I’m spectacularly unsuccessful at interviews for jobs. I dress myself up in my best dress and coat (the power dressing suit came later) and prepare as best I can my knowledge of the firm and what I would do if I got the job. At the interview I have learnt not to have coffee, since my hand always shakes. On one occasion I took an instant dislike to the two interviewers and they to me. Nothing we could say afterwards could repair it. But this time not only did I get the job but for the last 15 years my work has followed the same direction, though mostly without interviews.
The story really begins with a redundancy, actually my third. Later I was able to boast about this, but at the time it was unplanned and unexpected, unlike the first two. The pregnancy was not, and the redundancy coincided with the week’s wait for the amniocentesis in the fourth month to test for genetic defects. By my age of 42, the chance of Down’s Syndrome had risen to 1 in 100. In that week, you try to work out why you had the test, will you have an abortion, will you love the child anyway, can your incredibly good run of luck survive this latest challenge, or are you to be the one in a hundred. Someone has to be it, what gives you the right to expect to escape? Of course to make it worse, the child will begin to move in that week. And you can’t tell anyone at work you are pregnant, in order that the abortion will be manageable. My luck holds, the baby is OK, but I sink into a deep depression with nothing to do all day after working full time for 22 years. With the other redundancies I was back at some sort of work within a week, but this time it seems there is nothing to do till the baby is born.
Gradually the redundancy turns into a court case for maternity pay compensation. My employer couldn’t include into the redundancy pay the maternity pay I would have received at the end of my notice because they did not know I was pregnant. To a veteran of university women’s groups, trade union women’s committees and equal opportunity projects, this should have been an easy one, but the pregnancy fuddles my mind, the bank balance looks precarious and a do it yourself legal case looks like the only possibility.
To pass the time I wrote to everyone I could think of, looking for work to do at home. My career has been very varied. These days I am valued for my experience as renaissance woman, but at the end of 1990, as the downturn on the British property market turned into a full scale recession, my position as IT manager for a construction firm was not replaceable. Neither was my previous position as university lecturer, design engineer, or trade unionist (incompatible with PhD). It appeared I was destined to be a mum, and nothing else.
My first daughter had just started school in Birmingham, so taking her there and back gave me a routine. Gradually I met other mums, and learnt their small talk. I drove back to Brecon for anti-natal care. We had lived a gypsy existence for the last two years with our real home in Brecon up a mountainside and weekday home in Birmingham for our work. Keeping two homes was difficult now on one not very high income, but I was determined to have our second child in the same small hospital in Brecon as I had done with my first child.
By 8 months pregnant I had despaired of any work from home. As a further long shot I had offered my knowledge to Eastern Europe and Russia to construction firms interested in marketing themselves. The previous Christmas we had dashed off to Hungary and Czechoslovakia to see what it was really like, watching the downfall of Ceausescu on TV in a bar in Hungary. Then in the summer I had extracted a marketing grant from DTI and an expense account from my boss to finance a marketing trip to Budapest and a camping holiday round Hungary. With no result, except to meet other UK professionals also interested in marketing in Hungary. How naïve it all seems now.
Then suddenly a polite but unenthusiastic reply from one London real estate agent, was followed a week later by an urgent phone call from the same person about working in Russia. Was I interested? But could this be real? How to hide an eight month bulge?
Gradually some details emerged. Some Hungarians in London were building a hotel near Murmansk and needed someone who spoke Russian to check on what the builder was doing. Could I do that? I had no idea. Could I speak Russian? Not to save my life, but after a one year course 15 years ago and a PhD reading Russian materials on power stations for 10 years, I thought I could probably still read Russian. I asked for the building contract to see what was involved. Before my interview I translated it painstakingly using a dictionary and was no wiser. Who were these people? Why was payment in tons of apatite, and what was that anyway? The building contract was short and unlike any British building contract I had ever seen. It was not clear what I would be able to do or even on whose side I would be.
So I attended an interview in the City of London with a tall aristocratic Hungarian and a small dark Hungarian, plus the London real estate guy. I remember worrying what the well-dressed 8 months pregnant engineer wore for an interview. Somehow this never figures in the women’s pages, either under careers or maternity wear. In the end I compromised and wore what I could still get into, which meant black trousers and long jacket covering the bulge plus boots (it was December). I don’t remember much about the interview. Both Hungarians of course spoke Russian but never bothered to test me. It seemed that to be able to translate the contract was enough. Had they signed it without reading it?
