by T A Williams
His eyes alighted on the scowling face of Edgar Lean, squeezed in alongside the other postgrads. He really had taken the news badly. Oh, dear. He soldiered on with his speech.
‘Of course, I won’t be completely alone. As many of you will already know, I will still have Linda to look after me.’ He caught sight of her face, now blushing red. He pressed on. ‘Because Linda has agreed to come to work with me. After so many years of having my life arranged by her at the university, I would have felt totally lost without her.’ A ripple of applause ran through the audience. Linda herself looked as though she wanted the boards to part beneath her feet and swallow her up.
When the applause died down, he continued with his speech. Beside Edgar Lean in the front row were the familiar faces of his other postgrads, Amanda and Rosie. He noticed that Rosie was in a dress that displayed a startling amount of bare skin. Somebody should speak to her, before some boy gets the wrong impression, he found himself thinking. He would never understand the caprices of female fashion. Of course, in St Bernard’s time, women would have been covered from head to toe, their hair concealed beneath a wimple. A glance around the ballroom revealed no wimples. With an effort, he returned his attention to his speech.
Linda looked across, disapprovingly, at the redhead. The dress the girl was wearing was so low-cut as to be positively indecent. Rosie was staring in rapt adoration at Roger. For his part, he appeared blissfully unaware of her designs upon him. Linda snorted to herself. There was only one person in this room with any right to have designs on Professor Roger Dalby. And it certainly wasn’t Rosie Barnes.
She returned her attention to Roger. By now, she knew every last freckle, line and dimple on his face. Over the years she had known him, she had dreamt of him in many different costumes, including his present, formal one. Some of her other dreams, she thought with a guilty flush, saw him much less formally clad. Indeed, much less clad altogether. She rubbed her palms surreptitiously down the sides of her dress.
The speech continued, interrupted occasionally by a little polite applause. Duggie slowly retreated into the warmth of the crowd. As he stood and listened, the warmth of the crowd behind him crystallised into the unmistakable contours of the feminine form. This was a subject to which he had devoted almost as many hours of dedicated study as Professor Dalby to his doctoral thesis. Careful not to disturb the other guests, or the flow of the rhetoric from his old friend, Duggie slowly turned. He cast an admiring eye across the source of the warmth, reluctantly raising his gaze to the face above. To his exquisite delight, it did not disappoint.
‘Enchanting, quite enchanting. Douglas Scott. And you are…?’ He smiled warmly as his eyes instinctively flicked back down to that magnificent body, clad only in sheer black silk.
‘Tina. Tina Pound from the Geography Department.’ She gave a mock curtsy. She scrutinised him for a moment. ‘Where are you from? I haven’t seen you on campus.’
‘Not on campus, sweetheart. Not an intellectual, I’m afraid. Can’t read a word of Latin to save my life, but it doesn’t seem to stop me making a living. No, I’m a friend of the groom from way back.’ Tina’s big brown eyes smiled at him. To his surprise, he found he was managing to maintain eye contact far more readily than he would have expected.
‘Groom? That’ll be the day.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Tina had been admiring the handsome figure of Professor Dalby up on the stage. His mop of brown hair curled fashionably as it hit his collar, making him look more like a film star than an academic. And he was all the more desirable for being blissfully unaware of the reaction he aroused among members of the other sex. And quite probably among certain members of his own sex, she reflected with a smile.
‘There’s a line of girls halfway around the university waiting for the prof to invite one of them to the altar. That is, if a certain person doesn’t manage it first. Still, you know him well enough, I’m sure…’
Duggie smiled and nodded. He leant forward to whisper in her ear, taking the opportunity to let his fingers run slowly across the thin black strap over her shoulder. ‘Other things on his mind, I’m afraid. He gets off on things that happened in the Middle Ages, rather than present-day encounters.’ His hand lingered on her warm skin. ‘Not like the rest of us.’
