Puppies Are For Life

by Linda Phillips

  ‘But not on the office phone,’ a voice came from behind her as she replaced the receiver. ‘And not during office hours.’

  Susannah looked up to find Mr Duffy peering down at her with grim disdain.

  ‘Mrs Harding,’ he said, ‘do you think we could have a quiet word?’

  As soon as they were in his office Susannah offered to pay for the call. But he batted her words to one side.

  ‘It’s not just a matter of the phone call, is it?’ Gravely he wagged his head at her.

  ‘Then what –?’

  ‘What?’ he repeated incredulously.

  ‘Yes, what?’ She was supposed to be a mind-reader?

  Duffy stood in front of her with his mouth open, two old gravy stains below the knot in his tie. ‘Well now, you had your statements in front of you; you tell me. Or were you so engrossed in your conversation that the penny failed to drop?’ He went to sit in his chair, tipped himself back in it and fixed her with cold eyes. ‘Perhaps “pennies” might be more appropriate in the circumstances. And rather a large number of them too.’

  Realisation came to Susannah like an icy hand on her spine. The statements had looked odd for a very good reason: they were wrong.

  And it simply wasn’t fair. She had tried so hard with the wretched forms, filling them in with the utmost care to get the figures right, and what had she forgotten, for all that? To mark the debit box.

  ‘A plus and a minus cancel each other out,’ Duffy lost no time in reminding her, ‘whereas a plus and a plus means we have forty-three overpayment cases on our hands. Or, to put it another way, forty-three men who’ll be getting money in their banks to which they are not entitled, and from whom we’ll have the devil’s own job recovering it – especially with Christmas nearly upon us. They’ll hang on to it for dear life, even though they know they can’t keep it for ever. So you see, Mrs Harding, it isn’t only a question of cheating the company out of money for a phone call. Heaven knows what Management are going to say when they’re presented with all this.’

  It was at that point in the interview that Susannah discovered she couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what Management might have to say. She couldn’t care less about the error. In fact, she couldn’t care less about the job, and hadn’t for a long, long time.

  It was strange, but not caring was so much easier than caring, and far from hammering her into the ground, Duffy’s words were having the effect of lifting weights from her shoulders. A bubble of recklessness enveloped her and would have floated her to the ceiling if it hadn’t been for that one degrading word ‘cheating’. That kept her feet on the carpet.

  OK, so it had been dishonest of her to make the phone call; but talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

  ‘Cheating,’ she said, with jerky nods of the head. ‘Do you plan on telling Management about that too? Well, perhaps you’d better show them the Flexi print-out while you’re at it. They might be interested in an entry on the print-out that appears under the letter D.’

  Duffy’s gaze met hers. His mouth fell open and stayed there, confirming Susannah’s wild shot in the dark – wild, because only he normally saw such print-outs. But a sudden vision of Duffy lurking around the Flexi machine had sprung into her mind, and with it had come the notion of what he had probably been up to. Not watching over his staff and keeping them up to scratch as they had all naturally concluded, but fiddling the system himself!

  ‘Everyone in the office knows you spend an hour and a half in the pub each lunch-time,’ she went on. ‘What Management hasn’t cottoned on to – yet – is that you key yourself out and in again for exactly the obligatory half-hour before you swan off to the pub. You’ve been cheating the company of an hour of your services each day, for years and years. And that makes my overpayments pale into insignificance.’

  Duffy chewed over these facts for a long time. Susannah could almost see cogs grinding inside his ugly head.

  Finally he said, ‘Well, I’ve got proof of your inadequacy, haven’t I? But where’s your proof against me? A print-out can’t prove anything; everything looks fine on that. You’d need witnesses prepared to support your story – for “story” is all it is.’

  Susannah saw too late the impossibility of her case. Everyone in the office moaned like hell about injustices until given an opportunity to do something to put them right; then they stuck their heads in the sand. And of course they couldn’t afford to put their jobs on the line the way she had done.

