Perfect Timing

In the mid 90's, Petranella found herself discharged from (Drayton Park) a women's mental health crisis project. After a recent suicidal trauma, she was diagnosed Bi-Polar. Cooped up in a new flat, she was ready for a new job, and a fresh start with a young daughter who had witnessed far too much.

With the help of an agency working strictly with charitable and voluntary sector employers, she secured an interview for a permanent job with prospects - a role as PA/secretary to a recognized charity. It’s head-office was based in Piccadilly, Central London, one of her favourite hang-outs as a student.

The charitable organisation she hoped to work for had an empathetic ethos. She felt, she was in with a chance. The job description made known that a prominent member of the royal family had established the organisation, with a mandate to encourage young individuals to have aspirations, ambition, and achieve their goals.

Petranella had made the effort to look the part. She was well spoken, appeared laid back, and dressed in an outfit that said more about class than fashion. She was ready. Ready enough, she felt to defy her background and origin a little. She believed she ticked all their boxes, including the hidden ones, the covert vibes that spoke volumes in person. Petranella couldn't help feeling a bit smug, about how she carried the ‘new impersonation’ of herself, and prayed all signs of deprivation lay concealed under her temporary persona.

For Petranella, the prize job was a step up, a ‘way out’ of poverty. She was able to easily forget her powerless and penniless reality as she thought soon she’d be busy, feel important, she wanted to make things tick, feel that she mattered; She wanted to count as one of the many masses, milling around the city.

Petranella was more than ready. Conscious of her bad sense of direction, she’d arrived at Piccadilly Circus way before the appointed time, to ensure she wasn’t late. Voices, shrieking, nervously in her head calmed down, and liberated her a little at this trivial sense of achievement. With relief, she found the offices located not too far away from the station. She spent a good half an hour, taking in her surroundings, committing the route from the station to memory then relaxed a little more. Petranella allowed herself to be captivated, by the familiar figure of Eros, the Royal Academy of Arts, a building that was home to the British Academy Film and Television Awards, Tower Records, Lilywhites, Burger King, Regent Street all minutes away, for a lunchtime splurge, all with the enchanting comfort of Sony’s electronic advertising screen above her beaming down flashy products.

Petranella couldn’t believe her luck. She’d had trouble taking it all in. Piccadilly had a wicked buzz! Huge clusters of people furiously shopped and passed through it. As far as she was concerned, she was at the centre of the universe, and some how felt privileged that she might work in such an alluring location.

Petranella felt her thoughts and emotions speed ahead of her into glorious fantasies. Her brain sucked up the affluent surroundings, calculating her future with mercenary flamboyance. The alter ego she’d constructed drifted into a daydream rapidly casting this perfect self into an ambiguous scene, in which she confidently, moved up a career ladder, and presented a crisp new C.V. (Piccadilly occupation included) to some future employer who awarded her a new role as Executive PA.

Weary of window shopping, and with just under an hour until her 4.00 clock interview, Petranella took a short stroll around the corner from the interview venue. She noticed a small square, with a beautifully tended park, and decided to sit there and wait until her appointment. With so much time on her hands, all she could do was fret. She attempted to calm her uneasy nerves, and prayed she’d control her bodily functions during the interview.

Petranella sat with increasing apprehension, and found herself appealing to God, making promises with mad desperation; Petranella wanted the job badly. It was perfect. It was one of those moments on which she felt her life depended. What she did not want, was to repeatedly record her name and address on countless forms, conjure up bespoke applications for every prospective employer, find another 20 reasons why she wanted each job, or walk into interviews knowing they were over well before they’d started. Right there and then Petranella had to convince herself that she could hold down a ‘respectable occupation’, and not give the impression she was desperate for the job.

Her interviewer was a perfumed, warm, friendly middle-aged female executive, with a classy sense of style. She seemed to embody a welcoming spirit, and introduced herself as “Mrs Claudine Willoughby-Stockard, but Claude will do…” she smiled as she held out a hand. Petranella felt no hesitant tension, encountered no shocked pause at the colour her skin, and was able to feel at ease. They embarked on a swift interview with warm smiles and courteous straight talk. Mrs Willoughby-Stockard then took her on a leisurely tour of the elegant buildings. As they walked, they talked, trading chitchat. Did Petranella understand she’d be working alongside members of the royal family? Yes, she did! Mrs Willoughby-Stockard provided Petranella with a final reminder about the royals and the expected protocol.

Petranella, was 25 years old, another practical young woman may have understood that this was just a decent job with prospects. For Petranella it meant more, it meant status. She soared on the possibility that she could be the ‘one’. One from generations of deprived and messed up black women with slave ancestry, who would turn her life around, and lead a future generation out of hard core struggle.

With her early arrival, the day seemed long and drawn-out. Not yet fully aware, Petranella felt her anxiety kick in. Harsh expressions, judgments, whirled round her head “…I'm just out of the NUT HOUSE, hee hee”, “…they don’t know me, she won’t have a fucking clue…”,“…not an inkling”, “…I ain’t worth jack shit!”, “...I’m a nobody, who’ll hang out with aristocrats!!”

