by Celia Scott
'I'm going as fast as I can,' Cakey glared at him, but it had no effect on Flint, who said firmly:
'I'm delighted to hear it. We would like to get to our beds before midnight. Come along, Polly!' He held the door and led her from the room.
In the den Sable was curled up on one of the faded Chintz sofas watching a thriller on television. She looked as if she had been crying. Flint sat down beside her and put his arm over the back of the cushions.
'Bad news from the big city?' he asked.
'No news at all.' She smiled at him wanly. 'Nobody's home.'
'Ah!' He patted her shoulder.
'And not expected to be. I mean—it could be days.' Her voice cracked and she concentrated furiously on the flickering screen.
Presently Cakey thrust her head round the door to announce that the meal was ready, and they trooped into the dining-room.
Polly hadn't seen this room before. It was papered in dark red and the ceiling and woodwork were painted a brilliant white. The large oval table was polished mahogany. A silver bowl, badly tarnished, and containing one withered apple, stood in the centre. More silver stood on the handsome old mahogany sideboard. Cakey had flung some plastic place-mats on the table, together with an assortment of kitchen cutlery, which jarred with the simple elegance of the room.
Grimly Flint sat himself down in front of a roast chicken, and, picking up a knife, started to carve it. Blood spurted from the bird and splattered on the table. With a roar of fury he threw the knife down and, picking up the platter of nearly raw fowl, made for the kitchen at top speed.
'Come on,' said Sable, in hot pursuit, 'this should be fun!'
Polly was not sure she would describe watching Flint rail at his housekeeper as fun, but it was certainly awe-inspiring. Despite his passionate indignation he never once paused for breath, or repeated himself. Even the stolid Cakey looked shaken. At the end of his recital of her many failings he cast the offending chicken on to the kitchen counter.
'Why you ever decided to become a housekeeper in the first place beats me!' he snapped. 'You certainly don't have the temperament for it.'
'I've been meaning to speak to you about that,' the woman retorted sullenly. 'I've accepted a job at the Caledon Nurseries. They need new help.'
Flint stared at her. 'Accepted a job! What about the little matter of giving me notice first?'
'I'm giving you notice now,' Cakey informed him. 'Two days. I start work day after tomorrow.'
Polly held her breath, waiting for the storm to break. But there was no storm. Flint said, almost chattily:
'You don't have to wait two days to start your new job, Mrs Cakebread. If you come down to the office with me now, I'll write you a cheque to cover the time you've— gardened—this month. Then you can start your new job tomorrow.'
Suits me! I'm sure I don't enjoy cooking for your fancy women morning, noon and night!'
Flint turned on her, his lips a thin line. 'The ladies you refer to are guests under my roof,' he rasped. 'Since you choose to gratuitously insult my guests you are no longer welcome here. You will pack your bags and leave my house tonight!'
Swiftly he went down the stairs, followed by the now silent woman.
'Wow!' said Sable, when they had disappeared. 'I always knew she didn't like me, but she hardly fed me morning, noon and night!'
Polly smiled weakly. She wasn't sure she enjoyed being referred to as one of Flint's fancy women, even by such an unreliable source as Mrs Cakebread. To cover her discomfiture she replaced the chicken on its platter and wiped the surface of the counter with a cloth.
Flint came back upstairs, followed by a scowling Mrs Cakebread, who left them without a backward glance.
He looked straight into Polly's wide eyes. 'I'm sorry, Pollyanna. You didn't deserve that scene. And you must be starving.' He straightened his long back. 'I'll get the car out and we'll drive into Toronto for dinner.
'Toronto!' Sable looked down at her pink jeans. 'I'll have to change, then. Why don't we go and eat in the village?'
'Because the restaurant there closes at nine, and it's ten-thirty,' he replied wearily.
Polly was galvanised into action. 'We don't need to go out for dinner,' she said. 'I can fix us a meal.'
She took a wedge of cheese and some olives from the refrigerator. 'Flint, you find some biscuits, or some bread, and we can have a snack while I figure out what to do with this chicken,' she ordered him. 'And Sable, would you bring me the dish of vegetables and the salad from the dining-room.' She smiled, her face alight with pleasure. This was the kind of challenge she enjoyed! She didn't have a moment's doubt that she could salvage the meal in double quick time, nor that it would be a good one.
