bizarre beauty pageant in which all the contestants were overweight, ruddy-faced, middle-aged men. The swimsuit portion of the evening was especially painful. Nicholas came second, and I knew that I’d be in for a hard time the next day at work.