by Liz Fielding
The countryside was fresh and new, there were flowers in gardens and suddenly Melanie wished she wasn’t tied to London. Well, only another week and she would be able to claim victory in her bet with Richard, although she couldn’t possibly take his hard-earned money. Not now she knew just hard-earned it was.
Making him admit that he had been wrong about her would be reward enough. Of course, if her plans for the co-operative got anywhere, she would still be needed in London.
Paddy had promised to talk to Sharon. Maybe today, when they were on their own, she would have a chance.
‘Open the gate, dear, would you?’ They had stopped at a five-barred gate marked “Dove Cottage - Private” and Melanie climbed out of the car, opening and closing it behind the car. ‘Thanks. Bit of nuisance, but if it isn’t kept shut all those people with four-wheel drives just charge across the field to get down to the river.’
It was a very ordinary looking field and there were no animals to stray that she could see. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Well, it’s a site of special scientific interest. Some rare wild flowers grow there, don’t ask me what.’
‘Oh, I see. Couldn’t Mr Wolfe simply put up a sign?’
‘He could. The trouble is then they’d all be dug up over night. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’
‘I’m not sure that I ever did,’ Melanie murmured, but they had already pulled up in a walled courtyard at the side of the cottage.
He swung out of the car and crossed to the back door of the cottage, unlocked it and went in, switching off the alarm system. ‘If you’re making coffee I could murder a cup,’ he called back to her, apparently in no hurry to off.
But Melanie was still outside. The sprawling red brick timbered cottage faced the river and she had walked round to the front and was staring up at the drunken angles of the pantiled roof where a couple of fantailed doves were strutting their stuff.
‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ the driver said, coming out to look for her and saw her staring up at the facade. ‘It’s lovely isn’t it?’
‘It must be really old,’ she said.
‘Seventeen something, so Mr Wolfe told me once. And the dovecote is really old.’ He pointed to a round brick building at the far side of the courtyard. ‘The river’s down there, through the trees. You should take your lunch down there if the weather holds.’
‘Maybe I will.’ She turned to him. ‘First I’ll get you that cup of coffee.’ But she was impatient for him to finish and leave, keen to have the place to herself and explore this private, unknown part of Jack Wolfe’s life.
Once alone she walked slowly through the ground floor. The cottage had been furnished for comfort, she decided, a long time ago and she didn’t think there would be a stampede of life-style editors beating a path to Jack Wolfe’s door begging to do a colour feature on his country home, no matter how enchanting the exterior.
But if the furniture was old, hard used, too well-loved to be thrown away and replaced by something smarter, the sense of peace and welcome was just as tangible.
She stroked the arm of a well-rubbed leather sofa pulled up in front of the ingle-nook fireplace, then curious, raised her fingers to her face.
Yes. She knew this scent.
The Jack Wolfe who wore that terrible old t-shirt was not just a figment of her over-heated imagination. He was real and at the end of a hard day, he stretched out in front of the fire on this sofa.
She smiled a little as she opened the French windows to let in the sweet spring air. Away at the far end of the garden a clematis, grown rampant over a wood shed stacked with logs, was flowering its heart out. And there was a saw horse to the side with an untidy heap of branches waiting to be cut.
Jack Wolfe could have paid to have some one cut his logs, but she knew that he didn’t and the knowledge warmed her. This was where he came to get rid of the smell of the City.
And she would bet a month’s wages that he didn’t bring Caroline Hickey with him.
The garden, full of secret places, called to her to come and explore, but she resisted the temptation and turned back to the living room.
In the far corner of the room there was an old piano draped in a faded chenille cloth, its surface cluttered with photographs in silver frames blackened from lack of polishing. Mostly they were old, men and women in stiff poses wearing outdated clothes and outdated hairstyles.
A few were more recent. A woman who had to be Jack’s mother wearing sixties styles, false eyelashes, holding the arm of a young man and later with a baby, who even then had that same penetrating gaze.
Melanie smiled and moved on. Jack self-important at ten with his mother and a new baby, which must be Tom.
After that Tom was the favoured subject and there was nothing more of Jack until his graduation. And then...
And then her heart stopped as she picked up a photograph, half hidden behind the others. The girl was lovely, dark haired, dark eyes luminous with happiness on her wedding day. And the man at her side was Jack. He was married. Had been married.
She suddenly felt quite sick and calling herself every kind of fool for her stupid fairy-tale daydreams, she grabbed her cleaning kit and hurried upstairs to get on with the job. Start work.
*****
‘Jack, are you busy?’
‘What is it, Mike? I was just going out.’
Mike Palmer glanced at the wicker hamper in Jack’s hand. ‘Lunch in the park?’ he enquired, with a knowing grin.
‘By the river, if you must know.’
‘Forget it. It’s going to rain.’
‘And?’
‘And we’ve just had about fifty feet of fax in from Chicago, following up on your meetings.’
‘I should have made my escape while I had the chance.’
‘Since when have you wanted to escape from this?’ Mike asked, with an expansive gesture.
‘All work and no play, Mike ...’
