Coming Out

Sexual content

11. Knowing Tannhäuser

Nice one, Tanny. He knows nothing of my work situation. My closest work colleague – not a friend – has to be Dianne, my PA. Dee does not count. She no longer works for the company, having, I just learned, jumped ship to the bunch in Baltimore. I assume Greg had something to do with that. Perhaps they are lovers. I can’t blame him. She is the woman all women want to be. I think she could be twenty-two plus twenty-two, heel to buttock. I’m not!

I didn’t provide details of my friction game that evening, nor did I intend to discuss it with a work colleague. I didn’t tell Tannhäuser that. Some things are a woman’s business.

Who knows? It would be great to be able to talk to someone about what is going on inside me. Perhaps I should work on that aspect. I’ll try and involve PA in some very peripheral way in my private life. I’m sure she would appreciate more intimacy at work. She seems to have no friends in the office.

I arrived at work, and much sooner and in more depth than intended, involved PA in my adventures. It was as simple as dropping an invoice on the floor. She dropped it, I bent to pick it up for her, she noticed.

‘Why do you have marker pen on your heel and behind your knee?’

‘And under my butt,’ I corrected her.

‘Show me!’

I looked round; no one in the office apart from we two. I tried to hoist my power skirt. No joy.

‘Find a measuring tape and we can continue in the disabled place,’ I told her.

She rummaged through drawers and arrived a few minutes after me, in trap one, which was the disabled toilet and the largest. I removed my power skirt and she counted the marks.

‘So – what’s it all about?’

‘I have a lover,’ I started to explain. She got excited at some gossip, but I ignored her hopping from one foot to another. ‘And he calls me Venus, and Venus as a goddess should measure twenty-two inches from heel to knee and another twenty-two for knee to buttock. It’s in Beardsley – and my lover – he wants to know if I fit the description.’

I enjoyed her look of incomprehension.

‘Time to get measuring,’ I told her.

PA cottoned on, then looked exasperated.

‘Beardsley, the artist, 19^th century?’

‘The same.’

‘Beardsley says a woman should be, foot to cheek-overhang, forty-four inches?’ Her voice was incredulous.

‘Yes.’

‘Connie ...!’

‘What?’ was all I could manage. ‘Don’t you play games with your husband anymore?’

‘Not daft ones!’

‘All games are daft. Why this one especially?’

‘Connie, my love, twenty-two plus twenty-two makes forty-four.’

‘Obviously! We’ve established that.’

She turned me round and looked at my upper pen mark.

‘If forty-four inches was up to your butt, you would have to be about ninety-five inches tall. That’s nearly eight feet, or,’ she paused to calculate, ‘that would make you over two metres forty. Your lover – what’s he called?’

‘Tannhäuser.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘Okay. Your lover would need to be Giant Bradley to give you a seeing-to, standing up. Or use an orange box from the market.’

I saw her point, but I was horrified by the unnecessary addition of ‘standing up’. Why did she say that? Has she guessed what we did on the tube train? Who the hell is/was Giant Bradley? PA is as complex and bizarre as Dee. Perhaps it goes with PA territory. I cut to the chase.

‘Just measure.’

She measured.

‘In inches it’s sixteen and fourteen. If I take the centre of your butt, we could get to sixteen, sixteen.’

‘Oh dear. That’s not good.’

‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

‘I can’t. No woman could keep this secret and I can’t risk having it office gossip.’

‘It’s a bit late to worry about me gossiping, after I’ve measured you heel to buttocks in the washroom. Hey! And why do you think I can’t keep a secret?’

‘Behave! No woman can.’

‘Get dressed. I’ll think about it.’

I’m the boss and, once again, I’m ordered around by my PA.

I dressed and returned to my desk. No wonder bosses prefer machines. They don’t have hormones. I couldn’t do any work – too distracted by thoughts of Tannhäuser. PA entered. I think her name is Dianne. In the building they call her Dido, which sounds unlikely and too familiar for me to use. I’ll have to phone payroll. Why not ask PA what her name is? Because I’ve worked here over a year and should have found out months ago. Months ago, she was a nonentity. Now I’m considering sharing my most personal experiences with her. Dee is too far away. I need a strategist here, on the ground – local!

‘Is your name really Dido? Should I call you that?’

‘You’ve managed not to call me anything for the last year. Why the change?’

‘I’m sorry. Was that said with malice, regret, or was it just a statement of fact?’

