Love Him or Leave Him

by Mary Burchell

  ‘He had some such idea,’ Deborah replied. ‘But it would mean his having to have a secretary this end too. Or at least someone who could come in and type for him. I tell him he’d much better concentrate on getting well as quickly as possible, and not try to tackle things before he’s up to it.’

  Anne gazed with some respect at the girl who could say this to Mr. Jerome, and apparently not turn a hair over it. But, in her heart, she felt faintly sorry for her ex-employer.

  However, she said goodbye to Deborah without comment. And since the first drops of what was evidently going to be a heavy storm were falling, she hurried back to the Towers, and spent a good part of the day writing letters and reading a slightly scandalous, but very enjoyable, book of memoirs which Mrs. Vernon had pressed upon her.

  Not until the evening did Robin make an appearance. But then he came to have dinner with her, and stayed to dance.

  Anne asked rather feelingly after Mr. Jerome, considering that she had had fairly recent information of him from Deborah. And from Robin, too, she learned that he was ‘going on not too badly’.

  ‘A bit like a bear with a sore head, though,’ Robin added unsympathetically. ‘I think I begin to see signs of what you had to complain about.’

  ‘Oh, we-ell,’ said Anne, most perversely taking up the cudgels on Mr. Jerome’s behalf at this point, ‘I expect it’s simply sickening being helpless like this, just as he wants to put through some big deal, or advertising campaign or something.’

  ‘Still,’ objected Robin, ‘he might also reflect that, if he had to be hung up like this, he was darned lucky that it happened on his fiancée’s doorstep, so to speak.’

  Anne was bound to agree with this, though she privately felt that she could have thought of lots of places she would have preferred to Deborah Eskin’s doorstep. Still, of course, she was not engaged to Deborah.

  To her surprise—and a little to her annoyance—she found herself thinking a good deal of Mr. Jerome and his dilemma. Not only that. Her mind kept on reaching back into the details of the work during her last weeks at the office. She thought she knew just what points would be coming up for Mr. Jerome’s consideration and decision at this moment. And, reluctantly, she sympathised with his probable state of mind very much more than the Eskins could.

  If Robin had not been unexpectedly busy at this time—and forced to interrupt the holiday which he had given himself—Anne might not even have thought of the idea which presented itself to her mind, and, having presented itself, refused to be dismissed.

  But the temporary loss of Robin’s company, and the fact that the weather broke just then, and there were several days of rain, combined to leave Anne with a certain amount of time on her hands.

  So that a couple of afternoons later, when she happened to know from something Robin had said the evening before that Deborah, as well as her cousin, would be away from home, she donned her mackintosh, put a scarf over her head, and with a determined, though faintly scared, expression on her face, set off in the direction of Greenslade.

  Mrs. Eskin herself opened the door to Anne, and exclaimed:

  ‘Dear child, how glad I am to see someone else who enjoys the rain. To me the soft, grey days are every bit as beautiful as the sunshine.’

  Anne, who had stepped into several big puddles on her way there, didn’t really agree. But she managed not to say so too emphatically.

  ‘How is Mr. Jerome?’ she inquired, when she had thoroughly wiped her soaking shoes and hung up her mackintosh in the hall.

  ‘A little triste,’ Mrs. Eskin said. Which Anne mentally—and very accurately—translated into ‘pretty grim and fed-up’.

  ‘Perhaps I might go up and see him?’ Anne suggested, aware that the suggestion would have to come from her.

  ‘Why, of course—if you like,’ Mrs. Eskin said, though she looked rather surprised. And she added, with less than tact, but much good humour: ‘I expect he’ll be glad to see almost anyone.’

  Thus encouraged, Anne ran upstairs, and knocked on the door which had been pointed out as his.

  Her heart was thumping a little—perhaps with her run upstairs—and when Mr. Jerome’s voice said, not very agreeably, ‘Come in,’ it took a great deal of resolution on her part to open the door and enter.

