No Friend of Mine 1.0

by Lilian Peake

  But Howard Beale looked like a man who had just been offered a good bargain at a surprisingly reasonable price. He seemed satisfied with the girl Lester Kings was presenting to him as a prospective wife.

  They shook hands and moved into the sitting-room, but Elise did not alter her expression. She kept it apathetic and blank, and as they sat down, Howard in the armchair, Lester beside her on the couch, she made no attempt to converse.

  Howard tried talking to her, but she gave monosyllabic answers. The more irritated Lester became, the more she played the dull-witted, slow-thinking, untutored girl. Once, when Howard was searching in his pockets for a cigarette, which he had first asked permission to smoke, she glanced at Lester and caught the impact of his wrath. She flashed him a sudden, intentionally impish grin, then allowed her surliness to close down again.

  Lester moved his two hands together in a throttling action as though he would dearly have loved to put her neck between them. It was a lightning communication which could only have taken place between old friends who knew each other intimately, or lovers. The unspoken message was understood instantly by both. But Elise chose to ignore it.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked, speaking her first complete sentence.

  Lester looked at Howard, who accepted eagerly, probably, Elise thought, to rid himself of her impossibly stupid presence for a few minutes. She made the tea and carried it in on a tray.

  ‘I’ll take a cup to your father,’ Lester said, standing in front of her and grinning triumphantly. She frowned, uncertain now. His move had put her in check, and he knew it. With Lester upstairs talking to her father, she would be forced to make reasonably sensible conversation with the other man, with no intermediary to protect her.

  As soon as Lester had gone, Howard moved to sit beside her. He accepted a cup of tea and took out his diary.

  ‘Since we’ve got to get to know each other,’ he said, and Elise was astonished that his skin was so thick he could take her lack of response as encouragement, ‘we must decide on a date to meet.’

  She floundered. ‘Oh, I - I don’t think, I mean I don’t know whether - -‘ She might have saved her breath. He went on blandly,

  ‘The evenings are getting longer, so a drive is called for I think, then we can discuss the position.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she thought, ‘what position?’

  ‘Couldn’t we - ?’ she said aloud, hesitated, decided to be more positive, and went on, ‘Could we go to a concert?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not my cup of tea at all. I’m tone deaf. I find it agony listening to music.’

  Lester came back, a half-smile on his face betraying that he had heard Howard’s dismissal of what was so dear to her. ‘Now a show, a good show - plenty of colour, dancing, movement. Not to mention the girls that go with it.’ He threw a sly smile at Lester. ‘Now that I do like. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll look in the paper and see what’s on, and give you a ring.’

  Elise said faintly, helpless in the face of his unbelievable insensibility, ‘If you like,’ at the same time experiencing a sense of reprieve at even so small a delay in the continuance of their acquaintance.

  He nodded smugly. She felt that even if she had said ‘no, thank you’ his reaction would have been the same, because it would not have filtered through his complacency and conceit that she could possibly have refused.

  Soon afterwards, Lester suggested it was time to go. He lingered in the hall after Howard had gone out to the car.

  ‘Did you have to play the complete dimwit?’ he whispered, like a conspirator.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to bring him,’ she snapped. ‘If you will act like a self-appointed marriage bureau, don’t blame me if your manoeuvres have misfired and I don’t approve of your choice of marriage partner for me.’

  Howard wound down the window of Lester’s car and cleared his throat noisily. Lester took the hint.

  ‘Anyway,’ Elise called softly as he moved away down the path, ‘I told you, I don’t want to get married,’ adding childishly, ‘and what’s more, you can’t make me!’

  The impatient backward movement of his hand was both a dismissal and a terse reminder that Howard might be listening and she should therefore have had more tact.

  The next afternoon Phil Pollard answered the phone and looked suspicious when he handed the receiver to Elise.

  ‘It’s a man asking for you,’ he said frowning, then more hopefully, ‘it could be your brother.’

  She shook her head, and dreaded hearing the caller’s voice. ‘Elise Lennan here,’ she said almost inaudibly.

