March 14, 2004 | About Last Night

“There was a small inner room like a cupboard where, morning and afternoon, these girls took turns to make the tea. A list was tacked to the wall, of all the men and their requirements: Mr. Bostock weak with sugar, Mr. Miles strong and plain. Valda’s Leadbetter had an infusion of camomile flowers, which he bought at Jackson’s in Piccadilly; these were prepared in a separate pot and required straining. Another notice cautioned against tea-leaves in the sink. The room was close and shabby. There were stains on the lino and a smell of stale biscuits. On one spattered wall the paint was peeling, from exhalations of an electric kettle.

“Sometimes when Valda made tea Caro would set out cups for her on a scratched brown tray.

“It was something to see the queenly and long-limbed Valda measure, with disdainful scruple, the flowers for Mr. Leadbetter’s special pot (which carried, tied to its handle, a little tag: ‘Let stand five minutes.’). To hear her reel off the directions: ‘Mr. Hoskins, saccharin. Mr. Farquhar, squeeze of lemon.’ She filled the indeterminate little room with scorn and decision, and caused a thrill of wonderful fear among the other women for the conviction that, had one of these men entered, she would not have faltered a moment in her performance.

“When Valda spoke of men more generally, it was in an assumption of shared and calamitous experience. None of the other women entered on such discussions–which were not only indelicate but would have mocked their deferential dealings with Mr. This or That. Furthermore, they feared that Valda, if encouraged, might say something physical.

“Watching the office women file towards the exit at evening, Valda observed to Caro: ‘The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.’

“There was another male faction in the office, of ageing young men who spoke bitterly of class divisions and of the right, or absence, of opportunity. For these, equally, Valda had no patience. ‘They don’t quite believe they exist, and are waiting for someone to complete the job, gratis.’ She would set down the biscuit tin, switch off the electric kettle. ‘Oh Caro, it is true that the common man is everlastingly embattled, but he has a lot of people on his side. It’s the uncommon man who gets everyone’s goat.’

“Valda would tell Caro, ‘You feel downright disloyal to your experience, when you do come across a man you could like. By then you scarcely see how you can decently make terms, it’s like going over to the enemy. And then there’s the waiting. Women have got to fight their way out of that dumb waiting at the end of the never-ringing telephone. The receiver, as our portion of it is called.’ Or, slowly revolving the steeping teapot in her right hand, like an athlete warming up to cast a disc: ‘There is the dressing up, the hair, the fingernails. The toes. And, after all that, you are a meal they eat while reading the newspaper. I tell you that ever one of those fingers we paint is another nail in their eventual coffins.’

“All this was indisputable, even brave. But was a map, from which rooms, hours, and human faces did not rise; on which there was no bloom of generosity or discovery. The omissions might constitute life itself; unless the map was intended as a substitute for the journey.

“Those at least were the objections raised by Caroline Bell.”

Shirley Hazzard, Transit of Venus

(Note: In my first job out of college, Editorial Assistant at a publishing house, I had to make tea most days for a [female] boss. Sometimes, too, go fetch raspberry muffins at the Mrs. Field’s in the subway station. In the latter case, I was always provided money for my own muffin into the bargain, because “I’m affluent and you’re not.” Which was very, very true.)