Flash of Emerald

by Jane Arbor

  FLASH OF EMERALD

  Jane Arbor

  Hope anticipated few problems when she traveled to the West Indian Island of Madenina to take over the job her spoilt cousin Tina had failed so dismally. But when she encountered her new employer Craig Napier, she realized that there might be storms ahead! What could she make of a man who had the conceit to tell her, sooner or later all of my secretaries deluded themselves either that they were in love with me, or that I was hiding a secret passion for them? And yet ironically, Hope did fall in love with him. And quite apart from anything else, there were two women at least in whom Craig was, to put it mildly, interested—and neither of them was herself!

  CHAPTER ONE

  As usual, all the way to the office by car, Uncle Lionel had talked yesterday’s business with Hope, giving her no chance to discuss with him the letter she had received that morning. But along with her dictation-pad, she took it with her when he rang for her to join him in his room.

  After all, Tina was his daughter, which made Tina’s present trouble his problem and Aunt Harriet’s, more than it was Hope’s. In fact, thought Hope, not without irony, it could be said that if it weren’t for Aunt Harriet’s doting indulgence of Tina, the girl wouldn’t be in trouble, disillusioned, homesick, and complaining on the ‘Nobody Told Me’ querulous note of her letter to Hope.

  At his desk Uncle Lionel was ready with his correspondence. But Hope forestalled his beginning on it. ‘Just a minute, Uncle—’ she said.

  He looked up, a forefinger flicking impatiently at the papers before him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve had a letter from Tina.’

  ‘You have? Good. As you know, your aunt was getting anxious, as we haven’t heard for some time. How is she? Enjoying herself? Getting on all right with her chief?’

  ‘No,’ said Hope flatly.

  ‘No? What do you mean? What can have happened since she first wrote? She was all enthusiasm for the whole West Indian scene then.’

  ‘That was a few days after her arriving in Madenina,’ Hope reminded him. ‘She hadn’t begun her job then. But now she says the Napier man is mean to her, that he gives her work she doesn’t understand, and expects her to be at his call all the hours there are. She hates the digs he’s found for her; can’t fancy West Indian food, and is having no fun at all. She wants me to beg you to bring her home as soon as may be. If not, she threatens she’ll run away. Though where she would run to, on an island the size of Madenina, is anyone’s guess,’ Hope concluded practically. ‘But she sounds desperate enough to mean it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘She says all that in the letter?’ Lionel Godwin held out his hand. ‘May I see it?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Hope passed it over and he read it through. Then, smoothing it with the side of his fist and pushing his spectacles up his forehead, he mused, ‘I suppose the truth is we shouldn’t have sent her. She was too young.’

  ‘And not nearly experienced enough for anyone’s personal secretary. So far away too, when she’d never been abroad, except on holiday to Spain,’ suggested Hope.

  Her uncle nodded agreement. ‘I had my doubts too. But you know how mad she was to go, and how your aunt saw it as a wonderful chance for her.’

  Hope did know. Also that Uncle Lionel, so shrewd and forceful in his own business, could rarely say a firm No to either her aunt or her cousin Tina, and that when they had both seen Tina’s despatch to the French sugar island of Madenina as a ‘wonderful’ if undefined chance for her, he had been less than wise and had agreed to let her go.

  He seemed to be thinking aloud now. ‘I can’t believe Craig Napier can be as tyrannical as she says. He would surely make allowances for her, new to the job and her surroundings, even though I understand he has a bit of a reputation for being a martinet and a perfectionist. But if she’s as disappointed as she sounds, she’s probably making a mess of her work, and he could feel he has a grievance against us for sending her out to him.’

  ‘If he knows she’s threatening to quit, yes. But he may not,’ said Hope.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ Lionel pursued his thoughts, ‘that I’ve never met the man—only heard about him on the firm’s grapevine. When he was over in the spring and rang us up, he and I were doing a Box and Cox—I was in Barbados while he was in England—and he only spoke to you on the telephone, didn’t he, and didn’t call in?’

