The Treacherous Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  As he reached the door of his room, he turned and said to Anne, as he did every morning,

  ‘Ah, Miss Symons, I wonder if you could possibly rustle up a cup of coffee for me?’

  It was part of Anne’s duties to make coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon for both partners, but Mr Cass always made it sound like a favour, which was one of the reasons she liked him.

  ‘Certainly, Mr Cass. I’ll put the kettle on now.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Symons. And then you can go for your own coffee, of course. I hear tell,’ and his eyes twinkled gravely, ‘they have doughnuts at the Cosy Café this morning.’

  ‘Would you like me to bring you one back?’ Anne asked innocently. Mr Cass pretended to look offended.

  ‘I mentioned it only out of academic interest, Miss Symons.’

  On Thursdays, after she had made the partners their coffee, Anne always went out to the Cosy Café at the corner of Church Street for her own coffee break. It was one of the little treats that made Thursdays special. She never really knew whether Mr Cass was hinting or not when he said things like that. Sometimes she brought him back a cake to have with his tea, and sometimes he accepted it, and sometimes he didn’t. It all added to the variety.

  At five to eleven, Anne switched off her typewriter, picked up her handbag and crossed the street to the café. It was one of those arty little places with fumed oak tables, and windsor chairs with chinz seat-cushions, but the oak beams that ran across the low ceiling were genuine enough, and the coffee was good. Anne usually met her friend from school days, Wendy Stokes, for coffee here on Thursdays, and Wendy was already there, sitting at a table and watching the door.

  ‘Ah, there you are. I didn’t get my coffee – I thought I’d wait for you,” Wendy said as she came in.

  ‘You’re early, aren’t you?’

  ‘Dear old punctual Anne! I don’t know, I believe you sit up there at your window with a stop watch waiting to see me come down the street.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s just that you gave the impression of having been sitting there for some time. Shall we go and order?’

  The two girls went down to the counter together. Wendy also worked for solicitors, but hers was quite a different kind of firm from Wilson and Paul. It was a new firm of four young men and occupied offices in the brand new building beside the car park at the back of Woolworth’s. It did a lot of business, and had a name for being bright, go-ahead and up to all the modern trends. Mr Whetlore spoke of the partners disparagingly as ‘thrusters’ and hinted that none of them knew the first thing about the law. Mr Cass said more mildly that there was room in the world for all sorts of firms but that nothing would ever replace the old family lawyer – the ‘man of business’.

  Wendy liked her job, and spoke rather patronisingly of Anne’s, even though she was only one of three typists in the office, and hadn’t the sole responsibility that Anne had. She was a plump, pretty girl with vivid blue eyes, and was as perpetually untidy and disorganised as Anne was neat and punctual.

  ‘Two coffees, please,’ Wendy said to the girl behind the counter, and then turned her eyes to the display of cakes in the glass-fronted counter. ‘Look at those scrummy doughnuts.’

  ‘I thought you were on a diet,’ Anne commented mildly.

  ‘I am. I was only saying look at them,’ Wendy said indignantly. They did look good – the Cosy Café was noted for its cakes, all home-baked. Both girls usually had something with their coffee as part of the Thursday morning treat, but Wendy sometimes had pangs of conscience about it. She was almost always on a diet, but since she almost always cheated, it cancelled itself out and she stayed the same shape, which was the shape nature intended her to be, and which, in Anne’s opinion, suited her very well.

  ‘I think I’ll have a rum baba,’ Anne said, looking up at the assistant, who nodded.

  ‘You’ll have what? Well, what a greedy pig,’ Wendy said. ‘In that case, I’ll have something too. I was going to go without, but since you’re setting me such a bad example, let me see.’ She mused over the glass case while Anne watched her with amusement.

  ‘You know perfectly well,’ she said at last, ‘that you always have the same as me, so why pretend to choose?’

  ‘That’s half the fun, choosing,’ Wendy said with a grin. ‘All right, I’ll be different today – I’ll have a rum baba.’