In spite of her bristly emotions, Petranella acknowledged this irony worked both ways. At the end of the day, no matter how successful she became, she’d never comfortably end up holding down a mortgage. On the social spectrum she registered as ‘poor’, moved on to ‘struggling’ and ended up ‘surviving’. Petranella didn’t want to survive, she wanted to live. It wasn’t quite about money, she knew; it was her attitude to the status quo and where her values truly lay.

Petranella didn’t want to be the template for failure she feared. Would she become the regrettable stereotype no one cared about? She had seen so many black women her age up to their neck in debt, isolated, addicted, pregnant, with more disturbed kids than they could handle, broken; emotionally dependent on violent men who drank, slapped them up, slept around or had walked out - like her father. She lived with brutal visions of her father, above all pounding his fists into her thirteen year old brother. Petranella didn’t care to know or speak to him. In over ten years, the few words to reach her from her father were passed on by the same brother with a touch of sarcasm; he’d said ‘You’re all no good!’ She, along with her brothers and sisters.

Petranella the eldest of five children, was expected ‘to know better’, ‘be an example’ to her siblings. She kept an eye on her brother’s and sister’s until her mother returned home from work. Like so many West Indian mother’s she demanded these values and beat them into Petranella, until she took a stand at fifteen.

Petranella found comfort in reading fairytales way beyond childhood, to escape from reality. Back there in childhood, she was fond of ‘Cinderella’, and had taken the story’s hopeful message to heart. Bear her despair humbly, and she’d be rescued by a husband, to live happily ever after. By the age of sixteen, Petranella concluded, if she could be a secretary she would have accomplished something with her life. She hoped to exceed all expectations. Be, living proof that people like her could make it.

Petranella was distracted by the recollections that played on her mind. They were obsolete, mattered to no one that day. Yet they contained an elemental truth. The truth about who she was. She felt tense and stressed with these thoughts. She suppressed a desire to just sit on the floor laughing hard, as loud as a donkey’s hee haw at the desperate irony of it all. How much longer could she take her ‘self’ this seriously? If only she could get out of there, kick back, flip off her heels and consider ‘who the hell she thought she was kidding?’

Mrs Willoughby-Stockard revealed that it had been difficult to find a suitable candidate, and was keen to fill the secretarial position. This frank bit of news raised Petranella’s hopes, as their tour came toward an end. In a mock conspiratorial manner, and with some good humour, Mrs Willoughby-Stockard warned Petranella that one royal was “exceptionally grumpy”, with a tendency to “shout rudely” at staff. The appropriate response was to politely “…take it in your stride”. Petranella laughed measuredly, unsure the royals would appear as frequently as mentioned.

Petranella and Mrs Willoughby-Stockard approached a lift; its mirrored doors slid open to reveal three tall influential looking men, wearing pinstripe three piece suits. Like some kind of cosmic timing, there stood the “grumpy” elderly member of the royal family. Large, with a resemblance to Sir Winston Churchill, Petranella blinked. The glimmering chain to time piece tucked into his tiny waistcoat pocket swung about his wide girth. Mrs Willoughby-Stockard made polite, nervous introductions as Petranella shook hands with the two executives. With the low down on his personality, Petranella trembled slightly as she held out a hand to greet the elderly royal. He ignored the gesture, simply glaring back with a look of point blank open hatred. Petranella couldn’t help but stare back at the looming figure. He seemed the last of a dying breed, a breed with privilege and expectations she could only imagine. He was one from a generation, of whom many had lived and died before she was born. Petranella felt she could see a part of him, glaring at no ordinary commoner, but another culture, a way of life he didn't recognise or possibly care to understand. Her smug inner confidence flooded out through her feet, as anxiety returned to take up its rightful place in her gut. The moment brought her back to reality, she felt that if she got the job, the man would make her life a misery, and there’d be nothing she could do about it.

Based on her rapport with Mrs Willoughby-Stockard, Petranella felt it could all be in the bag. She’d jumped through hoops and believed she was nearly there, but was to fall at the last hurdle. The pleasant and fragrant Mrs Willoughby-Stockard had one more thing to discuss. She explained that she had been informed that Petranella had turned up for interview at 4.00 pm the previous day. Mrs Willoughby-Stockard, with her compassionate manner asked if this was true. Petranella’s heart sank. In that moment she knew it was all over. She solemnly described how nervous she had been, and as a result muddled her dates. She caught a genuine sense of disappointment in Mrs Willoughby-Stockard’s gaze and felt deeply ashamed to witness it. ‘It's such a shame’ Mrs Willoughby-Stockard replied, “You were so close, but it’s obvious we can't ignore an error like that, especially when the role calls for organising a diary”.

Petranella knew her interviewer was right. She wanted to laugh at her ambitions, and own profound sense of disappointment. Any qualified secretary worth their salt had to have perfect timing.