Bittersweet Yesterdays
She told Sarah about the American she had met through a vague acquaintance and the nightmarish results of her accepting a lunch invitation from him simply out of compassion for his apparent loneliness in a strange city.
‘I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies in that it was only the American Press that got hold of my name,’ finished off Lucy despondently. ‘Though heaven alone knows how they managed to make the connection between me and the Waterfords.’
‘The other disaster you mentioned,’ murmured Sarah, shaking her head in sympathetic disbelief, ‘surely it wasn’t on that scale?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘It depends how you view my writing off Mark’s car—actually, it was by no means written off, though it might just as well have been the way he carried on—and still does to this day...I’m glad someone finds this amusing,’ she exclaimed indignantly, as Sarah became convulsed with laughter.
‘I’m sorry,’ choked Sarah, trying desperately to control herself. ‘Lucy—you did have a driving licence, didn’t you?’ she gasped in sudden sobering horror.
‘I didn’t—I was only sixteen. Though I’d had a few driving lessons in the States,’ replied Lucy. ‘But at the time it seemed like a life and death situation,’ she sighed. ‘It happened during that couple of weeks I had to stay at Mark’s flat. I’d gone down to the garage—one of those massive underground places—to get something I’d left in his car, when I saw Perry, the spaniel belonging to a delightfully daffy old neighbour of Mark’s. Perry was lying beside one of the bays and at first I was convinced he was dead, but he started this awful twitching when I touched him.’
‘Oh, Lucy, how ghastly,’ exclaimed Sarah, not in the least put out to discover this life and death emergency featured a dog rather than a human.
‘It was,’ agreed Lucy. ‘And I was terrified the old dear would come looking for him—she absolutely worshipped him and rarely let him out of her sight. Mark had gone off with one of his women in her car—she was one I particularly loathed,’ she interposed venomously, ‘and I’d no idea when they’d be back. I knew there was a vet not too far away, down a side-street, which meant I wouldn’t touch a main road...you see, I didn’t want to risk carrying Perry there, in case I did further damage—at that point I was sure he’d been hit by one of the cars.’
‘So you decided to take your stepbrother’s car,’ sighed Sarah.
Lucy nodded. ‘I was perfectly aware of how wrong it was,’ she admitted, ‘but it somehow seemed less wrong than letting that little dog die. I managed to get him into the car without heaving him around too much and started it up with no trouble. I had learned how to reverse—but not in a car like Mark’s. I’d also never come across anything like power steering before, so when I yanked the steering-wheel round I used far too much force and smashed the side of the car into one of the concrete pillars. Needless to say, I panicked and did far more damage than an experienced driver would have,’ she added with a sigh.
‘What about Perry?’ demanded Sarah, plainly not in the least concerned about the car.
‘His recovery was nothing short of miraculous,’ she replied wryly. ‘He was suddenly up on his feet and wagging his tail as normal. In fact, it was just then that his owner came looking for him, so I opened a window and he leapt out and bounded over to her as right as rain.’
‘You’re kidding!’ gasped Sarah.
‘It seems Perry was prone to occasional fits,’ sighed Lucy, ‘and it was in the tail-end of one that I found him.’
‘Oh, heck,’ groaned Sarah.
‘Oh, heck, yes,’ agreed Lucy. ‘Because it was just as Perry and his mistress trotted off that Mark and his woman appeared.’
‘And our Lucy, needless to say, offered no word in her own defence.’ Sarah gave an exasperated shake of her head.
‘I didn’t get a chance, the way he started ranting at me,’ protested Lucy. ‘It was bad enough listening to the racket he was making, without having that smirking female witnessing it all!’
‘Poor Lucy,’ sighed Sarah. ‘And with your track record anyway, I can’t say I blame you for not bothering.’ She uncurled her legs and got to her feet. ‘Come on, I’ll make us some tea—you deserve one after relating all that.’
As they pottered around the tiny kitchen, Lucy tried to clear her head of the oppressive gloom now clouding it.
‘Sarah, I’ve decided I’ve really got to get myself organised with my writing,’ she blurted out.
Sarah turned from the tray she was preparing with a look of surprise. ‘I’ve been telling you that for months now,’ she said. ‘Heavens, Lucy, you’ve practically made it already. I thought your problem was money, but it obviously isn’t. If I were you I’d pack in the job—you could go and stay with your mother and stepfather and do your writing in the lap of luxury.’
‘My problem is money,’ replied Lucy in ominously quiet tones. ‘It’s my mother who married into wealth, not me!’
Sarah gave her a startled look. ‘But surely there’s nothing to stop you staying with your own mother while you write?’
‘You mean stay with my mother and sponge off the Waterfords,’ exclaimed Lucy bitterly. ‘One of the reasons I’m so desperate to make a financial success of my writing is that I want to be free of the Waterfords and their damned empire. It’s bad enough being employed by them as some sort of poor relation, but my writing’s one area where I intend succeeding without a penny of their support.’
