The Vital Spark

by Carson, Angela

  would take them, she had no doubt, but she did not intend to back down and admit it.

  `We'll face that hurdle if we come to it.' His manner suggested that it was only a remote possibility, hardly worth considering, but in the unlikely event of the Royal Anchor not receiving his offering with open arms, he was more than capable of coping with the sale of several trays of highly perishable fruit. 'They've been picked under-ripe, they'll be just about right when you go down with your usual load of salads to the greengrocer in the morning. I'll come with you,' he stated, not asked, as if her agreement was a foregone conclusion.

  `And what will you do when we get there?' she bit back. `Walk up to Vince and tell him you've brought him fruit he didn't order, and in all probability doesn't want, and expect him to accept it, and pay up gracefully?'

  `Nothing so blatant as that,' Haydn grinned, completely unperturbed by her sharpness. 'Something much more subtle,' he assured her. 'You'll see, when we get there tomorrow.' And with that she had to be content until the trays of tomatoes and strawberries had been loaded into the van along with the usual consignment for the greengrocer, the following morning.

  `Mr Dunn might say he wants them.' Haydn remained silent the whole of the way from Polrewin, and Lee felt ready to burst by the time she pulled up outside the greengrocer's shop. She glanced surreptitiously at Haydn's face as she got out of the van, and scowled at the amused grin he shot in her direction.

  `He won't be able to have them, will he?' he retorted blandly. 'It won't hurt him to see them, though, when he unloads his own produce.' He stopped her protest with a quick jerk of his head towards the shop. `Shhh, here he comes. 'Morning, Mr Dunn,' he raised his voice, and Lee noticed he called the greengrocer Mister, not just Dunn, as Vince did.

  "Morning, Mr Scott—Miss Ramsay. I'll soon have this lot out of your way.' He ducked into the rear of the van as Haydn obligingly opened the back doors to give him access.

  `Yours are on this side.' Helpfully Haydn indicated the correct pile.

  `Right you are—I say !' Mr Dunn's eyes widened as he surveyed the other trays carefully stacked so that both showed to advantage, Lee realised, coming round to join the men at the back of the van. She had not helped load it. Jon and Haydn completed the job while she went to answer the telephone, and by the time she had finally convinced the caller that Polrewin was a flower farm and not a health hydro, ten minutes was wasted, and the rear doors of the van were already closed when she got back. Her own eyes widened as much as the greengrocer's when she looked inside. The strawberry trays, and those containing the big tomatoes, were each neatly covered by one of Polrewin's paper 'hats' with a transparent window in it, showing clearly the superb quality of the fruit.

  `These are the finest strawberries I've seen in many a long day,' Mr Dunn peered at them with avaricious eyes.

  `They're not a bad strain.' Haydn was briskly businesslike. 'I don't know if there'll be much call for them round here, though.'

  `Call for them?' the greengrocer ejaculated. 'Why, with that caravan site further along the coast, I could sell all you bring me.' His hands reached out hopefully towards the other trays.

  `They're spoken for, I'm afraid,' Haydn stopped him with apparent regret, and Lee stifled a gasp. They were nothing of the sort, and Haydn knew it. But if you feel you'd like to try some....' He let his sentence trail away.

  `Try some?' the trader exclaimed fervently. 'Just give me the chance, Mr Scott !' He scribbled out a tally, and absentminedly held it out towards Haydn, and Lee galvanised into angry action.

  `I'll take that,' she sharply reminded the greengrocer to whom it belonged.

  `Naturally,' Haydn acknowledged her right to it, but he took it from the greengrocer just the same, with a smile and a polite nod, then handed the tally to Lee. She pocketed it with an angry thrust and turned on her heel towards the van.

  `Where to now? The Royal Anchor, I suppose?'

  `Right in one,' Haydn complimented her, and her lips tightened. `I'm rather looking forward to this,' he admitted, and she shot him a suspicious glance. He had a look on his face like a cat about to steal cream, she thought, and his voice held a purr of satisfaction. 'Why, how fortuitous,' he drawled, as she drew to a halt beside the hotel steps, `there's the boy-friend himself, taking the air.'

  `Vince isn't my boy-friend,' Lee snapped, and could have kicked herself for rising to his bait.

