Maybe the Horse Will Talk by Elliot Perlman

Author:Elliot Perlman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143781479
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

VIII

Jessica was simultaneously compelled to continue reading and repelled by what she was reading. The compulsion came from a sense of guilt. She was employed in the one department in the company with a heavy concentration of women, even a female boss, the one department with the explicit mandate to look after the wellbeing of staff. She had gone into the office day after day, week after week, half suspecting that this kind of thing was going on but never knowing the specifics and never making it her business to ask. As she had explained to Maserov, the whole culture there was one of don’t ask, don’t tell.

She felt too small, too powerless, to ask the people who also felt too small and too powerless to tell. She was a young woman, Indian too, in a white males’ world, almost as likely as any of the female support staff to be a victim. Almost. It was the almost that got stuck in her throat. She had got herself an education which she had used to gain a marginally less vulnerable position. When she interviewed and was offered the job she hadn’t known that what she would be doing was serving the interests of the people who allowed her to be slightly safer than the less-educated women at the front line. That, and ensuring there was sufficient alfalfa on the sandwich trays that were served at lunch during in-house seminars.

As she lay on her bed in her apartment reading the affidavits, she felt that the company’s regular salary payments into her bank account were in fact dependent on her not voicing her concern with its treatment of women and she started to wonder in what sense she was complicit with its underlying culture. It was a culture she put on a brave face to negotiate every day, right after she applied her make-up in the safe space of her own bathroom. But after reading this, how was she ever going to look at herself in the mirror again? She had been terrified of being in the position in which these women had found themselves but had managed with guile and deft manoeuvring, sometimes deft physical manoeuvring, to avoid the worst that could happen. These women had not been so lucky.

Jessica knew that there were men who, after they loosened their ties at the end of the day, turned their attention to the women who, having groomed themselves first thing that morning after choosing their clothes carefully the night before, had fought their way to the Torrent Industries tower through impatient morning crowds clutching coats and bags, fingers tight around the dignity they brought from home for pay that would have left the pack cold. It was an attention these women, these stress balls for the men they worked for, could each feel in the air. In a touch, a look, a remark above the chatter of keyboards they would hear the subliminal sounds only feral dogs make. And soon, here and there, the teeth would emerge from behind a rapidly vanishing dissembled smile.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.