by S F Hopkins
‘What did you say to Martin Planer?’
‘Who?’
Frustrated rage was a constant feature of Alice’s relations with her mother. She knew she must not give in to it now. ‘Martin Planer,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘How do you know Martin?’ asked her mother.
‘Mother…’
‘He’s one of our directors.’
‘I know who he is, mother. Though why he lets you go on working there I can’t imagine.’
‘You’ve never met him. You know very well I’ve always kept work and home separate. I owed you that, as my daughter. And what do you mean, “why he lets me go on working”?’
‘Mother. What did you say to Martin Planer about me?’
‘My conversations with my colleagues are none of your business.’
‘You discussed me.’
‘A few words, perhaps. I told him about your luxurious apartment and he…’
‘Mother,’ Alice broke in. ‘You didn’t tell him where I live. Tell me you didn’t.’
The older woman sounded flustered. ‘Not the address, of course. What do you take me for?’
The shock of relief almost cast Alice to her knees.
‘I told him about your penthouse, and what it must have cost. And I had to tell him where it was, or it wouldn’t have meant anything to him, now would it?’
‘Oh, mother.’ Alice felt almost physically ill.
At that moment the doorbell rang. ‘I’ve got to go,’ Alice said.
‘But I haven’t told you what I need.’
‘Mother. Merrill is at the door. She’s taken in a package for me.’
‘Oh, has she. Yet more ridiculously expensive clothes, no doubt. While your poor parents…’
The doorbell rang again, longer and more insistent this time.
‘I’m sorry, mother. I have to go. I’ll call you again.’
Alice pressed the red button on her handset and placed it on the rest. She hurried to the door and flung it open. ‘Thank heavens you’re here. Come in. I need a stiff…’
The word “drink” remained unsaid as she stared in horror at the tall, well built man smiling horridly in the doorway. Martin Planer stepped past her and pushed the door closed behind him.
‘You need something stiff, do you?’ he leered. ‘Well, I’m sure I’m the man to oblige.’
‘Get out!’ shrieked Alice. ‘How dare you burst in here?’
‘Burst in?’ His cold blue eyes mocked her. ‘You threw the door open. You invited me in. You made a most indecent declaration of need.’
He stepped closer, the scent of his cologne filling the air between them. Alice moved towards the door but his hand snaked out, trapping her wrist. She took a step backwards but Planer simply followed her. Now her back was against the wall and there was nowhere for her to go.
He stepped right up against her, holding her wrist by her side. Alice shook as his chest brushed against hers. The smile had not left his face. He came even closer, and she felt his hips, his legs, as they pinned her to the wall.
‘My, my,’ he said. ‘Little Alice Springer. Who’d have thought you’d turn out like this?’
His head moved forward and Alice realized with horror that he was going to kiss her. She raised her free hand and swung at his face with all her might. In vain; he simply caught it and transferred it to the iron grip that already held its twin. Now both of her wrists were helplessly trapped in a single huge hand. He brought the other up and cupped her chin, turning her face up towards his own.
‘Behave,’ he murmured. ‘You’re mine. There’s nothing you can do, so accept it.’ His lips nuzzled her brow, nibbled at her ear, grazed across her cheek. Then with a murmur of enjoyment he brought them to rest on her helplessly upturned mouth.
Alice gasped in horror as his hand left her chin and began to move across her trembling body. So firmly was he pressed against her that she felt with the most profound shock the hard physical evidence of his aroused lust.
‘Please, Martin,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t do this.’
His only response was to laugh. ‘I came here to discuss your mother,’ he murmured. ‘And what you can do to make good her latest depredations. But before business – pleasure.’
The doorbell pierced the fog of Alice’s despair. She screamed for help – but the cry was penned in her throat almost immediately by the huge hand that closed firmly on her mouth. Planer held her so tightly she felt she would suffocate. It had to be Merrill at the door, and she had to have heard, surely? Alice waited desperately for the sound of the key turning in the lock.
It did not come.
After a few moments, she heard Merrill’s footsteps retreating on the marble floor beyond her door. She had gone.
The hope raised by Merrill’s arrival, followed so swiftly by her departure, had knocked the fight out of Alice. When Planer stepped suddenly back she fell helplessly into his arms. Laughing cruelly, he lifted her into the air. Limp and unresisting, she found herself carried across the floor and tossed onto a sofa.
Alice was the only woman John Pagan had ever loved and he loved her still. If he had known what she was going through, he would have moved heaven and earth to rescue her.
But he did not know. At the very moment that Martin Planer was emerging from his taxi outside Alice’s apartment building, John was meeting up again with Cathy after his afternoon meeting. Did John feel guilt at being with a woman he didn’t love when the one he did love was in London? Of course not. Alice had ended their relationship. Alice had told him their love could never be. Alice was happily settled in a relationship with David Tucker.
No-one could expect John, unattached as he was, to walk away from every advance by every pretty girl until he found another he could love as he loved Alice. And John wasn’t going to.
‘I love Manhattan,’ John said. ‘It’s possibly my favourite place on the whole planet. I like to stand on the sidewalk at eight in the morning and feel the buzz of people going to work. You could run a space station on that energy.’