  `He'd like to be.' She could not deny that. `Not that I blame him.' Haydn looked at her speculatively for a moment, and smiled at her furious glare. 'Ah well, let's join battle.' He said it as if he put pleasure aside at the call of duty, and Lee shrugged. She slid out of her seat, unsure of what he would say to Vince, but determined she would not allow him to commit Polrewin again to something they could not supply.

  `Hello, what lucky chance brings you here at this time in the morning?' Vince's face lit up at the sight of Lee, and he ran eagerly down the hotel steps to meet her. His manner should have been a boost for her ego, if it did not also prove Haydn's guess about the hotel proprietor's son wanting to be her boy-friend....

  `We were delivering in the town, and....' The words stuck. What could she tell him? That there were trays of tomatoes and strawberries in the back of the van they could not hope to get rid of, and would he pay for them? She did not doubt Vince would take them, but he would do it as a favour to her, and he would expect her to pay for his benevolence by partnering him in the dance at the festival. And she had already refused....

  `We thought you might like a sample of those tomatoes we discussed yesterday. Just to see what they're like before you commit yourself to an order.' Haydn broke in and saved her from having to reply. Vince had already ordered the tomatoes. Haydn knew that, too, but Lee reluctantly had to admire his smooth handling of the situation, particularly in the face of Vince's obvious antagonism towards the other man. The look he gave Haydn, when he got out of the

  Mini from beside Lee, was the reverse of friendly. 'Did you lock the back doors, Lee? Oh, no,' Haydn tried one, and it gave to his touch. 'Just as well, we needn't keep you from your duties any longer than is absolutely necessary.' He deliberately needled Vince, and Lee watched the two of them, intrigued despite herself. It seemed a strange way to do business, she thought, if Haydn wanted to sell his stock to the hotel, to go out of his way to antagonise the owner's room.

  `Well, of course there's a lot to see to, when you're in charge of a place this size.' Vince responded to what his natural conceit looked upon as flattery, and Lee felt a quirk of laughter start inside her. Haydn was a better judge of human nature than she gave him credit for.

  `Are these what your chef's looking for?' Haydn slid off one of the paper tops and picked up a couple of tomatoes. He held them out on the flat of his hand towards Vince, and Lee saw they were two of the most perfectly formed fruit in the trays. Had he deliberately engineered that these two should be on the top? She did not question that he was capable of it.

  Vince tried to look knowledgeable, and Lee bit back a smile. 'They'll do, I suppose.' Her smile turned to righteous indignation at Vince's indifferent attitude. She knew, and so must he, that they were top quality fruit, and must be the best on the market.

  `Why not let your chef have a look?' Haydn asked casually. 'The staff like to feel they have a say in the matter, don't they? An involvement, so to speak.' He spoke man to man, and again Vince reacted as Haydn obviously knew he would. It was like watching a puppet on a string, Lee thought, fascinated.

  `Arthur,' Vince turned and called to the hotel porter, `fetch Weston, at once.' He did not say 'please', either, Lee noticed. She saw Haydn give him an oblique look, and wondered if he had noticed, too, then the chef came down the steps towards them. He smiled at Lee, and she smiled back. She had met him once or twice, and wondered at first how a man of his obvious skill came to work in a small place like Tarmouth. He was a Londoner, and could have

  had his choice of posts in the capital. Then he told her about his small daughter w
ho suffered from asthma, and who doctors thought would benefit from living at the seaside, and she understood how it was that a man of his quality could endure taking orders from a man like Vince.

  `Have a look at these, and tell me what you think of them.' Vince turned everything he said into an order; he did not seem to have the necessary tact to make it a request.

  `They're prime quality, the best I've seen this season.' The chef took one of the tomatoes from Haydn's palm. `We've had nothing like them here since I came.' He ignored the scowl on Vince's face and turned his attention to the back of the van. 'How many trays have you got?' He moved closer as Haydn obligingly stood back to make room for him, and caught sight of the trays of strawberries. `I say, are these for us, too? Those we've been using up to now are the absolute limit,' he exclaimed disgustedly, and Lee saw Haydn's lips twitch. The scowl on Vince's face deepened, but curiosity made him poke his head into the van too, and he could not quite erase the-impressed expression on his face as he withdrew it, and said in what he tried to make an indifferent tone,

  `We'll take those off your hands as well if you like, perhaps they'll come in for the afternoon teas.'

