3
Introducing The Project Manager
“That’s it!” said Julia Weekes enthusiastically. “Chipping Abbas!”
“Mm,” agreed Hill with something less than enthusiasm. Not wholly on account of Chipping Abbas, either. That dirty weekend had been a real mistake. Not that Julia wasn’t an attractive young woman—no, well, if she hadn’t been the weekend wouldn’t’ve happened. But she was one of those terrifyingly eager lady execs—the sort that a few years back he’d led round the wilds of Yorkshire, yeah—and being in her company for more than half an hour, was, frankly, exhausting. Exhausting and very, very boring. Why couldn’t she for God’s sake shut up? Or at least say something mildly disapproving about the bloody firm they both worked for, the piece of tinny Japanese shit the firm had allowed them to hire for this trip, or the amount of fucking paperwork they always had to do when on a trip at the firm’s expense to prove they really had needed to eat, sleep and fill the bloody thing up with petrol. Or at the very least about the ludicrous wild goose chase they were on! But no. She’d even approved of the vile muck they’d been served for dinner last night at the Boddiford Hall Park Royal. The only good thing about that was that it was a “company house”—she actually used the expression, God!—and so they hadn’t had to do the paperwork for the meals and the rooms, they’d only needed to use their company cards. Not their company credit cards, no: their company cards. Not for drinks, of course: one drank at one’s own expense. Copiously, in Hill’s case, when in Julia Weekes’s company, but it had been a wasted precaution: she’d informed him that she was going to spend the evening checking her background notes and re-reading his completion report on the Medway Towers Park Royal conversion project so as to get an idea of the scope of what might be needed.
Perhaps fortunately Hill hadn’t been drunk enough to say what he really thought of what YDI had done to Medway Towers. He hadn’t bothered to point out that it was a Victorian house on the edge of a fair-sized city that had been turned into an expensive resort aimed at the affluent week-ending upper-middle couple in search of spa baths, massages with scented oils, thermal mud treatments and five-course dinners in minute but very artistic portions, and thus the project would bear only a generic resemblance to what the firm was envisaging for Chipping Abbas: if she wanted to butter him up by reading the bumf he and his laptop churned out, let her.
“Georgian, isn’t it?” said Julia busily.
“Bits of it,” replied Hill drily.
“You get a lovely view of it from up here!”
You could see the dump, yeah. What you mostly got a view of was canola fields. She was now blahing on about Capability Brown—this plus the Georgian bit would all be from her background notes: Julia, as Hill had long since realized, knew nothing whatsoever about the long and honourable traditions of English architecture and landscape gardening. In fact, until she joined YDI her entire experience of the country house had consisted of one visit to Woburn Abbey. He didn’t blame her for this in the least, he just wished that she wouldn’t bother to impart aloud what she had since acquired. She had an imperfect grasp of it and in any case much of it was wrong: it wasn’t that she wasn’t bright, but as she didn’t read she had almost nothing that might back up or refute the blather she or her PA found on the flaming Internet.
After quite some time he was driven to say: “Capability Brown and his successors never came near this dump, Julia. I mean, look at it!”
Julia looked at it with a blank frown. Then she said: “But what about those trees?”
Those trees, or Hill was a Dutchman in his clogs, were the remains of a late Georgian shrubbery. Capability Brown would have had a fit at the mere idea of anything that large that near the house. From this angle it might not have dawned on Julia Weekes, but they must pretty well block the view of the house from, well, a hundred and eighty degrees out of the 360? Pretty much, yes. “Um, the landscape gardeners didn’t put large trees that near the house,” he offered feebly, wishing he’d never opened his mouth at all. “Um, well, Boddiford Hall was landscaped—at about the time the owner did the Grand Tour and stole that ruddy Italian marble thing he plonked on the forecourt. It hasn’t got any huge trees near the house, has it?”
“Um, no. Do you mean the fountain? I think it’s lovely!”
Yes: it was a lovely Italian fountain that would have looked really good outside a villa in, say, Tuscany. Outside Boddiford Hall’s grey stone it looked, frankly, silly, but Hill already knew he was alone in this opinion in the whole of the British Isles, so he held his peace.
Briskly Julia decided they should go down for a closer view of Chipping Abbas. Hill didn’t point out that the view would vanish as they got closer, he just agreed, silently thanking the strange gods that looked after idiots that had decided (a) to go into project management and (b) to work for YDI (formerly You-Drop-Inns Plc.) that they weren’t his springs that had had to jolt up this track to get the non-Capability Brown view of Chipping Abbas. Ouch! And down again—yeah.
On the way Julia spoke a lot but Hill just replied: “Mm, the ground dips,” and: “Mm, we’re lower now,” and: “Canola, I think—er, rapeseed, Julia,” and: “Mm, oaks and chestnuts,” and: “We’re still in the valley,” and finally, and alas, rather more loudly: “We’re still in the valley, Julia! Never mind the village is called Abbot’s Halt, I’m damned sure that’s popular etymology and it’s Chipping à bas, nothing whatsoever to do with abbots or monasteries, never mind what Henry VIII might have given away elsewhere!”
To which Julia replied: “Of course, it belongs to a relation of yours, doesn’t it?”
“Mm. Very distant cousin.”
They jolted up the remains of the drive—Julia Weekes was not a girl to let considerations like not cleared since Adam was a lad or the hire-car’s springs or Hill’s kidneys weigh with her—and drew up in front of the house.
There was an appreciable pause. Then Julia said aggrievedly: “Where are the steps?”
Hill drew a deep breath. “It’s basically just an old manor, Julia.”
Julia burst into speech. Okay, she’d seen this, that and the other on the telly. Hill didn’t point out that these days they filmed on location all over Europe and he knew for sure that one so-called English country house he’d seen in glorious Technicolor was just outside Prague, he just waited until it was all over. Then he said—true, deliberately, but then, think of all the things he might have said: “Boddiford Hall hasn’t got a double flight of steps, either.”
“No, but it’s got that lovely fountain,” she said sadly. “Mind you, this is quite pretty, I suppose… But will it appeal to our client base?”
