'How did it go?' Gillian Frampton asked.
'I'm to stand by to fly to Moscow on Wednesday,' Jolene relayed, but could not refrain from asking as Gillian again invited her to take a seat, 'Is he always so blunt?'
'Mr Templeton has only just returned from almost a month abroad on other business,' the other woman replied. 'Which means he's got only two days in which to clear up the pile of work which I couldn't handle for him in his absence.'
'You didn't go abroad with him, then?' asked Jolene, having assumed that his PA normally went with him on his outside assignments, but that the only reason she was not going on this assignment was that she had no knowledge of the Russian tongue.
'Oh, it's not necessary for a secretary to go with him every time he goes abroad,' Gillian told her. 'But with the Russian schedule looking extremely punishing to me—though you will get a break,' she inserted as though she was afraid of putting her off going, 'it will make for efficiency all round if Mr Templeton can have his impressions recorded on the spot and not be bogged down by the paperwork side of things. He thinks on his feet,' she confided, 'so you'll have your work cut out to keep up with him. But,' she smiled, 'I feel sure that you'll manage.'
Wishing that she felt half as confident, but that sort of talk being just the challenge her career-orientated self needed, Jolene put Cheyne Templeton's harsh manner out of her mind and, as excitement began to stir in her again,, 'How long shall I be away?' she asked.
She drove home that night knowing that she would be away for about two and a half weeks. Her head was still buzzing with the information Gillian Frampton had given her during her briefing.
Jolene garaged her car, recalling that besides Moscow and Leningrad, Gillian had said her skills would be needed at a place called Irkutsk. She had never heard of it before, but with so much else to think about she decided to concentrate on being the best Russian-speaking substitute for Gillian Frampton that Templeton's could provide.
She realised as she prepared her meal that evening that she had some way to go before she could begin to be anywhere near as good a PA as the efficient Miss Frampton.
Indeed, Jolene had eaten her meal and was in the middle of doing her washing up when it suddenly came to her just exactly how efficiently, and well, Gillian Frampton worked for her employer. Because only then, she recalled firstly how Gillian had spoken to her only for a short while before taking her in to see the boss, and then how she had asked, 'How did it go?' and had learned that she had, by the sound of it, passed muster, had she revealed any of what the Russian trip was all about.
In fact, she had seemed so relaxed that it had taken until now to realise that the outcome could have been very different. Only now did Jolene see that had she not said what she had when she' had come from Cheyne Templeton's office, Gillian Frampton would have smoothly, and with some tact, found a way to tell her that she would not after all be required to go.
Feeling a trifle peeved that had her face not fitted she would not be going, Jolene rebelled for all of two minutes. Who in creation did Templeton's think they were anyway? she mutinied. For about ten seconds of her two minutes her imagination took off to picture herself telling Cheyne Templeton personally tomorrow that she was afraid she could not make the Russian trip after all.
She dismissed that notion when her true self came to the fore, and she knew that since there surely could not be sufficient time now for a visa to be obtained for another secretary, it just was not in her to let anyone down.
Not that they'd have had any qualms about letting her down, she thought while the edge of mutiny was still on her. Of course, she suddenly realised, Gillian Frampton had not known that she and Cheyne Templeton had happened across each other earlier that day. So she would have no idea that her services in the 'let down gently' department would not be needed. As Jolene saw it, had expediency not won the day, Cheyne Templeton would not have thought twice about telling her himself that she could forget the Russian trip.
She spent the next hour wishing she was flying to Moscow on Wednesday with anyone but Cheyne Templeton. At the end of that hour, though, her chin was tilted at a stubborn single as she vowed that she would make a success of this, the biggest challenge in her life. Then she went to the phone to ring her parents.
'You're going where?' her mother cried, panicking already at the thought of her baby travelling to Russia.