  `They're perfect.' The chef had no such inhibitions; he said what he thought. 'If we could only get hold of berries of this quality, I could go to town on the fancies for the festival.' There was no doubt about his enthusiasm, and Lee felt a flash of sympathy for the man. How he must long to practise his art among the banqueting halls where his skill belonged ! Vince truly did not know his own luck. And probably would not appreciate it if he did, Lee thought shrewdly.

  `They're spoken for, I'm afraid,' Haydn said regretfully. `Although....' He rubbed his chin with a thoughtful thumb and finger. 'I know they're not actually wanted for use until tomorrow—that's why they've been picked fairly firm. We might be able to spare three of the trays, and use the next picking for our other customer. What do you think, Lee?' he appealed for her help.

  I—er—that would probably be all right.' She hoped to goodness Vince did not notice her bewilderment, but his attention was on the chef. With a grin of undisguised delight the man picked up the tomato trays and dumped them into Vince's arms before the latter could utter a protest, and cradled the top three trays of strawberries in his own.

  `We'll take them.' He had no intention of allowing either Lee or Haydn to change their minds. 'If you can let us have a regular supply while the season lasts, I'll be able to turn out dishes that will really put this place on the map.' And he disappeared up the steps of the front entrance, giving the strawberries, Lee felt, the accolade they deservd.

  `That's what's called softening up the market,' Haydn remarked into the pregnant silence as Lee turned the van round and headed back towards Polrewin, still with one tray of strawberries in the back. 'Come on,' he urged her, `admit that it worked.'

  `It worked,' she got out reluctantly. 'What about the other tray of berries?' They looked delicious, but she was not going to think about that.

  `I thought we'd take those back home and eat them ourselves.' Haydn sat back in his seat with a satisfied sigh. `I reckon we deserve them, don't you?'

  `Nell will be able to make use of them.' Lee had been longing to try some, but stubbornly refused to ask, and suddenly, now she had the opportunity, she found she did not want them. Polrewin was her home—hers and Jon'snot Haydn's. She objected to the proprietorial way in which he seemed to be trying to take over the business at Polrewin, and use it simply as a distributing base for his own produce. He had won Jon over, she thought bitterly, but he would not find it so easy to win her own consent. Or—an unpleasant thought struck her—had he already started a softening up process, as he called it, with herself? By the admittedly generous gift of a tray of strawberries now being carried in the back of the van, and—worse—by his practised lovemaking only that morning on the rocky point of the bay? To which she had responded....

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I'll take the strawberries in to Nell.'

  Haydn jumped out of the van and opened the back doors as sooners Lee drew to a halt on the gravel at Polrewin, and she did not offer to help him carry the tray. 'Would you like a quick taste?' he asked in a friendly manner as he passed her with it in his arms. She shook her head.

  `No.' She did not add 'thank you'. She did not feel like thanking him, and eating his strawberries would probably give her indigestion in her present mood, she thought angrily.

  `Are those for us?' Jon asked hopefully, and when Haydn nodded he gave Lee a beseeching look. Will that mean strawberry shortcake for supper tonight? You've got to taste Lee's strawberry shortcake to believe it,' he told Haydn, and licked his lips with greedy anticipation.

  `I shan't have time to make shortcake,' Lee said stubbornly. 'There's the rest of the day's tomatoes to pick, and....'

  `You won't have to bother with those any more,' Jon interrupted gleefully, 'Ben's coming full time from now on. We arranged it this morning, so the work will ease off quite a bit, especially where you're concerned,' he said with satisfaction.

  `We can't afford to have Ben full time, you know that.' Lee was appalled.

  `But Sis, that was the arrangement when he first came to us,' Jon expostulated.

  `I know,' Lee conceded through tight lips, 'but the rest of the arrangement was, when we could afford it. And we can't, not yet,' she reminded him grimly.

  `But now we're distributing Haydn's stuff as well as our own, we'll have a bit more elbow room in the exchequer, and we'll need another pair of hands to cope with the extra work,' Jon pointed out.