“Dunno, Julia. That’s not my job,” said Hill cheerfully. “I just make sure the chaps do ’em up the way the firm wants, once they’ve decided what they want.”
“And bring the projects in on time, within budget!” she said with a beaming smile, not asking why they’d sent him on this jaunt, then. “Sir Maurice told John Banks you were invaluable!”
Er—ta. He supposed. “Um, largely a matter of speaking to the chaps in terms they understand and making sure they realize you won’t take any nonsense, Julia,” he offered feebly.
“That’s more or less what George Findlayson said, and he was hopeless!” she beamed.
“Um, made the mistake of wanting to be liked by the chaps, I think,” he offered feebly.
“Exactly!”
Hill scratched his chin. If you fought your way through the polysyllabic bumf, wasn’t making yourself liked by your human resources what person-managers were supposed to do, in the 21st century? Oh, well, if it had dawned on the firm that his old-fashioned, not to say pragmatic approach actually worked, so much the better. “Want to go in? Got the keys?”
Of course Julia did have the keys, but she thought they should look round the outside, first. Hill didn’t mind, so they did that. Tried to do that. Those high heels, lady execs for the use of, weren’t much use on the overgrown remains of cobblestones at the rear of Chipping Abbas. Ditto in amongst the former shrubbery. Though the shade was very pleasant, didn’t Hill think? Yes, he did, if one felt that England needed shade. And what did he think of rustic wooden tables and benches out here for tea? He thought, actually, that that would be delightful and about five million times more desirable than that fucking glasshouse that was the Boddiford Hall Park Royal’s so-called “Solarium” and was just about to tell her so when she decided that it wouldn’t appeal to their client base as there was no view.
Eh? There was: a view of what had once been a croquet lawn. In fact, a very long time ago, he and Allan had once watched Ma and Pa and some friends playing croquet on it. Well, Hill had watched and eventually been driven to steal a ball and have a go himself with a handy stick; Allan had just sat on the rug sucking his rusk.
Hill gestured limply at the expanse of knee-high waving grass backed by an old stone wall and behind that again, tall chestnuts and hazels. “What’s that, then?”
“That lawn? No, I meant the house, of course!”
Um, ye-es… Oh, good Christ: she meant the house had to be in it for it to be a view! He was so stunned that he let her tell him that an overgrown yew was a pine tree.
The keys worked—they wouldn’t have dared not to, with Julia in charge of them. The old house was dim inside, with many of the windows shuttered or boarded up and this was, on the whole, not a bad thing. In the main drawing-room Hill winced as he met the sardonic gaze of the dark-visaged Aden Tarlington over the mantelpiece but Julia wasn’t looking at the pictures, she was eyeing the floor space and calculating aloud whether this room would be suitable for the main dining-room or better as a conference hall, what did Hill think? Jumping slightly, he admitted he thought that to turn this room into a conference anything would be a crime, but in any case there was a ballroom at the side of the house, added in Victorian times, that would probably be better for that. If it hadn’t got dry rot.
“Good,” said Julia, making a note on her inevitable laptop. The things had replaced the Notepad thing Hill had had forced upon him during the war-gaming crap, which was an advantage in that they could accept more crap than codes, numbers and very, very, brief phrases, but then you had to spend hours afterwards going over the crap, so on the whole they were not a Good Thing.
The house was in pretty good nick—well, it had been inhabited within his own memory—but of course it would need a lot done to it for YDI to set it up as any sort of hotel. Ensuites—yes, Julia. No, it wasn’t funny that the furniture was still in it, because Col Tarlington still owned it, though he hadn’t been near it for years and was in fact living it up between New York and Miami on his second wife’s money from her second and third husbands. Hill didn’t bother to point this out, he just agreed with her again. Also agreeing that it would be good if they could take over the paintings. Even though the only one she’d actually looked at had been one of Aden Tarlington’s wife, Henrietta, and he was in no doubt she’d only looked at it because the lady was young, pretty, and artistically posed in a high-waisted white drift of Regency muslin scattered with tiny blue flowers and sashed in more of the blue. Julia thought it was lovely and said so and Hill thought it was a Raeburn and didn’t say so. Or that it was a pity that all that moolah of Aden Tarlington’s had run out in the subsequent two hundred years. Well—chucked it away on commissioning Raeburns: yeah.
As Julia was rhapsodising over redesigning the after-dinner lounge, so-called, in tones matching the picture, he did, however, say temperately: “The firm might not want the pictures, Julia. The insurance costs would be outrageous.”
“Ooh, do you think some of them might be genuine Old Masters?” she gasped.
No! The Tarlington Rubens was now on public show in the— Forget it. “Not exactly, but some of them might be valuable. But they might wear having them copied, like they did with Boddiford Hall.”
“What?” she said blankly, staring.
“Mm. They’re very good copies,” he said kindly, not mentioning that some of them were copies of stuff that had never been near Boddiford Hall in its puff. “We didn’t need to with Medway Towers, those Victorian and Edwardian things are nice but not worth an arm and a leg. Though Sir Maurice bought the Winterhalter for his own collection.”
“I see. I think it would improve the ambience if we did have them copied.”
“Yes.”
“And what about all the china? It’s very pretty!” she said eagerly.
YDI’s customers eating off genuine old Spode and early Wedgwood? Hill passed a hand over his forehead. “I suppose the firm could agree to lease some of the stuff along with the house itself, if they wanted to go to the expense of installing the requisite security systems and keeping it behind glass. It’s too valuable to eat off.”
Julia allowed a lovely display of old china would improve the ambience, mentioning in passing some scene in some film about the President (“American” evidently went without saying, these days) which had been lovely, and noting that they could use his uncle’s firm again for the security!
“Yes; the bosses seemed pretty pleased with the other jobs they did for them,” he said temperately.
“Of course!” she beamed.
“So what’s your overall feeling about the place, Julia?” he said as they returned to the car.
“Well,” said Julia slowly, “I’d say it’s got definite possibilities, Hill. I’d say it’s a warm house. Warm and welcoming. You feel cosy in it.”
