Harriet (6 page)

CHAPTER NINE

    NUMBER NINE stood out from the other houses in Chiltern Street, because it was painted cobalt blue with an emerald green door. Quaking with nerves, Harriet gave her last pound in the world to the driver and rang the bell. After some delay the door was answered by a tall angry looking man in a black polo-necked sweater.

    ‘Yes?’ he said unhelpfully.

    ‘Mr. Erskine? I’ve come from the agency about the job.’

    ‘Come in. I’m on the telephone.’

    She followed him upstairs into a large, untidy room. Books covered the walls, littered a very large desk, and were strewn all over the rose-coloured carpet.

    ‘I won’t be long,’ he said.

    Lighting a cigarette, he picked up the telephone.

    ‘Oscar? You’re still there? Look, I don’t give a damn if the Yanks do pull out, we’ll raise the cash some other way, but I’m not writing another major character into the script!’

    Poor Oscar, thought Harriet sitting down in a lemon yellow chair, hoping her laddered tights didn’t show too much.

    Then she studied some photographs on a side table. Two were of very beautiful children, a boy and a girl, with long blonde hair and dark slanting eyes. Another photograph was of a racehorse. Cory Erskine, she remembered, had once been famous as an amateur jockey. The fourth was of Noel Balfour herself, in a bikini, looking not unlike a sleek and beautiful racehorse - long-legged, full bodied, with the fine head, tawny eyes, classical features and wide sensual mouth that were so familiar to cinema audiences all over the world.

    And what of the man Noel Balfour had been allegedly happily married to for so long? Harriet turned back to look at Cory Erskine, examining the aloof, closed face with its dead-pan features, high cheek-bones and slanting, watchful eyes. He looks like a Red Indian, she thought, inscrutable and not very civilized at that.

    As he came to the end of his conversation, a shaft of winter sunshine came through the window, lighting up the unhealthy pallor of his face, the heavy lines around the mouth, the grey flecks in the long, dark hair.

    ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, putting down the receiver. He picked up a half empty whisky bottle. ‘Have a drink?’ Harriet shook her head. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunchtime, and a drink the size of the one Cory Erskine was
^p
ouring into his own glass would put her out like a light. When he offered her his cigarette case, however, she couldn’t resist taking one, although she knew one wasn’t supposed to smoke at interviews. Her hand shook so badly when he gave her a light that he had to steady it with his own hand.

    He straightened up and looked at her for a minute. You’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t you?’ he said abruptly. How long is it since you had the baby?’

    ‘Three months,’ said Harriet. ‘I wasn’t awfully well afterwa
^r
ds; but I’m fine now.’

    ‘Who’s the father?’

    Harriet blushed.

    ‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘I don’t make a habit of rushing round on roller skates with a megaphone, as soon as anyone tells me anything.’

    ‘He was an undergraduate,’ said Harriet, ‘called Simon Villiers.’

    Even after so long, the mention of his name made her mouth go dry, her throat tighten.

    Cory Erskine looked up.

    ‘Simon Villiers? Good-looking boy, blond? Loaded with coney? Doesn’t he want to go on the stage?’

    Harriet started shaking. ‘You know him?’

    ‘I’ve met him. I had to give a couple of lectures on drama t Oxford last summer. Simon Villiers was allotted to look after me.’

    ‘How was he?’ asked Harriet in a strangled voice. ‘Extremely pleased with himself. Don’t you see him now? doesn’t he help you?’

    ‘He gave me a lot of money to have a proper abortion, but I funked it so I bought some contact lenses instead and kept the baby.’

    ‘Does he know you’ve had it?’

    ‘I wrote and told him. He didn’t answer. I
think
he’s probably abroad. He wasn’t in love with me.’

    ‘Won’t your parents help?’ he asked.

    ‘Only if I have William - that’s the baby - adopted, and I can’t bear to do that.’

    ‘Where’s he now?’

    ‘I’ve left him with a friend - but only for the afternoon.’

    Her stomach started rumbling with hunger. She felt at a distinct disadvantage in his lemon yellow chair, her bottom much lower than her legs.

    Cory Erskine shook the ice round in his whisky. ‘And you want to look after my children?’

    Harriet nodded, trying desperately not to appear too eager. He pointed to the photographs on the table.

    ‘Jonah and Chattie, aged eight and five. Contrary to all the rubbish you’ve read in the papers about Noel’s and my married bliss, they’ve had a very rough time. Ever since Jonah was born, Noel’s been making her mind up whether or not to leave me. The children have been used as pawns. Now she’s finally decided she wants to marry Ronnie Acland.’ His voice hardened. ‘And we’re getting a divorce.’

    ‘I’m abroad a lot. The children live up in Yorkshire in my old family home. Noel has never got on with any of the nannies. As a result, they’ve had a succession of people looking after them. They desperately need someone kind, loving, responsible and permanent to give them security.’

    He looked at Harriet, taking in the pitiful thinness, the long legs sprawled like a colt’s, the lank dark hair drawn back in a crumpled black ribbon, the irregular features, sallow skin, huge frightened eyes, full trembling mouth.

