Tomorrow...Come Soon

by Steele, Jessica

  She rummaged in her bag for her door key, and leaving her cases to the side of the porch, silently she let herself in. She saw the line of light showing beneath the sitting room door, and her heart was ready to burst, for she knew that that was where she would find him.

  Her hand was on the sitting room door, when a smile of mischief widened her mouth. In the next second she had the door open, and in a swirl of activity she was pirouetting into the room, her cry of `Tar-rah breaking off as pain assaulted her hip, and she lost her balance and went cannoning into the hard unmovable figure standing there.

  The pain in her hip frightened her, and had scorching fears returning that she was back to having to get her balance before she moved. She clutched tightly on to her father, who oddly, seemed to have grown in stature in her absence, while she tried to best her panic.

  Panic faded, and with it pain, as she sorted out that with 'her hip still healing, and with her feet unaccustomed to their new high heels, neither was ready yet for such a crazy spin into the room.

  And then the figure she had been clutching on to as though to life was pushing her roughly away. And Devon was gasping afresh, though this time not in pain, for she

  found she had perfect balance, but from shock. For -the large man she had grabbed hold of was, she now saw, very different in build and height from what he should be. He was, in fact, not her father at all!

  Shock to see she had launched herself at the self-same man who had visited her father on her last night at home left her dumb for several seconds.

  But not so the man she had seen only once, though she had never forgotten him—seven weeks in hospital had left her with a lot of time at her disposal. And she was soon to discover that in those seven weeks she had been gone, his liking for her had not. gone up at all. For there was aggression added to the none too polite way he had treated her before.

  `You're back in England,' he reminded her grittily. `Back where a parental eye might be kept on you—don't come the free love tricks you've been practising in Stockholm with me.'

  Free love! Good heavens, was that what he thought she had gone to Sweden for—to do as she wished without her father there to check her? Speechless from what he had said, Devon stared at him.

  She watched his eyes travel disparagingly down, over her new suit, his unflattering appraisal reaching her trim ankles and dainty feet, before he lifted hard eyes to study her pale face. She felt tired suddenly, when tiredness had been kept at bay by the elation she had thought she would never lose but which, all at once, she had. She guessed that tiredness was showing in her face as Grant Harrington's lips curved cynically as though he was putting his own interpretation on why she should arrive back looking done in, from what he obviously considered the free love capital of the world.

  Struggling out of fresh shock that any man could say such things to her, Devon managed to find her voice.

  `Wh-where is my father?' she questioned, her voice having a husky quality, and nowhere as firm as she would have liked to have heard it.

  Her question, was ignored as she found herself in for some more of his insolent scrutiny as, his expression sardonic, he did not give her a straightforward reply, which was all she wanted, but answered sneeringly:

  `Fancy you remembering you have one. You cut your holiday short by one week—didn't Sweden come up to expectations?'

  Nothing wrong with his mental arithmetic—his manner had flushed out that stranger to her of anger. And Devon was glad of it. For it replaced the shock she felt that he was seeing her as totally as something she was not, and made her forget entirely that he was her father's employer.

  `You'll never know what Sweden can do for a girl,' she told him shortly—and was ready then to go looking herself for her father, since it looked as though insults were all she could expect if she stayed where she was.

  `I can take a good guess.' He was having the last word as his eyes flicked again over her suit, an intimation there she couldn't miss, that without a doubt she had got some poor Swedish sucker to pay for it.

  Angry words flared near to the surface. But just in time, memory came that the only possible reason he could be in her home had to be because of something to do with the company her father worked for. She remembered that the most detestable man she had ever had the misfortune to meet was her father's employer.

  `You'll excuse me, Mr Har . . .' she started to say stiffly, but broke off as she heard footsteps.

  She turned her back on Grant Harrington as those footsteps neared And she had her eyes on the doorway when the smaller man came through it, then stood stock-still, looking at her as if he just could not believe his eyes.

  It was her father who stood there—and yet not her father. The man who had halted at the sight of her; the man who stood blinking as though he thought her some sort of mirage—had aged ten years in the short time she had been away!

  `Dad!' she cried.

  And then it was as if some magic had whisked those added ten years away. Nobody watching could miss seeing his unbounded delight as Devon moved the several steps up to him, not a sign of a limp, a lurch, about her.

  She forgot all about Grant Harrington being there. Forgot that he was watching the way her father, his delight immense at the physical change in her, put his arms around her and hugged her as though she had been away a year. She was mindless that to an outsider who knew nothing of why this homecoming should be so joyous, it should seem she looked to be an adored daughter who had been away much too long. She was too busy battling against tears to think about him—tears had no part in this happy homecoming.

  Charles Johnston, too, was for the moment oblivious of the other man. 'Why didn't you let me know you were coming home? I would have come to the airport to meet you,' he said, and his eyes were shining too as, with the memory of that stab of pain, this time Devon did a sedate twirl around for him.

