In The Garden Of Stones (17 page)

She
pecks a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot to
have your support … and your trust.”

“
Ach, pish.”

“
I mean it, Colin. I know how hard doing this must have been
for you.”

“
You’ll knock ‘em deid wi’oot ma help,” he says. “Dinna
fergit, yer bright, intelligent, talented, and if they dinna tak ye
oan straightway, it’s their loss and they’ll regret it. Now close
yer eyes and repeat what I jest said.”

“
I would, if I knew what it was.” She squares her shoulders
and closes her eyes. “I am bright, intelligent and talented and
I
will
knock them dead, and if they don’t take me on straight
away, they’ll regret it alright … I’ll put their sodding windows
through. How was that?”

Silence.

He has
already gone and she is once more alone in the flat.

First
impressions are formed within the first thirty seconds don’t they
say? For Grace, it takes less than ten, starting the second she
steps from the street and into the reception foyer of Latimer
Associates, Interior Designers of Distinction.

Everything is black and white and angular, the only splash of
colour being a single uranium orange gerbera in a glass
vase.

At the
desk she is welcomed by a middle aged woman wearing a twin set,
pearls, and glasses with wings, like Edna Everage’s younger sister,
and is invited to take a seat.

When
asked if she would like a cup of coffee, Grace says that would be
very nice, thank you, and while the woman totters off to make it,
Grace is up and away, her nosey nature having got the better of
her, and she takes it upon herself to wander through to a brightly
lit space where a small group of people are busy.

One
woman has a selection of shade cards spread out on a table top and
is marking up a printed floor plan of a new office block where she
thinks each colour of paint should go. Another is working her way
through swatches of brightly coloured fabrics, feeling the nap,
then holding the cloth up to the light, checking for
flaws.

In a
corner, a young man stares at his computer screen, face rigid,
expressionless, only his right hand moving as he shifts and clicks
the mouse.

They
work in silence. There is no radio, no music, no chatter, no
motivation whatsoever, and not one of them looks up from their work
to acknowledge her presence.

Grace is
not impressed and is ready to leave before her interview even takes
place, and would have if the woman with the glasses hadn’t been
blocking the exit.

“
There you are!” She looks Grace up and down, eyes lingering
disapprovingly on her shoes, plain Mary Janes for both comfort and
driving, and sniffs. “Ms Latimer will see you now.”

Ms Kaye
Latimer, co-owner and proprietor of the establishment, is a haughty
woman of roughly Grace’s own age, in a stiff pencil skirt, high
heeled strappy sandals, and sporting a typical Torry facelift, her
jet black hair scraped back in a tight bun on the back of her head,
ironing out the tiniest of wrinkles and leaving her face with a
rigid plastic smoothness beyond the best efforts of any
botox.

Her
carefully plucked eyebrows are heaved so far up her forehead that
her face carries an expression of perpetual surprise. The cheeks of
her pale, overly made-up face strain to their angular limit above
the high neck of a starched white blouse, and with her wide red
letterbox of a mouth stretched into a tight smile, she has the look
of a painted clown straight from the circus.

She
offers Grace a scrawny bird-like hand replete with jewelled rings
and scarlet talons too long for practicality, and when they shake
in introduction, a heavy gold charm bracelet at her wrist clanks
like an anchor chain. She then uses the claw to motion for Grace to
take a seat in a nearby bucket chair.

The seat
of supplicants and applicants.

Ms
Latimer lowers herself into the high backed leather chair behind
her über-modern, purely functional black wood and chrome
desk.

There
then follows the preliminaries of introduction, after which Ms
Latimer, begins to talk. Oh how she can talk, obviously in love
with the sound of her own voice.

Before long Grace tunes out Ms Latimer’s droning on about
how wonderful and successful the company is, how they have bucked
the recession while others have folded, and how they are on the up
and up in the cut-throat world of interior design, and lets her
eyes wander from the yammering clown-like visage to the artificial
flower pinned in Ms Latimer’s lapel, and can’t help but think
–
I wonder
if it squirts water,
followed by,
I bet the wheels fall off her car every time she
sounds the horn.

She
swallows down a giggle and wrestles the smile from her lips before
it is fully formed, managing to maintain a facade of rapt
attention.

On and
on Ms Latimer goes, for nearly quarter of an hour, giving Grace the
impression that this is not so much an interview as a sales
pitch.

Finally
they get to the nitty gritty. Ms Latimer scrutinises Grace’s
extensive CV closely, thumbing through the folio of photographs
Grace has included as samples of her previous work. She has
purposely left out all mention of her running her own business.
That was the past and gone now. This is for the future.

With a
nod, Ms Latimer closes the folio and sits back in her
chair.

“
I have to say I am quite impressed with what I’ve seen
here, very impressed,” she says. “In fact, I think you are just
what we are looking for.” She stretches the crimson gash into the
most synthetic smile Grace has ever seen. “And I would be delighted
to be able to invite you to join us here at Latimer Associates. I
see great things in your future, Miss Dove.”

“
It’s very kind of you to say so,” says Grace.

The
simpering smile does not waver. “Do you have any questions you
would like to ask me, although I think we’ve covered everything –
holiday entitlement, dental plan, salary?”

Had she?
Grace hadn’t really been listening.

“
Just one thing,” she says. “Regarding your dress
code.”

Ms
Latimer’s rictus grin twitches at the corners. “What about
it?”