'I'm a big girl now, Mother,' Jolene laughed, and although she dearly loved her parents, she was able to see that, if she had not left home when she had, then her parents might, in their love for her, have stifled her and her need to live her own life. 'I couldn't be more excited about it,' she told her, and when later she replaced the phone she knew those words for the truth.
For excitement was back with her and, as she pushed thoughts of Cheyne Templeton from her, she could not wait for Wednesday.
Tuesday had to be got through first, however. After her interview with Mr Raven several weeks ago, and in anticipation, she had enquired of her bank how much notice they would need to get her some roubles, and had been informed that Russian currency could not be obtained outside the USSR. That being so, she went to her bank in her lunch hour that Tuesday and picked up some traveller's cheques. Next she tore round the shops and, completing last night's list of things she thought she might need to take with her, tore back to her office.
She had barely caught her breath, though, when Mr Hutton, his curiosity obviously straining at the leash, was calling her into his office and telling her, 'This is getting to be a habit, Jolene—your presence is again requested on the top floor.'
'I'd better go now, then,' she smiled, and went from his office, through her own office and out towards the lifts. But for the confidentiality of her new and temporary position, Jolene would have loved to have stayed and satisfied Mr Hutton's curiosity. But that was just pride, and she knew it. For, when she got around to thinking about it, she was enormously proud that she was going to Russia with the industrialist Mr Cheyne Templeton, to explore the possibility of a joint engineering project.
Initially, however, Jolene was to doubt that she would be going anywhere with Cheyne Templeton. She had thought she had been summoned to the top floor for a last-minute briefing from Gillian Frampton, but a decidedly peaky-looking Gillian told her, 'Mr Templeton would like to see you, Jolene. Would you like to go through?'
'Close the door,' Cheyne Templeton ordered curtly when, after first tapping on it, Jolene went in.
'You wanted to see me,' she said, observing in one glance that he had not overnight turned into a man she would, unpaid, leave home for.
Unspeaking, he pointed to the chair where she had sat yesterday. Unspeaking, Jolene went over to it. 'There's a lot riding on these initial interviews in Russia,' he began without preamble as soon as she was seated.
'I assumed that might be so,' she said quietly, having worked out for herself that to make it worth anyone's while the project they were going to discuss just had to be worth millions—not to mention its value on the employment of manpower side.
'Then I can rely on you to behave yourself should I take you?'
His 'should I take you' was not lost on her, but initially, Jolene was more indignant over what else he had said than upset that there still seemed to be some doubt that she was going.
'Behave myself?' she exclaimed, her lovely green eyes starting to emit sparks. She didn't have to take this from anyone, and that included him.
'You know quite well what I mean!' Cheyne Templeton rapped. 'I'm not having these talks put in jeopardy purely because of some man-mad...'
'Man-mad!' Jolene erupted. 'If you're referring to the way Tony Welsh backed me against a wall yesterday, then I've already told you it was none of my fault. If you'd care to check with Personnel,' she went fuming on, heedless that yesterday she had gained the impression that this man did not care to have her put the blame on someone else, 'then I'm sure they'll have it down on file that I... I...' she started to flounder, '... that I d
on't— couldn't—get on with Tony Welsh and that I asked for a transfer.'
'You seemed to be getting on with him all right when I came across the pair of you,' he retorted sharply. And before she could get another word in, 'Did you suppose, Miss Draper, that after seeing you—for the second time—yesterday, I wouldn't check you out?'
'If you've checked me out then you know...'
'It seems strange to me,' he cut in toughly, 'that your personality clash with Welsh should become suddenly too much for you and that you should apply for a transfer only on the day that his wife should come to the office to ask you to leave him alone.'
'It wasn't like that!' Jolene protested, her horror showing that, by the sound of it, it must be all over Templeton's that she and Tony Welsh had been having some sort of sordid affair. A sordid affair which had only ceased when his wife had come to the office and shrieked her head off about it. 'I couldn't stand him or his sneaky amorous overtures. I enjoyed my work before he came,' she charged on, too angry at being falsely accused to tell it other than the way it was, 'but when Tony Welsh's wife called that day and it became evident that she would never know peace of mind, not while I was his secretary anyhow, I walked out.'