Flint foraged in one of the cupboards and produced a tin of biscuits. 'Here we are, Pollyanna! And I think we'll open a bottle of decent wine. I've got some Chablis on ice. Let's celebrate the departure of Mrs Cakebread from my life.'
They set the table in the kitchen for this second attempt at dinner. Flint cut squares of cheese and put them on a pretty glass plate with the olives, and they all munched contentedly while Polly cut up the chicken and sliced onions, before stir-frying their supper in a wok that Flint had found hidden behind a plastic bag of potting-soil. He served the pale straw-coloured wine in tall crystal glasses. It tasted to Polly like iced sunshine. Cold on the palate, but warming to the soul.
She started to stir the chicken in the hot oil when Flint offered her the cheese plate again, but she shook her head. Several glossy curls fell round her flushed face. 'Can't manage it,' she explained, 'I need both hands for this.'
'Here then,' said Flint, 'open up!' and he took a cube of Tilset and popped it in her mouth. The tips of his fingers brushed against her soft lips for a moment and she felt a delicious kind of prickling sensation under her skin. She jerked away with a mumbled 'thank you', for she didn't want him to touch her, no matter how innocently, if it was going to have that effect. He was Sable's man, and she wasn't interested. Adding a tin of pineapple chunks to the chicken, and stirring soy sauce into the pan, she licked her lips in an attempt to brush away the lingering memory of his touch.
She served the stir-fry straight from the wok on to old china plates whose rims were decorated with marigolds. Flint topped up their glasses, and spooned out rice that Polly had boiled from a packet she had discovered on the counter. She had made a fresh salad too, to replace the limp one they had been offered earlier, using a dressing of soy sauce and oil, for she knew it had an astringency that was just right with any kind of Chinese food.
Flint tasted a morsel of chicken, then formally raised his glass in a toast. 'To you, Pollyanna,' he said. 'You've not only saved the day but you've saved it magnificently.' She tried to reply, but he added, 'And if you say it's easy I'll belt you!' so she just grinned and sipped her wine.
They ate in silence for a while, being much too hungry to make conversation. For Polly the evening had developed a gala air, and she didn't think it was entirely due to the Chablis. Cooking and serving a meal to Flint, seeing him obviously relishing her food, made her ridiculously happy. Between mouthfuls she smiled contently, secure in the knowledge that she had done well.
'It is good,' said Sable with her mouth full. 'You're very clever, Polly. Cakey couldn't have made anything like this, not if her life depended on it!'
'How long has she worked for you?' Polly asked. She had just noticed that the fork she was using was an antique silver one. When Flint had set the table he had dumped the kitchen stuff back in the drawer and produced this cutlery instead.
'Not very long.' He speared a piece of lettuce and ate it. 'Your salad's terrific too,' he remarked pathetically. 'I needed someone just before I went to Nepal. The people who usually look after Duvet and Fellini were away, and I didn't want to board them, so getting a housekeeper seemed the best solution. It would leave me time to work on my article—I thought! I didn't know then that Cakey was going to behave like Capability Brown!'
'Well,
you won't have to put up with her much longer,' Sable informed him. 'I heard her phoning for a taxi when I was in the dining-room.'
'I shall not weep tears of sorrow,' Flint remarked drily. 'I can't help feeling Cakey and I will be happier apart. But,' his brow creased momentarily, 'it couldn't have happened at a more inconvenient time. Never mind! I'll worry about it tomorrow… Now, Pollyanna, shall I make coffee? Or have you dreamed up some luscious dessert?'
Polly started to collect the empty plates, but he took them from her, so she headed back to the refrigerator to get the dish of fresh strawberries she had doused in fine sugar, orange juice, and mint leaves.
They lingered over coffee and dessert, and after Flint had helped Cakey take her luggage to the taxi, which had arrived while they were still drinking their first cup, he celebrated their "liberation" as he called it, by pouring them all a liqueur. The alcohol, combined with her early morning, began to catch up with Polly, and she started to yawn uncontrollably.
