An Authentic Life, page 25
“That’s honest, true enough,” Joanna laughs, knowing that this is absolutely what would have happened. They were too young and there were too many pressures on them. “And you went on and sowed your wild oats right up till the night club in Edinburgh.”
“Ouch. A lapse, that’s all,” Annie laughed. “Jemmy and I are doing fine. You won’t say anything if you ever meet her, will you?” Annie is suddenly worried over her recent nightclub incident.
Joanna thinks she has heard this before recently. The last time it was Wendy who did not want Bobby to be told about her affair with husband Jerry. Why is dishonesty so easy? But no, she knows that she will not say anything, not simply because the likelihood of meeting Jemmy is remote but because she is used to holding other people’s confidences and just accepts that the way they tell or do not tell the truth is for them to judge. But she wants to make the point.
“I think it’s best to be open about what we do. Do you not think it would be better to come clean with Jemmy?”
“There’s only one other time that I did not tell the truth,” Annie reflected aloud. “I regret that now and I suppose I regret my Edinburgh fling and not telling Jemmy. You know, that maxim from philosophy that the end never justifies the means may well be true. But it is the safest thing to do, not to tell Jemmy. I live with the consequences of not telling her and knowing that I deceived her. It grinds me down. I actually hate secrets.”
Annie sounds weary, suddenly, and older than her years.
“Then tell her if you hate lying and it weighs on your conscience,” Joanna encourages her. “I bet you find that the earth does not open up and swallow you and that she will accept it if she knows you made a mistake and that it meant nothing. If she has anything about her at all, she will realize how hard it was to come clean and she will respect you for that. Won’t she?”
Annie listens quietly and says that she will think about it. Then Joanna asks,
“What about the other time you lied? Can you sort that?”
“I could but it would not be wise.”
A penny drops somewhere at the back of Joanna’s mind.
“Don’t tell me. All the time you were complaining about Dennis and me, you were actually seeing someone else?”
“Not quite,” Annie stalls.
“But?”
The silence is short lived. Annie wants this out in the open.
“But I had a sort of rebound affair for a few months.”
“After me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s no surprise. What’s the big deal about that? Why did you not say over the years? You knew that I had moved on. There was no reason why you should not have as well.”
“Jo, it was Pip.”
Joanna is silenced. Annie had an affair with Pip, the friend to them both, the woman Moira liked and would not allow near her. Pip and Annie must have had a double rebound thing, Pip from Moira, Annie from Joanna.
“Did Moira know?” Joanna asks, suddenly thinking that Moira, the woman who has kept in touch all these years, and who comforted her when she and Annie split up, has been keeping a secret from her.
It feels like a double betrayal to Joanna as Annie confirms that she told Moira at the time. It is one betrayal that Moira has kept this secret all these years. Annie kept it secret too over all the years. That is the second betrayal.
This should not matter, she thinks to herself as she tries to adjust. It was twenty years and more ago. They were just youngsters, coming to terms with adulthood and sexuality before it was OK to talk about these things. It should not be a big deal to hear this now.
But still, she is shocked and in a muddled way tries to sort out her first thoughts and reactions.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Loyalty to Moira I, suppose. She was adamant at the time that you were not to know, for your sake.”
“You didn’t go to her wedding, did you,” Joanna recalls now. “You were invited weren’t you?”
“My nose was out of joint. It was not that important a thing between Pip and me but it was over and she was also invited to the nuptials. I was not best pleased. And also, I did not want to see you there. I wasn’t ready then to be friends with you. Maybe I didn’t want to look you in the eye over Pip either. Not that I saw that then. But anyway, it was too early.”
“But you kept in touch with Moira?” Joanna probes
“Only after a while, then I had someone else. But it’s very superficial between her and me, Jo. She is always scared that that tight-arsed Malcolm will ask who is on the line when I ring. Talk about running scared. And frankly, I don’t need to be treated like that.”
‘What women will give up for the conventional life’, Joanna thinks. She believes that Moira will do anything to protect her marriage. At least this is what she has always assumed. Joanna thought that he was the ticket to an affluent Sussex life style and that Moira jumped at the opportunity when it came along without a backwards glance. How different that was from how she felt about Stephen. She wonders how many women live like that – choosing a life, or having one chosen for them, of husband and family when their true self, or at least a big part of themselves, lies elsewhere. For those women, the price must be high in emotional terms. Only they will know how the price compares with what they gain in terms of children and social standing.
She was not like that. And neither was Geraldine. No. That was not true. Geraldine had been just like that – only she was deeply ambivalent about her life choice. Would she really have broken free if Anthony had not died? Maybe when Judy left home and married? But she knows that is only speculative. She has to believe that she and Geraldine would have come together whatever their circumstances. And then there is Annie, different again, from both Moira and from herself. Annie would never contemplate life with a man.
She gives in to a terrible temptation to ask what Pip was like in bed. Annie laughs.
“As superficial as you can imagine. Wanting it at the time and off as soon as it was over without a word of acknowledgement. Not the most exciting time of my early years.”