  Duffy was smiling grimly. He had always resented her working here for pin money, she felt, when the less well-off could have had her job. And now he could do something about it. ‘I think you’ve just about made it impossible for us to work together in future, don’t you? Looks like one of us had better walk away from all this. And it sure as eggs won’t be me.’

  The Old Dairy looked as quiet and deserted as the rest of the village normally did, mid-morning on a week-day.

  Would Harvey be at home, Susannah wondered, sitting at the kerb in her car. She chewed the thumb of her glove. He simply had to be there. And he must be persuaded to let her do the mural. No doubt he was fed up with being messed around, first by her own prevarication, and then by Paul’s negative response to him on the phone, but she was now desperate to retrieve the situation. Throwing away her job at C & G as she had just done would not go down at all well at home. But if she could tell Paul that at least she had work of a kind …

  Wrapped in the same cloud of unreality that had transported her from Duffy’s office to her desk, from her desk to her car and all the way home to Upper Heyford, she climbed out on to the pavement and let herself in at the Webbs’ white picket gate.

  Her first timid knock went unanswered; her second, more resolute one, brought Harvey to the door with a newspaper in his hand and a pencil tucked behind one ear. The accommodation now partly revealed behind him was open-plan, and it was instantly apparent that she had disturbed his coffee break.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, her eyes drawn to the steaming mug he’d left balanced on the arm of a chair, ‘I do hope I’m not intruding.’

  His face had relaxed into a smile on seeing her. ‘Actually you’re a welcome relief,’ he assured her, stepping to one side as she transferred herself to his doormat. She stood shivering inside her coat while he shoved the door shut with his shoulder. ‘Care for a cup of coffee? There’s plenty left in the pot.’

  ‘Please!’ She nodded nineteen to the dozen. Coffee was something she badly needed right now. Her nerves were so strung up following the morning’s drama that she could barely control her limbs.

  But watching Harvey’s easy, confident movements as he made his way over to the breakfast bar she wished she hadn’t agreed to the cup of coffee – appetising though it promised to be since the smell of fresh-ground beans hung in the air. Being here alone in this attractive man’s company – and for all she knew alone in the whole village – an uneasiness was stealing upon her. Cautious by nature, and having spent most of her life with one man, she was not at all sure of this one’s trustworthiness. She resolved to gulp down the coffee, get her business over with as soon as possible, and quickly make her escape.

  But the coffee was scalding hot.

  ‘I’ll put it down on this table,’ Harvey said, after a glance at her trembling hands. Clearly she was in no fit state to handle dangerous liquids. ‘You’d better come over to the fire.’

  Under his guidance Susannah gravitated towards a wood-burning stove set under an unusual old chimney-piece. ‘I’m not cold,’ she said, afraid that his arm was about to go round her. She sat down on the sofa abruptly.

  ‘Not cold?’ he said, smiling again. He looked her over in a leisurely manner, his eyes twinkling with secretive humour. Then he suddenly broke away, loping across the carpet to the other side of the fire.

  ‘I was browsing through the “Situations Vacant” before you arrived,’ he told her conversationally. He snorted as he picked up the paper only to throw it aside again. ‘Situatio
n’s hopeless, if you ask me.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Susannah sought out a hang-nail she’d recently discovered and began to pick at it. If Harvey had been counting on getting another job soon and was beginning to discover the unlikelihood of this happening, wouldn’t he think twice before lashing out money on a useless mural?