‘So, if you’re not an academic, what do you do for a living, Douglas?’ Tina found she liked the look of this one. She had always had a thing for tough guys. The faint scars on Douglas Scott’s face spoke of an eventful life. ‘Nightclub bouncer, maybe?’ His hand was still on her shoulder. She didn’t mind.
‘Call me Duggie. Everybody does. No, far worse than that, I’m afraid. I sell houses.’
She grimaced. ‘Oh God, that’s disgusting!’ She gave him a broad smile. ‘And I thought this was a posh establishment.’
‘Nothing posh about me, darling.’ He was grinning too.
At that moment, a burst of applause told him that the speech was over.
‘Tina, I’m afraid I have to leave you for a short while. You won’t go anywhere now, will you?’
He slipped regretfully back towards the stage. Tina watched his muscular back depart and reflected how refreshing it was to meet somebody fun for a change. Somehow, most of the folk she met in the Geography Department were so terribly earnest. She decided that this particular bad boy merited closer inspection.
Roger was already off the stage and in the middle of some bumbling apology to Linda for something or other. Duggie cut him short.
‘Come on, Rog, let’s get some more champagne open and get you rat-arsed.’
Linda giggled at the thought, and accompanied the two men across the room. This time Roger managed to behave almost normally. All three of them made a point of stopping to talk to the guests. Both the mayor and the vice-chancellor received the attentions of the man himself. By the time they reached the bar, Linda was feeling more like the hostess than the personal assistant of the host.
As if reading her thoughts, Roger leant over, laid his hand on her arm and whispered, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Linda.’
She beamed and waited for more. But that was it. This rare moment of natural human affection would, she knew full well, probably have to do her for the next six months. Tomorrow or the next day, he would once more plunge into his labyrinthine world of medieval politics and power struggles. She gave a mental shrug and returned to the task in hand, oblivious to the face of Rosie Barnes in the crowd to their left. The girl was staring bleakly at Roger as he clasped Linda’s arm. The expression of adoration on Roger’s face said it all. Her hopes dashed, Rosie turned back into the crowd, tears in her eyes. She was so upset, she didn’t even register the effect her audacious décolleté was having on every other man in the room.
‘I haven’t seen any of your family, Roger. Have you? Did any of your relations come?’
Linda had been responsible for sending out the invitations, so she knew that the few relatives who had been invited were of the very distant variety.
‘I haven’t seen any.’ Roger took another good look round, just in case. ‘Mind you, I’m not sure I would recognise any of them, even if they did decide to come.’
Duggie appeared with glasses of champagne. He knew Roger and his family better than most. As boys, the two of them had been inseparable. ‘They’re probably miffed that old Uncle Eustace left it all to you. You did have some pretty weird relatives though, didn’t you? What was your cousin’s name? William, wasn’t it? The one who looked like Dracula. He must be hopping mad. Mind you, thinking about it, he’d be like a hundred years old by now. I imagine he’s no longer with us.’
Linda looked across at Roger’s face. He still hadn’t fully come to terms with his great good fortune. Being left a thirty-six room mansion, along with the rental income from a street of Georgian houses in Hampstead, had turned him into a very wealthy man. But he wasn’t making plans to buy a Caribbean island, or a villa in St Tropez. Professor Roger Dalby had other things on his mind. Pre
dictably, his intention was to concentrate entirely on his research into the life of Saint Bernard. Linda was not in the least surprised to hear the B-word on her boss’s lips at that very moment.
‘Champagne was the cradle of civilisation in Bernard’s day, you know. And yet, they never got round to making the sparkling wine itself till the later Middle Ages.’ He was staring down into his full glass of champagne, musing out loud to nobody in particular.
Determined not to let him retreat into the past, Duggie was quick to snap him out of it. ‘Bloody hell, Rog, can’t you think about anything else? So tell me something. Why did they call those big hairy dogs after the old boy then? Surely he didn’t have a tail and a barrel round his neck?’
‘No, of course not. It was the abbey…’ He stopped. Even Professor Roger Dalby knew when he was being made fun of.
