Seven Week Itch

by Victoria Corby

  As soon as I judged it safe, I began to explore my new home. Stephen was right, it was absolutely charming, but I wasn’t altogether surprised that the owner, Preston, an actor who’d landed a six-month contract with a play touring the southern hemisphere, had had difficulty finding a tenant. For a start, to say it was small was like describing Thumbelina as on the petite side. If the little brick-floored sitting room had held much more than its two-seater sofa and two chairs it would have been dangerously overfurnished, and to get into the single bed in the spare bedroom it was necessary to shut the door first. But it was absolutely enchanting, with slightly wobbly whitewashed walls everywhere and beamed ceilings down­stairs. Hamish had to duck under those as well.

  Preston favoured minimalism, so what little furniture there was came in strict neutrals, even the pictures on the walls were grey-and-white abstracts, though he branched out into a couple of theatre posters in the upstairs bathroom. Despite all the cool colours the cottage was anything but cold; the brick floor downstairs glowed a rich varnished red, there was loads of wood everywhere and the enormous fireplace cried out to have a huge arrangement of flowers when it wasn’t being used for its proper purpose. Apparently, one or two people had expressed interest in it as a weekend cottage, but Preston was, in Stephen’s words, something of a green fascist and disapproved strongly of weekenders, saying they did nothing for the village and didn’t use the local facilities. Quite why they did less for it than leaving the cottage empty escaped me, but it was my gain. I made a resolve to patronise the village shop at least once a week.

  I leant on the sink, looking at the view out of the window, planning long summer evenings spent sitting under the apple tree with a drink and gazing down the length of the narrow back garden to the field beyond. There was what looked like a properly dug, but unplanted, vegetable patch at the far end of the garden. My mind drifted in a bucolic manner to lettuces and tomatoes; since my gardening expertise was limited to pots of basil which were usually stripped of all their leaves before they had a chance to die I’d have to call on Mum, the earth-mother incarnate, who would be delighted to give me a few tips. Unfortunately she didn’t believe in being mean to slugs or other garden pests, saying that they needed food as much as we did, with the result that she usually had to buy her lettuces from the pick-your-own up the road ... I spun around at a clatter from behind me. Hamish had just dumped a cardboard box on the pine kitchen table. ‘That’s the last one,’ he said, holding my car keys out. ‘Here you are. I’ve locked it for you.’

  I’m not sure if I had the grace to blush at leaving him to do all the work while I wandered around in a dream, but at least I had the decency to offer him a drink as a consolation prize. ‘I’d better not,’ he said,’ you’ve got a lot to do. Besides, I bet you can’t even find it,’ he added, looking around at the boxes and carrier bags which seemed to take up every surface and most of the floor. I was going to have to make another lightning trip to my parents’ to dump more stuff next weekend.

  ‘Of course I can,’ I said with dignity. I always know where the alcohol is. ‘It’s in that box over there.’ With a flourish I opened a box on the dresser, dumping the pile of books that had been on top of it on the table, and extracted a bottle of wine. I turned around to see his eyes fixed in apparent fascination on the books. Too late, I realised they were the last-minute present from two of my now ex-flatmates; copies of The Rules, How to Get a Man to Marry You, How to Catch Your Man, What Men Really Want and about six other titles along the same lines. Trish and Claire claimed that I’d announced rather grandly late one night (very late and equally far down the bottle) that it was ‘new job, new home, new man’ and since I was severely out of practice in the getting-a-man stakes they decided I needed some guides. Trish and Claire have always believed that if you’re going to play a joke, you should do it properly. The sheer quantity of books smacked of true desperation, of someone who’d already tried car-maintenance classes and found them full of women, who’d hung around Sainsbury’s in Nine Elms on a Friday evening and hadn’t managed a single meaningful encounter over the chiller cabinet, of being the last desperate step before joining a dating agency for lighthouse keepers and other such professionals who have a natural difficulty in meeting women so can’t afford to be fussy.

