A Bouquet of Barbed Wire (22 page)

‘I’m afraid Mr. Manson is out of his office at the moment. Would you like to wait?’

‘Yes, I would.’ Prue walked past her and pushed open Manson’s door. ‘I’ll wait in here.’

Sarah resumed typing. Prue sat on Manson’s desk, swinging her legs, smoothing her dress over the baby bulge, poking about amongst her father’s papers and watching Sarah out of the corner of her eye. Presently she said, ‘Where is he, by the way?’

‘Only in Mr. Warner’s office.’

Prue slid off the desk. ‘Oh, I’ll go up then.’

Sarah put on a secretarial face and said doubtfully, ‘Well, they
are
in conference and I don’t think they’ll be long.’

Prue laughed. There was something about this girl that annoyed her intensely and she could not pin-point it. ‘Uncle Rupert and Dad in conference! They’ll be gabbing away for hours if I don’t interrupt them.’

Sarah picked up the phone. ‘Then I’ll tell them you’re here.’ Prue, transfixed by her coolness, simply stood and watched, heard her say, ‘Mrs. Sorenson is here, Mr. Warner; could you tell Mr. Manson? Thank you.’ Then she turned to Prue. ‘Can I get you some coffee, Mrs. Sorenson?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Prue, sulking, and aware she was sulking. ‘It’s too hot.’

‘Lemon barley then,’ said Sarah brightly.

‘All right.’

Sarah brought the glass of lemon barley, very cold and clinking with ice.

‘Thanks.’ Prue knew she ought to enthuse—Sarah had made an effort—but she could not. She stood by the window and watched the traffic. The typing started again. Suddenly she could not bear it. She swung round and said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sarah Francis,’ said Sarah, still typing.

Prue digested this. The continuing noise infuriated her, making her feel deliberately excluded from the busy life of the office. Surely they were not all so occupied that they
could not even spare five minutes to be polite. She said, raising her voice, ‘Can’t you stop typing a minute?’

Sarah stopped, smiled beautifully and said, ‘Well, I do have rather a lot to get through.’

Prue thought of the job she had left and the infinite tedium of it. This one could not be much better. And here was this girl, hardly older than she was, pretending to be too busy to talk.

‘I suppose you took over from Monica,’ she said.

‘That’s right.’ Sarah began licking stamps and sticking them on envelopes. Prue watched her.

‘Good heavens,’ she said, ‘did they tell you you’d get the sack if you stop to breathe?’

Sarah smiled. ‘It’s not very arduous,’ she said, ‘and I like to be busy.’

The door opened and Manson came in. He was smiling a welcome but Prue thought he looked flushed and agitated. Surely stairs were not getting too much for him already?

They hugged and kissed. He stood back and admired her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s quite a colour.’

Prue slowly revolved in front of him. Sarah had started typing again. ‘And it’s all over,’ she said. ‘Even the bulge is brown. It was that sort of garden where you could do everything naked. I’ve never worn so few clothes on a holiday in my life before.’

‘Good for you,’ said Manson shortly. He went to his desk.

‘Well, I suppose it was a sort of second honeymoon really.’

‘Yes, I suppose it was. Look, Prue, it’s lovely to see you, darling, but I do have a lot of work—’

‘You, too. Your new secretary won’t stop for a minute either. What’s the matter with you all? Is it Back Britain week or are they running a competition for England’s busiest publisher?’ She laughed to take the sting out of the words.

‘All right,’ said Manson, lighting a cigarette. ‘My time is yours. What can I do for you?’

Prue smiled. ‘I was hoping to cadge some lunch. We only came back ‘cos we’d run out of money and I’m really quite hungry.’

Manson hesitated; Prue thought he looked evasive. He called out, ‘Sarah, aren’t I busy for lunch today?’

There was a pause. Then: ‘Nothing I can’t get you out of.’

‘Oh,’ Manson said. ‘Then I seem to be free.’

* * *

He said furiously, ‘Now why did you do that?’

‘What?’

‘You
know
what. Cancel our lunch so I could eat with Prue.’

‘I thought you ought to eat with Prue.’

‘Since when do you judge what I ought to do? I can eat with Prue any day.’

‘You can eat with me any day. But surely Prue takes priority.’

‘Dammit, Sarah,
whoever
takes priority, it’s for me to say. Not you.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I interfered.’

