‘I agree, to an extent,’ said Daphne. ‘But it’s not quite as simple as that, is it? I mean, if for instance, I told you my husband had committed a crime, wouldn’t you feel it necessary to tell your husband?’
Ellie considered this.
Finally she said, ‘I don’t know about necessary. Suppose I told you my husband was investigating your husband, would you feel it necessary to tell him?’
Now Daphne considered, but before she could answer she was interrupted by a large, handsome, middle-aged woman, rather garishly dressed and with an ornate rose-tinted hair-do, like a mosque at sunset, who was coming from the counter with a coffee in one hand and a wedge of chocolate gateau in the other.
‘Hello!’ she cried. ‘It’s Daphne Aldermann, isn’t it? Not often we see you in here. I always meant to keep in touch, dear, but it’s all so hectic, one mad round after another, time just flies, just flies. And so must I. What a lovely baby. Coming, darlings, coming.’
This last was in response to a chorus of Mandy! from a distant table where three men were sitting. The woman made a valedictory gesture with her gateau and went to join them.
‘So you’re not so out of your depth here as I thought,’ said Ellie. ‘I’ll have to look for somewhere really low. You should have asked your friend to sit down. She sounded interesting.’
‘You think so? Well, for a start, she’s hardly a friend. And in any case, there’s no way you’ll get Mandy Burke to join two women and a child when there’s anything in trousers imminent. Just flies is the perfect motto for her.’
‘Miaow!’ said Ellie, grinning broadly. ‘Mandy Burke? I’ve a feeling I’ve seen her around.’
‘She runs a stall in the old covered market. Cane and mats and curios, that sort of thing. It’s a little goldmine, I believe,’ said Daphne. ‘Mandy’s Knick-Knacks it’s called. That’s where you’ve probably seen her, unless your husband wines, dines and dances you at the best night spots a lot.’
‘And what makes you think he doesn’t?’ wondered Ellie. ‘But you’re right. I know the stall. And in which of her milieux did you meet her?’
‘Neither. Her husband used to work with mine, or the other way round really. He died about four or five years ago. I don’t think I’ve run into her more than a couple of times since. Widowhood seems to become her. I should imagine women like her are a bit of an embarrassment to the feminist movement. So confident, so secure, so able, but absolutely anchored in a masculine world.’
She spoke challengingly and Ellie was again surprised at the vein of aggression she was finding in this superficially stereotyped bourgeois housewife. But before she could reply, Rose suddenly let out an enormous burp, then smiled complacently at her admiring audience.
The two women laughed and Ellie said, ‘Let’s have another coffee.’
‘All right,’ said Daphne. ‘No, I’ll get them. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you by pushing to the front of the queue.’
She rose and made her way to the counter where Ellie was both amused and irritated to see four horny-handed sons of toil step back and wave this long, elegantly dressed, fair-haired lady to receive service before them.
(Bush. Vigorous growth, red-flushed blooms, heavy and susceptible to being snapped off in strong winds, otherwise long-lasting, some black spot.)
Patrick Aldermann sat at his desk in the office which still bore the name of Timothy Eagles on the door. It did not bother him. It took a great deal to bother him as the staff of Perfecta Ltd had long ago come to realize.
One of the junior sales executives had been moved by drink and seasonal bonhomie to philosophize on the subject to Dick Elgood at the office Christmas party the previous year.
‘It isn’t so much,’ he slurred ginnily into Elgood’s face, ‘that things run smoothly around Pat Aldermann, it’s more than no matter how many cock-ups have been cocked-up, he just keeps on running smoothly around things, you follow me?’
Elgood had used his nimbleness of foot to evade the man and headed for the bar, where he spotted the object of the analysis in close conversation with Brian Bulmer, the firm’s financial director, and a hawk-faced young man called Eric Quayle, an industrial chemist by training and a captain of industry by inclination, who was also on the Board and generally regarded as tomorrow’s man. My bloody heir presumptuous, Elgood called him, adding, but the bugger’s going to turn grey waiting.
Quayle saw Elgood and turned away from the other two. Bulmer was doing all the talking, Elgood noticed, and he guessed that most of the Scotch from the bottle between them had gone down his throat. As Quayle approached, Elgood grabbed two glasses from the bar and a half of Scotch.
‘Enjoying yourself, Eric?’ he asked as he moved away, but did not stay for an answer. Besides having little desire for a bout of horn-locking with Quayle, he was also ten minutes late for a rendezvous in his private office with the new invoice clerk, who was so well-bosomed that she had to stand sideways to see into a filing cabinet.
An hour later, he had just scaled this Alpine lady for the second time when the phone started ringing, rousing him from post-coital lethargy with the news that Brian Bulmer within minutes of leaving the party had skidded into the seasonal road-death statistics.
The death had cast a light pall over Christmas which as usual he spent alone in his seaside cottage, braving the North Sea’s icy waters for his traditional pre-luncheon swim. Experience had long ago taught him that shared Christmases bred sentimental notions which could lead to an unhappy New Year, so now it was his one celibate season and as he lay in his double bed, listening to the hungry tide gnawing at the cliff face, he had plenty of time to think about Bulmer’s death. He mourned the man’s passing but his main thought was about his successor. Timothy Eagles, the Chief Accountant, was the obvious man. Competent, predictable and loyal. He wanted such men about him and whatever he wanted, the Board would ultimately agree to. The memory of Bulmer and Quayle with the quiet watchful figure of Aldermann between them hardly stirred, not even when Quayle had tentatively wondered whether or not a younger man, like, say, Eagles’s assistant, Patrick Aldermann, might not be a more revitalizing addition to the Board. Quayle was just flexing his muscles. It meant nothing.
Then Eagles had died, collapsing in the washroom at the end of the corridor he shared with Aldermann.
Immediately it became clear that Quayle meant business and that he was not without support. The battle was about Aldermann’s candidacy for the Board, but the war was about Elgood’s chairmanship. Aldermann’s suitability didn’t worry Quayle and his supporters in the least. He was merely their instrument to probe, irritate and display Elgood’s vulnerability. The more blood they drew, the more support they would get.
He had started to use every weapon at his disposal and he had collected a formidable armoury. He had not even omitted the direct appeal to Aldermann himself. To win him to withdraw from the fray voluntarily was too great a coup not to be attempted. But things had gone wrong. Aldermann had hardly seemed to consider the matter worth bothering about. His detachment, his self-possession, the hint of secret amusement in his eyes, had got under Elgood’s guard. What had been intended as a subtle operation became a bludgeoning attack.
‘But it all seems so simple to me, Dick,’ Aldermann had said finally. ‘If I don’t get on, I don’t get on. Honestly, it won’t bother me, don’t worry about it for a moment. And if I do get on, the extra money will certainly come in very useful.’
It was then, vastly irritated that this conversation should have been mistaken