Rolt turned his head. ‘Oh, no thanks, nothing.’ He strove to keep sharpness from his tone. ‘No need to hurry too much over that stuff, take your time.’ The lad had a tendency to wet-nurse him; there were times when he didn’t find it amusing.
He looked down at his desk, at a sheaf of letters that must be answered. He gave a long sigh. ‘Send Miss Webb in, will you?’ he said to Hulme. The chore wouldn’t grow any more attractive for being postponed. And he would be away pretty well all the afternoon at Kain Engineering.
Mandy Webb was in the outer office. She looked up as Rolt’s door opened, picked up her notebook and came over at once on Hulme’s nod. He didn’t stand back for her in the doorway but remained half blocking the entrance so that she had to squeeze past. They exchanged a long, intimate, unsmiling look.
Mandy took her seat a little to one side of Rolt’s desk. He shuffled the letters together, selected one at random, ran his eye over it and began to dictate. A quarter of the way through the batch, his vagrant attention suddenly abandoned the mail completely. Mandy was sitting with her legs crossed, her notebook resting on her right knee; her head was still bent, her pencil still poised. He saw her all at once not as Miss Webb, short and none too pretty, the junior secretary who had been with CeeJay a matter of weeks, but simply as a female.
He stared at her without subterfuge. What would it be like to start all over again with someone entirely new, to put the past behind him for ever? For a moment the idea seemed exhilarating as if by some magic he might find youth and innocence again along with courage. But the moment passed. I couldn’t do it, he thought, clenching his fist over the scatter of letters. It would need the kind of confidence and self-esteem he had never greatly possessed even when he’d started out on life. His grip on the remnants of these essential qualities was now so insecure that he dared not risk putting it to any more exacting test than those inescapably facing him.
And the effort it would take to find the right woman, the expenditure of time, of energy. And no guarantee of any more lasting success even if he succeeded in finding and winning this mythical being.
Mandy raised her head at the lengthening silence. Her eyes, bold, confident, young, met his. He picked up the next letter and resumed dictation.
Ten minutes later he finished the pile. He sat back in his chair and watched with relief as the door closed behind her. He had barely time to draw a sweet breath of solitude when there was a brief knock and the under-manager, Arthur Ford, entered almost at the same instant.
‘Come in,’ Rolt said loudly when Ford was already inside the room. Ford looked surprised for a moment and then smiled as if humouring an invalid.
‘Beryl’s been on to me again to ask you over one evening,’ he said. ‘My life won’t be worth living if I’ve got to tell her I can’t persuade you.’ Beneath the cheerful surface words others less cheerful rose unspoken into the air … All alone in that great empty house, can’t be good for you …
Rolt closed his eyes for a second. Impossible to choke the fellow off, pushy and intrusive as he was, when all he was doing was trying to display goodwill.
‘Nothing in the least formal,’ Ford said. ‘Just a few drinks, a bite to eat. And a hand of cards.’
Heaven preserve me from such ghastly jollity, Rolt said in his head, unable to voice a refusal until Ford committed the cardinal error of mentioning a specific date.
Ford instantly obliged by committing the error. ‘What about tomorrow?’ he suggested.
At once Rolt said in a friendly tone, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t manage tomorrow. I’ve already got something fixed. But it’s very kind of Beryl to think of me.’ Dreadful woman, he thought, that appalling mixture of ignorance, prejudice, gentility and ruthlessness.
Ford began to marshal his guns. ‘Friday then?’ he said amiably.
Rolt shook his head with an air of regret. ‘I’m afraid I’m busy on Friday evening as well.’
Ford let off another salvo. ‘How about Saturday?’
Rolt pretended to give the notion some thought. ‘Mm,’ he said on a deceptively affirmative note that caused Ford’s eyes to glisten in momentary satisfaction. ‘Saturday ought to be – oh no, stupid of me, I’ve just remembered, Saturday’s no good either.’
A steely determination came into Ford’s expression. ‘Yes, I know how it is,’ he said as if abandoning the struggle. Then he fired his big guns. ‘Name your own day, that’ll be best. I know Beryl will be delighted to fit in with whatever’s convenient to you.’
There’s no help for it, Rolt said to himself with resigned amusement, all at once relaxed now that there was no way of winning. ‘Wednesday,’ he said magnanimously. ‘The day after tomorrow. How would that suit you?’
‘Wednesday would be fine.’ Ford couldn’t resist a smile of victory.
‘But tell Beryl not to go to any trouble,’ Rolt said without hope.
‘I’ll tell her.’ Ford spread his hands. ‘But it won’t be any use. You know what women are.’
Rolt looked at him suddenly like a man taking part in an entirely different conversation. ‘Oh yes,’ he said in a voice from that other dialogue, ‘I know what women are.’
A quarter to one. In the records office on the ground floor at CeeJay, Arthur Ford looked at his watch. He ought to be thinking of clearing up, popping up to the first floor to collect Robin, get off home in time for lunch. His son – in fact Robin was his only child – had left the local grammar school a year ago. He was doing three-month training stints in various departments at CeeJay, was considered a bright lad, possible executive material.
Ford glanced out of the window and saw Celia Brettell’s silver-grey car pulling up on the forecourt. She stepped out on to the concrete. She wasn’t carrying a briefcase, only a handbag, so this wasn’t going to be a business visit but one of her personal swoops to take Andrew Rolt off to lunch.
Ford watched her approach the side entrance. Good-looking in her hard-edged way, considerably more hard-edged now than when she’d first walked into CeeJay on the look-out for good secondhand plant, ten or twelve years ago. Chestnut-brown hair, grey eyes, smooth pale skin; well groomed, carefully presented. But the whole package lacking any suggestion of mystery or romance. She had done everything she could possibly do with her appearance but there was nothing she could do about her aura, which radiated an unmistakable air of natural dominance, strong purpose, shrewdness and a highly practical approach to life and very probably also to love.
Ford neither liked nor disliked her. She was one small factor in his career situation and so he was obliged to take a certain amount of notice of her. But he couldn’t help admiring her. She was successful in a pretty tough area of commercial life; she had the essential bulldog quality.
He had known her since the first time she’d walked up the steps of CeeJay, well before the day Alison Lloyd had set foot in the place as a junior secretary. Alison had married her boss in the classic tradition – and they’d all been so sure once upon a time that he’d marry Celia. When the marriage broke up after only a couple of years it wasn’t very long before Celia’s business visits – which had continued as usual – began to coincide once more with the approach of Andrew’s lunch hour.
It occurred to Ford suddenly and with total certainty that Celia was at long last going to succeed in marrying Rolt. He stepped back from the window and went out through the door of the records office, arriving in the lobby in time to present a casual appearance of having just come down the side staircase as Celia Brettell entered the building.
‘Oh – hello there!’ he said with a friendly smile. ‘Haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you for a week or two.’
Oh yes, Celia said to herself, and precisely what is old Creepy Crawly up to this time? Aloud she said, ‘That last lot of trenchers hadn’t been properly maintained. You’ll have to keep a sharper eye on the lads.’
His