‘And it isn’t good for Prue to get her own way all the time.’

‘No.’

‘Walking in here and upsetting all my arrangements …’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘No.’

‘Then come here.’ He held out his arms.

‘No, I can’t. Anyone might walk in.’

‘You’re right. Christ, why are you always right?’

‘It’s something they taught me at Commercial School.’

He laughed. ‘At least you still make me laugh. That’s about all you get a chance to do, these days. God, I want you so much—if this goes on much longer I’ll be walking
around the office with a permanent erection and that won’t be good for my image—or will it?’

She said, ‘Oh, darling,’ and then, ‘this thing seems to get madder and madder; I don’t know where I am. I don’t think Prue liked me; there was a terrible atmosphere between us.’

He said, to his own amazement, ‘Damn Prue.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Yes, I do. Don’t tell me what I mean.’

She said lovingly, ‘Darling, you’re awfully stroppy these days.’

‘I know.’

‘I love you for it though.’

‘Do you? I thought you’d gone off me.’

‘Did you? I wish I had.’

‘Do you really? Don’t say that.’

‘Well, you make me unhappy, that’s all. And nobody’s ever done that before. I’m not used to it.’

‘Aren’t you really? What a happy, lucky life you must have led.’

‘Yes, I have. That’s me, to a T.’

She sounded so bitter that he said, suddenly concerned, ‘Sarah, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. You just don’t know anything about me, that’s all.’

‘I’m sorry. I’d like to.’

‘Yes, I know. But you don’t get the chance, do you? It’s all wives and daughters and work and trains. Oh, nothing to complain about and I’m not complaining.’

‘Aren’t you?’ he said.

‘Well.’ She considered. ‘Okay, so it’s great in bed and we make jokes and you take me out to dinner. But so what? That doesn’t tell you what makes me cry in the night.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Do you cry in the night?’

She smiled. ‘You wouldn’t know, would you?’ She thought
of Geoff, and the car, and his arm round her as she fell asleep.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s not my fault.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘of course not.’

‘Look, I will do something about this. I promise. Just give me time.’

G
AVIN WAS
actually laughing as he came through the door. ‘Boy, do I have something to tell you. I had lunch with Sue and Victor—you should have come—it was great.’

Prue was curled up in a chair. She said moodily, ‘I had lunch with Dad.’

‘So why aren’t you radiant? Didn’t you get the full Mirabelle bit?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘So?’

‘I don’t know. He was in a funny mood. Not himself somehow. I don’t know what it was. As if—he didn’t want to be with me.’ She felt her eyes pricking again as they had done all afternoon, and blinked rapidly.

Gavin laughed again. ‘Well, maybe he didn’t at that.’

She stared at him. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Honey, you’re not listening. I said I had something to tell you.’

‘What?’ She spoke sulkily.

‘Okay, be like that. I guarantee this will make you sit up. Sue wasn’t the only person with a key to this flat in our absence.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Ah, I knew that’d get you.’

‘Gavin, what do you mean?’

Gavin flopped into a chair opposite her and laughed at her consternation. ‘I said you’d sit up, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.
What d’you mean?
Someone else was here? Who? Was anything taken? Who
could
have a key?’

‘Relax, honey, it wasn’t burglars. Just a couple of people using the bed. Sue walked right in on them when she came to water the plants. Gave her quite a shock but gave them a bigger one. Scrambling into their clothes, she said, guilty as hell. Middle-aged man and a young girl.’

Prue said slowly, ‘I don’t understand. How could anyone but us have a key?’

‘Put it another way. Who but us is likely to have a key?’

Prue frowned. ‘The porter? The previous tenants? The cops?’

‘You’re not concentrating, hon. Let me spell it out for you. Who is the person most likely to have a key to our flat? Who would want to feel free to walk in at any time? Who would want to feel it doesn’t really belong to us—and Christ knows it doesn’t, we never paid for the lease—that’s right, now you’ve got it.’

‘Gavin,
no.’

‘Gavin, yes. I think. Sorry about that, baby. But don’t look so shocked. The poor old guy’s only human after all. What’s so terrible about that? Did you think he wasn’t?’

