Even Stranger

by Marilyn Messik

  “You wouldn’t think someone so small, could steam-roll so effectively.” I muttered. Hilary shrugged,

  “Makes more sense than having to find a proper wage, at the end of the week.” she pointed out, “You don’t even know how this whole thing is going to work. Must say, I’ve got my doubts, honeybun.”

  “Now, what do you want to call me?” asked Kitty, as I plugged in the kettle and she bustled around with cups. I debated a few choice answers, one of which was a bloody nuisance. She tutted at my silence,

  “Well Auntie’s not going to work is it? You’d better,” she said, tossing aside forty years of happy married life, “Make me, Miss Macnamarra.”

  “Why on earth… ?”

  “Trust me, Miss sounds more secretarial than Mrs and Scottish is always reliable.” I wasn’t convinced of her logic, but as the main problem wasn’t what I flipping well called her, but what I was going to do with her, I didn’t waste time debating.

  I’d sweated over and eventually finalised, a carefully worded ad to go in the local paper, offering a range of helpful and (hopefully) much-needed, practical services. I’d adopted the royal ‘we’, and indicated that nothing reasonable was beyond our scope or capabilities, from escorting children and the elderly, to organising house moves, office relocations and travel arrangements, together with a complete range of secretarial and office service options, at our premises or theirs. All of this, caused a deep degree of alarm in the family ranks.

  “You can’t do that. You don’t know who you’re going to get answering,” worried my mother, “It’ll be all sorts, perfect strangers, you won’t know anything at all about them.”

  “Well of course it’ll be perfect strangers,” I said, “Otherwise, I’d just end up doing jobs for you and Dad wouldn’t I?” She reluctantly acknowledged the sense of this, but anxiety was unalloyed. Unexpectedly she said,

  “Will you… you know… ?”

  “What?”

  “Use, you know… “ I looked at her in surprise, we so rarely talked about it, we just took what I was, for granted. At home, nobody even noticed any more when something floated gently past their head, because I couldn’t be bothered to stand up and get it.

  “Use it to check them out, I mean.” She continued, “Make sure you don’t get involved with anybody who’s, you know, odd!”

  “What, odder than me, you mean?” I asked. She laughed at that and gave me a hug, “You’re not odd, you’re special.”

  But she’d put her finger neatly on something I’d taken for granted, and therefore hadn’t thought about too much. I did have a huge advantage, which is why I didn’t have too many nerves about my venture, other than worrying whether it could earn me a living. As you’ll have gathered by now, I’ve a healthy respect for my own safety and certainly, even back then, wasn’t remotely a risk taker. I suppose I simply always felt pretty secure because of what I could do. So yes, I could take care of myself and no, I absolutely wasn’t going to get involved, at any stage, in anything even remotely risky and definitely nothing at all unpleasant. Which only goes to show, prescience wasn’t one of my attributes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fortunately for my future profit margins, I wasn’t starting off, completely clientless. When the Colonel and Mrs H-B closed down their secretarial agency, we’d stayed in occasional touch, Christmas cards and the like, and they’d sometimes send pictures of them on their boat, raising a jaunty G and T to the camera. I wrote to them, told them what I was planning, and asked if they thought any of their old clients might make use of my new services. They obligingly came up with a list of names and addresses. Picking ones within travelling distance, I wrote and got a definite yes from two and a maybe from a third. One of the yeses was from an old favourite of mine, Professor Lowbell, who not only said he would definitely want secretarial services, but also wondered whether, in due course, I’d be up for taking on some research for his latest book.