  The assistant, looking thoroughly bewildered, served her, and they took their coffee and made their way back to their favourite seat by the window.

  ‘Well now,’ Wendy said when they were settled. ‘What’s the news? What have you been doing since this time last week? What exciting adventures have come your way. Tell Aunty Wendy all, don’t spare the details.’

  ‘That won’t take long,’ Anne said, smiling. ‘I went to the disco on Saturday night, which you know because you were there. I went blackberrying with Dad on Sunday, and to the pictures on Sunday night, and the rest of the week has been work. Now you tell – what have you been doing? Are you still going out with Graham?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Wendy said.

  ‘How can you not be sure? You seemed friendly enough with him on Saturday night.’

  Graham Raphael was one of the young accountants who shared the office building with Wendy’s firm of solicitors, and the big excitement of last week had been his asking Wendy out. Wendy had hailed it as The Big Romance, but since she started one of those about once a month, Anne had not taken it too seriously.

  ‘Yes, I know, but we had a quarrel on the way home, and then we had a sort of disagreement on Sunday, so I don’t think we’re speaking to each other at the moment,” Wendy said.

  ‘I see,’ Anne said. ‘I’m finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with your romances – they seem to be on and off more quickly than ever. Aren’t you ever afraid you’ll run out of new men?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Wendy said airily. ‘There are plenty of fish in the sea, even in a one-horse town like Winton. And I get bored with the poor fellas so easily. Why don’t you try your hand, Anne? You might find you enjoy it. I’m sure you can’t have much fun going about with poor old Joe. After all, you’ve been going out with him for – well, ever since we left school, and that must be four years now.’

  ‘I know,’ Anne said, not without a sigh. ‘It is a long time. But I like Joe, and he’s very fond of me, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Wendy said impatiently. ‘And you don’t like to hurt his feelings. But you know perfectly well he doesn’t appreciate you. All he really loves is pigs, and you’re the wrong shape to compete with them.’

  Anne laughed. ‘You’re absurd,’ she said, and to turn the conversation away from herself, she asked, ‘So if it isn’t Graham, who is it?’

  ‘Well, I’m temporarily out of boyfriends at this moment in time,’ she said solemnly, ‘so if anyone comes along who’s extremely handsome, fairly rich, young, amusing, a man of the world, has good taste—’

  Her voice trailed off and both girls stared in the same direction. Through the big, plate-glass window of the café they had a fine view of the street, and as Wendy was speaking the very person she had been describing was walking towards them on the opposite side of the street. He was tall, handsome, elegant, dressed in the kind of clothes that you couldn’t get on the never-never at a chain-tailors in Winton High Street. He had an air of sophistication that spoke of larger fish-ponds than Market Winton, and as he came closer, Anne found herself gazing at his face and realising that as well as being handsome, it was attractive – not always the same thing.

  He seemed to be strolling without great purpose, and when he saw the café he crossed the street and came in, and went through to the counter at the back without a glance at the two girls. They had both hastily withdrawn their eyes as he came in, not wanting to be caught staring at him, but when he had gone past, Wendy took another quick look and then said to Anne in an undertone,

  ‘Wheee! Who is that, I wonder?’

  ‘I d
on’t know. I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘It must be meant for me. Just when I’m short of an escort – and on market day too. He’s like something in a Martini advert. Now,’ she leaned across the table with a mock serious air, ‘before I crash in and help myself, are you sure you wouldn’t like to have first go? Just for a change?’

  Anne laughed. ‘You are terrible! It’s a good job I know you’re only joking. Anyway, he wouldn’t look at me, or you. Too sophisticated by half.’ She refused to turn her head and look at him again. They were both too old for that kind of thing. ‘Anyway, don’t get yourself excited – he’s probably only passing through.’

  Wendy sighed. ‘Don’t I know it. Things like that don’t happen in real life. Never mind, Graham’s really quite as good looking as that, and probably lots nicer.’

  ‘So Graham’s “on” again, is he?’

