The Man in Possession

by Hilda Pressley

  THE MAN IN POSSESSION

  Hilda Pressley

  For sentimental reasons Julia had wanted to buy her late fiancé’s boatbuilding business—but was beaten to it by Roger Leighton. She ought to resent him, but somehow she found a very different feeling developing...

  CHAPTER ONE

  The auction room was crowded. Julia Barclay glanced around at the faces of the prospective buyers. By sight and by reputation she knew quite a number of them very well indeed; for the most part they were property owners and property developers, land owners and the owners of hire-fleet. There were some very interesting properties to be auctioned this morning, all of them situated in and around the Broads area for which Norfolk was famed.

  But Julia was interested in one item only. Wingcraft, the name of the boatyard and its fleet of hire craft owned by her late employers, the man who had almost been her father-in-law.

  ‘I can see Windbush’s men, and someone from Jenkins’,’ said the man at her side.

  ‘Yes,’ Julia had seen them too, but now, her eye caught that of a tall stranger across the room. He was standing beside a window apparently doing the same thing as herself—assessing the opposition. He had thick dark hair and was hatless, his sheepskin coat open, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his catalogue. She wondered fleetingly who he was, and thought from the set of his jaw that he would be the kind of man who usually got what he wanted.

  ‘I told Father’s man not to bid against you, of course.’

  Julia brought her gaze slowly to the man sitting next to her. Max Windham’s father had taken over several small boatyards in the area. Normally, he would very likely have wanted this one, too.

  ‘Thank you, Max,’ she said, giving him a smile. ‘That’s very good of you. Did your father say whether or not he wanted it?

  Max shrugged. ‘Well, we did discuss it, but he said he’d leave it with me.’

  ‘In that case, thanks again.’

  He put his hand on her shoulder, his features softening as his eyes dwelt on her face.

  ‘You know I’d do anything for you any time,’ he said softly.

  She shifted her gaze from his swiftly. Max frequently said things like that, and she was grateful for his friendship, but somehow, since David’s death—even though it was well over a year ago—she couldn’t feel anything for another man beyond ordinary liking. She supposed that by working for David’s father she had kept his memory more acutely alive. But he was more than merely a memory to her. She had learned to do his job in his father’s boatyard, walking where he had walked, sitting in the chair he had occupied, sailing the boat which had once belonged to him. She had seemed to hear his voice a dozen times a day. Now his father was dead too, and she was determined to buy Wingcraft if at all possible.

  ‘Pity Hargreaves never made a will,’ murmured Max. Julia smiled. ‘In my favour, you mean?’

  ‘Why not? You’ve done more for him than that sister of his in Australia.’

  But Julia shook her head. ‘He paid me a good enough salary. I don’t suppose he thought about dying, anyway. It happened so suddenly. But if only his sister had been willing to take my offer!’

  ‘I expect she thought she could get more money if it were auctioned. But it could turn out the other way unless she’s put a considerable reserve price on it,’ Max said.

  Julia prayed that not too high a reserve had been put on the boatyard. She simply could not bear the idea of the place passing into someone else’s hands. She almost felt it belonged to her. John Hargreaves had come to rely on her more and more. She had practically run the place during the last few months. He had cared only about the boatbuilding part of the business. Then one morning he had crossed the road to the Broadband store, apparently without looking where he was going, and had been knocked down by a bus.

  The auction was starting. Julia’s muscles tensed nervously. Her parents had given her a few hundred pounds as a present when she had become engaged, then six months ago an endowment policy her mother had taken out for her when she was a child had become due. This, added to some savings, had afforded a down payment on a mortgage a solicitor was willing to arrange for her to buy the boatyard property. The house adjacent in which David and his father had lived was being sold separately. This was one thing about which Julia was thankful. She could never have afforded to buy both.

  The first item to be auctioned was a riverside hotel. The bidding started at a very high price. Julia’s glance strayed in the direction of the tall stranger. This might be his kind of property. Or would it be the second item the Georgian house overlooking one of the Broads with a hundred and twenty feet of water frontage and thirty acres of land? He looked affluent enough. He had that bearing of confidence and authority which often accompanied money and position, and the tweed suit showing beneath his sheepskin jacket looked expensive.

  As if aware of her scrutiny he turned and looked straight at her. With a feeling of embarrassment she withdrew her gaze swiftly and turned her attention on the auctioneer.

  The stranger did not bid for either the first item or the second, however. He opened the bidding for Wingcraft.

  ‘Oh, no—!’ she breathed, quickly making her own bid.

  ‘Why, do you know him?’ asked Max.

  ‘No, but he looks as though money might be no object if he really wants anything,’ she answered, raising her catalogue as the auctioneer glanced her way.

  Two other boat owners, who own a string of boatyards, were also bidding, but Julia knew that they had a price beyond which they would not go, and she had been prepared to carry on when they had stopped.

  Very soon the only two people bidding were the stranger and herself. Julia’s limit was reached and passed.

  ‘Go on, Julia, carry on,’ Max urged her. ‘I can let you have a hundred or so.’