  I was tickled pink, to acquire my first proper client. I also felt it boded well that it was someone I already knew and liked. In the Hay Hill days, he’d always asked for me to do his work and we’d established a great modus operandi. Professor of English Literature, he was a highly respected expert in his field of obscure folk and fairy tales. His enthralment was with the common threads running throughout all the stories; the same monsters under the bed, the same horrors lurking in the shadows in the corner of the room. These ran consistently down the centuries, woven into different cultures the world over. The psychology of terror, its impact and attraction, for both children and adults alike, endlessly intrigued him. The depth and breadth of his knowledge was impressive and he would have made a superb lecturer, were it not for a stammer that painfully intensified under any kind of stress or excitement. He’d battled it all his life, and there was the huge frustration of a mind, flowing and flooded with ideas and commentary he wasn’t able to smoothly share. He had though, over time, evolved a highly effective method of expelling even the most immovably lodged words or phrases, by singing them out in a light tenor.

  He was an unusual looking chap, in his early sixties, short and stocky, and bearing an unfortunately strong resemblance to one of his own fairy tale frogs – pouched throat, wide jaw, eyes alarmingly protuberant and an iris so dark, it merged with the pupil, giving him a disconcertingly black and blank stare. When we’d first met, I’m ashamed to admit, I’d thought the emergence of a swift, forked tongue, grabbing a passing fly to pop into his thin, almost lipless mouth, wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. But as I grew to know and like him, any oddity of appearance was completely countered by a sharp sense of humour, sweetness of nature and the infectious, high-pitched, hiccoughing chuckle with which he invariably greeted his own jokes, as well as his speech struggles.

  I’d always enjoyed doing his work, and it wasn’t hard to get it right, he was highly intelligent, focused and always totally engrossed in whatever we were doing. His mind was more multi-layered and compartmentalised than most, and whilst I wouldn’t have dreamt of delving deeply, if I needed information at any particular moment, it was always conveniently floating on the surface. If he got wedged on a word as he dictated, I was always able to supply it as an apparently educated guess and, as we became more comfortable with each other, even sing it out with him, to our mutual amusement.

  He lived in Hampstead, in a rambling edifice at the top of a hill. It could so easily have been the setting for any one of his stories and, as my mother pointed out once, when she and I drove past, must be worth a fortune and a half. He’d been brought up there and continued sharing comfortably with his elderly parents until well into his forties before, as he put it, they shuffled off this mortal coil, within a mere two months of each other. I gathered he’d married late in life, and for the last twenty years or so, the house had been occupied by him, his wife Dorothy and, as she was wont to grumble, more books, paper and dust than should be legal.

  A woman of few words, Dorothy was built for comfort rather than speed, her fine, chin-length, grey hair fastened back on one side with a slide, from which the odd strand would slip, to trail limply against plump cheeks, untroubled by make-up. She was, she told me on one occasion, and I can’t even remember how it came up, a soap and water kind of a girl, splash and a dash had always stood her in good stead. She was also, although I didn’t realise it at first, as expert and erudite in her own field as he was in his. She held a doctorate in history, but never used the title. The Professor, rather touchingly, called her Dotty, fondly patting whichever bit of her happened to be nearest at the time. ‘Dotty by name and dotty by nature!’ he’d say. She seemed to take this in good part although if, as I suspect, he’d been doing it all the years of their marriage, I would have wanted to bash him on the head with the nearest blunt instrument.

  Dotty’s area of expertise was antique dolls. She once told me, in a brief period of loquacity, as we waited for th
e Prof to come back from one of his frequent trips to the toilet, that dolls had been around as long as little girls had and were just as important – if not more so! Little girls grew up, dolls didn’t and gave us invaluable depths of insight into different cultures, histories, workmanship, techniques and materials. She’d authored a number of books and regularly consulted for museums and auction houses world-wide, as well as being the go-to-guru for serious collectors, seeking provenance and authentication. You’d never, in a million years, guess any of that from meeting her, and I only knew because I’d been curious (nosey?) enough to check her out in the comprehensive reference section at Hendon Library. I knew from what I’d read, she had one of the most impressive collections of antique dolls in private hands. I liked her. She wasn’t overly warm, but she was consistently pleasant and courteous, didn’t waste breath or time on unnecessary small talk, and had a tightly closed thought pattern, which was just the sort I preferred, so much more restful.