  She was sure they would have hugged each other again from sheer gladness, had not a harsh voice cut in abruptly: `You have the keys, Charles?'

  At that moment Devon felt she hated Grant Harrington that his cold harsh voice should intrude on this time of happy reunion. But as she looked from her father to the stern glacier features of the taller man, and back again to her father—so a new fear entered her heart. And it was a

  fear that had nothing at all to do with the success or otherwise of her operation.

  For her father was suddenly looking old again. That shining light had gone from his eyes, and as he moved from her towards his employer, she knew just then, without having to be told, that something very, very dreadful had happened while she was away.

  Choking back comment, she watched, her eyes widening, as she saw her father hand over keys which she knew were his office keys because of the key-ring they hung from. A key-ring she herself had bought him when he had complained about the office keys getting mixed up with his home set.

  Neither man had anything to say. The keys were taken without thanks. And as, bewildered, Devon searched for a reason why her father's employer should so sternly be taking the office key, the safe key, and other keys that had been in her father's possession for as long as she could remember, Grant Harrington did say something, the effect of which' made her father's face go a putty sort of grey.

  I'l—see you out,' Charles Johnston replied, finding

  his voice, mindless that Devon was staring at them both as she tried to grasp what it was all about.

  Stunned to see her father with his proud head bent as he preceded his employer from the room, she came to life as Grant Harrington, with neither word nor look for her, would have followed him.

  `What's going on?' she addressed his back.

  He looked set to ignore her, but her feelings were all for her father, and she wasn't having that. With a speed new to her, Devon flew to grab hold of his arm, catching him in the doorway.

  I'll be in touch,' he clipped, and made a movement

  indicating that there was nothing more to be said, that he wanted
to be off.

  Hostilely he turned round, his eyes going to look distastefully down at her hand on the immaculate sleeve of his suit jacket.

  `What's happen . . .' she began, before his arrogant stare had her taking her hand from him.

  `Pretending you don't know, Miss Johnston?' he bit cynically.

  don't kn .

  `There's nothing your father wouldn't do for you, is there?' he sliced through her denial, his voice a seething undertone. 'I've seen with my own eyes that he worships the ground you walk on.' And while she had started to gape, contempt blazed from him as he tore into her furiously, 'The trouble with women like you is that somebody else always has to pay the price. It's you, you idle bitch, who has brought your father to this dishonour!'

  `Dis—honour!' she exclaimed hoarsely, fresh shock making her voice barely audible.

  But he had heard it, and was straight away discounting any truth in the roundness of her eyes. 'You can throw away your passport,' he informed her brutishly, 'your jet-setting days are over.'

  . ?' She still wasn't with him.

  `The horn of plenty has just dried up,' he said succinctly.

  And with that she was staring at his back as he strode purposefully to the front door. With only the briefest of nods at her father, he strode out into the night.

  Devon stood where Grant Harrington had left her, the words he had uttered spinning crazily around in her head. She watched without really seeing the way her father, used as he was to carrying anything heavy for her, having spotted her suitcases in the porch was mechanically bringing them into the hall.

  He straightened up. But it was when he wouldn't meet

  her eyes that the words 'horn of plenty', that word 'dishonour', changed from merely spinning to start roaring in her ears. And she was then going forward, an arm going round him protectively. And she just had to ask:

  `Did—did an—endowment really pay for my—operation?'

  Fifteen minutes later, not sure who had supported whom as they had moved from the hall and back into the sitting room, Devon was still not believing what her parent had confessed in answer to the question she had not really expected a denial to.

  Her father's honour was without question. She knew it, just as everyone else knew it. His employer knew it too, was certain of it, why else did he have such a trusted position?

  But even when, no joy about him now to have his good-as-new daughter home, Charles Johnston leaned his head back against his chair and closed his eyes for some seconds, even then Devon could not believe it.

  `You'll have to know, child. You'd guess anyway before too long when I no longer got the car out to go to the office. It was Grant Harrington, or rather his company, who paid for you to have that operation.'

  For how long she sat numbed, Devon couldn't have said. Then, her mind darting up all channels, she opened her mouth, and closed it again. It appeared to her then that anything she thought to say would come out sounding like an accusation.

  She valued honesty every bit as much as her father, but whatever he had done, he had not done it for himself. Blame there was. But not blame down to him. It was her blame. Only now was she beginning to see what a pathetic creature she had been. She had not been exactly brimming over with acceptance of her fate, had she?

  `Oh, Dad,' she said softly, wanting, needing to help him

  in what must be a terrible time for him. Harrington's as the loser had ceased to exist in her mind just then. All she could think of was her father, and what his pride, his self-respect must be suffering at this moment. 'You - didn't expect to be found out?' she enquired gently, tentatively, instinct telling her it would be better for him she could get him to talk about it.

  He looked at her, and quickly away, making her feel dreadful that he should be too ashamed to meet her eyes, when everything he had ever done had all been for her. Then he coughed, and cleared his throat, and then as if it was being dragged from him, he began: "

  `I thought—I'd been exceptionally clever.' He cleared his throat again. knew the risk I ran, but . .