‘Lucy, I got the impression you were rather fond of your stepfather!’ exclaimed Sarah in shocked tones.
‘I am—I’m very fond of him,’ protested Lucy, picking up the tray and taking it into the living-room. ‘And I’m beginning to wish Mark had never told me about this operation coming up,’ she exclaimed as she placed the tray on the coffee-table. ‘What if I really am jinxed and get involved in something ghastly before he’s recovered?’
‘Don’t be so silly,’ said Sarah, flashing her a look of exasperation as she began pouring the tea. ‘From that tirade you just delivered in the kitchen, I can only conclude it’s your dishy stepbrother you want all this freedom from,’ she stated, handing Lucy a cup.
‘Why does everyone always have to refer to his looks?’ demanded Lucy despairingly.
‘Because he’s an exceptionally good-looking man,’ retorted Sarah sharply. ‘And I must say, it makes a pleasant change to hear all the women making such openly sexist remarks about a man’s looks, instead of the other way round.’
‘They wouldn’t drool quite so much if they knew what an overbearing tyrant he really is,’ muttered Lucy. ‘One of the reasons I can behave like a moron with such ease is that I spent most of my teenage years listening to him telling me I am one.’
‘Oh, my poor Lucy,’ groaned Sarah. ‘I’d always suspected you had some sort of a hang-up about your lack of qualifications—but I’d have thought the way your writing’s been received would have boosted your confidence no end on that score.’
‘Sarah, they’re only children’s stories—’
‘What do you mean, “only”?’ cut in Sarah incredulously. ‘They’re fantastic! And the kids must have enjoyed them, otherwise the publisher wouldn’t be nagging you for more. I know people with a string of degrees behind them who’d give their right arm to get into print.’
Lucy gave her a sheepish smile. She was secretly enormously proud of her small success—and it had boosted her confidence no end.
‘I take it your stepbrother knows nothing of what you’ve achieved?’ said Sarah, her expression resigned.
‘You’re the only person I’ve told,’ admitted Lucy cagily.
‘You’ve not even told your mother?’
Lucy shook her head, her feelings of discomfiture bordering on guilt as she did so.
‘I want to make sure it’s something I actually can do as a career before I started broadcasting it,’ she said. ‘And I honestly do intend getting myself organised to write more regularly,’ she insisted, brightening visibly with the prospect.
‘You’ll make a most successful career out of it—that’s for sure,’ Sarah informed her confidently. ‘But something tells me that all the success in the world with your writing isn’t going to help cure the problem you have with the divine—in looks, that is—Mark.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU said you wouldn’t go too fast,’ complained Lucy, and was surprised when Mark instantly complied by slowing down the rate of his dictation—but only to a rate that enabled her to get down every third instead of every fifth word he uttered.
Up until now he had simply given her the gist of his letters, leaving the actual wording up to her, and it had worked well. In fact, being Mark’s secretary hadn’t been the trauma she had worked herself up into believing it would be—but only because he had been in his office so rarely.
‘Just a little slower,’ she pleaded, though in her heart of hearts she knew she should be asking him to stop altogether—her shorthand was useless!
‘Hell, Lucy, if I go much slower I’ll lose track of what I’m saying,’ he exclaimed, scowling across the desk at her. ‘Now—where was I?’
Lucy waited with growing despondency for him to continue.
‘I asked you where I’d got to,’ he stated impatiently. ‘You’d better read it back to me.’
She gazed down at the jumble of hieroglyphics staring back at her from the pad on her knee and experienced a moment of total panic.
‘I...I can barely read a word of it.’
‘Lucy, I’m not in the mood for your juvenile humour—read the darned thing back!’
‘I’ve told you—I can’t!’ she protested. ‘I warned you I’d be rusty...but even I hadn’t expected it to be this bad. I’ve just about forgotten all of it.’
‘Then what the hell were you scribbling away at while I was dictating?’ he demanded, leaning forwards across the desk in a manner she found more than a little intimidating.
‘I was trying to take it down...but I’ve done it so badly I can’t read it back.’
‘So, might I ask what would have happened if I’d not asked you to read those few words back to me?’ he demanded grimly. ‘The first few words, I should point out, of what would have amounted to several pages. I suppose you’d have been quite content to let me carry on—while you continued scribbling down gibberish!’
‘I’ve really no idea what I’d have done.’ And that was the plain truth, she thought unhappily.
‘So—what do we do now?’
Lucy hesitated—now was the time to tell him to stop playing around and find himself a proper secretary. ‘You could use a dictating machine,’ she heard herself say instead, as it suddenly occurred to her just how badly she had been handling the whole question.
As usual whenever Mark arrived on the scene, her self-confidence had deserted her. But she wasn’t a halfwit, so why on earth was she confirming his low opinion of her abilities by behaving as though she were? By no means all secretaries used shorthand and there was absolutely no reason whatever why she shouldn’t perform the job well once she set her mind to it.