  ‘How can I be sure,’ said the voice which set her heart pounding, ‘that it’s not a mouse I’m talking to?’

  She laughed and relief put unusual warmth into her answer. ‘Oh, Lester,’ she said, ‘it’s you.’

  Phil’s head shot round, his eyes full of mistrust. She turned away hoping a little childishly that such an action might prevent him from hearing the conversation.

  ‘Are you so glad to hear from me,’ Lester said, ‘that you come alive at the sound of my voice?’ She could hear that he was smiling. ‘I’m touched - and flattered - by your sudden change of heart towards me.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said hurriedly, ‘I thought it might be - -‘

  ‘Don’t spoil this sudden rapport between us. It’s so rare I feel I want to cherish this moment forever.’

  ‘Stop being silly, Lester.’ She glanced apprehensively at Phil, who was beginning to look annoyed. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lester asked, lowering his voice. ‘Is your boss getting jealous? I must make a habit of phoning you at work, or better still, call in. That would really get him worried. He’d think I was after you.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well aware,’ she mouthed into the receiver, ‘that even if I were the last woman on earth, you wouldn’t be “after me”. Now will you tell me what you want?’

  He was laughing so loudly she had to hold the receiver away from her ear. When he had recovered he said, ‘The little mouse shows some spirit after all. Maybe I misjudged her?’

  ‘Goodbye, Lester,’ she said, and prepared to ring off.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he urged, ‘at least let me give you my message. It’s from my grandfather. His secretary has gone off to help her daughter cope with her new-born infant, as expected. Could you oblige as promised?’

  ‘When - tomorrow?’

  ‘This afternoon if possible.’ She hesitated and he said softly, ‘Could you - please?’

  She said ‘All right’ with a sigh and asked how would she get there?

  ‘I won’t be free in time to take you so could you go by bus? I’ll take you home afterwards.’

  She agreed and rang off. She saw the query in Phil’s eyes and knew she would have to explain. He did not like what he heard.

  ‘You don’t mean you’re actually going to help old man Kings? I thought you were as much against them and their damnable desecration of the countryside as I am. Or,’ with a guardedly jealous look, ‘has that grandson of his persuaded you to go over to their side?’

  ‘Of course not, Mr. Pollard.’ But despite her emphatic denial of collusion, she felt a twinge of conscience as she saw the hurt in his eyes.

  There was the smell of floor polish, liberally and energetically applied as the housekeeper opened the door of Alfred Kings’ residence.

  ‘Mrs. Dennis?’ Elise asked as she stepped into the hall.

  ‘I am, my dear,’ said the housekeeper, smiling and bustling in front of her across the shining parquet floor. ‘And you’re Elise Lennan. We’ve been told to expect you. I remember you, dear, when you were a little girl.’ She turned, her hand on the door handle. ‘You and Mr. Lester and your brother used to go roaming in those woods, didn’t you, climbing trees and getting your clothing torn?’ She waggled her head from side to side, her ample chins following suit a few seconds later. ‘And now they’ve all gone, those trees. I told Mr. Kings
he shouldn’t have done it.’ Her round motherly shape moved busily into the lounge. With its fitted carpeting, its wall-lights, the delicate decor and luxurious furniture, it was a room that spelt comfort and opulence and an unmistakable desire to impress. It was in essence a perfect example of late twentieth-century taste.

  Only the occupant struck a false note. He might have come from Edwardian times, with his stiff high collar, the waistcoat buttoned beneath his jacket and the pocket watch with its heavy gold chain. The man himself was lithe and wiry, his eyes alert with a kind of cunning, his hair white and sparse. He wore his years with unbelievable ease and his wits seemed to be as lively as those of a man half his age.

  When Mrs. Dennis showed Elise into the room, Alfred Kings was sitting, slippered and relaxed on the couch. A cigarette, which, by the stubs in the ash-tray had been preceded by many more, drooped from his puckered lips, and its smell caught at Elise’s throat. A glass of beer balanced precariously on the upholstered arm. His hands, with their gnarled knuckles and veins made prominent by age and sheer hard work in days gone by, held up in front of him the morning’s newspaper.