“Serves you right,” Joanna laughs. “You should have known better. Nothing if not rampant, mentally and physically, was Pip at the time.”
“Let’s hope Pip faired well,” Annie quips. Then, she adds, “Sorry. I know she was more your friend than she ever was mine.”
Yes, that’s it. That is why Joanna is so thrown by this relatively minor revelation. It was because Pip was one of their circle of friends, one who claimed unswerving attraction to an indifferent Moira. Joanna and Moira laughed about it, equating it to a latter day schoolgirl crush. Moira had the effect on Joanna of confirming in her mind that her lesbian inclinations were somehow an immature problem to be overcome. Pip and Annie, both prepared to sleep with someone for the sake of it would have confirmed that to Moira.
“If this were not twenty years ago, I’d be pretty put out about it, you know.”
“You would?” Annie feigns surprise.
“Yes. But it is twenty years ago. I just need to do some conversion of my understanding, that’s all.” She knows that she sounds defensive.
The conversation begins to drift and Joanna wants to think in the privacy of her late evening solitude. With one further reminder to Annie that she does like to be called Jo, a reminder that just brings a chuckle over the phone, she promises to think about contacting Geraldine and they say good night.
It all feels so chaotic.
All those years ago, Annie and Pip were two young women playing with emotions and sex. That is how it seems to her as she sits, looking back down the years. But unlike how Annie felt about Pip, Joanna knows that Annie felt strongly about her. Maybe Moira was wise in keeping the truth from her.
Of course, it also protected Moira to keep it quiet. Convention and marriage would shortly remove her from these circles where woman-to-woman attraction was not unusual. She certainly had a set of parents who would have very strongly influenced her away and to the wedding bed. It was quite a wedding reception, Joanna remembers. The parents pushed the boat out with a reception in a hotel with a garden marquee and champagne – the works. Moira’s parents gushed. Moira at least looked the part of the ecstatic bride. Moira was much more under family influences than ever she had been.
As she recalls the wedding eve confidences Moira and she shared that night, Joanna concludes that Moira probably never meant to do more than protect her from Annie’s indiscretion with Pip. It is just curious that she invited both Pip and Annie at all to the wedding. Why did she do that?
As Joanna sits there, she wonders if all these memories are diminishing her feelings for Geraldine. Sitting there in the dark, against the backdrop of those early adult relationships, where such fickle behaviours could and did occur, her time with Geraldine feels somehow devalued. How easy it is to get sucked into the notions of homosexuality as some sort of aberration of immaturity, a view that Moira will hold to this day.
Yet Joanna knows that is not how she experiences this present time. She sorts the cushions on the sofa, preparing to go up to bed. As if looking for a lifebelt to her feelings, she remembers reading somewhere that there is plenty of research to suggest that lesbian women score better than their heterosexual counterparts in psychological ratings such as self-esteem. Tonight, though, Joanna’s self-esteem could accurately be described as being at an all time low.
Chapter 32
And people with such a low level of self-esteem, no matter how temporary it may or not be, do not go off in search of the one person whom they most desperately need to see. Joanna is no exception. She knows that she is spiralling down into devaluing both herself and everything that she and Geraldine have so recently shared. Instead of dwelling on any thoughts of trying to see her, she is putting time in as best she can, counting the hours till it is time to sleep again, as if sleep will come easily, and then finally rising, exhausted, to face another day and another working week.
A tedious process looms ahead in the workplace. Staff appraisal has been running now for several years in the social work department and takes the rather conventional form of the so-called ‘grandparent’ approach. The person being appraised has a formal interview with their line manager, who then agrees a report with them, which in turn is the basis of the worker meeting with the manager’s senior officer. It has the benefit of acting as a kind of check on the worker’s performance as well as on the supervisory relationship the manager brings to the individual.
Joanna hates it. To her eye, it is a nit-picking review of her work over the last year. It is too crude an instrument to truly measure the nuances of the work she does with troubled patients and their relatives. And it is not as if she is some youngster who needs to be monitored. She is good at what she does and she knows it. Even Angela who is so modest in her praise knows it. Joanna is all but self-programming and has been for years. If she needs Angela’s help, it is in the allocation of her workload and in the accessing of resources for her clients whilst she gets on with the next assessment and gives the next piece of support.
But Joanna is like every other employee and has no choice. Angela and she go through with it each year, Angela structuring the interview and then the report around the range of undisputed competencies that Joanna has and giving her a ranking of ninety percent in overall performance. No one gets more. That would be beyond the unspoken limits of the protocol. And they both have the common sense to go about the task with good grace. In the section where the individual’s career potential is discussed, they know that Joanna has no aspirations for management and this is set down accordingly.
At the end of her annual session with Angela, her supervisor leans back in her chair and looks at Joanna, long and hard.
“Well, now, there is just one more thing.”
Joanna waits, unperturbed by this new departure from the usual pattern. She sits and waits, knowing that Angela will be enjoying this moment of using the power she holds by virtue of the as yet unknown communication.
