Six Clever Girls Who Became Famous Women by Fiona Farrell

Author:Fiona Farrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143020097
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2010-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Caroline

‘Elizabeth danced merrily at court while her cousin Mary Stuart languished in captivity …’

Being a review of the career of Caroline Jane Carstairs who graduated in 1970, joined Finnerty Jansen Rowe in the summer of 1971, moved upon marriage to Morgan Jeffries and Stanway, was sidelined, near dead and buried, as Braithwaite Salmond restructured and refocused in 1988 but rose again to burst through the glass ceiling to an office on the twelfth floor of Tremayne Prentice where she now sits on the right hand of JT himself at the partners’ meetings on Monday mornings.

From whence she may yet come to judge the quick and the dissolute.

1. Caroline Jane Carstairs is energetic and hardworking.

On Friday morning 22 September Caroline startled one of the cleaners on her way in.

‘Oh,’ said the cleaner looking up at her in the mirror. She wore a red dress patterned with hibiscus and comfy running shoes, her hair was drawn back in a heavy bun, her ears covered in two bright yellow Walkman muffs. She stood holding an aerosol can in one hand and a green handiwipe in the other and Caroline could see herself reflected across her left shoulder: a pale background wraith in cream linen and navy, the two of them caught within one frame by subtle architecturally designed overhead lighting.

‘Excuse me,’ said the wraith.

It was the same woman Caroline passed most mornings on the way in. Usually she was carrying a couple of shopping bags and heading with a heavy steady tread off toward the train station and the long ride home. They’d been caught once on either side of the automatic door, and mimed to one another through the glass. Your swipe or mine? Caroline had smiled at the mime, said, ‘Good morning,’ as they passed. She liked to be on reasonable terms with the staff at whatever level. Not too friendly, not too distant, but the woman had nodded, bent down to gather her bags and walked past.

There was really no point in trying to extend ordinary courtesies to some people.

Lyndsay, who also went to ShapeUp after work, had defended some cleaners who had been laid off following charges of theft. She said it was a terrible life, that typically such families had two jobs or more: the women worked cleaning offices, three hours a day after a 3 a.m. start to get into the city, and some worked night and morning, six till nine at night, four till seven in the morning. And the husband might work during the day and drive a taxi at the weekends. That way, there were no problems with childcare.

‘If they’ve got preschoolers they get by on catnaps and a couple of hours sleep,’ she said. ‘And they never see each other and they earn less than nine dollars an hour. Bloody terrible, isn’t it?’

‘Mmm,’ said Caroline. Steam rose from the spa into the glass dome above their heads.

‘So much for cradle to the grave, eh?’ said Lyndsay.

Lyndsay had been a member of the Socialist Society back at University.

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