‘Makes Jack a dull boy? I don’t think anyone would ever describe you as dull. Besides, there’s a rider to that proverb; All play and no work makes him something greatly worse.’
‘Well that would seem to settle the matter fairly comprehensively. Have you made arrangements for lunch to be sent in?’ Jack glanced at the hamper. ‘Or shall we picnic in the boardroom?’
‘It seems a pity to waste it. Will she be very disappointed?’
‘No, it was to have been a surprise. And probably a mistake.’ The women who worked for him were strictly off limits. Getting involved was asking for trouble. And yet just the thought of Melanie Devlin stirred something deep, something long buried. He realized Michael was looking at him a little oddly. ‘You did say it was going to rain?’
‘Without a doubt.’
Jack turned as his secretary came into the room. ‘Mary, get hold of Geoff will you? Tell him to collect Miss Devlin at about four and take her wherever she wants to go.’
Mike, about to ask who Miss Devlin might be, took one look at Jack’s face and changed his mind.
*****
Work was easy. Melanie went through the cottage like a whirlwind, concentrating all her energies, all her thoughts on the task in hand, not even stopping for lunch.
She started at the top, resolutely refusing to speculate on which of the dust-sheeted bedrooms Jack had shared with his wife. It certainly wasn’t the small, single-bedded room he used on his weekend visits. And when she returned to the living room, it was with nothing in her mind but the eradication of dust and cobwebs.
She removed the photographs from the piano without looking at them, took the cloth outside, shook it and hung it over the line to air and after she had finished cleaning she draped it back over the piano. Then she polished every one of the photograph frames until they gleamed before she put them back.
To the wedding shot she gave pride of place, in the centre. When she was satisfied, she stepped back to admire her handiwork, just to prove that she was not in the least affected.
‘
Oh, very nice, miss.’
‘Heavens, Geoff, you’re early.’
‘Mr Wolfe said to pick you up at four o’clock. It’s not far short of that.’ He looked around. ‘The cottage looks a real treat.’
‘Thank you.’
He crossed to the piano and picked up the wedding photograph. ‘I’d just put that round the back, though, if I were you, miss. He doesn’t care to be reminded.’
*****
It was a week before Sharon broached the subject of the co-operative again. They’d been cleaning an empty house after it had been renovated by a building contractor and for once had the luxury of a proper lunch break.
‘What’s all this about, then? You planning on starting up on your own?’ she demanded, without preamble.
‘An agency of my own? No. I’m an actress, Sharon. This is just a temporary job for me.’
Sharon gave her look that suggested she was living beyond her hopes. ‘What’s in it for you, then?’
Nothing, except a lot of extra work when she could have been out having fun. But Sharon wouldn’t believe that. ‘You and Paddy and the other girls could have made life difficult for me. You didn’t.’
Sharon shrugged. ‘You might talk posh, but you know how to work.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t like the way Mrs Graham does business, and I don’t think you should have to put up with it.’
‘Oh, I agree. We agree, don’t we Paddy?’ Then she laughed. ‘Come on, then, spit it out.’
She spat it out. Or rather laid out her plan for a co-operative that would be run by the women who did the work. A co-operative that would have its own crèche and nursery facilities so that no one would have to worry about childcare. A co-operative that could provide after school care for the older children.
‘That would mean employing properly qualified people,’ Sharon said.
‘Yes. And you’d need properly equipped premises. But with your nursery vouchers you would already be partly funded. And you could offer the facilities at a reasonable price to other working women to help pay for it. The nursery doesn’t have to be a profit making organisation, but it is essential that it covers its running expenses. And the business could be run from the same premises.’
‘And where are we going to find somewhere to rent?’
‘There’s that old house round the corner from you, Paddy,’ Sharon said.
And that was it.
Quite suddenly Melanie’s idea had taken on a life of its own and become unstoppable. Within a week they had a working business plan, had applied for a start-up loan, enterprise allowance and business training for Paddy’s husband. They only lacked one thing. Premises. The house round the corner from Paddy would have been perfect with a little money spent on it, but the council were dragging their feet.
Luke, she knew, could have helped. But she didn’t want to involve him. This was her idea and she wanted to carry it through without running home.
But who else was there? Her subconscious, right on cue, supplied the image of Jack Wolfe that seemed imprinted on her brain like a photograph. Her subconscious, she told herself, had several screws loose.
*****
Mel was running late. A signals failure on the Underground had put her nearly an hour behind by the time she pushed the key into Jack Wolfe’s front door, let herself in and turned off the alarm. He wasn’t in and she couldn’t fool herself about that niggling sinking feeling any more.
It was disappointment.
She shook herself. Who was she kidding? She was his cleaner, for heaven’s sake. Nothing more. And not for much longer.
She had given herself a month and that was nearly up. She didn’t know what she had proved, but at least no one could accuse her of being boringly sweet any more.
She pulled a note from the fridge door. There was always a note. Sometimes it was a genuine request for her to pick up his cleaning or to restock the refrigerator. Sometimes it was just an irritation, like today.
“Could you pick up some black olives, Cinderella? In case I decide on a pizza.”
Was it her imagination, or had the irritating ones become more frequent since he had come so close to kissing her? She crushed the note between her fingers and tossed it in the bin.