  ‘He will be by this afternoon,’ Wendy said cheerfully. ‘We’d better be getting back, you know, it’s a quarter past already. Listen, I’ll see you at the market this afternoon. See if you can coax Joe away from his pigs to take you into the fair – I want to show off how good Graham is on the rifle range.’

  ‘I’ll try, but I doubt if he’ll come,’ Anne said.

  ‘Tell him there’s bowling for a pig,’ Wendy directed wisely. ‘That’ll fetch him.’

  ‘Don’t mock,’ Anne said, but she laughed all the same. Wendy was not far wrong.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Anne had known Joe Halderthay for a very long time. He had gone to the same secondary school as she had, but being a few years older than her, he had not noticed her. Anne, however, had noticed Joe, and from early days he had been a sort of hero to her.

  He was the school sports champion – football, cricket, athletics, swimming – and all-round sportsman, and, as such people will be, very popular with both boys and girls in the school. He was not particularly good at his lessons, but he was good-natured and honest, and these things shone through even to little girls in the lower school. Besides, he was considered very good looking – not especially tall, but broad-shouldered and athletic, fair-skinned, auburnhaired, blue-eyed – a real Dorsetman. By the time he left school and was beginning to take an interest in girls, Anne was not the only one who hung about the gates after school to get a glimpse of him passing on his bike, or lined the playing-field during matches to cheer him.

  Joe left school and went to work on a farm over towards Felsham, about five miles from Winton Parva where Anne lived. Farm hands work long hours, and Joe scarcely ever visited the haunts of young people. It was known that he was going out with one of the daughters of the farm manager, and in the fullness of time, never seeing him, Anne forgot him, and had she been asked would have assumed he had married the girl. So that should have been that.

  Anne, too, left school and did a secretarial course at the technical college in Weymouth – a great adventure that, travelling in by train every day like a commuter. She had a lot of fun during that year, mixing with boys and girls her own age, having money in her pocket for the first time and no responsibilities, and all the diversions of Weymouth at her command. She found that she was popular with the boys, and was never short of a companion, and from the same source she discovered that she was pretty, so life was fine by her.

  She was lucky, too, in spotting the advertisement for the solicitors job when she did and in making a good enough impression at her interview to be taken on. For some time after that she was fully occupied with her job and the necessity of making a good impression. She didn’t go out much, spending her evenings repairing and improvising clothes, and going to bed early so as to be sure of getting in on time the next day, and so one by one she lost contact with her old friends.

  Her mother was ill at that time, too, so there wasn’t the impetus to go out. Her mother had often tried to persuade her, and her father had even been worried because she wasn’t bringing young men home for him to interview.

  ‘If you’re not careful, my girl,’ he had said, ‘you’ll be too late. You’ll wake up one morning and find yourself on the shelf.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dad,’ Anne had said. It was too early to worry about that sort of thing.

  What did happen, however, was that one morning she woke up and found herself bored, and that was the day that Fate took a hand. She was opening the second post at around eleven that morning, when the street door opened and in came a tall, suntanned figure.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, in such a low voice that it failed altogether, and he had to cough and start again. ‘Good morning. I wondered if I could see the solicitor?’

  He was evidently a farmer, by his shapeless tweed jacket and his clean white shirt, and he was evidently painfully shy. Anne smiled her kindest smile and said, ‘I should think so. Can you tell me what’s it’s about?’

  ‘Well, you see,’ he began, and at that moment lifted his eyes for the first time and looked at her. Two things happend. Firstly, he became tongue-tied again and stopped in mid sentence. Secondly, Anne recognised her former hero of the sports field.

  ‘Why, you’re Joe Halderthay, aren’t you?’ she cried. He looked surprised and confused.

  ‘Well, yes, I am, but I’m afraid …?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose you’d remember me. Anne Symons. I was a few years younger than you.’

  ‘Yes, I do – I do remember you, of course,’ he said and as Anne raised an eyebrow, thinking he was simply being polite, he went on, ‘you lived in Winton Parva, by the railway station.’