  ‘No. I told him where you were and when you would be back, and asked him if he would care to look in here anyway. But he refused, saying he had barely an hour to call his own as it was.’ Hope was remembering a deep, incisive voice and a brief, no-words-wasted conversation. ‘And that, as you know, was all we heard of him until he wrote to ask you to engage him an English girl as his personal secretary. Though why he should ask you, you couldn’t understand.’

  ‘Nor why he should ask anyone over here, instead of going to an agency. However, we misguidedly sent him Tina, and now what do we do about it?’ Lionel appealed.

  ‘Well, if she’s determined not to try to make a go of the job, I’d say you have no choice but to bring her home,’ Hope advised.

  ‘Letting Napier down? I shouldn’t care to do that. Nor, I must admit, to lose face myself with some of the Top Table who thought I was playing favourites when I sent Tina in the first place.’

  In the great sugar-importing and distributing combine of Netfold and Islay, of which Lionel Godwin was one of its six branch managers, the Board of Directors was always known as the Top Table, and though she didn’t say so to her uncle, Hope privately agreed that its members had shown better judgment than he.

  ‘You did as you thought best at the time,’ she told him loyally, though knowing he had acted on her Aunt Harriet’s ‘best thinking’ rather than his own. She went on, ‘If you ask me now though, you’d be doing worse by Mr. Napier by letting Tina stay on—even if you could make her, that is.’

  ‘M’m, that’s so,’ mused Lionel.

  ‘Or—’ But there Hope paused for so long that he looked up at her enquiringly. ‘Or what?’ he asked.

  ‘Well—I suppose you wouldn’t consider sending someone else over to iron thing out and to ship Tina home if necessary? Sending, say, me for instance?’ she suggested tentatively.

  ‘You?’ Lionel sounded galvanised by shock. ‘My dear girl, I couldn’t spare you! To coin a phrase, you’re my right hand—And who would take your place?’

  Hope smiled at him fondly. He was a dear, really. If only she had the same rapport with Aunt Harriet! She said, ‘It was only an idea, and of course I’ve little clue to what Mr. Napier wants of a secretary than Tina has. But I do know my job, and I do know that Kathy’—naming her immediate junior in the office—‘would jump at the chance of stepping into my shoes. She’s good too. She could.’

  Lionel drew down his spectacles and surveyed her over them. ‘And this idea—it wasn’t that you should take on the job—as a permanency in Tina’s place?’

  ‘Oh, no, though I might have to play it by ear. Just for a month or six weeks, perhaps, which should give me time train a local girl if Mr. Napier would accept one.’

  Lionel was musing again. ‘M’m, yes. And we can’t afford to lose the good will of the Belle Rose plantation—’ He lapsed into silence once more, then nodded ‘All right,’ he said and subjected Hope to a long, shrewd look.

  ‘Could be,’ he suggested gently, ‘that your motive isn’t entirely the rescue of Tina? You’d welcome a break? Things haven’t been too easy for you lately?’

  She looked away, ashamed that he knew. ‘Not so very,’ she admitted. ‘It’s probably my fault.’

  ‘Not altogether, I think,’ he said. ‘But you must make allowances for Harriet. She’s missing Tina, and in her view you are no substitute. What’s more, you’re
adult now—twenty-three, aren’t you?—and two women in a house, only related by marriage, don’t always manage to jell.’

  Hope ventured, ‘Our friction hasn’t only been since Tina left. It’s been growing for some time. Yet I’ve always been terribly grateful to you both for giving me a home after Mum and Dad died, and while I was little, Aunt Harriet was kindness itself.’

  ‘Exactly,’ confirmed her uncle. ‘Since we’re being frank, I’ll admit to you that Harriet enjoys power and influence, and this she had over you when you were young. But ever since then she’s resented your trying your wings and even your overshadowing Tina a bit, with the resulting flashpoint which at times has had to explode.’

  ‘It’s been my place not to let it explode,’ Hope said wretchedly.

  ‘My dear, it’s not always been possible to avoid it. I’ve felt the impact myself at second hand!’ Lionel comforted her. ‘But now we’ve a temporary solution at least. You’ll go out to Madenina and try to bring out silly little girl to her senses, but meanwhile, for goodness’ sake, brief young Kathy Tremayne well before you go, for I don’t know how I’m going to do without you.’