Hill nodded weakly. Chipping Abbas was, of course, not small. But most of its rooms were not particularly huge, it featured a great deal of warm-looking panelling, at once stage someone with a great deal of taste had had a go at its furnishings, and, in short, she was right. You did feel cosy in it.
“We’d stress the intimate atmosphere!” said Julia happily. “Lovely little suites!”
Exactly. What came out of her mouth was mostly crap, what was between the ears was a strange mixture of native intelligence, crap off the Internet, the latest clichés, and the shit she’d learned in her Management course, but there was no doubt about it, Julia Weekes had an infallible instinct for what the punters would go for. Which was the reason why YDI kept her on. Never mind the unending lip-service, the bosses were fundamentally as unimpressed with crap off the Internet, the latest clichés and management shit as Hill was. Which was, on the whole, why he kept on working for them. Added to which he loved getting out on the sites.
Their brief included a report on the local facilities, so they headed down the rutted track to Abbot’s Halt.
In the village shop the proprietor gasped and dropped a drink bottle on sighting him but as it was only a plastic one it merely bounced and as Julia was talking nineteen to the dozen the woman was unable to say anything, if she had been going to.
“Oh, dear, it’s nothing like Chipping Ditter, is it?” said Julia as they emerged to survey what might have been the village green in a larger place but here was just a sort of widening of the opposite verge. “No lovely antique shops or anything!”
“No. Well, the woman said there are a few done-up cottages.”
“Yes, but no facilities, Hill!”
“No. Well, not a bad thing, in a way: unless they want to drive over to Chipping Ditter the punters’ll have to rely on the hotel for everything. Up to and including the fancy soaps,” he said with a smile. Fancy soaps had figured largely in her description of the ensuites to come.
“Yes, but they’ll be the sort that like antique shops!”
She was right, dammit. Antiques shops and gawping at nastily restored cottages with 21st-century cottage gardens. “Once the hotel gets going an antiques shop might be encouraged to open up, I suppose, but until it does we’ll just have to hand out maps of Chipping Ditter with all the interesting shops marked on ’em.”
Not entirely to his surprise Julia took this suggestion seriously on board and they returned to the facilities of the charmingly restored village of Chipping Ditter and the swaddling comforts of the nearby Boddiford Hall Park Royal with her buried in her laptop and Hill conscientiously following her orders and timing the drive.
“Sir Maurice Bishop would like to see you as soon as convenient, Hill,” said his secretary, quite some months after the trip with Julia, as Hill came into the office he didn’t use very much in the firm’s London headquarters. “I believe it’s about Chipping Abbas.” She looked at him sympathetically.
Hill took a deep breath. “I see.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“I’d like a transfusion, but a coffee would be very welcome: thanks, Hellen.”
Nodding, Hellen got up to make it. Hill went into his office aware that she was reading his every thought and feeling but managing to hide the grimace until he was actually in there.
Hellen came in with the coffee before he’d barely had time to hang up his overcoat and brolly, sit down, glance at his email, look with loathing at the top pile of neatly sorted letters in his in-tray, and think about opening his briefcase.
“Nothing urgent in the in-tray,” she said kindly.
“Good. Thank you, Hellen, it smells wonderful,” he said with an effort.
Hellen went over to the door, and hesitated. Then she said, in her usual calmly efficient tones: “Tell him to eat your shorts.”
Hill’s jaw sagged.
“It’s too soon: it’s indecent, and if he doesn’t know it, he ought to!” she said vigorously.
“Yuh—uh—yeah,” he croaked. “To eat my shorts?”
Smiling a little, his middle-aged secretary replied: “My youngest sister’s kids say it: it’s something off an American telly thing. Usually in the imperative voice.”
In the imp… “Eat my shorts,” invited Hill numbly.
Twinkling, Hellen nodded and closed the door gently after her.
In spite of his genuine disturbance Hill broke down in sniggers all over his immaculate desk and Hellen’s wonderful coffee.
Hellen Wadham was a Find. She’d been working for him, bless her, for several months now, in fact since well before the visit to Chipping Abbas last summer, and coming in to the office was now—urgent summonses from Sir Maurice apart—a pleasure instead of a trial. He’d been through—the phrase was unfortunate but all too apposite—six secretaries during his relatively brief period with YDI before she turned up. The first was a dark-eyed, dark-haired, deep-bosomed, lush-looking creature with a penchant for very expensive French perfumes and severe dark suits with very low-cut jackets under which she apparently wore a sliver of heavy lace or nothing. Perhaps fortunately the first week Hill had to spend actually in the office with her was not his first week with the firm, or he’d have been out on his ear: he had such a hard-on for the entire week that he couldn’t think. The week ended with one of the frequent “workshop” weekends that YDI favoured: normally held at one of their own hotels. This one was an orientation workshop and as Hill and Rowena Tippett were both relatively new and hadn’t yet attended one they both had to go. It was a modern hotel, but as with most of the firm’s houses a conversion, this time of a palatial glass and steel house built for some would-be tycoon just before the big crash of the Eighties. It had a superb view of a minor lake in Cumberland. His room was done out with pale ash furniture against soft blue-grey walls and featured a tall vase of dark blue irises.
Rowena came in just as he was unpacking, removed her suit jacket to display a lacy slip-top of almost the same shade of deep blue, allowed him to give her a brandy, and then, smiling into his eyes, put the brandy aside and both hands on his shoulders, so that was that. She was extremely eager and if by the end of a month Hill had also realized that she was a hopeless secretary with no gift for organisation this wouldn’t really have weighed all that much with him had be not discovered that she was simultaneously doing Jody Carmichael, one of his fellow project managers in Development. Jody was also a bachelor, and also on Sir Maurice Bishop’s very short list of those slated to go somewhere in the firm, so— No doubt he should have been warned by the name: remember bloody Rowena Sanderson, that time he and Colin had been stationed in Germany? Yeah.