‘You could do with a dog in the new house, you know.’ Duggie drained his champagne glass just in time to slip it onto a passing tray and replace it with another. Chivalrously he offered it to Linda, but she waved it away with a light shake of the head. He remembered that she rarely drank. This was something else she had in common with her boss. She turned back to Roger, catching his arm in her eagerness.
‘Oh yes, Roger, get a dog please. It would be such great company.’ Her eyes sparkled and her hand on his arm felt good. Eager to please her, he immediately agreed. In fact, if she had suggested getting a giraffe, his reaction would probably have been the same.
‘Of course. We must have a dog. There is so much land at the new place, we could have a whole pack of them.’
She thrilled at the use of the pronoun we, but made no comment.
‘Will you help me select one, please?’ Delighted to see her nod, he carried on. ‘I suppose we could even consider a Saint Bernard…’ This time both of them groaned as one, so he hastily qualified it with a vague ‘or whatever…’.
Then, to the surprise of both of them, he did not dive back into the Middle Ages.
‘I hardly knew Uncle Eustace at all, you know.’ His voice was low.
‘Did you ever meet him?’ Linda prompted him gently, conscious that personal revelations did not come easy to him. She was rewarded by an unambiguous answer.
‘Only at the funeral.’ He paused to clear his throat. ‘My parents were both killed in a car crash. I was only nineteen. I was halfway through my first year at Cambridge when they had the accident. It all seemed so surreal somehow. One moment I was a normal student in the process of breaking away from my parents and then, overnight, they were dead.’
He swallowed the glass of champagne in one gulp before carrying on. The expression on his face was bleak. It took the thirty-five years of rigorous training in the suppression of her emotions by her Methodist parents to stop Linda from sweeping him into her arms and clutching him to her breast. She did at least grip his arm tightly. Duggie reached out to a passing waitress and replaced the empty glass with another full one. Roger didn’t even notice. He carried on.
‘I didn’t see him in the church. It was outside in the churchyard in the pouring rain. After that awful bit, where you pick up a handful of earth and drop it into the grave, I suddenly felt an arm around my shoulders. A flask of brandy was pushed into my hand. I took a mouthful and turned to see him; a mane of black hair and a beard and moustache like one of the Merovingian kings.’
There was a pause, during which both Linda and Duggie waited for him to veer off, and take refuge in his own private medieval world. But, to their surprise and gratification, he persevered in the modern era.
‘He gave me a hug and told me he was the black sheep of the family. That’s what he said, “the black sheep”. He said he had loved his sister very dearly and regretted the fact he had seen so little of her. Then he kissed me on both cheeks and left without another word. Can’t have been with me for more than thirty seconds. It was only that night I found the hipflask in my pocket. It had McKinnon Marine etched in the side. That was my mother’s maiden name: McKinnon.’ He paused awkwardly, as if regretting this rare glimpse into his personal life.
Both Linda and Duggie, who knew him so well, were struck by this rare insight. This was, however, the end of the revelations. He fell silent. His mind was clearly already heading back to the Middle Ages when Duggie stepped in.
‘A toast.’
He held up his glass in their direction. The erstwhile university professor raised his glass absently. Linda snatched a mineral water from a passing waitress and joined in, unaware of the regret in Roger’s eyes as her hand was removed from his arm. Duggie waxed lyrical.
‘Here’s to your life at Toplingham Manor. May you find happiness and success. No, hang on a minute. You already have. How stupid of me to forget. So, here’s to your life at the manor and happiness and success to the rest of us. All right?’
Their glasses touched, and they drank the health of the lucky man. Then, remarkably, Roger Dalby stayed in the present day. Looking up, he asked the question that had been on his mind since seeing the manor for the first time, a few weeks before.
‘Now what do I do with a damn great house like the manor? Linda and I only need a couple of rooms at most.’ Oblivious to her surge of hope, he continued. ‘And another couple for me to sleep and eat in. I’m still left with over thirty spare rooms, and some of them are huge, as big as this ballroom.’
The crest of the wave of Linda’s emotions crashed back into its trough again. ‘Why don’t you start some kind of business?’ Her voice gave nothing away. ‘Maybe a hotel?’
