Читать книгу Element of Chance - Emma Page - Страница 8

CHAPTER 3

THE BARBOURNE branch of CeeJay Plant Hire Limited was situated on a sprawling industrial estate a short distance outside the town. It occupied a large stone building with a vast yard crammed with dumpers, diggers, excavators, handling, shifting and loading equipment of every description.

In his airy office on the first floor Andrew Rolt sat at his desk, explaining the more intricate details of a contract proposal to Paul Hulme, who was standing at his side, looking down at the papers spread out before them.

‘Yes, I think I’ve got that,’ Hulme said deferentially. I’d have got it a lot quicker if Rolt had been able to keep his mind on what he was telling me, he thought. ‘There is just one other point I’m not clear about.’ He picked up one of the sheets, ran a finger down it.

‘Leave it,’ Rolt said abruptly. He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘You’ve got the gist of the thing. I’ll fill in the gaps another time. You can put all this away now, you can get on with that other stuff for the time being.’ He jerked his head at a wire basket full of documents.

Hulme began to gather up the papers from the desk. He arranged them in an orderly pile, crossed the room and put them in a drawer. He was a trimly built, neat-featured young man with an air of control and calculation. He was being trained as a hire contract negotiator and at the same time carried out a number of duties as a general assistant to Rolt.

Hulme picked up the wire basket. In the doorway he paused and looked back at Rolt. ‘Is there anything I can get you? Coffee? Or tea?’ No doubt about it, Rolt’s manner was preoccupied, even faintly distressed.

‘What’s that?’ 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 smile grew if anything a trifle more friendly. ‘I’ll certainly take note of it,’ he said affably.

‘Is Andrew about?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Yes. He’s in his office. Oh, by the way,’ he added, ‘I’ve just remembered, he’s looking in on us on Wednesday evening. On Beryl and myself, that is. I don’t know if you’d care to join us. You’d be very welcome.’ He knew that would get her; she simply wouldn’t be able to say no to a chance of spending a few hours in Rolt’s company, however diluted. ‘Nothing very fancy, you understand, just a pleasant homely evening.’

Whatever it’ll be, it won’t be that, Celia thought grimly. However had Andrew allowed himself to accept such a frightful invitation? ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, burnishing her expression into a smile. ‘I’d love to come.’ With so many lies thickening the air she couldn’t resist throwing in another. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet your wife.’

‘Something else I’ve remembered,’ Ford said with a knowing air. ‘What’s this gossip I hear about a merger between Sugdens and Murdoch Factors?’ Sugdens was the comparatively small but highly efficient firm for which Celia worked; Murdoch Factors was much larger, with a wider range of interests. If there was anything in the whisper – and it had reached Ford’s permanently-cocked ears only recently and as the merest breath of rumour – then it seemed to him a good deal more likely that the deal would be a take-over rather than a merger.

Celia’s smile vanished. ‘That!’ she said brusquely. ‘I don’t know who started that particular hare but there’s nothing in it. I can assure you of that.’

‘It sounded a bit of a wild tale to me,’ Ford said lightly. Maybe you don’t want to know about it, he said to himself, could be you’d lose your job, whether it’s a merger or a take-over. Could be also, he added in his mind with a sudden sense of illumination, that it’s the reason why you’re closing in on Rolt. Time was going inexorably by, she wasn’t getting any younger. And of course she’d always been irremediably stuck on Rolt.

‘Kindly contradict the rumour if you should hear it again,’ Celia said with force. She walked away towards the stairs, she went rapidly up. He stood looking after her with amused approval. That one never knows when she’s beaten, he thought – and so of course she never will be beaten.

What was I about to do when I looked out of the window and saw Celia Brettell? he asked himself a moment later, staring up at the ceiling. Oh yes, he answered himself almost at once, I was going to collect Robin. He was just about to go upstairs when he heard a light patter of footsteps along the first-floor corridor and Mandy Webb came into view. He raised a hand, called out to her.

‘Miss Webb – you might trot along and winkle Robin out for me. Tell him to get a move on or we’ll be late for lunch.’ He turned away without waiting for any acknowledgement on Mandy’s part, and went off to get his coat.

It wouldn’t do Mr Ford any harm to polish up his manners, Mandy said resentfully to herself as she went reluctantly off to carry out his command.

She found Robin standing by the window in an empty office. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand, he was gazing down at the car park. He was a slimly built lad of medium height; he had short brown hair with all suggestion of curl sternly suppressed.

‘Your dad wants you,’ Mandy said without preamble. He turned and gave her a blank look. His face was long and pale, he had large grey-blue eyes.

She felt a sudden impatient touch of sympathy for him, imagining what it must be like to be blessed with a dad like his. ‘Lunchtime,’ she said in a more kindly fashion. ‘Your dad’s all set and raring to go. You’d better get off downstairs.’

Robin made a small jerky movement of his head. ‘Oh yes, thank you, I’ll go right away. Very kind of you to come and tell me.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said automatically. She paused on the threshold and looked back at him. She and Tessa might ask him along to one of their parties some time. He looked as if he could do with a bit of livening up. But she said nothing about it yet. She’d have to mention it to Tessa first.

It occurred to her as she went along the corridor to the cloakroom that it might also do her a bit of good with Mr Ford if she did a kindness to his one and only chick; it might sweeten old Ford’s disposition towards her, make him speak up for her perhaps in due course when promotions were being handed out. She bit her lip, considering the notion. Mm, bit of a long shot, but possibly worth a try.