Sally Archer was next. Different, you would have said, from Rowena Tippett in every way. Short, with a head of crisp light brown curls, big greenish eyes, and a hint of freckles on the tip-tilted nose. One of those brisk, bright, thin little girls. With, as those little girls often did have, small, perky, lemon-shaped tits. Sally’s blouses for the office were decorously worn buttoned to the neck but as they were thin silk what was under them was fairly apparent. Like herself, her perfume was light and fresh. Her secretarial work was excellent, even if she was apparently incapable of taking Hill’s feeble hint that he didn’t need an extremely complex filing system for his reports and papers, and the plans might be better just filed by the name of the project. She had worked in a very big architectural office before this and had been head-hunted away from them by YDI’s recruitment agency, whose head secretarial recruitment officer had promised Hill that he could not go past her. She was right, there.
Sally had been with him almost two months and he hadn’t gone further than a drink after work in the bar favoured by the firm’s younger execs for happy hour. Then he had to go off and look at a couple of sites in the north, followed by a weekend project consolidation meeting up there. A couple of the other chaps seemed to be taking their secretaries to this, so— He was a bit late getting to the hotel, one of their gloomier efforts as to the outside, a stone pile brooding beside an inlet on the Lancashire coast, but inside all glow and bustle and warmth and Merrie England. The decorator, so the story ran, had been inspired by Kenilworth. Not the actual site, no; and very possibly, if Hill’s memory of the book was correct, not it, either. A Hollywood version? Well, Merrie England, anyway. He located Sally in the Will Scarlet Bar; it did feature a lot of scarlet, yes, mainly wool, and there were scarlet flags to match in Sally’s round cheeks and she urged him with a giggle to try the genuine mead! He didn’t go that far but he did order a genuine Black Label, triple, and he did look with great appreciation at the pointy little tits in their lime green silk blouse, currently unbuttoned to well down between ’em, ooh-er! Dinner featured a lot of the roast beef of Olde England, a reasonable burgundy and a syllabub which wouldn’t have disgraced the court of Elizabeth I. Sally, licking fluff off her upper lip, declared in amazement that it was what you might think angels would have for pudding! Which was pretty good going for a secretary that used a filing scheme based on no fewer than six non-mnemonic alphabetical characters followed by four numerical ones. They sat in the Little John Lounge afterwards for about ten minutes listening to genuine Olde English recorders and genuine Olde English crumhorns, then both collapsed in giggles. At which point Hill brazenly put his arm about those slim little shoulders and said, looking right down the blouse at those pointy little tits: “Come upstairs and let me show you a genuine Olde English good time!”
“I don’t mind if I do!” replied Sally, giggling like mad.
She was extremely keen and quite athletic and he was entirely able to overlook the boniness of the hips and the skinniness of the thighs. And the bikini-line.
Most unfortunately when they got back to London she seemed to think that having been done by her boss entitled her to rule his life. The filing system for the plans became so over-elaborate he was completely unable to find anything it, and the papers and reports were only accessible if he looked up the database which Sally had efficiently set up, and retrieved the relevant code. Not convenient, if his immediate boss or Sir Maurice rang down to say to get up here pronto with the initial concept description for X or the sub-contractor’s quote for Y’s plumbing. Finally Hill had a serious talk about it with Sally. He’d had very little experience of supervising female staff, of course, so he was terrified of a burst of tears. Actually what happened was that she demanded in steely tones if he was unsatisfied with the quality of her work and when he fumbled that it wasn’t the quality so much as the suitability of it to his requirements, asked him to put his complaints in writing, so that the complaints officer could then adjudicate them. Feebly Hill said he didn’t think the firm had one of those but of course he’d write down what he wanted if she thought that would help. Grimly Sally looked up the relevant staff manual, reporting that the position was that of Human Resources Mediation, and it was held by one, Petra Gibbs. Feebly Hill said: “Sally, just do things the way I want them done and we won’t have to have any mediation!”
She was under the impression she had been hired for her expertise and her experience in the field. Hill said wildly he wasn’t an architect and he found it hard to believe that any sane architect hadn’t also been driven crackers by her so-called system and was that why they’d let her go? Sally got up and informed him grimly that he had no right to assume that any personal relationship they might have had gave him the right to speak to her in those terms and she would contact Human Resources Mediation about his harassment immediately.
His boss, John Banks, head of Development, sorted it out by offering the silly little idiot the giant pay-out which the contract the recruitment agency had negotiated for her specified and getting rid of her for good.
“Sorry, John,” said Hill guiltily.
“Must you fuck them?” replied Mr Banks glumly.
Hill cleared his throat. “Um, no. Um, they were keen.”
“It gives them leverage, you bloody idiot.”
“Mm. Sorry, John.”
“We’ll find you another one, but do us an immense favour and hold off,” he said heavily.
“Yes. Thanks, John.”
Melissa O’Connor was forty-five, with a rather florid figure well corseted in a discreet black suit and a mass of red hair well controlled in a neat bun. She had excellent experience in a variety of firms and had worked for one of their administrative staff on the Hospitality side before applying for the position with Hill. She worked quietly and, as far as he could see, efficiently for the first week. The next week he had to be out of the office on the sites. Everything seemed to be in order when he returned. It was possibly a bad sign that Mrs O’Connor’s hair, redder than ever, was now rioting madly about her shoulders, but— By the end of the week she was wearing a low-cut suit jacket with a lot of lace showing underneath it and bending over his desk approximately every ten minutes. Friday came and with it happy hour, but Hill, who had a report to finish, worked on. After a bit he came to, looked at his watch and buzzed Melissa to tell her she could go. In response to this impersonal kindness Mrs O’Connor undulated into the office, bent very low over his desk and said throatily; “Hill, dear: all work and no play, you know!”
Hill wasn’t immune to this treatment: she was several years his elder but not at all bad and, whether or not the red hair was real, she certainly had that pale pinky, satiny skin that many natural red-heads did. “Yes, but we’re in the office: sorry. You’d better go home.”
She went very red and stamped over to the door. “They said you were a bit of all right! Huh! Another piece of limp flannel’d be more like it! What was it, dear: old Sir M. put the fear of God into you, did ’e? He should talk, the old hypocrite! Ask Fee Hutchins where he put his hand, the last Christmas party!”