'Bed, young lady!' Flint ordered, swirling the brandy around in his glass.
'But I want to do the dishes,' yawned Polly.
'No way, kiddo! You'd need toothpicks to prop your eyes open. Sable and I will do the washing-up. Won't we, Sable?'
Sable nodded. 'Sure we will,' she said uncertainly.
Polly glanced briefly at Sable's long red nails. 'It won't take a moment. Really,' she volunteered, pretty convinced that Sable didn't know one end of a dish-mop from the other.
But Flint was not to be overruled. 'Don't argue, Pollyanna,' he said, coming over and pulling her to her feet. 'I want to have a talk with Sable and we can do it over the dishwasher.'
Of course! thought Polly, I am dim! Sable had been crying when we got in from our walk, and she's his girl, and naturally he wants to find out if everything's all right between them. And she suddenly felt that they were no longer three comrades, but two lovers and one extra person. She was in the way. So she said without further protest:
'Okay… I'll say goodnight then,' and climbed the shallow stairs up to her room.
As she undressed she told herself that she was wearier then she had realised. Otherwise, why should she feel so—excluded—because Flint and his lady wanted time alone together? It was perfectly normal that they should want to be by themselves. She quite understood.
But when she heard the murmur of their voices beneath her window, and, peeping out, saw Flint's tall form stooped over Sable, his arm around her shoulders, she was filled with an inexplicable sadness. A sadness that filtered into her sleep, filling her dreams with loneliness.
CHAPTER FIVE
She woke early, and at first she didn't know where she was, then the white curtains fluttered, revealing a glimpse of the orchard, and the past events flooded back.
Her bedside clock said six-thirty, and she groaned. Was this early waking going to become a habit? But she was awake now, so she might as well get up. Hastily she dressed in her jeans and tee-shirt, and, carrying her sandals, crept barefoot down to the kitchen.
Duvet looked up from a basket in the corner of the room and thumped her tail on the floor in welcome. Crouching down beside her, Polly stroked her between the ears. The dog felt nice and warm, for it was overcast this morning, and the air in the kitchen was chill. She had put the kettle on, and found herself a mug and a tea-bag, and was just poking about in the bread-bin, when Flint said, 'Good morning!' from the doorway, so that she nearly dropped the bread knife on her foot.
'Lord help us!' she exclaimed, her hand on her breast. 'Don't creep up on people like that!'
'Sorry, but I don't want to wake Sable. She doesn't take kindly to early mornings.'
'Neither do I.' She wondered if Sable was curled up in his big brass bed. Not that it made a jot of difference to Polly whose bed she was in. 'Do you want tea?' she asked, pouring hot water on to her tea-bag.
'I'll make myself coffee, thanks.' He took a filter from the cupboard and fitted it into the cone. 'Sure you wouldn't rather have coffee?'
'I simply prefer tea first thing,' she informed him primly, not feeling up to cheerful banter at such an ungodly hour.
Flint went to the back door to let Duvet out, and gazed up at the sky before coming back to the kitchen. 'Hope it clears by this afternoon. I had planned to take the plane up later.'
'Plane!' She stopped in the act of putting a piece of bread into the toaster.
'It's only a little single-engine job—not Concorde. I use it for work, mainly, but it's fun too. I'll take you up for a spin one day,' he promised, and she shuddered faintly, remembering the chestnut tree.
'What's the matter? Cold?' he asked. 'Don't you have a sweater?'
She admitted that she had not thought to bring one with her. 'Here, then! Have this.' He handed her the sweatshirt that was flung across his shoulders. It was faded grey cotton with a fleecy lining; warm and cosy.
'Thank you,' Polly said gravely, rolling up the sleeves which were far too long.
When the toast was ready they took it to the kitchen table and ate in companionable silence, then, after pouring himself a second cup of coffee, Flint said.
'I've been doing some thinking, Polly, and I have a proposition to make.' Polly stared at him over the rim of her mug, her tawny eyes huge in the dim morning light. 'To put it briefly, I was wondering if you'd like Cakey's job?' he said. 'On a temporary basis, of course.'
'What about your manuscript? Don't you want me to go on typing that?' She wasn't quite sure if she was being fired from one job, or promoted to another.