She had come to a heated end, but as she stared into cold dark grey eyes she knew that this man was quite prepared to go on this important trip without a Russian-speaking secretary if he did not get the right answers.
'If there's any truth in what you've just said, why keep it hidden from Personnel?' he charged. 'If it's as you say and Welsh is the sickening type of office Romeo you describe, then don't you think Personnel should know of it?'
'I couldn't prove anything,' Jolene was forced to confess. 'Up until yesterday when he openly made a grab for me, he was, as I told you, sneaky with it. Besides,' she went on, 'I didn't know he was going home night after night singing my praises until his wife cracked— not that I blame her,' she added. 'Anyhow, as I said, I liked the work I was doing until he came. I was good at it too,' she asserted. 'I...'
'Oh, I know you're good at your work,' Cheyne Templeton surprised her by chipping in.
'You do?' she exclaimed.
'Confound it, woman!' he said sharply. 'Leaving aside that there's a question mark over your penchant for married men, do you think Raven in Personnel would have recommended you if you weren't already earmarked as being the right PA calibre?'
Jolene's reaction on hearing him suggest that she had a penchant for married men was an angry one. But her ire was at once neutralised when she heard what else he said. By the sound of it, she had been earmarked for a PA slot at some later date—which just had to mean advancement within the company. Didn't it?
'I was down for promotion?' she just had to ask.
Sternly, Cheyne Templeton studied her eager face. Then, his mind at that moment made up, apparently, 'If you're that set on a career, you'd better go and arrange with' Miss Frampton to draw some expenses,' he told her. He was already on the next task in hand as, realising that he had just as good as agreed to take her to Russia with him, Jolene vacated her chair.
She floated out of his office on air. Many emotions had visited her during the short time she had been with him, but the emotion uppermost in her as she went into Gillian Frampton's office was happiness.
She did not question why she should feel so happy to know that she was going to a foreign land with her alien employer. Though had she-paused to question it, she would have been able to answer quite easily that the reason why she was so happy was that to have notched up a business trip with no less a person than the chairman himself must surely increase her promotion prospects further.
'Mr Templeton said I'm to arrange with you about some expenses,' she smiled at Gillian Frampton when she walked by her desk.
The PA smiled, giving no hint that she might well have been equally ready to deal with the matter had Jolene left Cheyne Templeton's office to tell her that she was not now required to fly to Moscow tomorrow.
Shortly after that Jolene left the top floor and descended in the lift, wondering if there was anything at all which the superb PA had not thought of. Because, as well as arranging her expenses, and arranging for a company car to be at Priors Aston at the crack of dawn ready to deposit her at Heathrow for eight o'clock, Gillian Frampton, having told her that Mr Templeton would have her passport, visa and flight ticket with him, had handed over the very latest in portable typewriters.
'It'll save you chasing round to hire one,' she had smiled. And in answer to Jolene's question as to whether it was all right for her to tell Mr Hutton that he would not be seeing anything of her for a few weeks, Gillian had said, 'Of course. Although since 1 imagine Mr Templeton will consider he owes Mr Hutton the courtesy of telling him that himself, I shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't already know.'
The proof that Cheyne Templeton had already been on the phone to him was there for Jolene when she had barely got back to her desk and Mr Hutton came from his office. 'Well, this is a real feather in your cap, Jolene,' he beamed, quite clearly puffed up with pride that his secretary, albeit only on loan while his other secretary was off sick, had been chosen to accompany the chairman.
'I'm sorry I couldn't tell you about it before,' she apologised. 'But...' She discovered she did not have to add any more.
'I quite understand,' he told her, and after a few more minutes of seeming as if he thought it was a feather in his cap too, he came down to earth to realise that since she would not be in tomorrow, they had better get on with some work.
