by Lilian Peake
‘Why didn’t you talk business to me in business hours,’ she said tremulously, ‘across your desk, in the right atmosphere? I’d have taken it on the chin,’ she turned and pointed, ‘right there, and only staggered a bit. But I wouldn’t have been knocked off balance, like I am now.’ She sought the window again.
Slade came to stand behind her. She felt him even though his hands were at his sides. ‘And now you feel like a little girl wanting the fairy at the top of the Christmas tree, and reaching up and finding you’re nowhere tall enough to reach it?’
It was so exactly how she felt about him that she nodded. Gently he turned her, tipped up her face, looking into it and let his lips rest against hers. She did not resist, because the feel of him was like a healing balm on an unbearable wound. His arms came round her and the pressure against her mouth grew more demanding. Her lips admitted his and when he eased her jacket from her shoulders and slid down the fastener at the front of her dress, her excitement increased at the certainty of his intention.
He slipped her dress from her shoulders and it fell to the floor. He lifted her on to the bed, shedding his jacket and lying beside her. He loosened his tie, tugging it off. For an instant his eyes held hers, and in his she read a growing ardour. Her hands reached out to unfasten his shirt buttons and it was not long before they lay entwined, separated by no material obstacle.
Slade murmured her name and caressed her, kissing her until she cried out with pleasure at the touch of his lips and hands. She was engulfed with desire for him and love for him until at last the tears, the disillusion, the world itself ceased to matter or even to exist.
It was some time afterwards before she would let the wonder and the joy recede. She was covered by a quilt and Slade, fully dressed now, was seated on the bed. ‘Feeling better?’ he asked softly.
Rosalind nodded, smiling, but the smile hid the hurt his words provoked. He had been sorry for her, for the way he had spoilt her happiness over the meal they had shared. Out of pity he had kissed and caressed her better, and now he was happy, too, because it was not only she who had experienced pleasure and fulfilment.
The trouble was that each time they made love, she loved him more deeply. Yet he, with his grey-green eyes, his challenging chin and full-lipped mouth, remained as out of her reach as ever.
He stood, taking a black comb from his top pocket and running it through his hair. ‘Don’t come back with me. I have to go because I left a pile of work on my desk.’ He bent to kiss her, looked into her large, wondering eyes and kissed her again. He left with a lift of the hand.
‘Conscience salved,’ Rosalind thought, turning with a sigh on to her side, ‘Mission accomplished. Return to base.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOR a few moments Rosalind lay on the bed, encased in the afterglow of lovemaking. Slowly, inevitably, the glow died, and out of contentment rose discontent. Restlessness followed, giving rise to a feeling of resentment. She would go down fighting.
Scrambling from the bed, she ran into the bathroom, showered, towelled herself vigorously and revelled in the resulting feeling of well-being. Dressing in everyday clothes, she applied make-up with a swift, skilled hand and ran down to the hall telephone to call a taxi.
By the time it arrived she had made up her mind. She would show the man in whose hands lay the future of Compro—and her own—that with or without the paper qualifications he seemed to find so necessary for her job, that she could do the personnel officer’s work as efficiently as anyone he might himself select.
On the stairs she met Gerry, but she rushed past him. ‘Long lunch hour,’ he called after her. ‘It certainly seems to have given you plenty of energy!’
‘That’s what happens,’ she called, reaching the second landing, ‘when you eat with the boss. It fires you with a new enthusiasm.’
He went on his way, murmuring loudly, ‘Eat the boss, eat the boss?’ and shaking his head.
Yes, she thought, entering her office, I’ll eat the boss. I’ll gnaw at his conscience so much that when he sees how well I’ve worked, he’ll relent and let me stay in charge. She dialled his personal extension number, which only his closest colleagues and relatives knew, waited for an answer, which resembled a bark, said sweetly, ‘Darling? I’m back,’ and rang off.
When the door swung open three minutes later, she was dictating into a machine. ‘What did you say?’ a harsh voice demanded.
‘Darn it, now you’re on tape,’ Rosalind responded. ‘I’ll have to scrub that.’ She looked up at him, eyes wide, frank—and challenging. ‘I said, I’m back.’