‘Regret. But you’re the boss, and a good one, I hasten to add. I’d rather have a good boss who doesn’t know my name than a rubbish one who tells me I’m great to my face, but whenever the shit flies upstairs, puts the blame on me, behind my back.’

‘It sounds as though you have had a bad experience.’

‘Yep. I ended up close to a nervous breakdown, and if my husband were honest, a divorce. Then I found I was pregnant, hung on until maternity leave, then found a sideways move. You arrived, looked nice, looked lost, and I asked for a transfer. They couldn’t say no, could they? They couldn’t sack me straight after maternity leave, and no one else would have me – not after all the bad press. And as for your question, I prefer Dianne. Dido is close to Dildo and someone played a nasty trick on me one Christmas dance, when I was at rock bottom with my nerves, and,’ she paused to get her voice under control, ‘and I had had too much to drink, even though I was six months gone,’ she blurted out.

I saw a tear in her eye.

‘You’d better take a seat, Dianne. This will be a long and important meeting.’

She sat, dried her eyes and continued.

‘You were so aloof to begin with, but last summer you changed completely, abandoned the power suit in favour of a summer skirt, and now this last week it’s back to last summer. Do you remember how you gave me time off, which saved my marriage – probably – and more importantly, you gave me back my self-esteem, which definitely saved a divorce lawyer. We couldn’t have managed as it was. I was impossible, crying all the time. I gave the old man hell, poor love.

‘You arrived, I moved in here, you treated me with respect, so others now do the same. I hope to find out what is going on. What happens in your life, at those moments when you can so empathize with me that you can save my sanity?’

She sobbed, blew her nose, dried her cheeks, drew breath and told me, ‘I think you are ready to tell me. I need to know. We will be friends then – real friends, who are there for each other for ever.’

I had to think. That was almost a declaration of love, but I knew what she meant. I’d had that relationship with Dee and now miss her terribly. That was a lot of information from Dianne, but there had to be more. I played for time.

‘Do you want me to address the Dido issue? Phone a few people and leave teeth marks? I am close to the CEO - a long way up the food chain, you know. People won’t jerk me about.’

‘Not needed. It’s nearly died out. I think ignoring it is the best way to defeat it. Are you going to tell me what is going on in your life?’ She gave a nervous and self-conscious laugh. ‘I tried to find out the sneaky way by stalking you on the platform. Remember?’

Now it was my turn to laugh. I walked round the table and took her hand in a big squeeze.

‘I twice gave you strategic time off so you couldn’t stalk me! I’m sorry if it disappoints you to find out my apparent philanthropy was actually self-interest.’

‘Who cares? Important is, that I’m able to sit here having his talk, instead of sitting at home drugged up on funny tablets.

‘To business. I understand your reluctance to tell a PA your private happenings. It would give me too much power. But I would never do anything to hurt you, Connie, so I’ve written down two things about me that no one may ever know about.’

She took an envelope from her bag and slid it across the table.

‘Put it in your safe and only open it if you think I have let you down.’

I was baffled. Two embarrassments she has entrusted me with, that no one may ever know about. She has put them in my power. This woman has a lot of trust, or takes a lot of risks for a bit of gossip.

‘Supposing I have an accident and you can’t get at your envelope and the company snoop finds it?’

‘Write on the outside, “if unopened, return to Dianne Potter”. Then sign it.’

I took the envelope. It was addressed to me and sealed with yards of parcel tape. I labelled and signed a corner left for the purpose and put it in the filing cabinet, which we always lock when the office is unoccupied. As I sat down again, I noticed her expectant look. The ball was now in my court. I’d taken the envelope. Where was the quid pro quo?

‘Can I come to your place when your husband isn’t in, or you come to mine, with baby of course. What’s his name?’

‘Madeline.’

‘Oh damn. Sorry.’

‘Let’s go for a walk in the park at the weekend. Nonesuch Park is pretty and we can get the 93 from Wimbledon to Epsom.’

‘It’s November, Dianne. I think Hampstead Heath is a better venue. You can nip home if Madeline is uncomfortable.’

‘Good point. I’ll work something out and e-mail a time and date. It should be Spurs at home this Saturday. Him indoors goes to football with his mates, so we can stay in if it’s raining.’

I didn’t pry. Why couldn’t we stay in if her bloke was there? Perhaps that’s why I’m not married.