On her last day she’d leave a little note of her own...
She caught herself. No, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do anything so ridiculous. She had far more important things to do than tell the man how many beans made five. Any man called Jack should already know that.
She was upstairs cleaning the gallery windows when she heard the front door open. Startled, she turned to look down to the lower floor just in time to see Jack Wolfe stride across the huge open-plan living area and straight out onto the terrace.
Someone had seriously annoyed him and he gripped the wrought iron balcony rail in a determined effort to control the temper that was darkening his features.
She had seen him in a variety of moods, from detached through withering scorn, but never seriously angry. Whoever had provoked such a reaction had her deepest sympathy.
It was the first time she had seen him since he had sent her home, bewildered, flustered, almost incoherent with feelings so disturbing that she could scarcely think of anything else. So that every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon she was like two separate people.
One dreading that when she put the key into the lock he would be at home.
The other dreading that he would not.
Not that she needed to see him. His image was so indelibly printed onto her psyche that he was always there just below the surface, waiting to emerge and disturb her if she stopped working, stopped thinking.
She wondered, with a sudden insight into her own motives, whether her project to help her colleagues owed more to the effort she put into not thinking about Jack Wolfe, than some high-minded ideal.
The trouble was there was so much to think about. She was now intimately acquainted with every item of clothing he possessed, she knew the brand of toothpaste he used, that he had a weakness for dark, expensive chocolate, the kind that cracked like a whip when it was broken.
He bought books that she wanted to read, would read when she had the time.
Worse, she could tell from the music he had been listening to on his stereo system the night before whether he had been alone, or with Caroline. Alone he listened to Mozart, Bach, Oscar Petersen, tastes that she shared. Not that there had been much evidence of Caroline’s presence lately which was something of a comfort.
But not much.
She had discovered other things too.
Richard had told her that he had a reputation for ruthlessness in the City. Well she knew how that kind of reputation could be distorted. Luke could be thoroughly ruthless when he wanted something. But Jack seemed to revel in it. Actually enjoy it. Why else was he making a collection of newspaper clippings with nasty headlines that played on his name?
He wasn’t just ruthless. He was good at being ruthless, brilliant at it.
He lived in the kind of apartment that cost telephone numbers and owned a cottage on the river at Henley, ditto. Even if it had been a family home that he’d inherited, not many people could afford to keep it for the odd weekend.
She always knew when he had been there.
The jeans and t-shirt would be waiting for her to wash. She had to fight the urge to hold them to her face so that she could remind herself of the sharp intermingled scent of pine and sweat.
Occasionally she relived her fantasy of meeting him at some smart gathering, wondering how he would react when he saw her dripping with diamonds and designer silk, how he would react when their hostess introduced them. ‘Melanie, may I present Mr Jack Wolfe? Jack this is Melanie Beaumont. Edward Beaumont’s youngest daughter. Did you see her in the West End last year with her sister, Claudia? No? Well, of course seats were like gold dust.’
And he would say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, her name isn’t Beaumont, it’s Devlin. I should know, I employ her as my cle
aner.’
The fantasy faded as he was ignominiously requested to leave.
Looking at him now, all constrained temper, she gave a little shiver as she dragged herself out of her daydream. Ridiculous of course.
She had never dripped with diamonds in her life and Jack Wolfe probably wouldn’t bat so much as an eyelid even if he met her in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. He’d certainly never do anything as crass as exposing her as his cleaner. But she doubted he would miss the opportunity to mark the event with a little note on his fridge door.
‘Last week you couldn’t wait to spend a few days in the West Indies with me.’ His voice startled her from her musings, warning her that he was not alone.
‘Surely we can go the week after next? A week in the sun is hardly a matter of life or death after all.’ Caro’s voice as she followed Jack onto the terrace was so reasonable, so sweet, that it made Melanie’s teeth ache. And her sympathy evaporated like desert rain.
He didn’t bother confirm or deny the justice of his cause. ‘If it’s the money that’s bothering you,’ he said, cuttingly, ‘I’ll cover your wretched fee.’
‘Darling, I’m going to be on the cover of the world’s most glamorous magazine.’ Her voice was honeyed, rich, amused at such foolishness. ‘Money can’t buy that.’
‘No?’ As he turned on the woman, Mel almost flinched. Was Caro mad? Couldn’t she hear that razor-edge to his voice? Or was it so sharp that you wouldn’t know you’d cut yourself until you were bleeding? ‘Perhaps you’d better tell me what could, Caro.’
But Caroline Hickey merely smiled, apparently oblivious to the danger, her smiling scarlet mouth inviting him to supply the answer for himself.
Mel, motionless above them, an unwitting and most reluctant eavesdropper, was all too horribly aware what the woman was trying to do. But she had no desire to witness a marriage proposal, particularly one extracted by blackmail.
In desperation she dropped her duster out of the window she was polishing and it landed in a little puff of powdery pink cleaner that dulled the shine on Jack Wolfe’s handmade shoes. For a moment he stared at it, then bent to pick it up and Mel found herself looking down into his upturned face.