Free Ordinary Miracles by Grace Wynne-Jones Page A

stomach.
    I’m rather surprised that they contacted me. There were piles of young, motivated women filling in forms in all the agencies. In fact some of them almost knocked me over on stairs and in corridors. They smiled hasty apologies, but still scythed their way forwards as they did so. I don’t blame them. Despite their smart suits they looked vulnerable. The job market is so competitive. Every mother knows that.
    Charlie told me to be creative in my form filling. He told me to make the most of all the voluntary work I’d done and use words like ‘liaise’ a lot. This was good advice because the last time I worked full-time was nineteen years ago. It was in a small family planning clinic. I was never quite sure of my title but, facing one of those forms, I decided ‘Office Manager’ sounded good. And not that far-fetched either, because I was the only person in the office.
    And now, despite having belatedly discovered that ‘liaise’ has two i’s in it, I’m in another office which overlooks St Stephen’s Green. It’s a big modern building with lots of plants and glass.
    My boss is a rather distinguished small, trim man who’s near retirement age and prefers ‘mature secretaries’. He’s held lots of important posts and is now in a consultative position with this particular organisation. This does not appear to be too taxing and can accommodate late arrivals, long lunches, and early departures. So far, I’ve spent most of my time here taking down long letters to friends of his in s horthand. These are not just friends, they are also business contacts, but to read the letters you wouldn’t think so. Many of them are to people who live abroad, and they’re dotted with reminiscences of dinners in palm-fringed restaurants on the Riviera and such places.
    Mr McClaren, that’s his name, explained to me that he sends these letters out a month or two before Christmas so that, when it comes to the cards, he can just send his best wishes and sign his name. He’s very methodical, is Mr McClaren. He likes things to be done in a certain way. For example he only likes a certain blend of tea, and he likes that tea to be served in bone china cups at a certain time in the morning, and a certain time in the afternoon. He also likes a certain brand of austere looking biscuit. As I tend his china, or dash out for his Daily Telegraph and Irish Times, I sometimes feel as though I’ve been entrusted with the care of a benign but rather fastidious creature. And indeed, when Mr McClaren peers at me through his bifocals across his large, leather covered desk, he does sometimes remind me of a marmoset.
    Thank goodness the course covered the software I’m using, so the word-processing’s been fairly okay so far. If I do make a mistake Mr McClaren is very nice about it and marks it in black ink with his fountain pen. He has big, confident, not quite scrawly writing, though his occasional artistic flourishes render some sentences illegible. Bruce has this tendency too. I can’t help thinking that when someone leaves you a note that is unreadable it is, in fact, communicating a great deal.
    So now I’m looking at one of Mr McClaren’s corrections and wondering if he really wants to say, ‘Please send my regards to Mabel and tell her she has great tits in wine.’ As I check back over other examples of Mr McClaren’s writing I notice that, though he sometimes does not dot his i’s, he also often only partially forms his a’s, and his e’s and s’s are sometimes indistinguishable. From this I deduce that Mabel has ‘great taste’ rather than ‘great tits’ in wine. This is rather a pity because images of a more abandoned Mabel momentarily relieved the tedium of a long afternoon.
    Mr McClaren is at one of his club lunches and the other secretary in this office, Bronwyn, does so much dictaphone typing that she scarcely ever speaks. Her boss is a young, tall, driven woman called Ms Armitage who has endless meetings. So,