  She crossed one leg over the other and tugged her skirt as low as she could. ‘Harvey –’ speaking his name brought a smidgen of pink to her cheeks –’I want to come straight to the point …’

  But it seemed that Harvey didn’t. Far from giving her the silent encouragement she expected he carried on down his own track.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I’ve written forty-five letters already? Cost me a fortune in postage, too; because you don’t stand a chance of a reply unless you enclose a return SAE. And I’ve had practically zilch come back to me. Not a single solitary crumb of an offer. It seems to me – don’t forget your coffee – that –’

  ‘Harvey, I don’t want to take up your time –’

  ‘No, no, of course not. I’m sorry, I’m rambling on.’ He got up from the tapestry-upholstered chair in which he’d been stretched. ‘You don’t want to listen to my woes, do you? You’ve obviously got plenty of your own.’ He plumped himself down beside her. ‘I could see that the minute I saw you on the doorstep. But I wasn’t going to pry – unless you want to tell me what’s wrong? And what are you doing away from work in the middle of the week, anyway? Don’t tell me you’ve been given the grand order of the boot as well?’

  She winced. ‘Er – not exactly. But what I really wanted to ask you –’

  ‘Shame, because they’d have been doing you a favour if they had. I told you the other day that you’re wasted there. With your talents … well, you should be using them. Life’s too short for not doing the things you were born to do.’

  ‘I know!’ Her soul flew out to him. Why didn’t Paul say things like this? ‘Look –’ she covered the painful hang-nail – ‘what my husband told you last night when you phoned … well, it wasn’t right at all. He shouldn’t have said what he did. I’d actually made up my mind to take some leave to do your mural, only –’

  ‘Your husband had other ideas.’ Harvey raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Bit high-handed of him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘High-handed isn’t the word. Downright arrogant, presumptuous, outrageous … ugh!’ Anger flared inside her. ‘Well, anyway, I can do your mural if you still want me to. I can start any time you like.’

  ‘I consider myself very flattered.’ He flashed her a disarming grin.

  ‘Fl—? But why?’

  ‘That you should contemplate giving up your leave for me.’

  ‘Oh. Well …’ She took a peep at the hang-nail. ‘Actually, it’s not going to be quite like that.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I mean –’ she needed to take an extra breath – ‘I’ve just walked out of my job.’

  Harvey’s face had begun to take on a wooden appearance, but she barely registered the change; she was too busy rehearsing the tidings that she must later break to Paul. ‘I had a bit of a run-in with my boss this morning – we didn’t see eye to eye over something – and the interview ended with him giving me the equivalent of “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us”. So –’ she laughed a little too gaily – ‘I’m the one who backed down.’

  But her smile soon froze on her lips. Why should Harvey be looking so utterly appalled at her news?

  ‘Oh!’ Her hand went up to her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think! There you are, desperate to find a job, and here am I jacking mine in. How insensitive can you get?’

  ‘No, no. It’s not that.’ He waved the suggestion away. ‘It’s just that I feel so terribly responsible.’ He got up and began to pace the room, smoothing the hair at the back of his head as he walked blindly from wall to wall. ‘I’ve been shooting my mouth off, telling you you’re in the wrong sort of job – and you seem to have taken me at my word. God, I feel awful.’

  Susannah glanced sideways at him. Had he influenced her? Or would she be in this position in any case? And – horrid thought – had he not really meant what he’d said about doing what she liked best? Had he only been humouring her?

  ‘I’ve done the wrong thing, haven’t I?’ she said bleakly. ‘I should have kept my nose to the grindstone, stuck to the wretched job. My place is with my family. They still need my support. I’ve been foolish and reckless and stupid. And I should –’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Susannah! That’s not what I’m saying at all.’

  She jumped to her feet to challenge him. ‘You don’t really want your bathroom wall done, do you? I don’t think you ever did.’

  ‘But I do!’ He clutched his head. ‘Women! Give me strength! Sit down and listen to me. What kind of man do you take me for?’ he went on in a more normal tone. ‘Of course I want you to do my bathroom. It was my idea, wasn’t it?’

  She looked at him for a long time.

  ‘You’re not just saying you’ll have it done – to boost my flagging morale?’

  ‘Now why would I do such a thing?’

  Why indeed, she wondered, looking into his eyes and trying to ignore the sensation of treading the deepest of waters. Never trust a good-looker, a voice said inside her head.