  He was in bed, propped up against pillows, with a book in front of him, but she thought he had not been reading for some while. And the unsmiling look he turned upon her did not exactly bid her welcome.

  But what really impressed Anne was the fact that even a few days of illness and pain had sufficed to hollow his cheeks a little and add something like shadows round his eyes. At least, they looked even darker than usual.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, just a trifle too brightly. ‘How are you?’

  ‘As you see,’ returned Mr. Jerome disagreeably, ‘not in a mood for social calls.’

  ‘No? Well, this isn’t a social call,’ Anne said briskly, because, somehow, she didn’t feel so much afraid of Mr. Jerome after all.

  ‘What is it, then?’ he inquired, but with studied lack of interest.

  ‘It’s a business call,’ Anne told him. ‘If I can get hold of a typewriter, would you like me to come in for an hour or two each day and take letters, so that you can keep in touch personally with what’s happening in the London office?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Once Anne had made her suggestion, her air of self-confidence deserted her, and she stood there regarding Mr. Jerome a little defiantly, aware that her colour was rising, slowly but relentlessly, and that, unless she kept a tight hold on herself, she would at any moment begin smoothing back her hair with an obviously nervous hand.

  For what seemed an unfairly long time, Mr. Jerome appeared to study her proposition—and its effect upon herself. The effect on him was nothing like so easy to gauge.

  Then he said: ‘This is really very handsome of you,’ but rather as though he were wondering where the catch was.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Anne assured him, in a smaller and more placatory voice than she had intended to use. ‘I couldn’t help knowing that you must be very—worried about your office affairs. And the fact that I—I knew a certain amount about them seemed to make it specially fortunate that I was on the spot.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I was not querying your accurate reading of the position,’ he said, with that faint smile which always made her wonder just what he was thinking. ‘I was merely surprised—rather impressed, in fact—that you were willing to overlook the past, as one might say, and not leave someone who is so arrogant and bad-tempered and ridiculously pampered to suffer what are so obviously his just deserts.’

  ‘Mr. Jerome,’ Anne began, ‘you’re not—’ Then something unpleasantly familiar about the phrase he had used to describe himself made her pause. Her colour deepened even further, and she said, in a rather shocked tone: ‘Did I really call you that?’

  He inclined his head, in regretful assent.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Oh, dear! Well, we—we won’t go into that again. And you mustn’t think I have any silly ideas about this accident being your—your just deserts. I didn’t at any time want you hurt, Mr. Jerome.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘And, in proof of that, you bring me this very nice olive branch,’ he said reflectively, rubbing his chin with his thumb and finger as though considering an interesting point.

  ‘Y-yes,’ Anne said, though she had not quite meant her offer as an olive branch.

  In fact, on her way up to the house, she had indulged in a certain amount of vague but pleasant speculation about shaming Mr. Jerome. She had visualised a scene in which she was cool and a little gracious, while he was, for once, abashed and even remorseful.

  It was not working out at all like that.

  ‘Well, what do you think of the idea?’ she asked at last, hoping to sound detached and impersonal, but very much fearing that she only achieved a slight truculent nervousness.

&nb
sp; ‘My dear child,’ Mr. Jerome said, with a magnificence of capitulation which took her breath away, ‘there is only one thing I can think. That you are a generous and very kind girl to offer to give up part of your holiday like this, and that I’m very lucky to have you here. When can you start?’

  ‘Oh—’ Anne gasped. ‘Oh, do you really? I mean—I can start now, if you like.’

  He laughed then. Not unkindly and sarcastically, but as though she really amused him. And he held out his hand to her.

  ‘Don’t tell me you came provided with a shorthand notebook,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I—bought one, as I came through the village,’ Anne admitted. Then she slowly approached the bed, and put her hand in his.

  ‘You were very sure I should accept your offer?’ he asked, as for a moment his strong, well-shaped hand clasped hers.

  ‘I—hoped you would,’ Anne told him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How do you mean—why?’ she said, surprised to find that she could not immediately withdraw her hand, since he seemed determined to have her answer to that before he released her.