    ‘Have you any idea what you’ll be in for?’ he said. ‘It’s a dead-end part of the world. Nothing ever happens there. All the locals ever talk about is hunting. I go up to work there because it’s more peaceful than London. Could you throw yourself into looking after two children? Because if you can’t, there’s not much point your coming. How old are you?’

    ‘Nearly twenty,’ said Harriet.

    ‘But Mrs. Hastings said you’ve got a degree.’

    ‘No, I dropped out when I got pregnant.’

    ‘But you do have experience with children?’

    ‘I’ve looked after friends’ children a lot.’

    ‘But I gathered you’d had a job, or was that just part of Mrs. Hastings’s meticulous inaccuracy? How long did it last?’

    Harriet shuffled her feet. ‘Only one night,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It was a housekeeping job for a man in the country.’

    ‘And?’

    ‘He… he tried to rape me the first night.’

    Cory Erskine raised an eyebrow. ‘Quick work! How did he manage that?’

    ‘He came into my bedroom j-just after I’d turned out my light and…’

    ‘And you didn’t feel it worth your while to capitulate. Very admirable.’

    Harriet flushed angrily. If she had expected sympathy, she was quite wrong. Cory Erskine’s face was without expression.

    ‘And the baby,’ he went on. ‘Is he good? Does he cry much?’

    Harriet took a deep breath. She might as well be honest, as she obviously wasn’t going to get the job.

    ‘Yes, he does; but I think babies are barometers. They reflect the mood of the person looking after them. I mean,’ she floundered on, ‘if I were happier and less worried, he might be, too. It’s just that I haven’t been very happy lately.’

    Cory Erskine didn’t appear to be listening. He was examining the page in his typewriter. He turned it back, and typed in a couple of words with one finger.

    Bastard! thought Harriet. How dare he be so callous!

    ‘Well, if he cries that’s your problem,’ he said without looking up. ‘We’ll put you both at the far end of the house, and then no one but you will hear him.’

    Harriet gave a gasp.

    ‘You can cook and drive a car?’ he went on.

    She nodded.

    ‘Good. You don’t have to do everything. There’s a housekeeper, Mrs. Bottomley. She’s been with our family for years, but she’s getting on and the children exhaust her. Jonah’s a weekly boarder at a prep school, and Chattie goes to day school. You’d have to look after them when they’re at home, ferry them to and from school, see to their clothes, cook for them, etc. I’m going to France for at least a month from tomorrow, but when I come back, I’m coming up North to finish a couple of scripts.’

    ‘Do you mean you’re really going to hire me?’ asked Harriet in a bewildered voice.

    He nodded. ‘I only hope you won’t be horribly bored.’

    ‘Bored?’ said Harriet slowly. ‘That’s like asking a drowning man if he’d be bored by a lifebelt.’

    It was the first time Cory Erskine had smiled, and Harriet could suddenly see why Noel Balfour had once found him so attractive.

    ‘I suggest you travel up on Sunday,’ he said. ‘There’s a good train at twelve o’clock. I’ll arrange to have you met at Leeds. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve a lot of last-minute things to do.’

    ‘I can’t begin to thank you,’ she stammered. ‘I’ll do everything I can to make them happy.’ As she stood up, she swayed and had to clutch at the edge of the desk to stop herself falling.

    ‘You’d better start eating properly,’ he said, getting out his cheque book. ‘Twenty pounds for travelling, twenty-five pounds in advance for your first week’s salary.’ He handed her a cheque for forty-five pounds.

    Harriet found herself fighting back the tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, turning her head away. ‘I’m just not used to getting breaks. You can’t give me that much money.’

    ‘I want you to look after my children properly, not just moon around the house. Now, I don’t anticipate Mrs. Bottomley will try and rape you, so I’ll see you again towards the end ‘of February. You’ll probably find it easier to settle in without my poking my nose in all the time.’

    After she’d gone, still stammering her thanks, he sat down to work again. Then, a minute later, he got up and looked out of the window. Harriet was walking down the road. He watched her take the cheque out of her bag, examine it in amazement, hold it up to the light, then give a little skip of joy, so that she nearly cannoned into a passer-by.

    Before she rounded the corner, she turned round to look up at the window, and waved at him timidly. He waved back.

    I’m a bloody idiot, he told himself. I could have got any Nanny in London and I end up with a waif with a baby - which means four children to look after instead of two!

    He looked at the photograph of his wife and his face hardened. He poured himself another stiff whisky before settling down.

CHAPTER TEN

    ONCE the euphoria of landing the job had worn off, Harriet grew more and more apprehensive. She had difficulty enough looking after one baby. What right had she to take on two children, who were probably spoilt and certainly disturbed?

    I won’t be able to cope, she kept telling herself as the train rattled through the Midlands the following Sunday. Each mile, too, was taking her further and further away from Simon, and the remote possibility that one day she might bump into him in London.