But she tailed off, realising that even Basil Fawlty would make a better hotelier than Roger. He would no doubt be able to take an order for dinner, but would then most probably disappear into his study for the rest of the day. The customers would be left to starve. Hours later he would be found, looking up some arcane fact to do with his beloved saint. Duggie, however, had a practical solution.
‘A club. That’s what the old place would lend itself to. A private club with leisure facilities and entertainment. After all, there is a decent golf course hidden away in the grounds. All right, it’s a bit overgrown and only nine holes, but even so… And the old squash courts won’t need too much to get them back in operation. Toplingham Country Club. I can see it now.’
His arms were spread out wide, his eyes screwed shut, as he visualised the scene. A tasteful gold-lettered sign, pinned to the stone pillars outside the manor, floodlit at night, naturally. As he did so, his outstretched right hand brushed against something reassuringly warm and soft. He was delighted when he opened his eyes to see Tina Pound, coming over to offer her congratulations to Roger. He treated her to his most engaging smile.
‘Hello again. You’ve come back to me. I assume you know our illustrious host and hostess?’
Linda reddened, but managed a smile at Tina. They knew each other well from the university. ‘Hi, Tina. I didn’t know you and Douglas were friends.’
Duggie was quick to reply on her behalf, his hand catching hers and drawing her closer. ‘We may only have met a few minutes ago, but I feel we know each other so very well already.’ He kissed her bare shoulder affectionately.
Tina gave Linda a smile in return, while gently fending him off. ‘Half man, half octopus. Just my type.’
Linda watched their easy exchange enviously. Somehow they made this relationship thing look so very easy. She glanced across at Roger. As far as establishing a relationship with him was concerned, easy it most certainly wasn’t.
Roger nodded absently towards Tina. His mind was still on the manor, and Duggie’s suggested change of use.
‘All very well, Duggie. The club’s a great idea, but who could run it for me?’ He seemed unexpectedly taken with the idea. ‘Now that I am finally able to concentrate on the definitive history of St Bernard, I can hardly find the time to run a club. I might as well have stayed on in the department. Unless…’ His eyes met Duggie’s and, with an unusual degree of perspicacity, he immediately saw the answer to his question. �
��Unless you would feel like doing it – as a favour to me, Duggie? After all, your background in estate agency is sort of the same field, isn’t it?’
Duggie felt there was little to be gained from pointing out the many differences between selling houses and hospitality management. He settled for a broad smile of acquiescence, and the chance to run his right hand lightly down across the taut buttocks of Tina Pound. She didn’t slap him and he took that as a good sign.
‘Do you know? I think I might well be up for it.’ He sounded very keen.
Tina glanced across at him, a delicious feeling of anticipation warming her. He certainly wasn’t backwards at coming forwards.
‘Does that mean you’d consider giving it a try?’ Roger Dalby was genuinely pleased that his oldest friend might be prepared to help him out. For her part, Linda, despite her reservations about Duggie as a bad influence, could see that he would be a natural for the position.
‘The more I think about it, the better it sounds.’ Duggie was definitely warming to the idea. ‘I’ll give it some thought and get back to you.’
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted. Linda’s smile faded as she saw the scruffy figure of Edgar Lean stagger into view. The grubby lapels of his suit had clearly absorbed almost as much wine as he had. Any inhibitions he might have had, had been drowned by the alcohol.
‘Linda. You’re lovely. Give us a kiss.’ He lurched towards her.
‘Mr Lean, really!’ She affected her sternest voice as she addressed him. He chose to ignore her, raising his hand unsuccessfully to his mouth to stifle a burp.
‘Go on, darling. You know you want to.’
‘Bloody hell, Edgar. What do you think you are doing?’
Linda was impressed by the way Roger sprang to her defence. He gave Edgar Lean an icy glare.
‘Behave yourself, please.’
‘Keep your shirt on, Prof.’ He leered malevolently at him. ‘Only you get to touch the lovely Linda, is that it?’