Before Hill could say anything to this surprising piece of YDI gossip—he’d known Maurice Bishop wasn’t immune but he hadn’t thought he was the sort to risk putting his hand anywhere at office parties—she slammed out.
Her resignation was on his desk on the Monday. That wasn’t bad. What was bad, he discovered as he tried in vain to look for a report he needed for a meeting that morning, was that she had completely fucked up Sally’s filing system. No doubt incapable of understanding it, but Jesus! Why hadn’t the silly bitch said something?
“Just get me someone who can file: please,” he said to the recruitment agency’s new senior secretarial recruitment officer. Of course that wasn’t all that they looked for, and Human Resources reported, lapsing rather from their official non-sexist position, that this time they’d found him a lovely girl.
Jennifer Ayles was lovely. A tall, slim, cool, capable girl with smooth brown hair and an assured manner. The suits were discreet and not low-cut, the blouses were entirely proper and if they bulged gently in the right places that was all they did, and she did not bend over his desk, suggestively or otherwise. And her perfume was completely unobtrusive. She worked quietly and capably for him for three months, restoring Sally’s intricate filing system in its perfect entirety. Oh, Lor’. But at least if you used the bloody database you could find everything; Hill didn’t have the heart to reprove her.
It was the trip to France that finished things. They were supposed to inspect two converted châteaux, with details not just of how the conversions had been handled but of all facilities and comforts offered, not to say details of the number and style of the clientele, then returning by way of Belgium and a place that specialized in numberless varieties of Belgian beer: Sir Maurice had his eye on an old pub in Suffolk but he wanted it to be something very different. Jennifer’s résumé claimed she had an excellent working knowledge of French. They’d been in the country about five minutes when it dawned that this was a lie. Certainly she could read the road signs but that was as far as it went: her spoken French was worse than his was. However, Hill was used to getting himself round foreign countries under far worse conditions than the companionship of a secretary who didn’t speak the lingo, so they got to the first converted château with no trouble and attempted to check in. Oops. Jennifer had made the booking and it was one room and the place was booked out. They took it, perforce. She didn’t utter in the lift going up. Hill didn’t order her to make a note of the ’orrible dinkiness of the antique lift, but it was an effort.
The bed was large, possibly fake-antique, and very French-looking. Hill heaved his suitcase onto it and began to unpack.
“I’m really sorry, Hill,” said Jennifer in a low voice.
“That’s okay. Make a note that this size bedroom doesn’t contain a large sofa, will you?” replied Hill on a dry note.
“I said I wanted a room each for two people! Pour deux!” she burst out.
“Forget it, Jennifer. We’ll cope.” He didn’t think they would, actually: he had meetings set up with a variety of people this trip and Jennifer was supposed to do the translating. He hung up his suits in the wardrobe and then said mildly: “Have you ever been to France before?”
At this Jennifer burst into tears.
Resignedly Hill put an arm round her and urged her to what the room did offer in the way of a sofa: a narrow, two-person sort of fake-rococo thing. Very French-looking.
She sobbed for some time and it all came out. Several bits of the résumé were fake. This certainly explained why she’d been unable to replace Sally’s bloody filing system with something more sensible. Why had she done it? Not just for the money, no: she’d wanted, quite unquote, a “nice” job. Mummy had said the firm of local solicitors where she’d worked for years weren’t nice so she’d gone to the agency, but all the jobs they listed required people with special qualif— Yeah, yeah. And she had done French at school! Hill looked at her weakly, experiencing a sort of despair at the daftness of humanity. But how could he keep her on, after this? It would hardly be fair to the firm. He was about to point this out when Jennifer said soggily: “I’ll resign, of course.”
“I think that would be best. Um, look, if you’ve done legal work I might be able to find you something. I’ll see if my solicitors know of any openings, okay? And I’ll give you a decent reference on condition you don’t fake up any bits of your résumé again.”
“Really?” she breathed. “Oh, thank you, Hill!”
At around this point it dawned that she was an attractive young woman and they were entwined on a small sofa. He got up, advised her to blow her nose and have a hot shower, and then they’d see what the dining-room could do for them. Gratefully Jennifer agreed.
It was pretty late but the dining-room turned on a miraculous meal, not nouvelle cuisine at all, which Hill had been dreading—the weather was distinctly chilly—but a solid pâté de campagne, a sole Normande of your dreams, something called porc bonne femme which he decided should go on YDI’s non-minceur menus immediately—if there was a chef in England capable of making it, which he sincerely doubted—an amazingly crisp, fresh endive salad—the curly sort, not the white, very bitter ones which the French called endives belges—and an incredible, oozy Camembert that had never felt the chill of a refrigerator in its life. There were desserts on offer after that and Jennifer had something, but Hill just ordered a Cognac and coffee and sat back dreamily. “Doesn’t France make you feel you’re on another planet?” he said dreamily. “Planet Happy!”
“Um, yes!” said Jennifer with a startled laugh. “Or Planet Food, I think!”
Funnily enough this exchange prompted thoughts of other exchanges they might have. So when they went upstairs and Jennifer said why didn’t they have another brandy and see what was on French telly he didn’t veto the suggestion. As nothing comprehensible was on French telly they drank rather a lot of brandy, sitting cosily together propped up on the big bed, and when somehow she fell against him, giggling, he put his arm round her and somehow kissed her. After which he rapidly discovered that that cool exterior shielded a considerable amount of heat. Or maybe it was reaction, or something. Anyway, she was very, very keen. Next morning she firmly said that this mustn’t make any difference, she was still resigning, and Hill said reluctantly she’d better, but he’d definitely help her find another job.
“Can I ask why you let that one go?” groaned the martyred John Banks.
“Not the sort of job she was looking for, after all. More used to law firms.”
His boss eyed him glumly. “Several little birds have told me they saw the pair of you living it up over large gins at the Savoy only the other day.”
“That ass Jody Carmichael, you mean. Mine was a gin, yes. Hers was a vodka martini: she wanted to know what James Bond saw in ’em.”
“Look, if you’re still doing the bitch, why did she want to— Forget it,” he sighed.
“Um, between you and me and the gatepost, that very nice résumé of hers wasn’t exactly accurate,” admitted Hill.