  ‘You may be saying just that about Kathy by the time I come back,’ Hope teased. ‘After all, they say no one is indispensable, don’t they?’

  ‘Huh! Don’t give me that, young woman. Whether or not you are indispensable I’m to be left to prove,’ growled her uncle. But his smile was kind as he adjusted his spectacles to their rightful place and job, and began to dictate his letters to her.

  During eight hours flying and disorientated at thirty-five thousand feet up, Hope had had time for both relief and misgivings.

  Relief—at having escaped from Aunt Harriet and the difficulties she had made over Hope’s trip, not the least being her ill-concealed conviction that the project had been prompted and engineered through jealousy—Hope’s jealousy of Tina who, in her mother’s opinion, was only being understandably homesick for a while, and who was far too aware of her good fortune not to settle down to the delights of the Caribbean in time. There was no need for Hope to interfere, and as for the Napier man, if he chose to engage a secretary on a kind of blind date, then he deserved what he got!

  And misgivings—at all that lay before her. After all, she had little more idea of the conditions awaiting her than Tina had had, though she wasn’t carrying with her so rose-tinted an image.

  She had asked questions, pored over maps and badgered anyone who could tell her what life on Madenina would be like.

  She knew that it was French-owned and governed, and that it lay slightly east of the long rope of islands which curved down from the Strait of Florida almost to the coasts of South America, and her uncle supplied such practical details as that its currency was French, that its people were mixed Creole, American and European, and that its main export was the sugar of which Netfold and Islay took the greater part. But it was Ian Perse, Headquarters’ young ambitious Public Relations Officer, who sketched in for her something of the work which would go through the office of the Manager of the Belle Rose estate. Ian had visited Madenina in the course of his work and could report some hearsay about her prospective employer, though he had not met Mr. Napier in person.

  ‘You know roughly how he’s placed?’ Ian had asked. ‘That he was managing Belle Rose for Roland de Faye until de Faye was drowned, sailing, and Napier has continued in management for his widow and his small son by his first wife, who was English?’

  ‘Yes, I’d heard something about that,’ Hope had said. ‘Is Madame de Faye English too?’

  ‘Victoire de Faye? No, she’s French and an absentee owner now, one gathers. She seems to prefer Paris to the Caribbean.’

  ‘And Craig Napier? Is he really the monster that Tina claims he is?’

  ‘Perhaps not as bad as she makes out. But he is a bit of a hard character, from all accounts.’

  ‘How “hard”—from a secretary’s-eye-view, for instance?’

  ‘I don’t know, though his wastage rate in them seems high. Each time I’ve been over he’s had a different one.’

  Hope had grimaced. ‘Oh dear—bad sign!’

  ‘As you say, bad sign,’ Ian had agreed.

  That had been their last exchange before she left England, but she was touched when, at the airport, she had been paged to receive a buttonhole of lily-of-the-valley and a Bon Voyage card from him. She had met him first at a Headquarters’ Dance and he had asked her to lunch and once to dinner since. That night he had kissed her when he left her, murmuring, ‘Nice girl. May we do it again some time?’ And Uncle Lionel, who was seeing her off, had approved the posy, saying of Ian, ‘Good lad. Going far. Needs encouraging.’ But whether by the firm or by Hope he did not make clear.

  All day the sky had been a cloudless blue, the sea far below an unruffled expanse. But towards the early tropical evening the aircraft, gradually losing height for landing, had to drop through thickening, rolling cloud. There were lights all over the island, some of them so high as to appear hung from the invisible sky, but the landscape was a blur, and when Hope had gone through Immigration and Customs, rain was falling in a torrential downpour.

  Tina, there to meet her, kissed her perfunctorily, asked about the flight, said, ‘Nice to see you,’ and led the way to a waiting car. Hope, who had been dreading a somewhat hysterical welcome, was relieved but slightly puzzled, especially by the sleek luxury of the car and by the correct deference of the West Indian chauffeur who handed them into it.

  As he moved off, Tina indicated the rain. ‘It’s been doing this more or less every day since I got here,’ she grumbled.