  ‘I still do,’ Anne said, impressed by his memory. ‘Fancy you remembering that. I never supposed you even noticed me.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said eagerly, ‘I always thought you were—’ He broke off, looking confused, and though Anne prompted him gently he wouldn’t go on.

  ‘So what are you doing these days?’ she asked in the end.

  ‘I’m a stockman on Haldane’s Farm,’ he said.

  ‘Cattle?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Pigs,’ he replied, and a gleam of pleasure lit his eyes at the very word. ‘I’m specialising in them, especially in the breeding. Fascinating animals.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever cared for them,’ Anne said, wrinkling her nose, ‘though I suppose they’re better than sheep. What does your wife think?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Of the pigs? Does she like pigs?’

  ‘My wife? But I’m not married,’ he said, bewildered.

  ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. I thought you were married to – what’s her name? – the eldest Moore girl. You used to work on their farm, didn’t you?’

  ‘That was Jenny. Yes, I used to go out with her when I worked at Moore’s, but we broke it off when I went to Haldane’s. We were never serious about each other anyway.’

  ‘I always assumed you married her, I don’t know why,’ Anne said vaguely.

  ‘I think she married a chap from the Atomic factory in the end, ‘Joe said. ‘And what about you? What do you do?’

  ‘Well, as you see,’ Anne said, waving a hand round the office. ‘I work here.’

  Joe was abashed again. ‘Of course, silly of me,’ he muttered. He was silent, and Anne realised that she still didn’t know what he had come for. She waited for him to say something, and since it appeared that he was tongue-tied again, she prompted him gently,

  ‘You were going to tell me what you came to see us about, when I interrupted you.’

  ‘Oh yes, well you see, I’m hoping in the end to buy a place of my own and set up in pigs. I’m head stockman now on Haldane’s and I’m studying at night, and I should be able to get a manager’s job in a year or two. Then I’ll be able to save up to get a deposit on a place.’ He forgot his shyness when he was talking about his favourite subject, and Anne noticed how handsome he looked when his eyes shone and his expression was animated. ‘There are special arrangements for mortgages on farm-land, special rates and so on, and with a couple of years as a manager behind me, and a cash d
eposit, I think I could get a mortgage on a smallish place, enough to set up for a start.’

  ‘How would you buy the stock?’ Anne asked.

  ‘That’s covered by the mortgage too,’ Joe said, evidently pleased that she was taking an interest in his plans. ‘I’ve even seen a bit of land that I think would be just the thing. It’s lying fallow at the moment, and there’s a cottage on the land, falling down, and hardly any roof on it. It looks as though it’s been empty for years.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Anne asked. Anything to do with land interested her.

  ‘It’s out on the Weymouth road, about three or four miles out of Springbourne.’

  ‘I think I know where you mean,’ Anne said. ‘There’s a little side turning, just the other side of that big Dutch barn, then it all lies uphill.’

  ‘That’s right, you’ve got it. Well-drained land. And that’s why I came here. I thought you might be able to tell me who owns it, and why it’s not being farmed. I suppose it’s early days yet to be enquiring about land, when I haven’t even got my manager’s job yet, but it’s on my mind so much I thought I’d have to find out.’

  ‘Well I’m sure we can help you,’ Anne said, and then, ‘just out of interest, why did you choose this particular firm? Rather than any other?’

  ‘I don’t know. I saw the sign in the window, you see – you can see this window from the market. I’m up here every Thursday for the market. I asked one or two people, and they said this was an old-fashioned kind of family firm, so I thought you’d be more likely to know about that sort of thing. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, no reason, really, just interested,’ Anne said.

  ‘You seem to be interested in a lot of things,’ Joe said, for him greatly daring. Anne smiled.

  ‘You hold on here for a minute, Joe, and I’ll see if Mr Cass will see you now, to save you coming back again. I’m sure it must be hard for you to get time off from the farm.’