  He looked like a man who would have been more at home in a Victorian kitchen, but who was determined to live up to the affluent image which he felt was expected of a successful and wealthy builder.

  Realising he had a guest, he put the paper down and motioned to Elise with exaggerated gestures to come in and make herself at home.

  ‘You’re very welcome, my dear,’ he said. ‘Cup of tea, or a glass of something?’ The wink he gave her advised her to accept the latter. ‘Do you good, eh?’

  Elise smiled and refused as politely as she could. She wished she could tell him she had come to work, not to be entertained. She wanted to get the preliminaries and polite conversation over as fast as possible.

  Mrs. Dennis left them and Elise sank into the cushions of the deeply comfortable armchair. Alfred replenished his glass from the bottle on the table, toasted her and drank, smacking his lips afterwards and admiring the rim round the empty glass.

  ‘Shouldn’t have this stuff,’ he chuckled. ‘Doctor says I mustn’t, old mother Dennis says I mustn’t, but let them try to stop me, that’s all.’

  That, Elise thought, was what he had probably said when told of the protests about his intention to cut down Dawes Hall woods. He seemed the sort of man who thrived on opposition, who took resistance as a challenge and who regarded every obstacle put in his way as yet another barrier to be overcome - a characteristic which his grandson seemed to have inherited in abundance.

  Alfred leaned back, crossed his short legs and moved a slippered foot up and down, as if even in the act of relaxing, his energy and agility would not entirely let him be.

  ‘So my grandson’s got round you, has he, to come and help us out? Got a way with him, that boy got a way with women, just like his old grandfather at his age!’ He chuckled. ‘Only I was a married man with a handful of kids!’

  He grinned at her meaningfully as if trying to get across the implication behind his words. She smiled politely, remembering what his grandson had said about his admiration of a man with a long list of girlfriends.

  He sighed, as if nostalgic for the old days. ‘Now I let my grandson get on with it. Fit as I feel, I’m past seventy-seven, and that’s no age to be running a business, however much money it might be putting into your pocket.’ He put his glass on the carpet at his feet and promptly knocked it over. It rolled unheeded under the couch.

  Furtively Elise glanced at her watch. Time was passing and she wished she could think of a polite way of telling him so.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘things were different in the old days. An employer got the most he could out of his workers. Nothing namby-pamby about the building trade then.’ He settled more comfortably into the upholstery. ‘Did you know, girl,

  that if a man was five minutes late for work, he’d lose fifteen minutes’ pay? If it was wet, he’d still be expected to work, or he’d lose money. Now,’ he commented disgustedly, ‘they coddle ‘em. My grandson, for instance, he’s the same, too easygoing by half, I tell him.’

  ‘My grandfather has a captive audience, I see.’

  Elise started violently at the sound of Lester’s voice, but Alfred Kings did not move a muscle. He did not even turn his head.

  Lester stood in the doorway, a smile softening the cynical twist to his mouth. He was in working clothes, mud-stained here and there. He lounged against the doorway, looking from one to the other.

  ‘Come in, lad,’ his grandfather invited.

  ‘If I trod the sacred pile of that carpet in these boots,’ Lester answered dryly, ‘I’d have Mrs. Dennis on to me like the proverbial ton of bricks.’

  His grandfather hooted, ‘And that, boy, would be an experience you’d never forget!’

  Lester asked Elise, raising his eyebrows, ‘I take it you haven’t done a stroke of work?’

  She flushed at the suggestion that she was slacking.

  ‘Work?’ the old man said with a jerky laugh, ‘You young ‘uns don’t know what work is. D’you know, my dear,’ and Lester raised his eyes skywards as if to say ‘he’s off again’, ‘they treat the workmen these days like they was royalty. They don’t have to make their own way to work now, they’re taken out in the firm’s buses to the sites they’re working on, and what’s more,’ he waggled his finger, ‘they pay them from the time of getting on the bus, not just from the time they arrive at the site, like it used to be. Now they pay men for holidays - that’s something they never did when I was a lad. AND they get a winter holiday as well as a summer one!’