  ‘Why did you hope I would accept the offer? Surely you don’t want to spend part of your holiday taking and transcribing shorthand, do you?’

  ‘Oh—well—’ Anne looked down at their clasped hands rather shyly. ‘I think I—I had some idea of making up a little for all the money I lost you when I made that mistake.’

  ‘I see,’ he said gravely. And he added, ‘Funny child,’ as though he really found her reaction odd.

  ‘Shall I fetch your correspondence for you?’ Anne suggested, assuming a manner as secretarial as she could manage in the circumstances.

  He too then became more like the Mr. Jerome she knew in the office.

  ‘Yes. Don’t let’s waste any more time,’ he said, and, somewhat to Anne’s indignation, he released her hand with a sharp pat, which rather suggested that she, and not he, had prolonged that particular form of time-wasting.

  ‘Open the top drawer in that bureau, and bring me the half-dozen folders you’ll find there,’ he directed.

  Anne went to obey. Then she turned and glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘Shall I run down and explain to Mrs. Eskin why I’m staying so long?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ he replied, with a careless indifference for Mrs. Eskin’s reactions which argued a certain lack of affection towards his future mother-in-law. However, as he added almost immediately, ‘Be sure you bring everything,’ and then, ‘Now we won’t have any more interference,’ it occurred to Anne that Deborah might be the principal culprit, and that he was really voicing a general protest against all question or comment on what he was used to regarding as his own affair exclusively.

  Certainly, she thought, it must have been Deborah who had put his official correspondence away out of reach. And, while she inwardly sympathised with Mr. Jerome in his dilemma and thought his fiancée rather officious, Anne reflected that Deborah would not be specially pleased with the person who came and undid all her arrangements.

  However, it was too late to worry about that now. With the air of a man who has been kept from his favourite vice much too long, Mr. Jerome was immersing himself in letters and invoices, and beginning to look much less drawn and irritable.

  Anne found herself smiling indulgently as she watched him. He really was a much more human person than she had supposed, she decided.

  But, at that moment, he glanced up and, catching her smiling in that way, frowned and asked curtly:

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Anne was a good deal taken aback.

  ‘This is not going to be an amusing little matter of fun, you know,’ he told her, in his most disagreeable office manner. ‘If you come here at all, I want plenty of serious, accurate work done. Otherwise, you’d much better stay away.’

  ‘Yes—of course. I—I understand that,’ Anne stammered, realising that he was not, after all, a much more human person than she had supposed.

  Then she flicked open her brand-new shorthand notebook, and bent her head devotedly over it, hoping he had not noticed that, for the third time, he had made her blush. It was really rather horrid of him, when she had come here with such kindly intentions.

  For half an hour nothing was heard but Mr. Jerome’s crisp dictation, broken by short silences, while he considered various documents—sometimes with a frown, but with what Anne secretly called ‘a frown of professional enjoyment’.

  Mr. Jerome was certainly beginning to look much more himself. And, when he finally looked up and said, ‘Now what about a typewriter?’ Anne was quite surprised to realise that her own office typewriter was not, after all, in the next room.

  ‘I’ll get Robin to run me into Keswick tomorrow,’ she offered, ‘and we can make inquiries.’

  ‘Very well. I should like those letters as soon as you can manage them,’ he said, so exactly as though he expected them to catch the afternoon post that Anne glanced instinctively at her watch. It was difficult to remember that she was on holiday, and not at Mr. Jerome’s beck and call in a London office.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Anne promised. And she had just risen and begun to gather up her various papers, when the sound of voices downstairs seemed to indicate that Deborah had returned.

  Anne felt slightly nervous, as she heard unexpected quick footsteps on the stairs, and realised that something had impelled Deborah to act much more positively and impulsively than usual.

  Indeed, she came into the room without knocking, and glanced round before she said a word. For the first time, Anne saw signs of genuine emotion in her face. And the emotion was anger.