  I bent over and pretended to be looking for glasses in a cupboard while I waved the bottle at shoulder height and asked if he’d like some. I know what the combination of a face tomato-red with embarrassment and my hair is like, and while I certainly wasn’t intending to use any of the tips in those get-a-man books on Hamish it’d be preferable if he didn’t recoil at the sight of me. After closely examining a half-empty bottle of Fairy Liquid and two dusters for long enough to allow my colour to go back to normal I straightened up and smiled at him brightly.

  ‘Er, yes, just the one,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some papers to finish at home before tomorrow morning, so I can’t be too late.’ Was his slightly hunted expression anything to do with worry that he might be the target of a seduction attempt by a desperate female wearing one of the cheesiest grins ever seen? More likely it was the bottle on offer. With my unerring talent for failing to impress people, I’d pulled out a bottle brought to my farewell party by persons unknown, which had been picked up and examined many times and then returned thoughtfully to the table, unopened. I’d tried to leave it behind, and failed. I suppose some Algerian reds can be quite good, but somehow the shocking-pink and sky-blue label with an illustration of a bunch of grapes and three camels just didn’t inspire much confidence that what was inside was a witty and cheaper version of a St Emilion or even a Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon. Oh hell, his estimation of me had never been very high, now he must think I chose to drink stuff like that, I thought gloomily and wondered for a nasty moment if he was a wine merchant. That’d really cap it. Then I remembered that Rose had described whatever he did as ‘dull’, and I was sure that in her book a wine merchant would be classified as ‘useful’ at the very least, if not ‘essential’, so I was off that particular hook. I was tempted to brave it out and watch him try and be polite about it, but respect for the lining of my own stomach - to hell with his – prompted me to search out another bottle from the box, merely an Oddbins special, but at least there weren’t any exotic animals on the front.

  I held it up, saying I thought it might be better, and was rewarded with a smile that made me think he could really be quite attractive at times, that is if you went for big-boned, loose-limbed men. Personally, I preferred them finer, almost dapper you might say, like Arnaud. Or Luke Dillon.

  I unearthed glasses and corkscrew and took everything through to the sitting room. ‘I haven’t thanked you yet for recommending me to Stephen,’ I said as we sat down.

  A strange grimace spread over Hamish’s face. I didn’t think the wine was that bad. ‘All I did was mention you were looking for a job.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought you weren’t even going to do that,’ I said, leaning back comfortably. In half an hour I was going to have one hell of a lot of unpacking to do, right now I was going to relax.

  ‘What choice did I have? It was that or find myself barred from the house of one of my oldest friends because I hadn’t done what his wife wanted,’ he said lightly. ‘She even sent me a postcard from the airport to remind me to get on with it.’

  I knew Hamish could make jokes, I’d heard his speech at the wedding and unless he’d employed a speechwriter he was nothing like as humourless as I’d initially thought, but despite his tone I had a nasty feeling he wasn’t joking right now.

  I looked at him thoughtfully, wondering what my chances were of getting him to spill the beans about why he’d thought I’d be about as welcome in Stephen’s office as a back-dated tax demand. I decided regretfully they were about nil, that was a particularly clam-like expression he had on his face. But why? He hardly knew me, and he didn’t strike me as the sort of man who’d refuse to recommend a woman for a job simply because she wasn’t the physica
l type he fancied. Unless Rose had been telling him some very indiscreet stories ... I was about to offer to refill his glass when I had a sudden vision of him talking to a woman in a yellow silk suit with a large matching hat and veil. I bounded back upright again, slopping some wine on the arm of the sofa. ‘Dammit! First evening too,’ I muttered in irritation, rubbing at the stain with the hem of my skirt, forgetting until too late I was giving him an excellent view of the hole in the top of my tights.

  I smoothed the skirt down again quickly and put my elbow over the mark. Maybe my jumper would absorb it all and it would have vanished by the time I lifted my arm again. ‘You were talking to Gabrielle Nicholls, weren’t you? No wonder you were afraid to let me loose on Stephen.’