Jolene was later than usual getting home that night, and after an evening spent in packing, taking a long telephone call from her parents and checking that her home was neat and tidy to return to, it had gone midnight when she finally got to her bed. She was up very early on Wednesday morning and, although bathed and dressed, she was still finding last-minute jobs to do when a uniformed chauffeur rang the doorbell of her bungalow.
Excitement was high in her as the chauffeur, who had introduced himself as Frank, carried her large suitcase out to the limousine standing at the kerb, and she followed hanging on to the portable typewriter which the efficient Gillian Frampton had given her yesterday.
They had been driving for about twenty minutes, however, when the chauffeur turned off the main road and explained that he had another passenger to pick up.
'Mr Templeton?' Jolene guessed, having begun to wonder if she was likely to see him again before Moscow.
'Mr Templeton doesn't live locally,' Frank replied. And, leaving her to decide that Cheyne Templeton would either be driven to the airport by someone else, or that he would drive himself and leave his car in the long-term car park, he went on, 'First I've to pick up Mr Edwards, and then Mr Shaw.'
Hiding her surprise that by the look of it, unless they were just giving Mr Edwards and Mr Shaw a lift somewhere, it seemed likely that they would be four on the flight to Moscow on Templeton business, Jolene sat back to await developments.
Before, another twenty minutes had passed, however, she had become acquainted with both Alec Edwards and Keith Shaw. Alec Edwards, who wore glasses, was balding and seemed to be the studious type; he was somewhere in his mid-forties, Jolene thought. Keith Shaw, though, seemed little more than thirty, and was the friendly type. Both men, it appeared, were very well qualified engineers. Alec, Jolene quickly learned—and all before they reached the airport—worked on the production management side, while Keith worked on the technical 'nuts and bolts' side, specialising, so he said, in doing the impossible.
'How about you?' Keith Shaw questioned. 'I refuse to believe that with a face like that you're an engineer too!'
'I'm a secretary,' she replied. Keith's manner, as opposed to Tony Welsh's, was so open that she was in no way offended. 'I—er—speak a little Russian,' she said modestly, only mentioning it in case they were wondering what she was doing on this trip in place of Cheyne Templeton's PA—if they knew her.
'Don't we all!' Alec Edwards put in pleasantly, if not very ent
husiastically.
'You both speak Russian?' she queried.
'Mr Templeton insisted that we both did an intensive crash course—with a slant on engineering terms—before we could come,' Keith Shaw replied.
'Only some,' Alec Edwards chipped in, 'did better at it than others.'
'Genius will out,' Keith owned with no attempt to look bashful, and as the three of them burst out laughing, Jolene knew that she liked these engineering men and that all augured well for personalities to blend comfortably on the trip.
Some while later she was thinking that maybe she had been a little previous with that opinion. Either that or she had forgotten, if not Cheyne Templeton, then the way in which he could so quickly make her angry. For she, Keith and Alec were at the airport when Keith again said something to make her laugh. Merriment was still curving her lovely mouth when suddenly she became aware of Cheyne Templeton joining them.
She saw his glance flick to her mouth, but when he otherwise looked icily through her, all signs of happy humour went from her face, and she saw no reason at all why she should afford him a smiling greeting.
Not that, apart from the briefest of nods in her direction, he had any greeting for her whatsoever, but having uttered a greeting to the two engineers he was asking amiably, 'Your wives not here to see you off?'
Swine! Jolene fumed, knowing full well that not only was Cheyne Templeton telling her that both the engineers were married, so 'hands off, but she had a nasty suspicion that he would be watching her throughout the entire two and a half weeks too!
Fuming inwardly, she felt like telling him she knew jolly well that both Keith Shaw and Alec Edwards had wives—had she not seen them taking a fond farewell of their wives and families when the limousine had called at their homes? She did not say anything of the kind, however, but when a general move was made to go and check in, and Keith and Alec suddenly got mixed up with the crowd, she just could not resist the pleasant question, 'Isn't your wife here to see you off?'
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