‘I told you not to bother.’
She smiled disarmingly, remembering all that had so recently gone before. ‘I wanted to bother. I have a job to do, remember?’
Slade turned on his heel and went out. The memos were written in rough in front of her. She had written and rewritten them. Now she was dictating the final version before handing them to her secretarial assistant in the typing pool to photocopy and distribute them.
The door opened again and a straw-blonde head announced in advance who the newcomer was. Long, curling eyelashes fluttered, the scarlet lips pouted. ‘So you’re here,’ said Nedra, entering and sitting cornerwise on the desk.
Rosalind noticed with amusement how Nedra never lounged in the visitors’ chair, no doubt regarding a swinging leg and slender ankle as more provocative than the body slouched in a careless pose.
‘I was told,’ Nedra went on, inspecting her perfect nails, ‘that you wouldn’t be in this afternoon.’
There was no doubting who had told the new customer liaison officer that story, Rosalind thought acidly. Was that why Slade had wanted her out of the office—so that his friendship with the girl could blossom and eventually bear fruit?
Rosalind smiled sweetly. ‘My husband quite mistakenly believed that I needed the rest of the day to get over our very expensive lunch together.’
Nedra pulled a nail file from the pocket of her exquisitely-cut rust-coloured suit and applied it lightly to her scarlet fingernails. The action, Rosalind guessed, was used purely for effect. If the abrasive metal had in fact made contact with the red varnish it would have chipped it.
‘Your husband’s a sweetie,’ Nedra mused smiling. ‘Muscular, full of charisma—you’d have to look one hell of a long time to find his duplicate, and even then it would be a poor copy. Yes,’ with a lightning glance at her listener, ‘I’m looking forward to going to that conference with him tomorrow in Bristol. We’re staying overnight, but I expect you know that.’
Rosalind pressed the rewind button on the dictating machine and kept her eyes on the rapid movement of the tape. Her mind was turning like the tape, round and round, reverse, forward, stop, eject. But she couldn’t eject the jealousy which played havoc with the mechanism of her powers of speech, tangled up her thoughts, bringing the whole machine to a stop.
Nedra continued, having given up hope of a reaction, ‘This job’s exciting. I’m glad Slade persuaded me to accept.’
Rosalind found her voice and said evenly, ‘And what form did his—persuasion take?’
‘Financial. What else did you think?’ she asked with mock-innocence. ‘You’re his wife, dear. Although only of a few days, I was told. Maybe you haven’t yet learnt to discover whether or not your husband’s been unfaithful to you.’
‘Nedra,’ Rosalind’s eyes burnt, and as she lifted them to the other girl she knew without caring what a giveaway the fact would be, ‘I have a lot of work to do. It’s getting late
‘Okay,’ Nedra answered lightly, ‘I can take a hint.’ At the door she said, ‘I’m after him, you know. I’ll let you know when I’ve got him. Fair’s fair, although unfortunately I haven’t got a man to give you in exchange.’
Counting to twenty, to allow Nedra to have moved out of earshot, Rosalind scraped back her chair and walked with carefully steady footsteps down to her husband’s room. His head was bent over a folder full of papers. He opened his mouth to sna
p at the intruder, saw Rosalind and smoothly changed his annoyance to irritability. ‘Now what do you want?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to a conference in Bristol tomorrow? With Nedra. And staying overnight!’
He leaned back, started to speak, then became consumed in a wide yawn. His hand lifted to cover his mouth and he stretched slowly. ‘Do you know, Mrs Anderson, you tired me out. Did you have to be so demanding in the middle of a working day?’
She reached out, picked up a pencil eraser from his desk and threw it at him. It missed him and he laughed out loud. ‘Now,’ he said, rubbing the back of his head thoughtfully, ‘what were those questions? Why didn’t I tell you about going away tomorrow? Patrick only pointed it out to me this morning. He’d received a letter in the post from a certain John Welson. Mean anything to you?’