Cathy smiled and hugged his arm. ‘Everywhere looks good when you’re having fun,’ she said.
‘What fun would you like to have now?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I guess we’re both in New York quite often, so maybe sight-seeing isn’t a good use of our time.’ She grinned lasciviously. ‘Bearing in mind that I have to leave this evening. On the other hand, I could use a coffee. What would you like to do?’
‘I’d like to examine those garters in more detail.’
Cathy’s laugh was an earthy affair, good-humoured and lecherous. ‘Right answer!’
‘And I’m sure they’d serve coffee in my room.’
Cathy turned up her face to be kissed. ‘Why don’t you hail a cab and let’s find out?’
A little later, John and Cathy lay tightly held in each other’s arms, their clothes scattered across the large bedroom. Suddenly, John shuddered.
‘What is it, love?’ asked Cathy.
‘I don’t know. It was as though…as though something horrible had happened.’
Cathy sat up and took his head onto her breast. ‘My poor darling. Is it all right now?’
‘It was the strangest feeling,’ John said. ‘As though someone were crying out for help. And I couldn’t get to them.’
It was, of course, coincidence that John experienced this shivery feeling at the exact moment that Martin Planer was peeling off his jacket and loosening his tie in preparation for his assault on Alice’s celibacy. It must have been coincidence, because we all know that those things don’t really happen. Nevertheless, it is true that it came to him at exactly the moment of Alice’s greatest need.
Alice stared up at Planer from the sofa. His eyes were the eyes of a crazy man. Hurriedly stripped to his underpants, he had hurled himself upon her, kneeling between her thighs, her skirt pushed up to her waist. His hands reached for the waist band of her panties. She knew that the flimsy garment would not detain
him long.
Where did the strength come from? It is not, of course, possible that she received it from an ex-lover thousands of miles away in New York because, as we have said, those things don’t really happen. Be that as it may, strength came from somewhere.
Alice hurled herself upwards, scratching and slapping at Planer’s face. ‘Get off me,’ she screamed. ‘You filthy pig, get off me.’
Planer raised his hand to beat her into submission – and, as the blow was about to fall, the key turned in the lock and Merrill burst into the room, followed closely by Ben and another man in similar uniform.
The two men seized Planer by the shoulders. It took both of them to subdue him, heaving him backwards and slamming him against the wall until the breath was knocked out of him and he sank to the floor. Merrill rushed forward to take the sobbing Alice in her arms.
‘I heard you,’ she gabbled, ‘But I had to get reinforcements. Ben was just coming on duty, so I brought them both. Did he…?’
Alice shook her head. ‘You were just in time,’ she sobbed.
‘The bastard,’ said Merrill. She stood up, seizing the trousers Planer had cast off in his lust-fuelled frenzy. His wallet, stuffed with cards, was in the pocket. Merrill pulled out the driving license and studied it carefully, noting the name and address. She threw it across the room to lie on the floor beside Planer.
‘Do you want to press charges, Miss Stringer?’ asked Ben.
Hugging her slip to her, Alice shook her head. ‘Please. Just get him out of here.’
‘We have your picture on CCTV,’ Ben told Planer. ‘We’ll be printing copies. Make sure you never try to enter this building again.’
Merrill, shaking with fury, scooped up Planer’s clothes and marched onto the terrace. Flinging her arms wide, she hurled them into space.
Planer staggered to his feet. The two doormen closed on him. ‘We’ll see you downstairs, sir,’ said Ben.
Planer was incoherent with rage. He stretched out his arm, pointing at Alice. ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he snarled. ‘You’ll wish you’d never set eyes on me.’
Alice’s thudding heart had returned to some sort of normality. ‘I’ve wished that for ten years,’ she said.
Planer clutched his wallet and turned to the doormen. ‘I can’t go home like this.’
‘We’ll loan you a uniform,’ Ben said. ‘It won’t be a good fit and we’ll expect it back.’
‘Do you imagine I’d keep it? Do you suppose I want people to think I’m a doorman?’
‘Better that than a rapist,’ said Ben calmly. ‘Shall we go?’
Chapter 8
Merrill nursed Alice as though she were an invalid. She scrambled eggs and served them on the terrace with salad and toasted sourdough bread. Alice was allowed a single glass of wine. Gradually, she stopped shivering and regained a level of calm.
‘Do you think you might owe me an explanation?’ asked Merrill.
So Alice told her. About her mother’s spendthrift ways and her carelessness of the law in funding them. Of how Planer had collected the evidence against her. And how he had seized on the fact that Alice, the thief’s daughter, worked for a competitor company.
‘Thief’s daughter,’ Alice repeated. ‘It doesn’t sound very nice, does it?’
‘Are your parents poor?’ asked Merrill.
Alice shook her head. Dad had a good job. He has a very adequate pension. My mother…I sometimes think she must be ill.’
‘Ill?’
‘She has to have things. Whatever anyone else has, she has to have at least the same. Preferably better. And she doesn’t distinguish between her own property and other people’s.’
‘So let me get this clear. Planer came to you and showed you that your mother had been stealing from his company.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And he said he was going to prosecute, and she’d go to jail.’
