Jane felt jaded the following morning despite forcing herself to drink a large glass of water when she got home to dilute the alcohol still in her system. It probably helped, but lying in bed and exchanging texts with Pri till one in the morning definitely didn’t. It had started simply enough; a mutual confirmation they’d both made it safely home. Then they’d drifted into a discussion of favourite books, films and TV shows. It was silly, really, texting like that. Teenage stuff. If they’d talked, the conversation would have been over in ten minutes, but it was fun lying in bed, tapping away in the darkness lit only by the glow of the phone.
‘Morning, Flower,’ Alistair remarked as Jane plopped into her seat with a resigned sigh. ‘Full of the joyous prospect of another day working for Leviathan, I see.’
‘If I kill him, can you dispose of the body?’ Jane said to Barry.
‘No need,’ Barry replied. ‘Just leave him propped up in his chair. He’ll slowly mummify. I doubt anyone will notice the difference.’
‘Oo, someone’s been stirring the bitch’s cauldron this morning.’
‘In fact,’ Barry added, ‘the mummy will probably get an end-of-year bonus.’
Jane laughed then groaned as her computer popped up a reminder. Alistair glanced over. ‘Anything exciting?’
‘Lunch.’
‘You’ve not had morning tea yet.’
‘Lunch with a group of European bankers followed by two hour-long presentations on New Opportunities for International Business. I’m standing in for Ron Jonson.’
‘Well take a doggy bag so you can share the leftover caviar and truffles with us proles.’
‘Share?’ Jane remarked. ‘What on earth does he mean, Barry? The only reference I can find to that word in my banker’s lexicon concerns the stock-market.’
‘It’s a quaint, old-fashioned custom that went out of favour back in the seventies,’ Barry said.
‘Hey, do you know what the collective noun for a gathering of bankers is?’ Alistair asked. ‘It’s “wunch”.’
Jane and Barry looked at him blankly.
‘A wunch of bankers. Get it?’
*
Lunch with a wunch, Jane thought. Almost all of them men, impeccably attired and immaculately groomed. The sole exception, apart from a handful of PAs hovering at the periphery, was the delegate from a German bank. Eleanor Hahn was in her mid-fifties, wore a pantsuit, and had close-cropped blonde hair. She spoke loudly in a forthright manner and had a steely handshake. ‘Can we expect you to become a regular at our meetings, Ms Child?’
‘That rather depends on Mr Jonson’s recovery,’ Jane said.
‘There, the wrong attitude right away,’ Hahn took her elbow and steered her to one side. She dropped her voice. Hardly sotto voce; more like a normal speaking tone. ‘Your predecessor was not exactly ...’ she paused, considering the distant buffet with steel grey eyes, ‘... what you might call a live wire. In fact, for someone so apparently uninvolved in the role, it surprised me he was able to maintain it.
‘So, you have an opportunity to push aside a feckless man and make your mark upon the world. How to do this, you are wondering? How has Eleanor Hahn done this? By being like them, only more so. If they are tough, I am tougher. If they are ruthless, I am merciless. This is the only way to command respect.’
She sniffed and looked Jane up and down. ‘You have a prettiness of face and figure. That is a disadvantage. It is a distraction. They will favour you if you smile at them, but all the while they are thinking only of the conquest. No woman can sleep her way to the top and remain there.
‘So, the hair: cut, please, short, like this.’ She ran a hand over her own wiry crop. ‘The makeup, never, or they will think you are trying to please. Also the skirt: never. Pantsuit only. Loose, not tight. The bra to flatten, not enhance.’ She nodded curtly, happy with her advice, then left Jane with a summary of her wisdom. ‘Dress like them, act like them, think like them, and they will welcome you to their ranks, like Eleanor Hahn.’
Jane watched her march away to greet a Norwegian colleague, thinking that if she was invited to the next gathering she should wear a teddy and slippers and adopt a little-girl-lost pout just to be unlike Eleanor Hahn. If that was what it took, if it was all about image and pretence and subsuming who you really were, she didn’t want to pay the price. She’d rather chat with the PAs. They at least seemed like real people.
Still, it was an interesting encounter. She’d wondered herself what Ron Jonson did all day and how he’d managed to keep his job. The more she eased herself into the role, the more she came to realise how little there was to it – and how much of the work she and others had been doing for him.
The presentations, if possible, were even drier than their titles, and the subject matter could have been assimilated with a five-minute glance through their PowerPoint slides. Nevertheless, the presenters were warmly applauded and congratulated as trays of drinks appeared from the wings. Jane took a flute of orange juice for herself, downed it quickly, made her excuses and left, receiving an approving nod from Eleanor Hahn as she did so.
There was no shortage of taxis outside the Dorchester. A doorman in green livery summoned one and held the door for her, tipping a hand to his gold-braided hat as it drove away. She gave the driver the address and settled back. The Tube would have been quicker, but this was on expenses.
Twelve years ago, when Jane first joined Bartley’s as a graduate trainee, her Aunt Daisy – not a real aunt, a neighbour and friend of her mother’s, but Jane had grown up calling her auntie – tut-tutted and shook her head. ‘Banks! They’re all dead men’s shoes, them places. The only way you get ahead is if the fella in front of you keels over.’ Something Eleanor Hahn had apparently been ready for with her close-cropped hair and pantsuits.
As the taxi ground its way through the traffic on Victoria Embankment, Jane found herself half-hoping Ron Jonson would make a speedy recovery.