  Harvey suddenly went over to his cup and drained the last of his coffee. ‘I’d better take you upstairs.’

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘To take a look at the job,’ he added, grinning at her stricken face.

  ‘Ah. Yes. Right.’ She followed him up the polished treads, part-fitted with sisal matting.

  ‘Oh good, I’m glad it’s a white suite,’ she murmured, taking a notebook, businesslike, from her bag. ‘Victorian style, too. I think I can see –’ she screwed up her eyes – ‘something like stained glass for your panel. Perhaps even vaguely religious. What do you think of the idea?’

  ‘So long as it’s not too pi.’

  ‘Mmm. Or how about something like those old cave-paintings? Charging bulls – that kind of thing?’

  ‘I’m imagining a mermaid …’

  ‘Or a lion with a mane …’ She would have liked more time to consider, but Harvey was standing so close …

  ‘I have to go,’ she said, heading back down the stairs. ‘I have to go over to Bristol.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘New chapter in your life; new wardrobe. Go and have a lovely splurge.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to the shops! Heavens, I’ve got far better things to do.’

  ‘Such as … getting some tiles for my mural?’

  ‘No, I’ve plenty of those to be going on with. No, I must go and see our young Natalie. She’s my son’s girlfriend, you know. The mother of baby Justin. They’ve got problems, and I promised I’d try to help.’

  ‘Can’t they sort out their problems on their own?’

  She shook her head. ‘If a mother stays away from her own baby for days on end then there’s something seriously wrong. And I’m that baby’s grandmother. I can’t simply stay out of it, can I?’

  He made mock tutting sounds. ‘An artist has to be single-minded, you know; devoted to his craft and nothing else. He can’t afford to get side-tracked by other people’s problems.’

  ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head there,’ she said grimly. ‘Note: his craft.’

  She flashed him a cynical smile. ‘Ever wondered why there’ve been so few great female artists in the world? Well, I’ll leave that one for you to work out.’

  She left him shaking his head and ran outside to her car.

  But although she waited half an hour in the car park of the school where Natalie taught, she didn’t spot the girl. Perhaps Natalie stayed at school for lunch; perhaps she’d already gone home. Susannah had no idea, and trying to find someone inside the building who knew where she might be proved impossible. All she could think of was to come back at going-home time and hope to catch up with her then.

  So sh
e ended up passing time in the shopping centre after all, and spent an excessive amount of money on two dresses she didn’t need.

  Do I have to do everything Harvey Webb tells me? she demanded angrily of herself as she waited for the clothes to be wrapped. But she couldn’t really lay the blame for these mad impulse purchases at his door. If anyone was to blame it was Paul. Resentment against him had been building up for days, and this was one way of getting back at him.

  And so what if she’d lost her job, and hadn’t the money to spend? Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

  CHAPTER 18

  One blue Volvo ought to look like any other, Natalie considered, but this one didn’t. Something about it was distinctive; familiar even. Why?

  Maybe, she decided, as she watched it nosing round the school car park in search of a space, it was the arrangement of stickers in the back window that had caught her attention. She had seen them somewhere before. And she was certain, even from her distant position at the staff-room window, that none of them were of a frivolous nature. No. They were the sort that promoted worthy causes: the preservation of historic buildings; the rights of the unborn child; wild life, etc, etc …

  Of course! A brief vision had sprung to her mind, a picture of that very car receding into the distance and a group of people waving it away. That was it. She had last seen the car taking Simon’s grandparents off to their new life abroad almost two years ago.

  So what was it doing here?

  Remembering that she was supposed to be meeting Lara in a few minutes, Natalie drew away from the window and began to pack her straw shoulder-bag. She could only assume that Jan and Frank had sold the car to someone else. But no, that couldn’t be possible, because they were still out of the country. Unless they had met English people out there and … She ran through a series of possibilities and gave up with a little shrug; the car, and its current owner, were the least of her concerns. She had plenty of other problems queuing up to take their place.