‘Yup.’
‘But you worked for Fairmount, and Fairmount had something Planer wanted.’
‘Information. It wasn’t a product or a design secret or anything. He wanted to know who we sold to, how much we sold them and what we charged.’
‘So he could compete. Unfairly.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you got him this information.’
‘I didn’t think I had any choice. But it was from John, you see. If I hadn’t been in a relationship with John, I couldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have had access. I took the information right out of his briefcase while he was sleeping.’ Alice shuddered as she remembered the terror she had felt that John would wake and catch her red-handed.
‘And that’s why you felt you couldn’t stay with John?’
‘I’d betrayed him. Don’t you see? It was his sales that fell after Planer got the information he wanted. They fell a lot. He could have lost his job.’
‘So you did that to save your mother. You gave up the man you loved and you gave up your self-respect to stop your mother going to jail. But it didn’t stop her spending more than she had.’
‘No. It didn’t.’
‘How much have you shelled out?’
‘Over the years? I don’t know. A lot of money.’
‘And have you ever confronted her? Does she know that you know she stole money from Planer?’
‘How do you say something like that to your mother?’
‘Well, Alice, I can’t advise you about that. She’s your mother and you’ve got to decide what you’re going to do about her. But you’ve made a bad enemy in Martin Planer.’
‘I’ve made an enemy?’ Alice laughed. ‘Was it me that threw his clothes into the Thames? If it had been down to you, he’d have walked home in his boxers.’
‘Serve him right,’ said Merrill. ‘Watch out for him, though.’
‘I will. Any other advice you want to offer me, auntie?’
‘Yes.’ Merrill’s expression was very decided. ‘Yes, there is. It’s choice time, Alice. You need a man in your life. I didn’t say you need a husband,’ she went on as Alice opened her mouth to object. ‘I said you need a man. Someone to have the kind of fun with that you can’t have with a girl-friend. Someone you like having around, even if it’s in the background. You don’t have to see him every day.’
Alice thought back to what John had said was missing from his life. ‘Someone to hang out with,’ she said.
‘That’s exactly right. And I need one, too. So I’m going to go out and find one. And you’re coming with me. Unless you want to do the sensible thing. Get in touch with John Pagan and tell him how you feel about him.’
Alice shook her head. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘I think you could. But I accept that you won’t. So we go the other way, Alice. I’m in the mood to find a guy for me. And we’re damn well going to find one for you at the same time.’
That evening in New York, John Pagan was once again alone. He sat on the terrace overlooking Central Park, nursing a sparkling mineral water and enjoying his solitude.
There was no doubt about it; being alone could be very attractive, especially in the sort of surroundings that John usually found himself in. He had enjoyed his interlude with Cathy. There had been others before her and there would no doubt be more in the future. He was aware, though, that he chose carefully from the offers that came his way. He did what he could to make sure they were single, because breaking up homes was not on his list of things to do. Beyond that, he picked out only those who wanted what he wanted – enjoyment in the here and now, with no ties and no commitment.
Did he want to spend his whole life alone? No, he thought, he probably did not. The idea of having someone permanently in his life – someone to live with, perhaps someone to have children by – was one that came to him with increasing frequency. But there was a problem. Every time he had that idea, the face that came into his dreams was a face he knew. Alice’s face. Was he never to be able to move on?
And so he kept to his wandering life, traveling from
country to country in the interests of his company. As long as he had no settled home, he was not at risk of seeing the same woman long enough to feel the need to share his life. After he and Alice had split he had sold his place in London and bought a small townhouse in the Lanes area of Brighton. He liked it, but mostly as a jumping-off spot for his travels. Handy for Gatwick and not too far from Heathrow, with a good train service to London when he had to be at Head Office and a traveling bag always ready for the next departure. The company had tried several times to get him to accept promotion to a director’s job in London, and he had always refused.
And now, it seemed, he could be approaching a crossroads. Not long after he had said goodbye to Cathy, the phone in his room had rung. Tony Frejus was a colleague from the London office; but he was more than that. He was an old friend. They had met in Bolivia, where Tony was a locally employed manager. When it became clear that the weakness of the bolivar made it necessary to scale down their operations there, John had passed Tony’s name to Head Office as a good man. Strings had been pulled, a work permit obtained, and Tony had come to London. In another year he would have been there long enough to become a British citizen. Like John he lived in Brighton, which he appreciated for its raffish and somewhat bohemian atmosphere.
This, though, was not just a friendly call.
‘McGarrick is retiring,’ Tony had said.
‘He’s been threatening that for years.’
‘This time it’s really going to happen. His wife is ill, and he wants to spend time with her before it’s too late.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ John had meant it – he liked Tom McGarrick and had always found Rhoda’s company enjoyable at office functions.
‘They need a replacement.’
‘Yes, I guess they would.’
‘The Chairman’s coming to Rio next week,’ Tony had continued. ‘Ostensibly it’s a routine visit. Check out the operation, meet the troops, shake hands with the appropriate ministers.’
‘And below the surface?’
‘Charles has decided that you’re the man for the job. He’s going to ask you to take it. And he’s going to be very persuasive.’