Rosalind’s eyes lit up. ‘Of course it does! How nice to hear from him.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ Slade said dryly. ‘Incidentally, he sends his very—underlined—best wishes. The company John W. is working for now is being represented by—guess who? Your old friend J. Welson.’ He waited for her reaction, but she waited only for him to continue. ‘He suggested to Patrick that he might bring his sister Rosalind when he attends the conference. It appears Mr Welson, hasn’t been informed of your marital status. Patrick’s tied up, so I’m going.’
‘And taking Nedra instead of me.’
‘And taking Nedra. I thought it a good opportunity for her to meet the kind of people she’s going to have to deal with.’
‘And,’ Rosalind took him up again, ‘do some liaising?’
‘Do a lot of liaising.’ His smile became sardonic. ‘With her looks, the “liaising” part might take on—who knows what form?’
As Rosalind swung to the door, Slade added, ‘I—er—was going to tell our personnel officer, but she had a very long lunch hour. With the boss.’
A smothered ‘Oh!’ came from Rosalind and she opened the door, walking into the corridor. ‘Shall I give Mr J. Welson your love?’ Slade called.
Rosalind hesitated, then said, ‘Yes!’
‘I will,’ was the strangely hard response, ‘I will.’
She returned to stand in the doorway. The need to give some kind of explanation impelled her to say, ‘After all, I used to go out with him.’
‘You mean he was your boy-friend?’ Slade’s eyes had not lifted from the typewritten sheets in front of him.
‘Yes. We were even secretly engaged for a time.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied, and left him. Let him wonder, she thought rebelliously. That is, if he gives the matter another thought!
Rosalind was collecting her belongings before going home when her internal telephone rang. ‘Rosalind?’ her husband’s voice asked. ‘I’ll be—’
‘Staying late at the office. It’s getting so familiar.’
A heavy sigh preceded Slade’s next words. ‘I’ll be going out for a meal with Patrick and Nedra. To talk over tactics at the conference. Would you like to come? To the meal, not the conference.’
The invitation was given so abruptly Rosalind answered, ‘So that I can help to make up a foursome? No, thanks! Your devoted little wife will stay right in her place—at home, waiting longingly for her husband’s footsteps to mount the stairs.’ She switched from sarcasm to determination. ‘No, she won’t. I’ve just remembered, I’ve got a date—with Gerry,’ she invented. ‘He’s asked me to a meal at his place this evening.’
There was a heavy silence.
‘You told me yourself,’ she said, forced unaccountably on to the defensive, ‘you wanted freedom within marriage. Well,’ her voice rose a little, ‘it works both ways. I want that freedom, too, so I can go out with anyone I want.’
‘You can go out with the devil himself for all I care,’ was the answer.
Only her lips pressed together prevented them from trembling.
Gerry obligingly asked Rosalind to a meal at his place, when she asked him to ask her. He laughed, then sobered, looking at her wedding ring.
‘Will I be beaten up by a ferocious husband or worse, be thrown out of my job?’
‘Hardly, Gerry, since he’s got a date himself tonight. With the beautiful Nedra.’ Gerry frowned and whistled. Rosalind felt compelled to add, ‘Patrick’s going along, too, to talk business, Slade said. But I expect Patrick will go home before Slade, and then …’ The anxiety in her eyes could not be overlooked.
‘She’s some female, our new customer liaison officer. Although surely that ring,’ indicating her wedding finger, ‘means something?’ When her frown deepened, Gerry said, ‘You wouldn’t be using me to get back at him?’
‘Oh, Gerry, I wouldn’t dream of—’ She turned away.
‘Sorry, Gerry. Forget it.’
He caught her arm. ‘I leave work at five-thirty. I’ll call for you here.’
‘Wait a minute. Emma will be expecting me for a meal. I expect Patrick will have phoned her to tell her he and Slade won’t be home.’
‘Well, you can let her know about coming with me. I won’t be around this place much longer, so it can be a kind of farewell meal.’
Rosalind hesitated, then agreed. Gerry left, saying he would see her in just under an hour. When she rang Emma to say, she, too, wouldn’t be home, Emma assured her she didn’t mind. ‘Joining the others?’ she asked.