‘A dictating machine,’ he murmured, as though turning the idea over in his mind. ‘I could dictate into it for hours at a stretch...then you could erase the whole lot in as many seconds.’
‘Despite what you may think, Mark, I’m not a congenital idiot,’ she informed him sharply.
‘You’re wrong to think that’s an idea I’ve ever entertained about you, sweetheart,’ he drawled. ‘I know darned well that any such mishap certainly wouldn’t be a mistake on your part.’
‘OK,’ she conceded without umbrage—it was pointless denying there hadn’t been times when she wouldn’t have thought twice about such sabotage. ‘If I promise faithfully not to erase anything...will you use one?’
‘It doesn’t look as though I have any choice,’ he said, then promptly gave her one of those beatific smiles she had learned of old not to trust. ‘And I’m so pleased you’ve decided to stop frothing at the mouth whenever I forget and refer to you as sweetheart...it’s just one of those cosy endearments of mine that are liable to slip out from time to time.’
Cosy endearments, my foot, thought Lucy indignantly, and as for one slipping out, she doubted if anything had ever passed his lips that hadn’t first been scrutinised thoroughly by that coldly calculating brain of his.
‘Of course it is,’ she murmured, a smile to equal his plastering itself across her face as she rose to her feet, ‘so don’t you give it another thought, sweetie pie.’
His eyes widened slightly, but there was amusement lurking at the corners of his mouth.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he enquired.
‘To find you a dictating machine.’
‘Well, you don’t need to look far,’ he informed her, also rising, ‘there’s one in your office—the previous two secretaries I borrowed didn’t do shorthand.’
Lucy let out a groan of pure frustration. ‘Do you mean to tell me you put me through all that just for the heck of it?’ she demanded angrily.
‘Darling, I couldn’t resist it—you know how dictatorial I am. And besides, shorthand was part of that exclusive training you had.’
‘Exclusive, my eye!’ exploded Lucy, his not so subtle reminder of how much her unsuccessful education had cost his father affecting her like a red rag to a bull. ‘The only thing exclusive about it was the ludicrous fees they charged! The same with those ghastly crammers you kept packing me off to. All they—’
‘Can it, Lucy,’ he drawled, walking past her and towards her office. ‘How about you rustling me up some coffee while I dig out this machine?’
Lucy hesitated, then followed him into her office. ‘Yes, sweetie pie,’ she murmured, chalking it up against the ‘darling’ he had slipped in earlier.
This time there was no hint of humour in the set of his mouth as he turned and glared at her before walking over to her desk.
Lucy busied herself with the coffee.
‘What’s all this?’ he demanded.
Lucy spun round and found him frowning down at the draft specification on her desk.
‘One of the survey teams needs it in a bit of a rush,’ she said then, thrown by the expression on his face, added, ‘They’re used to me doing them, and, anyway, it’s not as though I’ve been worked to death since coming up here—you’re hardy ever around.’
‘Well, I shall be around from now on—so they’ll just have to get it done through the proper channels. And while you’re telling them, I’d be grateful if you’d refresh their minds as to what those channels are. From now on you work for me and no one else—understood?’
Lucy looked at him in amazement. ‘I’ve finished it, actually. I was just going to send the disks down for printing.’
‘OK—send them down,’ he growled, opening one of the cupboards behind her desk and removing a dictaphone from it.
‘Mark...why are you so annoyed?’ she asked, curiosity overcoming her.
He placed the machine on the desk, his expression slightly startled.
‘Lucy, you don’t seem to realise...’ He broke off, plainly rethinking what he had been about to say. ‘I’ve been borrowing other people’s secretaries for so long—so let’s just say I’ve become a little possessive now that I’ve got one of my very own.’
‘Ha, ha.’ Did he honestly think she would swallow rubbish like that?
‘Lucy, stop trying to be cynical,’ he admonished with surprising lightness. ‘And try getting it into your head that you are exactly what I need right now and that I’m not going to stand for anyone else poaching you... Isn’t that coffee ready yet?’
She flounced over to the percolator, her mind being tugged in different directions. Suddenly it was very important to her to do this job, not well, but brilliantly—if only to dumbfound him. But it was he who was managing to dumb-found her right at this very moment—not that she believed a word he was saying.
‘You’ve always made it perfectly plain that you’ve needed me like a hole in the head,’ she accused. The old Mark was bad enough, but this somehow different version was far worse. ‘So what’s changed?’
‘A lot,’ he replied, giving her one of those smiles she so distrusted as she handed him his coffee. ‘I’ve toured my empire and dutifully served my apprenticeships with all the experts and their super-efficient secretaries. And now that’s all behind me I’ll be able to get down to projects of my own in areas where I’m regarded as the expert.’
Lucy was racking her brain to remember what his particular field was. She knew he’d originally got a First in modern languages, but also that he’d immediately followed that with something else—architecture or something related to it, but she couldn’t be sure.
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