Breathing deeply and rolling his eyes, Mr Banks rang Human Resources and ordered them on pain of death not to use that recruitment agency again.
Barbara Burton was a dark-haired, slim, quite handsome, competent woman in her late thirties. Very neat-looking. The good German and French listed on her résumé were true, as was the reasonable Italian with the aid of a dictionary. She had had experience of a good number of filing systems and offered eagerly to replace Sally’s one with another but as it seemed just as bad Hill thought they should stick with what they had. She did the work he required and she didn’t make eyes at him or, as far as he knew, any of the other male employees. Or, indeed, any of the female employees. She had a wedding ring on her left hand but she called herself Ms and as she didn’t volunteer any details of her private life, Hill didn’t ask. There was one weekend workshop at which he could really have used her services and which she missed because of a bout of stomach flu but that apart he was very satisfied with her.
It took over six months for it to fall apart. Hill took the call himself because Barbara was human enough to have to go to the loo. It was her son’s school, in a flat spin because Master Lenny Burton, aged ten, had fallen off a high object on which he shouldn’t have been perched and broken a leg and concussed himself. Hill had several meetings scheduled that day but he took the white-faced Barbara to the hospital himself.
As it turned out Lenny was okay, but Barbara was forced to admit that she had three of them. Peter was at secondary school: he was never any bother. Mm. Never any bother until he got hit by a bus or was caught taking drugs or doing young ladies behind the toilet block: yes. Susie was only six but she had very good after-school care— Hill demanded chapter and verse on the so-called stomach flu. Susie had had a temperature: right. And the day Barbara had been extraordinarily late in and claimed the bus had broken down? Primary school teachers on strike, had to take Lenny and Susie over to her sister-in-law’s: right. Grimly Barbara pointed out that he could not legally discriminate against her because she had kids. Hill passed his hand over his hair and replied that he didn’t want to, but he sincerely doubted she could manage the sort of job which required odd weekends or even whole weeks away, with three kids of school age. And he’d prefer to have a secretary that could devote all of her mind to the job, and before she rushed off to see Discrimination Mediation could she just think about it rationally? Or was there a partner who could take half the burden off her— No.
That wasn’t the end of it but after an interview with Human Resources Hill managed to find another slot for her within YDI that wouldn’t require her to travel at all. It was a step down in salary but Barbara didn’t kick up: perhaps it had dawned, since Human Resources had introduced the word “misrepresentation” into one of their discussions, that the firm’d be within their rights to sack her.
“Don’t speak,” he warned John Banks. “It’s not me that makes them lie when they apply for the job!”
“No; I think it’s Western society as we know it, isn’t it?” replied Mr Banks very mildly indeed.
Yes, well, that certainly went some way towards explaining why the Development division was such a happy ship! Hill smiled at him and promised to try very hard with the next one.
Viv Jensen-Hannah was the sixth in Hill’s series of disasters. She was in her early thirties, had worked with Sally’s bloody system before, had a background in project management and the building industry, and spoke reasonable French and excellent German with a smattering of Spanish. She required to be called his PA but Hill didn’t mind and YDI raised no objections. Viv was a slim, unremarkable, neat brown-haired person with, apart from the PA nonsense, a no-nonsense manner. She proved extremely capable—terrifyingly so, indeed—and in fact proposed setting up a series of seminars to teach all the other secretaries in Development the filing system. This had to be vetoed—hard though it was to do so without pointing out that many of the secretaries didn’t have the brain-power to cope with the damn’ system and none of the execs wanted to be bothered with something that couldn’t be used by going to the shelves and putting one’s hand on the required item.
Then she came up with an even better plan. Everyone’s files could be put on the one database, which would be networked! Good in theory though this idea might have seemed, they didn’t need it. The firm did not handle hundreds of projects a year and all the project management staff had regular meetings, so they already had some idea of what was happening in the other projects. Added to which they were all required to read all completion reports. There were only three project managers, including Hill: each was in charge of the files relating to his projects and if John Banks wanted to look at any of them he merely contacted them or their secretaries. But, Viv pointed out reasonably, they could learn from the other projects and in fact if the project documents were indexed in the way she envisaged— John made her prepare a detailed proposal with exact times for every required action. This took hours and hours but Viv managed it without either the quantity or quality of her output for Hill noticeably diminishing. Terrifying—yes. What was even more terrifying was that in spite of the fact that she now had all the figures in black and white before her she couldn’t see that the gigantic effort would not be worth the time (and salaries) involved.
“Organised, energetic, methodical, but limited,” said John Banks to Hill with a sigh. “Incapable of taking a wider view. We get ’em like that all the time in project management. Quite unusual to see one cropping up on the secretarial side.”
“Never mind that! Can’t you for God’s sake use her somewhere else? She’s driving me bananas! She’s started linking all the digital copies of my documents to the ruddy database and when she’s finished that she’s proposing to digitize the documents that we haven’t got electronic copies of—quotes and God knows what—”
“I’ll talk to IT. God knows they could use someone with organizing ability.”
“Thanks, John. And please note I’ve refrained from doing her.”
Unfortunately IT refused to have her because she didn’t have the computer science qualifications all their pointy-headed little nerds had. Hill looked hopefully at his boss. “There must be somewhere she could go! Couldn’t you shove her off onto Hospitality?”
“Hill,” said Mr Banks heavily, “you’re a big boy now. I know you’ve had your nose to the grindstone since you started with us, but you must have gained some grasp of the ramifications of Hospitality by this time. You shove her off onto them. –By which I mean find a job that needs doing, that she can apply her organizing skills to, where she won’t drive everyone mad before, during and after, and where the result will actually be an improvement in cost-effectiveness.”
Hill didn’t bleat that he hadn’t seen the working end of Hospitality, he’d only been involved in planning projects and making projects come in on time and within budget, much though he felt like it. He replied grimly: “All right, I bloody will!”
A great deal of time and energy could have been expended on trying to push Viv off onto Hospitality and Hill very nearly made this fatal error. Fortunately he had a relatively free weekend to think about it, and it suddenly came to him, as he strolled along the Embankment on the Sunday. “By God!” he said with a laugh, immediately discarding all the potty and time-wasting visits he’d been about to plunge into.