Since I was impressed by the City of London office, I asked for what seemed a lot of money per day and got it. When could I start? Looking at my bulge, which was now mentioned for the first time in the interview, I asked “Could I have the baby first?” No problem, but was I sure I would still want the job afterwards? After four months of no work, I couldn’t imagine I would suddenly become satisfied with domesticity. After all I had gone back to work after the first baby (finishing my PhD at home). It seemed I needed to go to somewhere near Murmansk where this hotel was, inspect it and come back, every two months or so. It seemed like a three-day trip. So we agreed I would start three months after the baby was born. When Sophie was nine months old my husband had taken her on holiday to Rhodes, while I had gone to an academic conference in Washington. My husband was more domesticated than me and I felt I could safely leave him and a childminder to cope when the time came. Travel to Russia held no worries as I had travelled on my own several times, first as a student in 1967, and in various guises over the years till 1984, to the Far East and Central Asia. Murmansk did not seem too strange a destination, as I had also been north of the Arctic Circle in January in Finland on a holiday “just to see”. In 1991, no one was expecting much to happen in the Soviet Union, even if Eastern Europe was changing.
So at last I had a job again. It was strange that Eastern Europeans were quite unfazed by a pregnant woman and willing to employ me. Perhaps they were less male chauvinist than their western colleagues, after all.
So in February I awaited the baby in our Brecon house while listening to the news on the Gulf War. On the fatal day, snow fell all day. My husband and Sophie rushed home early from Birmingham and just made it up our cart track. At midnight, the waters broke and we called the ambulance. An hour and a half later, after frantic phone calls, a farm truck appeared. We all piled in and made it down the hill, to the new four wheel drive ambulance which was stuck in the snow. Eventually we got to hospital and bedded down for the night in a two bed ward for the three of us. The baby arrived without mishap, and after two days, before more snow was predicted, we, now four, returned home in the farm truck, from our hotel/hospital as the beds were needed for others.
Our gypsy life, Brecon at weekends and Birmingham in the week, resumed. A lodger helped with babysitting, a child minder was found, the court case was settled out of court in my favour, and I was ready for work.
Another meeting in London in preparation. This time I met the builder, a small pugnacious character, with the exotic name of Mr Hannibal who clearly did not think I was necessary. I sat through a long conversation in Hungarian wondering what on earth was going on. Some drawings and other documents for the hotel had been produced and I had remarked that there was not enough detail to build it. Several areas had no information at all: the windows, the kitchen, the basement, the leisure centre……. This was brushed aside.
Another long conversation, in which my role was explained. I wished it was clearer to me. As I listened to the Hungarian, one word seemed familiar. I was very surprised and racked my brains as to how I could know any Hungarian. I had heard my father count to 10 once, but could not remember anything he said. By a process of elimination, I decided it must relate to wine. As a child I had learnt French from a bottle of HP sauce, which had a label in both languages. Since then I have always read labels in foreign languages. “Minosegi bor” leapt into mind. It seemed what I was going to do had something to do with “minosegi”.
More elimination of “red” and “white” and mental exertions deduced that I was going to be responsible for “quality” like the quality wine in the bottles, just as Mr Hannibal was emphatically stating that this was quite unnecessary.
A further preparatory visit gave me a list of people I should meet when I got there: the mine manager, the town mayor, the housing department, the man in charge of the delivery of TVs, and the name and phone number of the person who would meet me in Moscow airport and “help me”. The list was delivered with the air of mystery as if the people might not be there. By now it seemed the three day trip had stretched to five. It was not clear how the TVs were linked into the deal, but at least now I knew that apatite was used to make fertiliser and came out of a very big mine. It seemed there was a three hour drive from Murmansk and someone would meet me. There was not enough time to ask all the questions, and the answers often made things more complicated rather than less.
As the final preparation was made for a visit in May, I wondered what on earth I was doing. My husband, having spent two years in Papua New Guinea and hence was more travelled than me, suggested it was probably not possible for me to achieve anything, but I could have an interesting time at least.
But having had the baby, it was time to start work. See the photos of where I went (Kirovsk) here