  `But for me you thought it was a risk worth taking,' she inserted, doing her best to hold back tears that wouldn't make him feel any better if he did look at her and caught sight of them.

  thought I stood a very good chance of the . . .' he paused, then faced the words, being the man he was, even though Devon winced to hear him end, 'of the theft not being discovered.'

  She swallowed. 'But it was?' she prompted.

  `Far sooner than I'd imagined,' he replied.

  At his words, her mind flitted back to that first meeting with Grant Harrington. To that first time he had been in their home. 'You were hoping I would have been out of the country before you were found out?' she asked, bringing out what her intelligence had brought her.

  had the shock of my life when I opened the door that night and saw Grant Harrington standing there,' he confessed, right there with her. 'My mind went blank for a while. I just wasn't thinking,' he recalled, 'or I would never have brought him into the sitting room where you were.'

  `He came to tell you then that he knew you'd taken money from the firm?'

  He shook his head. 'I'd been a bit cleverer than that,' he told her without pride. 'The—irregularities—in the finance section had been discovered, though they didn't point particularly to me. But the moment I saw it was Grant who had called, I knew damn well that he'd suspected it was me.' He seemed to go away from her, speaking almost to himself, as he went on, 'He could have sent anyone of half a dozen people to discuss those irregularities thrown up only because, for my sins, some immediate decision had been made to change to a more sophisticated system of paper work.'

  `Why did you know that Grant Harrington suspected you when you saw him at the door?' she questioned, not wanting him to go away from her. Although he was still looking terrible, the tension that had been in him seemed to be easing.

  He looked across at her then, and she tried her best to give him an encouraging smile, though in fact she was still suffering a fair degree of shock herself. The smile he offered back lifted her, weak though his smile was, as he went to answer her question.

  `You wouldn't remember this, but Grant's father and I were close friends in the old days. I respected his father,' he said, and she couldn't miss the hurt in him as he paused before adding quietly, 'and he respected me,' and pressed on, 'Grant knew of this. He and I would occasionally stop for a chat. Most times his father's name would come up. I think I was a sort of link man with the man he loved very much.' He cleared his throat again, then said, 'Grant Harrington came personally that night out of the respect he had not only for me, but for his dead father. It would have been what his father would have expected him to do, much though he would hate the chore.'

  Silence hung heavily when he had finished speaking. And Devon was back to remembering that night. But only then did Grant Harrington's hard look, the impolite way he had been with her, begin to mean anything. He had come there with his suspicions that her father was a thief, and she had just about confirmed it for him. He had already seen the cases in the hall, the sight of them must have given strength to his suspicions, before she had told him that she was the one who was going away, and carelessly, that she might make her stay in Stockholm that of a couple of months. He had most likely assumed that she intended to stay in only the best of hotels. Her father's salary was high, but it wasn't up to her jet-setting about the world for a couple of months, staying at Only the best hotels, at any time she felt like it—and he had known that.

  It seemed to her then that Grant Harrington, knowing that her father was as honest as the day was long, had, not wanted to believe what the intellect behind that high forehead had told him; that through her, because of her fun-loving ways; through the love her father had for her that would deny her nothing, she had turned him into a criminal. No wonder he had been blunt with her! The great respect his father had had for her parent had been tarnished and she was the root cause.

  Her fat
her moving to put his head in his hands brought her rapidly back to the present. She bottled down the impulse to go and put her arms around him. It would serve no purpose, though it might assure him that she still thought him the most wonderful father in the world. But she would have plenty of time to reassure him on that point, she thought, making herself stay just where she was. She knew, for all he wouldn't show it, that it would only irritate him if she went to fuss round him. More important at the moment was the need to get it all out into the open. If he was going to brood on it, then they would

  do it together. She had had her turn—it was his turn now.

  `You said that by seeing Grant Harrington at the door, you knew it was you he was suspicious of,' she said, striving to get back to the subject that had lapsed. 'Had he any particular reason for thinking it might be you?'

  `He's no fool, Devon,' she was told. 'He knew that if anyone of his staff was capable enough with figures to perpetrate an—embezzlement such as was perpetrated, there were few in that office up to my standing.'

  'He came to accuse you?'

  He shook his head. 'He planted the facts in front of me, and asked if I could throw any light on them.'

  `You said you couldn't?'

  `I—hedged. But he knew. I knew he knew, although he didn't suspend me straight away.'

  `Suspend you?'

  `He couldn't do anything else. He called on a Saturday night two weeks ago, to tell me not to go into the office until further notice.'

  Devon had never felt so dreadful in her life. All the time she had been in Sweden, at a time when her own anguish about the success of her operation had been terrifying, her poor dear father had been facing this alone—and all because of her!

  `You've given years of service to the firm,' she snatched out of thin air, unfairly not seeing Harrington's side of it in that moment of wanting to pull her father out of his despair.