  ‘David, what on earth have you been doing?’ she asked sharply, and actually ignored Anne.

  ‘Clearing off an accumulation of business matters, my dear, and feeling much better for it,’ Mr. Jerome replied, with a sort of dry good humour which secretly amused Anne.

  Deborah was not in the least placated, and Anne was surprised to see that anyone who was usually so studied and cool could express so much annoyance by the simple withholding of a smile.

  ‘You know perfectly well that the doctor wanted you kept quiet,’ Deborah said. ‘And really, Miss—Miss—’

  She turned to Anne and treated her to the subtle insult of appearing to grope unsuccessfully for her name. ‘It was very wrong of you to visit someone who has just escaped a serious illness, without permission, and then to excite him like this.’

  ‘My dear Deborah, I am not in the least excited,’ Mr. Jerome stated, still dryly, but not so good-humouredly. ‘Miss Hemming has not that effect upon me at all.’

  Anne suppressed a sudden desire to laugh, made an attempt to say something on her own account, but was immediately overborne by Deborah, who addressed herself to her fiancé once more.

  ‘Miss Hemming had no right to come here and actually start working with you like this.’

  ‘I asked her to do so.’

  ‘You asked her to come here and see you?’ Deborah seemed astonished.

  ‘No. She came to see me, and I asked her to help me out with my arrears of office work.’

  Anne gasped slightly at the incredible spectacle of Mr. Jerome fibbing on her behalf. Unless, of course, it was on his own behalf, because he feared a further intensification of Deborah’s wrath. But no, Anne decided, the next moment. Mr. Jerome feared no one. Not Deborah in a bad temper—and she was undoubtedly in a bad temper—nor anyone else.

  ‘I am sure you meant well, Miss Hemming,’ Deborah said coldly, turning back to Anne with something more of her usual self-contained manner. ‘But the fact is that Mr. Jerome had a very nasty head injury, as well as the broken ankle, and the doctor ordered him to be kept quiet. So you see that, with the best intentions, I’m sure,’ she continued accusingly, ‘you might have done him quite a lot of harm by interfering like this.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anne began, ‘but—’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, Deborah,’ interrupted
Mr. Jerome irritably. ‘I’m very much better now. And I can assure you that I find it far more tiring to be here thinking of work undone than to exert myself for half an hour and clear off everything.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Anne ventured to put in, at this point.

  ‘You should have asked me first, though,’ Deborah told her. ‘I’m more or less in charge of the case.’

  Anne found no answer to this. At least, none which she could tactfully make to Deborah.

  However, Mr. Jerome dismissed the whole incident, with a sudden weary impatience, which convinced Anne of his real state of illness much more forcibly than anything which Deborah could have said.

  ‘The thing is done now,’ he said, with a frown. ‘Let the child take her notes and go, Deborah. I’m much obliged to you, Miss Hemming. Do those as soon as you can, and let me have them for signature.’

  And he gave her an unmistakable nod of dismissal.

  Anne went at once, Deborah holding the door open for her—but more in the manner of one seeing her safely off the premises than with any suggestion of cordiality to a departing guest.

  Downstairs, Anne struggled into her still damp raincoat again, and while she was doing so, Mrs. Eskin came out into the hall.

  ‘I’m afraid Deborah was a little put out over the length of your call,’ she said, with something between reproach and apology in her tone.

  ‘I’m afraid she was,’ Anne agreed.

  ‘You mustn’t mind if she said anything—critical,’ Mrs.. Eskin murmured vaguely, with a nice degree of understatement. ‘This has been a very worrying time for Deborah. And she’s so sensitive, you know.’

  Anne had not known. And all she could think of saying was, ‘Is she?’ in a tone of considerable doubt.

  ‘Oh, yes. She takes after me in that,’ Mrs. Eskin explained with a sigh. ‘Very often the people who say least feel most, I’m afraid.’

  Anne made some suitable reply to this harmless generalisation, and asked when Robin was likely to be home.