Bright and early on Monday morning, therefore, he told Viv his feeling was that her talents were being wasted in his office: Development was much too small for her, but Hospitality’s wider scope would suit her and there was a chance for a keen young person who had good computer skills and organisational flair—“flair” was a good one, he silently congratulated himself as she beamed at him—provided that she or he could identify a place where efficiency could be greatly improved and suggest a methodology. Of course she’d still have to do her work for him but she could most certainly come on any trips that entailed visiting their existing houses.
With the enthusiasm of the new broom Viv would of course have done the entire project in her own time but Hill was on the alert for that and saw to it, once he’d checked over her idea, that she just put forward a preliminary proposal with enough figures to look tempting.
Hill in person trotted the report along to John Banks. “It’s for the consumables. A digital ordering syst—”
“Not the chefs?” he croaked, turning pale.
“No! Am I barmy? The minute she mentioned the word ‘chef’ I squashed her flat! No, they can go on using the backs of menus, or painstakingly typing each order on their Olivettis, or—”
“The Keep of Ailsh Park Royal and that dump in Lancashire,” said Mr Banks, grinning.
“The Landry Towers Park Royal—yeah.”
“Old Rainey at the Keep is the best chef we’ve got,” he said, grinning.
“I realize that; that lobster of his was unbelievable. Likewise that bombe thing with the ices one inside the other.”
“Which was it, the chocolate and the champagne?”
Hill nodded, sighing deeply.
“Mm. Did it for H.R.H. Dunno that he knew what he was eating, mind. Oh—Rainey’ll do you a porc bonne femme any time you care to ask him for it, by the way.”
Hill swallowed and tried to smile.
“Go on, tell us about it. –This system of your PA’s,” he said clearly.
“Uh—yeah. It’s a supply-chain system. For the basics, not the fresh lobsters the chefs buy down the market. Seems to be more or less what the building firm she worked for used. Requires no knowledge of computers by such persons as delivery men, chefs or similar lucky computer illiterates at either end of the chain. Each bulk delivery has a barcode slapped onto it on arrival. Most of the people down the chain only have to point a barcode reader as they perform their allotted tasks. By the time the stuff gets to the chefs a minion will already have done the pointing.”
“You relieve my mind extremely,” he said politely.
“What I liked was that those accepting delivery have to sign a chit which is digitized so that we have an incontrovertible record not only of what’s supposedly gone where but also of whose grubby little mitts have been on it. So Bert can’t say: ‘Aw, gee, that fifty kilos of cheap Romanian sugar never come,’ meanwhile Mrs Bert, her sisters and her cousins and her aunts are all refilling their sugar bowls. Likewise Joe that left it with Bert isn’t unjustly accused of nicking it on the way.”
“Mm. What if Joe’s an expert forger?” He relented. “Well, it doesn’t sound bad; I’ll have a look at it.”
“Thanks. And just remember, it may not be perfect but the girl deserves a chance.”
“I’ll remember that, Hill,” agreed John dulcetly.
Grinning a sheepish grin, Hill slid out while the going was good.
Viv’s scheme was approved and Viv went over to Hospitality Supply where she was given the new position of Systems Manager, Supply. After her scheme had been shown to work brilliantly for their bulk consumables, it was adopted for all their supplies, and in the end Development adopted it for their building supplies as well—after all, it had originated as a supply-chain scheme for building materials.
Meanwhile Hill said grimly to Human Resources: “I’ll sit in at the next set of interviews for my secretary, thanks.” So they sent him over a huge load of bumf on their interviewing procedures and techniques, but he chucked it out. If it hadn’t worked for them why would it work for him? He looked at it overflowing from his wastepaper basket and had another Thort. As a consequence candidates were interviewed in Hill’s outer office and he then took each one to the door of his own office, pointed to the heap of stuff he’d hauled off the shelves and chucked on the floor and said: “What would you do with that?”
They all said “Pick it up and refile it for you, sir,” except for the middle-aged, stodgy-looking, uninterestingly dressed Hellen Wadham, whose résumé listed two jobs in a forty-year working life, both with very dull government departments, from the second of which she had recently taken a redundancy package.
Hellen looked drily at the mess. Then she said: “Well, first I’d pick it up, it’s creating a hazard. Then I’d ask you why you threw it there in the first place.”
“Good for you, Miss Wadham,” replied Hill staidly. The Human Resources persons on the interview panel duly blinked. “Come and sit down again and tell me about your last job. Why did you leave?”
“She was made redundant, Hill,” said Ms Jamie Highett of Human Resources.
“Mm.” Hill looked expectantly at Hellen.
“My boss retired and as they were offering redundancy packages, I took one.”
“Uh-huh. And I gather from this,” he said, looking at the CV, “your boss was the boss, mm?”
“Wasn’t he a PA?” said Mr Leslie Page of Human Resources before the luckless interviewee could open her mouth. “Yes, here we are: only an under-secretary.”
“That’s right,” said Miss Wadham without a flicker. “Sir Gerald Knighton.”
“Quite,” said Hill, clearing his throat. “Sorry, Miss Wadham, YDI doesn’t get many applications from former civil servants.”
“So I gather,” she agreed drily.
Mr Leslie Page opened his misguided mouth again but Hill said quickly: “I’ll take it from here, thanks, Leslie. Why in God’s name do you want to work for YDI, Miss Wadham?”
“Several reasons. I think it sounds interesting, and it’d be a new field for me. Then, I’m fed up sitting around at home wondering whether to blow half my redundancy package on a world trip in the company of the blue-rinsed set.”
“Uh-huh. What do you think you can do for me?”
Hellen Wadham looked him straight in the eye and said: “That depends on why you chucked those papers on the floor.”
Hill scratched his chin slowly. “Partly to see if anyone’d have the nous not to offer to refile ’em. I don’t think I’m giving away any corporate secrets if I say you’re the only one so far.”
“And?” she said unemotionally.
“Partly because I’m so fed up with the intricacies of the bloody filing system dreamed up by one of your predecessors that I could scream!”