  Rose’s sister-in-law has the looks of a flower fairy and a tongue that drips the sweetest venom. She has a particular line in flaying alive people she doesn’t like with compliments. She doesn’t like me. The sentiment is entirely returned. She particularly didn’t like me on the afternoon of Rose’s wedding, due to the strong line I’d had to take with her beloved son, Alexander, over the stories he’d been telling the smaller bridesmaids about the skeletal hands that came out of the grating and grabbed your ankles as you walked up the aisle. I’d thought Alexander enjoyed my threat to hang, draw and quarter him if I heard one more word, but his mother had acted as if I’d been caught in first-degree child abuse.

  Hamish looked startled, as well he might. I don’t have supernatural powers of recollection or anything, it’s just that my feelings about Gabrielle are such that I prefer to know where she is, just in case I ever have the need to be made to feel really bad about myself, in which case I go and stand within earshot of Gabrielle and listen. I smiled coldly. ‘So what did she tell you? How I’ve been sacked from every job since I was six? I’m chronically unreliable? My filthy temper? I spilt tea in the computer and made the whole system crash, costing the company hundreds of thousands of pounds? I vandalised the coffee machine? I was caught reading a dirty book when I should have been working? I gave a presentation without realising I had pigeons mess in my hair? I misplaced the decimal point working out a sale price and lost millions? I wrote a rude limerick about the chairman and accidentally left it on my desk for him to see? I streaked at the office dinner dance?’

  My diatribe came to an end as I heard him murmur, ‘Now, that must have shaken a few tail feathers.’

  I stared at him crossly. This was no laughing matter. My mood of righteous indignation wasn’t improved when he added with a glint in his eyes, ‘I had no idea you’d had such a . . . varied career. What were you when you were six? Lollipop taster in the sweet factory?’

  ‘None of that was true!’ I yelped, then amended more honestly, ‘Well hardly any. Though I was sacked when I was six. I was modelling children’s wear for a catalogue being put together by a friend of my mother’s. At the time, I thought yellow net was the ultimate in fashion statements so I said what I thought of all this boring homespun, organic, natural stuff. Then I struck over a jumper. It itched and it smelt revolting, goat probably. Charity said I was an obstreperous brat. I didn’t mind the insults, but I did object when she refused to pay me for the work I’d done already,’ I said reminiscently.

  ‘I hope you threw a tantrum until she was obliged to honour her agreement,’ Hamish said surprisingly. ‘So you’ve really been quite respectable. Shame, I thought at the very least you must have parked in the chairman’s space or whipped his special chocolate biscuits,’ he added in a regretful voice. ‘But Gabrielle wasn’t being spiteful, she kept on saying how much she liked you.’ Chalk another one up to the power of round blue eyes and a lisp on a thirty-year-old woman when it comes to completely occluding the normal powers of masculine judgement. Except that his expression was just a little too bland; he didn’t believe she liked me either. He shrugged slightly. ‘She did say that you’d had rather a lot of jobs -’ she’d said I didn’t last for more than a couple of weeks in any of them - ‘and yes, she did mention you had a bit of a temper when things get difficult.’ She said I threw things and generally made life hell for everyone when crossed. I know how Gabrielle’s tongue works.

  Honestly, with his capacity for linguistic obfuscation, he could have made it big as a diplomat - or a politician, I thought sourly. ‘Did she mention child-beating too?’ I asked.

  ‘Er, she did say something about how you were unfit to be allowed anywhere near a child, yes,’ he agreed, smothering a smile.

  ‘But all the same you still agreed to inflict a work-shy, child-abusing virago on Stephen.’

  I noted he didn’t bother to deny my words. ‘Stephen’s a grown man, it wasn’t up to me to make his decisions for him, so I did what Rose wanted.’ Then he smiled slightly, ‘And I thought you might be just what he needed. Apparently, he used to make his last PA cry with frustration when he mucked up her arrangements, If only a quarter of what Gabrielle says is true you’ll probably threaten to keelhaul him if he does it to you. It’ll be interesting to see if it works. He needs shaking up a bit.’