  She was certainly no trouble at all, when she accompanied her husband on his visits to our office, as she often did. She’d settle herself amiably while we worked, sometimes sitting in the outer office, at other times with us, producing her own notebook from a tapestry carpet bag, writing with a fountain pen and carefully blowing on the ink to dry it, before any page turning. She illustrated all her notes with excellently-executed sketches from the photos people sent her, preferring to record details that way, because she could then put in her own measurements and notes for future reference. Her drawings were exceptionally good, but when I commented she shook her head, tutting,

  “Not my talent you’re seeing my dear, but the original doll-maker’s, that’s what’s shining through.”

  Professor Lowbell and I agreed initially on fortnightly sessions to which he brought all his mail, often hoarding and not even opening it until he was settled opposite me. I pointed out, more than once, there might well be something urgent; he was unperturbed.

  “If it’s urgent they’ll phone.” He said comfortably. At these meetings we’d devote about an hour to correspondence. We’d then habitually stop for a cup of tea and cake supplied by Kitty in best Miss McNamarra mode, before going through material to be written up for the next section of the book in progress. If I was pleased to get him on board, he in turn was delighted my new venture was going to provide a much needed service, so much nearer to home. And Kitty loved him to pieces because, not only did he treat her with great gallantry, but more importantly, unfailingly settled his invoice with a cheque at the end of each session.

  By the time Simple Solutions had been running for three months, and whilst never one to count chickens prematurely, I felt we were heading in the right direction, although the jury was still out on Kitty. There was no doubt she was efficient – no trace of batty article when she was in the office. I also couldn’t help but be grateful she’d taken to handling credit control, with a firmness and vigour I could never in a life-time have mustered. She had a habit of dropping her voice, when on the phone to late-payers, in a way that had more than a touch of the menacing about it. When I remonstrated, she was unrepentant.

  “Dolly, you be the nice one they like to deal with, I’ll be the not so nice one who makes sure they pay.” Whilst there was about her, a distinct whiff of Mafioso, when pressing for payment, on the increasingly frequent occasions that a potential new client made the two-flight trek up to the office, she was charm personified. In fact she had to be restrained from providing a running, coffee and cake buffet – at times our outer office/waiting room had a rather too convivial feel about it for my liking.

  Gratifyingly, within our first three months, we were already finding ourselves busy enough to need additional extra help. I put another ad in the local paper, to say we were looking for a new team member – secretarial skills, clean driving license and three references. I was pleased with the response, although felt most of them could have done without a thorough grilling from my outer office dragon, before meeting me. Our office hierarchy definitely required some clarification.

  I interviewed half a dozen women who were eminently qualified, answered all my questions, did great typing tests and produced rave references, but ended up taking on the one I liked best. Brenda Herkomer sailed into the office like a rather stately, square-rigged galleon. She hadn’t a single reference to her name because she hadn’t, she confessed, touched a typewriter or worked for anyone since God was a boy. She’d been comfortably married, for twenty-five years, to Mr Herkomer, a local bank manager, until one morning he announced, between the cereal and toast, that he was leaving. He’d packed a suitcase, stopped off at the vicarage to pick up the vicar’s wife – apparently, singing in the choir hadn’t been the only mutually satisfying activity in which they’d been engaged – and vanished. With him disappeared, not only Mrs Vicar but Brenda’s comfortable life-style, financial security and house, re-mortgaging being another something he’d neglected to mention.

  All of this, she recounted without a trace of self-pity, whilst absent-mindedly tutting over and straightening paperwork on my desk and asking me as many questions as I was asking her. I liked her instantly, and as a bonus, she was the only person who hadn’t walked in and thought to herself how young I looked, to be running my own business.

