MISS MARK'S LAST DAY AT THE OFFICE

Luky;
When my sister was a young girl working in a mine office, she had a colleague due for retirement.  
  Miss Mark was an elderly immigrant spinster who set a perfect example of professionalism and personal excellence.
  She had held the same job for over thirty years, controlling the office with a lift of her eyebrows.

You no longer meet people like Miss Mark today, but in the nineteen fifties they abounded in Britain and Europe.  
  They were the women who had remained single after two world wars had mown down the men they would have married and destroyed their chances of motherhood.

There is a passage in a poem called “Drafts” by Nora Bomford, which would well describe the silent, enduring and lonely despair of women like Miss Mark during the wars when the men in their lives had left for the Front:

So dreadfully safe! O, damn the shibboleth of sex!
God knows we've equal personality.
Why should men face the dark while women stay
to live and laugh and meet the sun each day?

After the wars, some of those whose love had died in the fray went into an existence of suspended animation, carrying on doggedly keeping body and soul together.  
  There was no chance for them of a satisfying career in the commercial world, for the best jobs went to men.  

So the Miss Marks lived out their working years, typing, filing or keeping books, and completing the remainder of their allotted span while subsisting on a pension and their savings.

My sister, barely out of her teens, had a great appreciation for Miss Mark despite the latter’s lack of obvious charm.  
  When she found the odd chink in Miss Mark’s armour of disciplined remoteness, she’d say: “We actually made her laugh today.”  

Unlike some of their colleagues, rather than resent the old lady’s personal brand of individuality, she honoured her for it.

When Miss Mark reached retirement age, she received no mercy.  
  Passing the boss’s office, accompanied by the older woman, my sister heard an interchange between him and a colleague that shocked her.  
  As the door was ajar, they could clearly hear him pronouncing his epitaph on Miss Mark’s thirty years of dedicated service: “Thank goodness we can decently get rid of that old bag at last.  That sour face of hers would curdle the milk.” 

Though Miss Mark gave no sign of having heard his words, the fact that she must have done so became clear on her last day at the office.  
  Due to depart at noon, she worked as on any normal day.  

At a quarter to twelve she put away her last filing before emptying out her desk.  
  And at twelve when the boss came in for the presentation and farewell speech, she could not be found.  
  The garage attendant said she had pulled her car out on the stroke of noon. 

My sister was sent after her with the present.  
Miss Mark opened the front door of her flat in a neighbouring town and accepted the gift with polite thanks.  
  Since she was not invited in, my sister said goodbye and returned to the office, where the sight of her former colleague’s abandoned desk suffused her with a sense of infinite pathos.

The story of Miss Mark's bleak last day at the office impacted on my own life.
  Though I worked for many years, cometimes for long stretches, I never allowed pension or other considerations to prevent me from resigning and looking for a different job whenever I felt my welcome was outstayed.
  But then, unlike Miss Mark, I had a husband's pension - not to mention his emotional support - to fall back upon.