  `We're not distributing Haydn's stuff yet,' Lee retorted sharply. For one thing I haven't agreed that we should.' She could see from her brother's face that he already had, and her anger rose, not against Jon, but against Haydn. He was manipulating Jon as he had manipulated Vince, and where in the latter's case it had amused her, she saw no humour in such manoeuvres where they affected Polrewin. `And for another, unless and until we do, we shan't need an extra pair of hands. We simply can't afford them,' she emphasised. Ilaydn's figures look fine on paper, but I want to see tangible results before we begin to think about building on them, and expanding our operations.'

  `We'll have to expand if we want to stay in business,' Jon said reasonably. 'We can't live off tomato profits for ever. Those were only to tide us over until we got the place going, in any case.'

  `I know that.' Lee drew a deep breath, and clutched at the shreds of her patience with both hands. But expanding from our point of view, and doing the same thing from Haydn's, are an entirely different matter. If Haydn expands he's got a big business concern behind him, and if his particular section fails the others will bolster him until he's on his feet again. If we fail, we go bankrupt,' she rubbed in the truth with uncompromising clarity.

  `He'll give us credit until things begin to flow more evenly.'

  `He's not going to give us any credit. We'll keep our books in the black, we've worked hard enough to get them that way,' Lee said mutinously. 'Can't you see,' she persisted urgently, 'if we expand too quickly, take credit from Haydn's firm and over-stretch ourselves, we could be out on a limb financially, and if anything goes wrong we'd be obliged to sell Polrewin whether we wanted to or not. And no doubt Haydn would be a ready bidder,' she added bitterly. 'We already know he's looking for a place on the mainland to extend his operations, he said so himself. What if he's decided Polrewin's an ideal spot? What would be easier for him than to put us in a position where we have to pull out of the business, and he simply walks in and takes over?' She remembered the haste with which

  Haydn had steered her away from Mr Dunn's garrulous tongue, and his obvious desire to continue their conversation about Scotts expanding on the mainland. She had not thought anything about it at the time. Now, his move seemed to take on a sinister significance.

  `Haydn's not like that, Sis.' Jon looked her straight in the eye. 'He's an honourable man. Remember, I've known him for years.'

  `You knew him when you were stud
ents at College,' Lee answered flatly. 'When you were both a lot younger, impressionable, and full of high ideals. Haydn's probably lost most of his.' Jon had not, she thought thankfully, and loved him for it, while it exasperated her that he could not see the perfidy of the man who was now their guest. 'He's a business man now, with one aim and one only, and that's to get his business off the ground, and then make a profit. Remember that, and see where it leaves Polrewin in the eyes of your precious friend.'

  `Simmer down a bit,' Jon warned her quickly, Ben's coming.'

  `I'll do the tomatoes in this house first, Mister Jon.' Their helper beamed at Lee. 'I'm right glad of the chance to come here full time now,' he told her gratefully. 'My other part-time job was folding up, and I didn't want to travel to Tarmouth every day, this being so close handy to home.' He nodded in a cheerful fashion, and departed into the nearest glasshouse, and Lee watched him go in silence.

  `I can't tell him to go back on half time now, can I?' Jon asked her helplessly, and Lee looked at him with a mixture of affection and impatience.

  `So Haydn's got you doing two things for him,' she said wearily. 'Distributing his goods and taking the risks of the market, and hiring staff for which he doesn't have to pay. All highly profitable—for Haydn,' she said sarcastically. `You said he was on a sort of working holiday, when he first came here. Well, he's getting both. His work done, and a holiday—both at our expense.'

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Haydn round the

  end of the house from the kitchen quarters and head towards them.

  `I'm going.' If she saw any more of him at the moment, there would be an open row, she thought furiously, and following Ben she took a short cut through the glasshouse and out at the other end. She did not look back. She strode through the wicket gate into the first of the flower fields, and skirting round it, headed away from the house. Away from Jon, and Haydn, and human beings generally, she thought miserably. Half way across the second field she became conscious that Bandy was at her heels, and felt slightly comforted. At least she did not have to be on her guard when she was with the dogs.