‘No. Slade invited me, but—’ Rosalind thought quickly, ‘I visualised an evening of talking shop and technicalities, so I opted out. I’m—’ she cleared her throat, ‘I’m having a meal with Gerry. He’s—he’s off on a new project soon.’ She improvised, ‘I think he wanted someone to share an evening with.’
‘I see,’ Emma answered, but she was clearly puzzled.
By the end of the afternoon Rosalind had almost completed the draft of the advertisement for the computer programmers which Slade had requested. She dialled his extension. The receiver at the other end was lifted. Rosalind, knowing Slade’s habit of completing a sentence he might be dictating or reading before answering, said, ‘Slade?’
There was a breathing noise which might have been a smile or a smothered laugh. At once Rosalind guessed who would speak. ‘Would that be Mrs Anderson?’
‘No,’ she told the husky, feminine voice, ‘it’s Rosalind. I should like to speak to Slade.’
‘Well, Mrs Anderson,’ the emphasis was so slight it was hardly audible, ‘he’s elsewhere at this moment. I’m holding the fort for him, as they say. I’m sitting in his chair, at his desk. Ah, here he comes …’
‘And soon,’ Rosalind snapped, ‘you’ll be sitting on his knee.’ Then she could have bitten her tongue for having given her jealousy away to the girl who had promised to ‘get’ her husband.
‘My darling Mrs Anderson,’ said a deep, laughing voice, ‘you give me ideas. Now I have your tacit permission, I shall put your suggestion into practice at the earliest possible moment.’
‘Why not?’ retorted Rosalind, glad that Slade could not see her blazing eyes and the broken pencil point her clenched fingers had just caused. ‘According to you, the rings on our fingers are meaningless. I was just an item of barter between you and Patrick—’
‘I’m busy. Why did you call me?’
Taking a deep breath, Rosalind said, ‘I’ve almost finished the advertisement for the programmers. I haven’t specified any number. If we don’t get enough first time, we can keep advertising until we do.’
‘Agreed.’
‘I must put in the salary range. I rang to confirm that it remains as it was. Or has inflation pushed the figure up?’
‘It’ll have to be increased … not so much through inflation as competition from other companies. As I said before, we want our programmers to put down a few roots to convince them it’s easier to stay than to keep moving on.’ He specified a salary range. ‘Check with Patrick and if he agrees, take it from there. Anything else?’
‘Yes. Do I put “Please co
ntact the Personnel Officer, or Personnel Director”?’
He knew as well as she did that it was a leading question, that his answer would demonstrate whether he had changed his mind about altering her status or whether he had relented.
‘Director, was his immediate answer, and he rang off.
Rosalind enjoyed her meal at Gerry’s place. His friends with whom he shared the house joined in and there was laughter and jokes and ribald comments about Gerry’s approaching stay in Brighton.
‘Is it next week you go?’ Rosalind asked. Gerry nodded. ‘For how long?’
‘For as long as the project lasts. Six months. Maybe longer.’
‘Six months in a three-star hotel?’ Rosalind laughed. ‘You’re the lucky one, Gerald Alton.’
‘Go on, Gerry,’ urged one of his friends. ‘Say, “Yes, I know.” Remember who you’re talking to. If you don’t agree with everything she says, she might persuade the man in charge he’s been too generous and he should reduce your expenses!’
‘Hm,’ Gerry mumbled lugubriously, ‘the man in charge is her husband.’
There were shouts of laughter. ‘Now you’ve really put your foot in it,’ the others said.
Gerry shook his head. ‘Rosalind’s not like mat.’
There was a sudden silence at his tone which revealed, more than even Gerry guessed, his feelings about the person of whom he had just spoken.
Rosalind levered herself up from the floor where they had all been sitting. ‘Let’s clear this away and wash the dishes, then I must be off. Emma’s all alone so I must get back to her.’
Despite the others’ protestations that they would clear the dishes, Rosalind stayed and washed while they dried. Gerry returned with her to Patrick’s house. As they walked along the street after getting off the bus, Gerry said,
‘It would have been nice to go to a film together. You know, just to finish off the evening. Slade’s out, isn’t he?’
Rosalind nodded. ‘With Nedra.’ Even then she could not keep the bitterness from her voice.