    As promised, a car met her at Leeds station and once they were on the road, William, who had yelled most of the journey, fell into a deep sleep, giving the exhausted Harriet a chance to look at the passing countryside. It did nothing to raise her flagging spirits.

    The black begrimed outskirts of Leeds soon gave way to fields and woodland then to wilder and bleaker country: khaki hillsides, stone walls, rusty bracken, with the moors stretching above, dark demon-haunted, Heathcliffe land. Harriet shivered and hugged William closer. No wonder Noel Balfour had run away from such savage desolation.

    They drove through a straggling village of little grey houses and then the road started climbing steeply upwards.

    ‘There’s Erskine’s place, up yonder ont’ hill,’ said the driver. ‘The Wilderness, they call it. Wouldn’t like to live there myself, but these stage folks have funny notions. I suppose you get used to anything if you have to.’

    The big grey house lay in a fold of the moors, about half a mile from a winding river. Surrounding it was a jungle of neglected garden. Pine trees rose like sentinels at the back.

    Harriet knocked nervously at the huge studded door, which was opened by a middle-aged woman with piled-up reddish hair and a disapproving dough-like face. She gave Harriet a hostile stare, but seemed far more interested in stopping a large tabby cat from escaping.

    ‘Ambrose! Come here, you devil!’ She just managed to catch the cat by the tail and pull him squawking into the house.

    ‘Miss Poole?’ she said icily, very much on her dignity. ‘I’m Mrs. Bottomley.’

    ‘How do you do?’ said Harriet, trying to shake hands and clutch William and the luggage at the same time.

    As she walked into the hall, two children rushed down the stairs, dragging a black labrador, and stopped dead in their tracks, gazing at her with dark, heavily lashed and not altogether friendly eyes.

    ‘Jonah and Charlotte,’ said Mrs. Bottomley, ‘this is Miss Poole.’

    ‘How do you do?’ said Harriet nervously. ‘This is William.’

    ‘Did you have a good journey?’ said the little girl in a formal voice. ‘We’re so recited to see you. Ambrose is on heat; that’s why he’s not allowed out. We thought he was a "he" when Daddy bought him.’

    Mrs. Bottomley picked up one of her suitcases.

    ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ she said coldly, starting up the stairs.

    ‘Watch the string,’ said Harriet in anguish, but it was too late. The string snapped and the contents of the suitcase - all the dirty laundry - her own and William’s that she hadn’t had time to wash before she left - cascaded on to the floor with a crash.

    The children shrieked with laughter. Chattie went into hysterics of excitement. Nothing could have broken the ice more completely as they rushed round putting things back.

    Mrs. Bottomley, frostier than ever, led Harriet along a winding passage to her room. The house, in contrast to its grim exterior, was positively sybaritic inside. Whoever had chosen the moss-thick carpets, the watered silk wallpapers, the brilliantly clashing curtains, had bad an inspired eye for colour, if no regard for expense.

    There were also looking glasses everywhere, in the hall, on the stairs and at the end of the landing. Harriet tried not to look at her worried, white-faced reflection.

    ‘What a lovely house, and how beautifully you keep it,’ she said, making a feeble attempt to remove the rigid expression of disapproval from Mrs. Bottomley’s face. The housekeeper ignored her.

    ‘You’re in here,’ she said, showing Harriet into a little grey and white room with yellow curtains and yellow flowered four-poster bed. ‘The child can sleep next door,’ she added coldly. It was as though she couldn’t bear to acknowledge William’s existence.

    ‘Chattie and Jonah are at the far end of the passage, but there’s a device you switch on, so you can hear if they wake in the night. I’ll see them to bed tonight. Your supper will be ready in an hour.’

    All this time she had not looked Harriet in the face. Oh dear, sighed Harriet, she really does resent my coming here.

    Later, feeling more and more depressed, Harriet found a place laid for one in the huge green Victorian dining-room. She looked at Mrs. Bottomley timidly:

    ‘Won’t you come and eat in here with me?’ she asked.

    ‘I have my meals in my own part of the house. I hope that will be all,’ said Mrs. Bottomley.

    But as she stalked majestically towards the door, she heard a muffled sob and, looking round, she saw that Harriet’s face had disintegrated into a quivering chaos of misery, as she fished out her handkerchief.

    Mrs. Bottomley’s heart melted. She padded across the room and put an arm round Harriet’s shoulders.

    ‘There, there, my lamb, don’t cry. You’ll get used to it all in no time. I know it seems an out-of-the-way place for a young girl, but the children have been so excited, especially with you bringing the baby, and you’ll be company for me. I get lonely of an evening.’

    Harriet wiped her eyes. ‘You don’t mind about William, and me not being married?’ she said.

    ‘Never gave it a thought,’ lied Mrs. Bottomley, who had been boasting in the village that she’d soon put the hussy in her place.

    ‘You come and eat in the kitchen with me. You’ll feel better when you’ve got something inside you. We’ll have a drop of sherry to cheer ourselves up.’

    From then on Harriet and Mrs. Bottomley were firm friends. The housekeeper bossed her, fussed over her, bullied her to eat, and gave her endless advice on how to look after the children.