  She hesitated. She did not want to put herself under an obligation to Max.

  ‘Are there any more bids?’ came the auctioneer’s cultured voice, glancing in Julia’s direction. ‘Going—going at—’

  In desperation Julia added another hundred. Perhaps her father would lend her some more.

  But whoever he was, the stranger seemed willing to go on bidding indefinitely. Julia made another bid. He raised it. Urged on by Max, Julia made two more, this time adding only fifty pounds. But this only protracted the business.

  ‘It’s no use—’ she murmured desperately. ‘He means to have it.’

  ‘Everybody has their limit, Julia, don’t let him beat you.’

  Max put his hand under her elbow and raised her arm. Her catalogue caught the auctioneer’s eye just before his hammer came down. The atmosphere in the room was now tense. The stranger glanced across the room as once more Max pushed up her hand holding the catalogue. But Julia knew it was hopeless.

  ‘No, Max, I mustn’t bid any more. I can’t. I’m five hundred over my limit, as it is. I’d be ruined before I started.’

  The next time the auctioneer glanced her way she shook her head and a babble of conversation broke out as his hammer came down.

  ‘That’s a fantastic price,’ Max declared. ‘Nobody who knows anything at all about the business would have paid it. I only urged you on because I know how much it meant to you.’

  Julia lowered her head, overwhelmed with disappointment. The boatyard had become her life. Suppose the new owner did not approve of a woman managing his business, if only the office side? Or even of having a woman working for him at all? Besides, she did not want to work for someone else.

  ‘I must go,’ she said suddenly to Max. ‘But don’t you bother—’

  Max half rose. ‘But don’t you want to wait and see whether he buys the house, too?’

  She shook her head swi
ftly. All she wanted to do was get out into the fresh air, to go somewhere to think.

  ‘You stay, and—let me know what happens,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, sure. See you later, then.’

  He subsided into his seat, and Julia made her way out, conscious of both curious and sympathetic looks. Her whole body seeming to ache with disappointment. Her throat and eyes heavy with gathering tears, she crossed the road to the car park. She had no car of her own now. She had sold it towards the deposit she hoped to have required for the mortgage on the boatyard, thinking that the firm’s small van would serve her needs well enough.

  She drove back to the boatyard along mushy, sand-coloured roads lined with February snow, the whole of the countryside under a four-inch blanket. It was like this in Kent too, according to the television, and a letter she had received from her mother that morning. Her father owned extensive apple orchards there, and until she had come to Norfolk to be with David she had helped him with the management of them.

  It was about this time of the year she had met David. It was just about the only time he could really be spared away from the boatyard, and he had been visiting friends one week-end in the small Kentish town where her parents lived. They had fallen in love at first sight. Letters had followed, then an invitation to visit Norfolk in the early spring. It was during the visit they realised that they had fallen headlong in love. There had been a strange urgency about their love, as if they had known that in a few brief weeks’ time they would be parted for ever. Julia’s visit had extended into weeks, made possible by understanding parents. Then three days before the date they had fixed for their wedding, David had been killed in a road accident. He had been everything to his father, whose wife had died when the boy was fourteen. He was their first and only child, and John Hargreaves had never married again. In comforting him and helping him in the boatyard office, Julia found solace for her own grief.

  Soon she became indispensable to him. He could not bear the thought of another man taking his son’s place, and Julia could not bear to leave the surroundings in which she had known such wonderful happiness, brief as it had been. She seemed to be held here by invisible bonds created by the love she and David had had for each other. She simply could not go.

  But what now? she asked herself, as she turned down the narrow lane leading to the boatyard. Now that she had failed in her attempt to buy the business would she feel a slackening of the bonds which had held her? What plans would the new owner have? She imagined the man she had seen in the auction room would not be very easy to please. And again the thought came that he might object to having a woman about the place at all. It occurred to her suddenly that he was probably married and that his wife might possibly want to help him in the business. Though it could be hectic in the height of the holiday season, it could be very pleasant indeed in warm sunny weather helping to bring in the craft to moor, giving a helping hand to a novice to hoist a sail, taking one of the cruiser hirers for a trial run up the river, or just to stand and stare, watching a swan in flight, the wind rippling the surface of the water or a family of brown ducks paddling one behind the other.

  But at present a film of ice encrusted the small docks, and the boats which normally moored there when not out on hire were safely in the shelter of the large boathouse or repair shed—craft all with the word Wing forming part of the name. Yachts called Redwing, and Lapwing, Blue Wing, Grey Wing, Light Wing and Swallow’s Wing. The cruisers, Wing of Happiness, Wing of Delight, Wing of Joy and Wing of the Morning. And when David and his father could not think of other names, numbers were added.

  Julia left the car and went in search of Frank Willis, the maintenance foreman. He and the workmen would all be anxious to know what had happened.

  The boathouse was a warm, untidy—at least to the uninitiated—friendly place, all the general paraphernalia of boat maintenance scattered around. Pots of paint and varnish, oars, masts, coils of rope, pulley blocks, rowlocks, anchors of various kinds, and in the centre a large black stove aglow with heat on which a large brown kettle steamed invitingly. Nearby, an exhouseboat table, cluttered with mugs and beakers, a teapot, a bottle of milk and a packet of tea half used. Julia picked her way carefully among the general clutter and went to where the men were working. As she approached they glanced up swiftly.