  He rose to his feet, thanking me for the drink, and left me to wonder whether he’d been serious or not. I was beginning to think that perhaps Hamish Laing might not be quite as stuffy as he’d first seemed.

  CHAPTER 5

  If Hamish suspected I was workshy he should have seen me this week, I thought, pushing back my chair and checking the property details I’d been compiling from Stephen’s scribbled notes. He was an extraordinary mixture of chaos and meticulousness. All the measurements were perfect to the nearest centimetre, if not the millimetre, but the descriptions were both illegible and, when I could read them, often idiosyncratic. Some were straightforward, like ‘original Victorian wallpaper’ and ‘checked marble floor’, some not so clear, such as ‘ten minutes’ jog to station’ – how long did it take to walk? The longest section, where I was supposed to decide in Stephen’s absence what was supposed to go in and what wasn’t could be downright enigmatic, ‘Five “bedrooms”; two doubles, one single, two boxrooms.’ So how many bedrooms was that? The final part usually included notes such as ‘charming matured garden with??? trees - check please, Susie.’ How? I’d think crossly. Somehow Stephen managed never to be in the office when I got to those bits and he had an uncanny ability for knowing when not to answer his mobile.

  Normally when you start a new job you get handed a few files to read and are told that someone will show you what to do when they have a minute. By halfway through the second day you’re so bored you’re pleading to be allowed to rearrange the stationery cupboard. Not so at Bailey-Stewart Estate Agents. I’d barely found out where the loo was, and hadn’t located the coffee machine, when Stephen dumped a pile of files on my desk and asked me to sort through them while he was out. He left at a run, saying he was already late for his appointment. That was the sum total of orientation into my job. Sometimes I wasn’t surprised his previous assistant had thrown in the towel after two weeks. Luckily, Amanda, one of the agents, took pity on my woeful ignorance and spent a morning showing me what was what or we’d have had quite a few disgruntled clients wanting to know why their bijou cottage was being advertised in the Dubai Times or why the management charge for the rental properties had risen by 300 per cent overnight. It quickly became apparent that one of the chief essentials for this job was a considerable degree of psychic ability, otherwise how on earth was I supposed to know the ‘X B’d C’ pencilled in for Friday afternoon in Stephen’s diary meant ‘Contracts due to be exchanged on Bowfield Cottage’? That was one of the easier ones. Stephen was always so surprised if I couldn’t instantly divine what he meant too. He was, without doubt, one of the vaguest people I had ever met, though I couldn’t help thinking if he hadn’t possessed quite so much charm and ability to get people, usually female, to smile tolerantly and pick up after him he would have been quite capable of dealing with the boring bits himself.

  Nearly two weeks into the job I was at last getting the hang of everything so I was
n’t endlessly asking Amanda or Jenny, the secretary, for help. I was surprised at how much I was enjoying myself. My experiences at temping had led me to think I wasn’t best suited to being someone’s assistant, I’ve always been better at telling people what to do rather than being told, hence the reason I made it to the dizzy heights of school prefect (until I was sacked for going to a horror film in the local town with Rose). But with Stephen’s methods of working I had plenty of scope for working on my own initiative and, though I would never have thought to hear myself admitting this, I was finding estate agency in general infinitely more interesting than the money market.

  Amanda came in, wearing the self-satisfied smile of someone who knows they’ve been extravagant and doesn’t regret it one bit. She was carrying a glossy dark-blue bag I recognised as matching the frontage of a smart little lingerie shop in the High Street. At very little prompting, no prompting at all in fact, she undid several layers of parchment-coloured tissue paper and held up some delectable silk wisps; calling them a bra-and-pants set was much too pedantic. I tried to quell my instinctive pang of envy by telling myself I had better things to do than handwash my underwear. I still coveted them desperately. I realised with a slight pang that all I’d bought in the lingerie area for the last two years were three packs from Marks and Sparks, practical, but hardly the high spots of glamour. It said something about the way my relationship with Arnaud had drifted into the ‘comfortable old shoe’ mode that it hadn’t even occurred to me to go and buy something as small and transparent as the items Amanda was holding up.