  ‘Well, it’s November. Not one of the recommended tourist months, I believe,’ Hope pointed out.

  ‘Then they should tell you so in the brochures. Silver sands, gentle zephyrs and sun-drenched days—my foot!’

  Hope thought it politic to change the subject. ‘Whose car is this? Not Mr. Napier’s?’

  ‘No. It’s Madame de Faye’s. She told me to meet you with it.’

  ‘Madame de Faye? I didn’t know she would be here! I thought she—’

  ‘Well, she is. She’s come back, and she’s opening up the Great House—that’s what they call the original planter’s house on sugar estates,’ Tina explained, ‘But the Belle Rose one had been closed all the time she’s been in France, except for the annexe that’s Mr. Napier’s quarters. He has a daily woman who “does” for him there.’

  ‘Is her young son with her?’ Hope asked.

  ‘Stepson? No. He’s at school in Europe. He’s to come at Christmas, I think.’

  ‘Wasn’t it a surprise, her coming back to Madenina?’

  ‘Uh-huh, I suppose so. Though if C.N. knew, he wasn’t telling me.’

  ‘C.N.? Oh—Craig Napier.’ Hope paused, then said heavily, ‘We’re going to have to talk about him.’

  ‘But not now, for pity’s sake. For when I start on him, I can say a lot,’ warned Tina sourly.

  ‘So I gather, from all you’ve written. But all right. Am I staying at the same place as you—with Mrs. Paul?’

  There was a moment before Tina answered. Then she said, ‘Yes. But I’m not taking you straight there now. The Ogre man has ruled that you’re to be delivered straight to his office.’

  ‘At this Great House?’

  ‘Oh no. That’s only where he lives. To the estate office on the plantation.’

  ‘But at this hour? After flying all day, and before I’ve changed or anything!’ Hope protested.

  Tina compressed her lips. ‘From that quarter orders is orders. I tried to tell him you’d be suffering from jet lag, but he just looked through me. And it isn’t all that late. It would still be only twilight, if it weren’t for the buckets of rain.’

  Hope sighed. ‘Where are these plantations?’

  ‘Some way out, but nearer to Mrs. Paul’s than the town. Once they begin, they go on for miles; row upon row of sugar-cane. I’ve just about had sugar, I can tell you.’

&n
bsp; ‘Well, you can soon be free of it now, if you really want to go home,’ said Hope. ‘You didn’t answer Uncle’s letter, telling you I was coming out. But that’s why he sent me—to tide things over for you until you could go back. I suppose you’ll have to give Mr. Napier some notice?’

  Tina turned her head to look out of the car window. ‘I don’t want to go home now,’ she said indistinctly.

  Hope’s jaw dropped. ‘You don’t? Why, what’s happened? Had a change of heart towards your chief? Or he had one towards you?’

  ‘Neither. He’s still quite impossible, but I’m free of him now.’ Tina faced about, her wide blue eyes which were the complement of her curly straw-fair hair flashing defiant fire. ‘Anyway, now he’s got you in my place, why shouldn’t I stay on if I want to?’

  ‘Let’s get this straight, may we?’ Hope urged. ‘He hasn’t “got” me, except as a fill-gap. I’m still Uncle Lionel’s secretary and I’m going back. And how do you propose to stay on, without a salary from Mr. Napier? The firm isn’t going to be too pleased to allow you to beachcomb out here while your old job is waiting for you in Uncle’s office. For instance, how are you going to pay Mrs. Paul for your digs?’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Tina shrugged. ‘But you don’t suppose Mum and Dad would grudge my staying on for a bit—at least until I’ve had a taste of this famous Caribbean weather which I haven’t had yet? After being cheated as I have been, I deserve a holiday!’

  Hope said drily, ‘Uncle Lionel could grudge sending me out to rescue you, when you don’t seem to need rescuing at all.’

  ‘Though I got the impression you were all as much concerned for him as for me?’ retorted Tina pertly.

  ‘For Mr. Napier? Well, perhaps we were, but—’ Hope did not finish as Tina touched her arm and pointed ahead.

  ‘We’re nearly there. We’re on the estate road now. That light you can see is in the office block, just inside the main gates.’