“
I couldn’t help but notice when I came in that everyone
looks so dreadfully … stiff. Actually, they look more like they are
ready to go to court than to do a day’s work. Will I be expected to
toe that particular line, too? I only ask because I don’t wear a
suit well. I’m a casual laid back sort of person and I work best
when I’m comfortable. In my last job, they didn’t care if I turned
up for work in my jammies and slippers, just as long as the work
got done.”

Which
was true. As she had been self employed and worked from home most
days, unless she had to be somewhere that required clothes she
sometimes didn’t bother getting dressed at all.

The
smile drops from Ms Latimer’s face as if she’s been slapped. “We
strive to maintain the highest standards of professionalism at
Latimer Associates, Miss Dove, and those standards extend to our
personal presentation as well–”

“
So the answer to my question is, yes.”

Ms
Latimer juts her chin, stretching her already elongated neck. “We
do insist on a certain standard of dress for all our staff. Women
will wear skirts no more or less than knee length, no revealing
tops, nothing too tight. We expect the men to wear suits and ties.
We do not allow denim of any kind, nor do we permit trainers,
or–”

“
Pink hair? How about tattoos and piercings?”

The very
idea instils a chicken like jerk of the head in the haughty woman.
“Absolutely not!” she exclaims, as if Grace has asked if she ever
enjoyed sexual congress with a cocker spaniel. “They are the
cheapest, most vulgar–!”

“–
expressions of individualism, which is probably
the
most essential
qualification in a successful designer,” Grace finishes for
her.

Ms Latimer pulls her mouth into thin red line. “Latimer
Associates is not about individualism, Miss Dove,” she says
stiffly. “We are a
team
, and our aim is to work as a team to provide a highly
professional service to our clients, the majority of whom are high
status corporates who demand certain–”

“
Standards, yes you said.”

“
Sloppy clothing reflects a sloppy attitude, and therefore a
sloppy mind.”

“
Which you think reflects in sloppy designs.”

“
Of course they do.”

“
But what about a comfortable working environment?” says
Grace. “How can someone let their creative juices flow if they are
being choked off by a too tight tie or underwires digging into
their boobs? How about a little music to jolly things along? Some
pictures on the wall to break up the sterility? A bit of fresh air
wouldn’t go amiss for goodness sake.”

Ms
Latimer’s ice cool attitude withers. “Nobody has ever
complained–”

“
Would they dare?”

Ms
Latimer’s eyebrows strain against the pull of her hair, just enough
for a shallow groove to appear above her nose. “Excuse
me?”

As Grace
has already made her decision - no matter how lucrative the salary,
no way could she ever consider working in such restrictive
conditions under this harridan - she had nothing to lose by stating
her opinion.

“
Let me tell you what I think shall I,
Mizz
Latimer? Firstly, you look and act
like some anally retentive school marm, and it wouldn’t surprise me
at all to find out you are some kind of tight arsed control freak
who wouldn’t know creativity if it jumped up and bit you on your
scrawny botoxed backside–”

“
How dare–”

Grace
stands and gathers up her portfolio and CV. “Your work area is
barren, your workforce is miserable, there’s not a spark of
inspiration or imagination in the place, and if what I’ve seen is
an example of how I’m expected to dress and behave and the
conditions I have to endure every day, you can shove it where the
sun doesn’t shine. You have a nice day now.”

Grace
marches from the room without so much as a backward glance, leaving
Ms Latimer gaping in her wake, into the foyer where another young
woman is sitting primly on the edge of her seat - same Torry
facelift, same clown like expression, same red mouth and stiff
suit, nothing short of a carbon copy of Ms Latimer
herself.

“
You here for the design job?” says Grace.

The
woman nods and offers the same plastic smile. “Yes.”

“
Then I wish you the very best of luck, but I doubt you’ll
need it. From the look of you, you’ll fit right in. Ta
ta.”

She
heaves open the door, sweeps out into the street, and strides along
the pavement towards the nearest coffee shop, her face carrying a
grin so wide it touches both her ears.

Despite
still being unemployed, her boats well and truly burned in that
respect, Grace feels good about herself, filled to bursting with
pride for having stood up for herself and for speaking her
mind.

“
The look on her face,” she chuckles to herself. “Bloody
priceless!”

With her
generosity of spirit overflowing, Grace decides that, for the time
being at least, Latimer Associates' windows will remain
intact.

Grace’s
good mood lasts almost thirty minutes, until the nerves set in and
send it packing. In another half an hour she will face the dreaded
driving lesson and she is not looking forward to it one little
bit.

She
finds herself fingering her mobile phone, in two minds whether to
cancel the lesson or not, and makes herself stop. Instead she
stares at the empty chair at her table in the bright and breezy
Chatterbox Cafe, wishing with every fibre of her being for Colin to
somehow sense her distress and come and sit with her and offer some
words of comfort. Perhaps he could make the decision for
her.

He does
not come, and she is left to finish her lunch of a super large
hazelnut latté and blueberry muffin and make the decision
alone.

She
approaches the A1 School of Motoring with her provisional licence
in her purse, and the coffee and cake swirling about in a churning
stomach.

All the
while her lips silently mouth, “You can do this, you can do this,”
over and again.

It
starts well, and she feels okay while they are in the yard, but all
too soon they are out on the road and she finds herself
overwhelmed.

The
traffic is so much heavier, drivers more impatient and much less
courteous than the last time she made an attempt to learn to drive,
and she spends the rest of her two hour lesson in a state of near
hysteria, praising God in his Heaven for dual controls and an
instructor with the lightning fast reactions to use
them.

When she
is done and they are returned safely to the school’s parking yard,
she hands over the car keys and her tuition fee with trembling
hands. She does not, however, arrange another lesson. Once was
enough for her shattered nerves.