“It’s to be announced in the course of the next few days. I shall be retiring in a month or so.”
Joanna knows that it will be happening soon, but has put Angela’s age as nearer fifty-six or so and not, as is obvious now, almost sixty.
“Angela, this is a surprise. How do you feel about that?” They wince at the same time at this bog-standard social worker’s question. But Angela has the good grace to reply in serious vein.
“On the whole, I’m looking forward to it now. I suppose I’ll find plenty to do. There’s my great nephews to see and, who knows, I might just do that round the world cruise,” She says doubtfully.
Each of them knows that this idea of a cruise is unlikely. Angela would be lost in the sophistication of cruise ship dinners. More likely, she might go off with her ornithologist’s book to Mull or Skye for a month.
“But the reason for mentioning this is to think with you whether you would be interested in applying for my job. It’s not the soulless work you sometimes seem to think it is, you know,” she adds as she sees Joanna beginning to automatically shake her head. “I do hope that you will consider this seriously, Joanna. The department could do with your talents.”
“I suppose you are saying this to all the team members?” Joanna tries to quip, knowing that it would be quite out of character for Angela to favour any member of the team in particular.
“I am saying it to you and to one other. Please do not get me wrong. The job will go to external advert and I will not be involved in the appointments. I just want to think that the people in the team who are well capable of doing this job will consider it. Will you?”
“I really don’t think so, Angela, though I am pleased to be asked. I’m not sure that I could grovel to those doctors who see social work as some sort of pointless placebo to the irreparable damage that some people suffer in life. You deal with such nihilistic attitudes, such arrogance and such conceit on a day-to-day basis. I just could not put up with some of the stuff that you do.”
Joanna is surprised to hear herself speaking with such vehemence. In her everyday work, she has learned how to work with most of the medical professionals and how to avoid the minority she has just described. And it is clear from the surprise on Angela’s face that she is equally taken aback.
“I didn’t know you had such strong feelings. And if you want to change attitudes, you need to be in a position to do so. Anyway, that’s always been my philosophy.”
“I suppose so,” Joanna concedes, thinking for the first time about the work that the team manager’s role would entail.
Could she do it and if she did, would she like it? It was never really something she contemplated before now. It is so many years since she was a manager that she has become accustomed to her direct work with patients. And then, what if she ended up not applying and some youngster just barely out of college applied? Where would she and the other team members be then? Perhaps this is not such a way out idea after all and perhaps, now that she has sourced just what it is that she dislikes about Angela’s role, she might just be able to do something about it. Why not give it a try?
“I never thought that I’d hear myself say this, Angela, but I’ll certainly give it some thought.”
Angela smiles, her work in this session over.
“Fine. I’ll write the apposite words in the section about career potential and we can pass the report up the line to HQ. Your appointment with John Barnes is Thursday, isn’t it?”
Courtesies about Angela’s work as the team manager seen to, Joanna gets up to leave and to return to her desk. As she reaches the door, Angela says one last thing.
“By the way, how are you getting on without Geraldine Spence’s input? It must be quite different for you.”
Joanna blushes. She knows that she does and she curses silently at doing it.
“Fine. I suppose. It was odd how she moved so quickly, wasn’t it?” She braves turning back round, hand on the door, to look her manager straight in the eye.
“Mm. It was quick, but it was for the best.”
“What do you mean? For the best?”
Angela looks at her.
“I think we both know why, Joanna.”
Joanna just stands there, recalling the conversation in the pub about John in Human Resources and his inferred advice to Geraldine. There is more to this than has been said. Suddenly, she is livid at the thought that there has been some sort of conspiracy to remove Geraldine. But Angela carries on speaking before Joanna gathers her wits and says something about her suspicion.
“Anyhow, do think about applying for the job. It would be a shame not to have a clear run at it, wouldn’t it?”
Joanna leaves before she says something she might regret. She has always hated meta-communication and the way you are left working out the real message behind whatever the words and the looks on the other person’s face tell you. But this time it seems pretty clear. Geraldine and her relationship were known about and it was ‘best’ taken out of the equation. Did Angela have a hand in this? And if she did, was it to clear the way for Joanna to be the boss of the team? Or is the suggestion that she should apply for the job the sweetener to the bitter pill of Geraldine’s transfer?
And, of course, it dawns on her, if she is being put under scrutiny like this, then presumably Geraldine was also. In fact, was Geraldine put under pressure to leave and go to the Royal? If she was, had it as much to do with them as a couple as about the official line of financial cuts and service realignments that the Chief Executive’s memo specified? Of course, there was also the report that Geraldine was preparing about resources for the meeting of the Board from which the memo ensued. Did they use Geraldine’s report to sign her own transfer warrant?
Was their relationship a political embarrassment that had to be dealt with? If it were, ‘they’ would have had to act under some pretext or other. The new anti-discrimination regulations would not have allowed management to tackle the two women head on, would they? No authority would start down the road on something that they knew would be so open to challenge.
