Many years ago I audited a particular division, X Division, of a particular Ministry, FAFF, we'll call it.
They were a really great bunch of people, a high level of competence and intelligence in relatively low grades. I liaised chiefly with 'Raj', who was one of the most impressive people I have ever met in Middle Management - he dealt with policy and medium-term issues. 'Jill' was responsible for day-to-day management. A very quiet and serious person, very shy. To me, she seemed to be straight out of a 1950 novel written by a Muriel Spark-wannabe . File notes by her were always written in impeccable, slightly girlish, script, keeping a perfect straight line on plain paper, and always signed J.J. Richmond (Miss).
She always wore a cardigan, and had a sensible supply of tissues in the pocket. Never a glamorous dresser, always sensible. I could never decide whether she was mid-thirties, as suggested by her skin texture, or mid-fifties as suggested by her style of dressing.
We never really conversed, except on FAFF business. Perhaps once or twice on adverse weather or transport disruption. She was not unfriendly, just conscientious and concentrating.
I had a sort of fantasy about her, inspired the countless post-War novels I had read in my youth. I decided that she lived with her ageing and infirm widowed mother, in order to care for Mother not because of an inability to flee the nest. Alternatively she lived in an impeccable but frugal flat in an unfashionable suburb, with a cat and many books. Not watching much TV, but listening to a lot of radio, maybe Radio 4. I also decided that she was a regular attendee at concerts, plays and operas, always going on her own, but being on nodding acquaintance with people she saw regularly.
Years went by, and I encountered many other people who, in the workplace, presented a supposedly 'boring' 'unexciting' persona, never talking about their drug-fuelled clubbing and shagging sessions, yet unbeknownst to their colleagues were living the wildest most exciting lives outside of the 9-5.
I got to thinking, maybe I was reading Jill all wrong. Perhaps she really did live with Elderly Infirm Mother, or in frugal bedsit with a two bar electrical heater. But in her spare time she was the long-standing mistress of a rich powerful married sugar daddy who once a year would whisk her off for a fortnight's frolicking in the Caribbean. Or a toyboy who trembled at her amazing sexual prowess.
A few weeks ago I got off the bus near work and spotted someone who looks a lot like Jill. Older, certainly. But, my god, so am I. Still very sensible, a sensible shopping bag, a sensible mac, and very sensible shoes. Not sensible, like my girlie slip-on embroidered Doc Martens, but very very sensible. If you didn't know she was a Civil Servant, you would assume her to be a librarian.
And on Tuesday I spotted her in the Ladies at Covent Garden. I spend some time after the second interval scanning the amphitheatre. Absolutely delighted that at least part of my fiction was correct. I tried to spot her, desperate to see the toyboy or the superpowerfulrichSugar Daddy. But I didn't spot her until I was leaving via the Vilar Floral Hall, where she was inspecting the exhibition of the Callas jewels.
So, I've come to the conclusion there probably isn't an Onassis-like figure in her life; the toyboy might have been at Stamford Bridge, I suppose.
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