Prue uncoiled her legs from the chair very slowly and placed them on the ground so that she was sitting stiff and square, facing Gavin, her hands around the bulge as if to protect it. She said, ‘Look, have I got this straight? You’re saying … my father was here with a girl. You’re saying he’s had a key to this flat all along and when we went away he brought a girl here and—’

‘Screwed her on our bed, yes, that’s what I’m saying. And Sue caught them at it—or damn nearly.’

Prue said, ‘No.’

‘What d’you mean no?’

‘It could have been anyone.’

‘Oh yes. Like the porter—have you taken a look at him lately? Like the cops—very likely—bet it happens all the time. Like the previous tenants—well, we met them didn’t we? Sure, it could have been anyone.’

‘You
want
to believe it was him, don’t you?’

‘Well, it’s a great new angle on a dreary subject.’

‘You hate him.’

‘I don’t hate him, honey, he just bores the ass off me, that’s all. I’m full up to here with his sanctimonious shit about your spotless purity and my filthy lust, when you were the randiest thing this side of L.A. and practically tore my pants off. Not that I objected, that I grant you. But he sure got a screwed-up version of our courtship, as it were, that’s for sure. I don’t hate him. In fact this makes me like him better. Shows the old guy’s got some life left in him after all; I thought maybe he was jealous ‘cos his balls had dropped off. Only thing I wish is he wasn’t such a bloody hypocrite. He bawls me out all over the place and then he comes screwing in my bed.’ He began to laugh again. ‘Say, I bet that gave him quite a kick. I bet he thought about me screwing you the whole time. Or pretended that girl was you. Yeah.’

Prue put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’ Tears were burning her eyes and yet at the same time she felt so unbearably stimulated that she could hardly keep still.

‘Baby, have I upset you?’ Gavin came across and put his hand on her knee. She trembled violently. ‘Oh, like that, is it? Too much talk. Too many dirty words. Well, now, what shall we do about that?’

He undressed her slowly while she moaned softly but did not help him. ‘Well, you
are
randy, aren’t you? Bet your Dad’d like to see you now.’ He stroked her. ‘Oh yes. He’d love that.’

She went beserk, clutching and clawing at him, and both to control and heighten her pleasure he gave her as much
pain as she wanted, being careful to remember the baby and not to hurt her there. The floor became a battle ground. When they had finished they were both soaked in sweat. They had left the electric fire full on.

‘Wow,’ said Gavin presently, rolling over and switching it off, ‘let’s keep it a secret or they’ll all want some. Cigarette, hon?’

‘No.’

He lit one for himself.

Prue waited till the baby, disturbed by all the activity, had stopped moving. She was still not used to the sensation and found it hard to speak while concentrating on it. ‘Gavin, you weren’t kidding, were you, just now? About somebody being here.’

‘No. Sue really did see them.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘Well, she said the guy was tall, middle-aged, grey hair. Quite good-looking she said. Left his jacket in here with an Eliot and Manson catalogue sticking out of the pocket. No, really. Corny but true.’

Prue said slowly, ‘What was the girl like?’

‘Why? Don’t tell me you know her? Or are you just curious about your rival?’ He tapped ash in the grate.

‘Did Sue describe her?’

‘Yeah, well, she said she was small and pretty with blonde hair, that’s all. And a startled expression, but I guess that’s not permanent. Not much to go on.’

‘It’s enough.’

‘You
do
know her.’

‘I met her this morning.’

‘What?’

Prue eased herself into a sitting position and leaned against the chair; she began putting on her clothes again. ‘She’s his secretary.’

For about ten seconds Gavin’s face was a superb study of
amazement and shock. Even his mouth formed a perfect round which Prue viewed with the same detached pleasure as a successful smoke ring. Then he burst out laughing. ‘Oh
no
. But I thought his secretary was a dog.’

‘That was Monica. She left. This is the new one. Sarah Francis. We disliked each other on sight; now I know why.’

Gavin ground out his unfinished cigarette. ‘Boy, oh boy, what a gas. What a pity we can’t share the joke. Isn’t that always the way—the best stories are always the ones you can’t spread around.’

Prue got up carefully and finished dressing. She opened her bag and started to comb her hair. ‘Why not?’

He stared at her. ‘Why not? Do you want a story like that all over school—well, do you? I swore Sue and Victor to secrecy and they haven’t told anyone. It’s got to stop there.’

Prue said coolly, ‘I didn’t mean college. Of course not; I quite agree. There’s only one person who ought to be told.’