  I can’t say she immediately hit it off with the other staff member, but then I’m not sure anybody would have done. As it transpired, the settling down period for Kitty and Brenda, took a little longer than I’d imagined and at times, the atmosphere was decidedly chilly, as each tried to out-boss and re-organise the other. I don’t think either of them felt they were remotely part of the same team, until a few weeks down the line, when I returned to the office at the end of the day and found them both sitting on a chap who was lying full length on the floor of the travel agency, growling and cursing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I wasn’t in the mood for a drama. I’d been out most of the day, conveying a ten year old, one of our regular charges, from school to the dentist and then home. His mother, Susan McCrae, was a local GP who ran, with total efficiency, a busy practice, an often absent-abroad husband and two other much older children, but fell to pieces when dealing with Devlin. He’d been a late, surprise addition to the family, with an eight-year gap between him and his next oldest sibling. He was, his mother told me, when I first went to see her, a wee bit of a handful. This was something of an understatement, and I could tell at a glance, the butter-wouldn’t-melt face, hid a no-holds-barred personality.

  The family employed Celine, a French au pair, but as she was inclined to lose what little English she had, when under stress, she probably wasn’t the best person to deal with young Devlin, who had an almost forensic interest in seeing just how hysterical he could get her. Celine couldn’t drive, so Dr McCrae was delighted to come across the services I offered, especially, she said, because it was so unusual for him to take to someone in the way he’d taken to me. It wasn’t, of course, the mutual attraction she fondly assumed, more a sort of armed neutrality. We’d been introduced against a background of Celine’s noisy sobs, emanating from the kitchen. I understood she had a thing about spiders and knowing this, Devlin had slipped a fake, rubber one into her coffee a few moments ago, while her back was turned. She’d drained the cup, come face to face and her reaction had been extremely satisfactory, even louder and more panic-stricken than he’d anticipated.

  “Devlin,” said his mother repressively, once she’d established the facts. “You’re a very naughty boy, in a moment, I want you to go right back in there and tell poor Celine how sorry you are.” Devlin allowed his lower lip to quiver just a little, and his mother immediately gathered him to her. “Oh, now don’t get upset little one. He’s such a practical joker,” she smiled at me, “Has us in stitches a lot of the time, don’t you darling? I expect Celine was just a bit surprised, that’s all. You didn’t mean to frighten her did you?” I could clearly see his mother couldn’t have
been more off the mark and decided, if I was to take this job on, boundaries would have to be drawn. Devlin, for his part, was more than thrilled to meet me, another soft touch and further entertainment, he thought. I smiled at him,

  “Perhaps Celine doesn’t like spiders?” I suggested. He furrowed an angelic brow.

  “Didn’t know that.” He said, giving me the big blue eyes.

  “I’m sure you didn’t. But we all have things we don’t like much, don’t we?” Obligingly, into his mind bounded next door’s Boxer dog, with its habit of sneaking up unseen to the other side of the fence and barking loudly when Devlin was kicking a football around the garden. The barking was deep, alarming and unexpected, Devlin had been scared rigid, several times now. I tucked that away for future reference, on the basis that the pleasure he took in scaring Celine, was as bad for his moral development as it was for her nerves. I smiled warmly at him again and I think he might just have had a suspicion that I wasn’t, as my Aunt Yetta had been wont to say, as green as I was cabbage looking.

  The family turned out to be a lucrative and regular source of picking up, dropping and escorting tasks, rarely a week going past without them needing our services, at some stage or another. And to be honest, Devlin never caused me too much trouble; he was a bright child and soon assessed that with me, there were some things that would be tolerated and others, he didn’t have a hope in hell of getting away with.

  He could be both tiring and tiresome and hence my general rattiness on returning to the office to find the staff busy sitting on a complete stranger. Hilary, it turned out, was also on the floor, in the opposite corner with her head buried in her hands. I shut the door carefully behind me and reversed the shop sign from Open to Closed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Call 999.” instructed Kitty. She was a little breathless, I suppose that was only to be expected, she was sitting on his legs and he was doing his level best to hurl her off.