  ‘Any luck, miss?’ asked the foreman anxiously.

  Julia shook her head slowly. ‘I’m afraid not, Frank. I had to drop out. The price was much too high. I did my best, but—’

  ‘Strewth! Well, that’s a turn-up for the book. Who in blazes was it?’

  ‘A stranger—at any rate, to me,’ she told him gloomily.

  ‘What’d ‘e look loike, miss?’ asked Andy, the youngest of the workmen. ‘I mean, is ‘e young or old or—what?’

  Julia sighed. ‘Neither, really. Thirtyish, I’d say. Tall, well dressed—’

  ‘You mean—collar an’tie an’ all that?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, but country clothes.’

  Andy gave a derisive grunt. ‘An office wallah, I expect. Somebody who knows nothing at all about boats or engines, somebody what’ll sit in the office all day, then come out ‘ere expectin’ we’ve performed miracles.’

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we, Andy?’ Julia said, thinking privately that the boy could well be right.

  ‘What will you do, miss?’ asked Frank Willis.

  ‘That I don’t know, Frank. I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Did he buy the house as well?’ he asked, as she turned to go.

  ‘I didn’t wait to find out,’ she told him over her shoulder.

  The house had been for sale as it stood—furniture and all. Julia could not remember anyone coming to view the place. As David and his father had had no resident housekeeper, just a daily woman, Mr. Hargreaves had offered Julia the use of one of the houseboats when David had died. It was as warm and comfortable as a house. Main electricity and water were connected so that she could use an electric cooker and have a fire in each compartment—bedroom, sitting-room and galley. The walls and ceiling were insulated and she had thick-pile carpeting throughout. She had even a tiny bathroom and a small refrigerator.

  Her using the houseboat as living quarters meant that it could not be let out on hire, naturally, and Mr. Hargreaves had refused to accept any rent from her. The fact that he had probably been losing anything from two to three hundred pounds a year had not appeared to worry him in the least. But it might worry the new owner. How soon could she expect him to visit his property? This afternoon?

  She cooked a light lunch for herself, then went across to the office. There was little else she could do for the time being except carry on with her work and await developments. There were one or two letters to be answered, then she would continue with her job of going through the linen, examining for repair or replacement, the sheets, pillow cases, tablecloths, tea-towels and blankets which would be used on the hire-craft during the rapidly approaching season. The popularity of a Broads holiday increased year by year, bookings beginning earlier and finishing later. Last year they had had some as late as November—a houseboat letting even for Christmas—and bookings this year began in March.

  Julia dealt with the correspondence, glancing at the door somewhat apprehensively every time she heard footsteps outside, thinking it might be the new owner. She couldn’t understand why she had not seen him before. Surely he had been to look over the boatyard before deciding to make a bid for either that or the house? He could have come while she had been in Wroxham or Norwich in search of supplies or something the workmen were waiting for, but none of them had seen anyone looking around, either, otherwise they would have said so. Living in the houseboat, she herself would have been here even on Sundays. But perhaps the man had been content with a list and description of the boats, sheds, wet docks, land area and chattels.

  She posted the letters, made some necessary telephone calls, then went into the linen store. How many more times would s
he do this? she wondered. Did she really want to stay on, working for a stranger, someone who might have totally different ideas of running things? She had planned to make one or two changes herself, if she had been successful in buying the boatyard. She would like to have more sailing dinghies available for day hire, more two, three and four-berth yachts for holiday hire. There were far too many large cruisers on the Broads, Julia felt, their number ever-increasing, and too few sailing craft. The climate was mainly responsible, of course. A week of rain and squalls spent either getting wet through in the open well of a yacht or being forced to sit in the cabin was not ideal, to put it mildly. But Julia maintained that the design of some yachts was at fault. Naturally a vessel meant purely for sailing, with no power at all beyond the sails, was impossible to navigate under cover. The boom needed to swing free, the main sheet—the nautical term for the main rope which controlled the mainsail—needed space and access and the yachtsman often had to move about swiftly. This was the holiday for the dedicated yachtsman, the young and the tough, those who did not mind ‘roughing it,’ if necessary.

  But for the auxiliary, or cruiser-yachts—those with an inboard engine as well as sail—Julia would like to see an entirely new design, so that when under power, with the sails furled, the holiday-maker could go along under cover. At present, when the well cover of a yacht was in situ it was impossible for the yachtsman to see where he was going. The term cruiser-yacht was a misnomer. Their crews still had to navigate out in the open—wonderful in fine weather, of course—while the cruisers proper had efficient awnings with windscreens, and hirers could be on the move in either fair weather or foul.

  If she had been able to buy the business she would have set about designing one, had an expert to draw the plan for her and put Frank Willis to work on building it. He could do it. He was a boat-builder, not merely a maintenance man. He had helped David and his father to build the whole of the existing Wing fleet.