  ‘Elise has come to work, Grandfather,’ Lester reminded him gently, but he might as well have stayed silent for all the effect it had on his grandfather’s loquaciousness.

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else, girl. All this talk of “day release” at the local tech. In the good old days, the lads had to do it in their own time, in the evenings, when they was dead tired after a day’s work. Now they get jam on it - it’s in the terms of apprenticeship, it’s compulsory, they all get it - in the day, and have to take time off work. AND they don’t lose any pay.’ He shook his head and did not notice Lester beckoning Elise from the room.

  He went on talking to himself as she went out, ‘In those days, a builder paid for what he got and got what he paid for. Now…’

  His voice faded away as Lester indicated that Elise should follow him along the hall. The study opened out of the morning room, and Lester told her they used both rooms for the administrative side of the business.

  ‘These are our offices - as you can see from the chaos all around you!’

  The table was laden with folders and plans, the chairs piled high with papers. Even the floor had not escaped. It was strewn with opened letters and discarded envelopes and magazines concerned with the building trade.

  ‘This is my office,’ they went into the study, ‘but as I’m here so rarely, we’ve put the typist’s desk in here, too.’ He smiled at her. ‘Don’t look so worried. I told you, I’m not often in residence, so you won’t be burdened too often with my presence.’

  She asked uncertainly, ‘Who will give me work? Your grandfather or - -?’

  He said softly, his smile mocking, ‘I shall be giving you work, not my grandfather.’

  ‘But,’ she said, her eyes accusing him of misrepresentation, ‘you told me it was your grandfather who needed help.’

  ‘And if I had told you it was I who needed it, you would have run a mile, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘So you got me here under false pretences?’

  He moved away so that his face was turned from her. ‘I got you here because the firm,’ he emphasised the word, ‘needed help, and out of the kindness of your heart, you agreed to come. I think that’s a good enough explanation of my request. Now,’ he said, his eyes narrowing a little, ‘can we put aside our habitual enmity and forget our personal differences and get on?’

  She apologised, removed
her jacket and sat down at the typewriter.

  ‘It’s an old tank,’ he remarked, tapping two or three keys with his forefinger, ‘but it works - just.’

  She opened a drawer and found a pencil and note-pad. ‘Will I need these?’

  He was sitting on the edge of her desk, facing her, and reading through a batch of letters. ‘What? Yes, you’ll need those. I’ll dictate answers to these letters.’

  For the next half-hour she took shorthand notes. He spoke so fluently and so fast, she found to her chagrin she was lagging behind and was forced to ask him to repeat much of what he had said. He would smile in a superior fashion and deliberately speak slowly and over-clearly for a few minutes, then speed up again.

  At the end he tutted, ‘If you had me as a boss permanently, I’d make you go to refresher classes to brush up your shorthand speed.’

  He watched her eyes cloud over with something like pain and sat swinging his booted leg, waiting for her reaction.

  She flung down her pencil like an ill-humoured child and started to rise from the chair. ‘If I’m not good enough for you…’

  He leaned forward and caught her shoulders, pushing her down. ‘I assure you, my SWEET Elise, you’re quite good enough for me.’

  She flushed and frowned, suspecting his words of having a double meaning, but his face gave nothing away.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘For the time being, yes.’ He moved across the room to sit at his desk.

  All the time she was typing, he stayed in the room. When she had finished she asked if he would read them through. He came across to her and rested against the desk, picking up the letters and reading them one by one.

  He looked down at her face, flushed with effort, and smiled. ‘Very creditable performance. Beautifully presented, not a single mistake. Full marks.’

  His praise brought a glow to her features which she could not hide. He leaned forward and caught her chin, forcing her to look at him. ‘My word, when you look like that,’ he said softly, ‘you’re irresistible.’