'Well, I was wondering if you could manage both. Two part-time jobs, so to speak.'
'That manuscript of yours is more than a part-time job,' she remarked grimly.
'Well, yes… But you did such a splendid job with dinner last night. And I thought if I managed lunch… and we helped ourselves to breakfast… maybe you could manage dinner. It wouldn't have to be anything elaborate. We'll have to work something out about shopping for food, but I'm sure if we all pitched in it could work. What do you say? I'll pay you extra, of course.'
'We could give it a try,' she agreed. The thought of cooking a meal didn't phase her, and the extra money would be useful. And—Polly's heart rose—maybe Flint would invite Dexter for dinner one night. 'Yes,' she repeated, 'we could give it a try.'
'Fine! That's settled, then. I'll phone my cleaning lady later on and offer her job back, so all you'll have to worry about is the cooking.'
'I didn't know you had a cleaning lady,' said Polly.
'I didn't for a while. Cakey told her to get lost. Mabel—my "help"—likes to bring her grandson along, and Cakey didn't like children around.' He looked at her sharply. 'You don't mind them, do you?'
'I love children,' she assured him.
'There is one thing we must do before it's finally settled, though,' said Flint. 'You must tell your mother. She should know that things have changed since you first came to work here.'
'Honestly, Flint!' Polly stopped on the stairs behind him and he turned round. 'Sometimes you behave as if we were living in the Dark Ages!'
He set his lips stubbornly. 'Nevertheless, I must insist!'
Grumbling under her breath, she followed him into the office. She still thought he was being unreasonable, but part of her respected his stubborn integrity. She had to admit it was a good characteristic, and one she secretly admired. Glancing at her watch, she said:
'I should be able to catch Mom before she leaves for work. Will that satisfy you?' And he inclined his head with mock solemnity.
'You could mention that Sable is staying on,' he said. 'It might put her mind at rest.'
'Mom's mind is never at rest,' Polly snapped. 'And if she knew it was Sable who was the model for that suntan advertisement she'd be down here in double quick time with her can of spray paint at the ready!' Flint looked mystified, and Polly explained about Marjorie's vendetta on sexist advertising.
'Poor old Sable!' he grinned. 'In that case we'd better keep her identity to our
selves.'
'What price honesty now?' Polly said nastily. Ever since Flint had told her that Sable would be staying on at the farm she had felt annoyed with him. Which was silly because she liked Sable, and it was fun to have another woman around for company. What she couldn't figure out was why Flint and Sable didn't live together openly. Or get married, so that people would know where they stood.
She dialled her home number; after several rings Marjorie answered and Polly spent a frustrating five minutes explaining the new set-up. As she had foreseen, her mother wasn't concerned about the lack of chaperon-age. It was the news that her daughter would be cooking, and cooking for a man, that infuriated Marjorie, and after a heated conversation, conducted by Polly in agonised whispers, she hung up.
'That's settled, then,' she said to Flint, who had tactfully turned his back to examine the contents of a filing cabinet during this exchange.
'You must ask your mother down for a meal some time, Polly,' he suggested. 'Or any of your friends if it comes to that. After all, all work and no play makes for a dull life.' That lovely smile of his lit his craggy face, and Polly's heart gave a lurch, but all she said was:
'I doubt if I'll be in residence long enough to organise anything like that,' and she started putting paper into the typewriter.
It rained during the morning, but by the time she took a break to make them both a cup of coffee the sky was starting to lighten and streaks of blue appeared between the clouds. She removed Flint's sweatshirt and hung it over a kitchen chair. She felt a mild regret when she did this, rather as if she had released herself from a comforting embrace, and she let her fingers linger for a moment on the faded material, reluctant to finally let it go.
Sable, wearing her silk nightie, staggered into the kitchen. 'I thought I smelt coffee,' she yawned, 'I sure could use some.' She glowered at the dripping trees that were now touched by a faint watery sun. 'What foul weather! I think I'll drive into town later. Escape all the mud.' She gave an elaborate shiver and, casually taking Flint's sweatshirt, pulled it over her sleek head, settling the waistband round her thin haunches.