“In that case I can abolish the system and set up something really simple for you.”
“Using a database?” asked Hill neutrally.
“If that’s what you want. I’ve found that men in a hurry,” said Hellen Wadham, serenely avoiding any avoidance of the sexist phrase, “prefer to be able to put their hand straight on the document in question. That or have it put straight in front of them within two seconds of having asked for it.”
“Thank God!” replied Hill with feeling. “This is what I’ve been looking for all along!” he said with feeling to the interview panel.
“Um, Hill,” said Jamie uneasily, trying to smile, “it does sound as if Miss Wadham may be what you’re looking for, but we will need to verify her references. Her written reference does look good and the agency assures us they’ve verified it, but we haven’t been able—”
“Where is he?” said Hill heavily to Miss Wadham.
“At this time of year?” she replied unemotionally. “Wouldn’t you know that better than I?”
“Uh—” Hill looked wildly at his desk calendar. Somehow he’d forgotten to take any sort of summer hols, this year. It was certainly past the glorious twelfth. “Balmoral?”
“Not this year, no.”
He took a deep breath. “Then he’s at bloody Craigie Castle, isn’t he?”
“I think so,” she admitted, allowing herself to smile just a little.
“Excuse me,” he said to the room generally, picking up his phone and dialling the number at home. Unfortunately Pa answered, rather than Ma or Allan. “Pa—” he said heavily. “No, fine. Yes, I know. I’ll be down some time soon, been too busy to turn round, lately. Pa— Look, you can tell me about Coot’s bottom another time! All right, not her bottom! I need the number of that dump of Uncle Hubert’s up in Scotland and if you can’t put your finger on it, get Allan or Ma, would you?—Sorry,” he said to the room at large, smiling at them. “My father’s hopeless on the phone. Thinks a call means one has all day to chat.”
“My dad’s exactly the same since he retired!” agreed Mr Page eagerly. “Is he retired, Hill?”
Hill made a rueful face. “Mm. Supposed to be. Allan’s running the farm—my brother. Pa keeps poking his nose in, of course.”
“Dad’s just the same! He’s driving Vince crazy!”
“What business is your family in, Leslie?” asked Hill kindly, since everyone was looking interested and the receiver was emitting only distant sounds of barking and quacking: Blackie chasing Ma’s ducks.
They were travel agents, not in a very big way, but did quite well… The panel and their interviewee had heard quite a lot about the Page family by the time the receiver said loudly in Hill’s ear: “Are you there? Hilly! Are you there?”
“Of course I’m here. Have you got it?” He had, amazingly enough, so Hill wrote it down carefully. “Pa, did you let Blackie slip out? Why? Because I heard barking and quacking, that’s w— Yes, ’bye to you, too!” He hung up, grinning. “Ma’s going to skin him alive, he’s let the dog chase her ducks!”
In the general laughter over that one he dialled Scotland. The old boy answered himself. “Hullo, Uncle Hubert, it’s Hill—” And etcetera, etcetera… “This isn’t a social call, I’m at work. Is Uncle Gerry staying with you? Then I’d like to speak to him, please.”
The panel goggled open-mouthed as he spoke to his mother’s brother. He then passed the receiver to Miss Wadham, poker-faced. “He’d like to speak to you.”
They goggled open-mouthed as she spoke to her former boss, telling him calmly why she’d applied for the job in the very terms she’d used to Hill, and asked warmly after Lady Knighton. Sir Gerald then spoke at length. “I see,” said Miss Wadham at last. “Thank you, Sir Gerald, that does help. No, I had no idea: the recruitment places don’t give out that sort of information. Would you like to speak to your nephew again?” And, first checking with Hill, she bade him goodbye and hung up.
After quite some time Ms Highett said in a small voice: “I wish you’d mentioned it, Hill.”
Ms Amanda Peel, who hadn’t spoken for some time, added: “Yes, you must have seen she’d worked for your uncle, I mean, we did send you copies of all their CVs!”
“Yes, but I didn’t have time to read them, I’m afraid, Amanda. Pretty busy in Development, y’know! Well, Uncle Gerry gives you a glowing reference, of course, Miss Wadham,” he said to her, smiling. “Please do come and work for me! When can you start?”
“He gave you a good reference, too, so as soon as you like, sir.”
“Gosh! This afternoon?” he said with a laugh.
“If you like,” said Miss Wadham placidly.
And with a certain amount of confusion over official starting time, largely on the part of Amanda Peel, it was agreed. Hill stood up. “Anyone feel like a celebratory lunch? On me!”
Funnily enough they all did, even though, as Mr Page noted weakly, there were some more that hadn’t been interviewed yet. The receptionist was told to tell these luckless persons that the position had been filled, and Hill took his interview panel and his new secretary off to a decent lunch. It was, actually, the first time he’d felt like eating for some time. He was drowning in paperwork since Viv had gone off to Hospitality.
Hellen’s system worked with miraculous simplicity. She actually understood that each project had its own inner logic and that was how its managers remembered its components. The concept draft document, for instance, was not always document number N within a specific project. It could have been preceded by any number of large reports, proposals and in some cases elaborate prospectuses from would-be sellers or their agents—or by none, merely a phone call from Sir Maurice. For convenience she had numbered each project simply, starting with 1, but in addition allotted it a colour. The Cottesford Manor conversion, Hill’s first project for the firm, was thus simply numbered 1, and all of its reports and folders featured a broad pink stripe across their spines. It was thus incredibly easy to go straight to the required project on the shelves. The documents within a project were given a running number as they came in. This did mean that in the pink section the concept draft was the first document and in the pale blue section it was the sixteenth but that was how that project had gone and that was how Hill remembered them. Alone of humankind, was Hellen Wadham: yes.
He discovered after the system had been flowing along for some time that she did in fact record everything in the database, where she had replaced Sally’s elaborate codes—she must have had to read Sally’s bloody manuals—with actual words. So if you typed in “Cottesford Manor” and “Concept draft” the screen displayed the record for the concept draft for Cottesford Manor and told you it was Project 1, Document 1 (Pink). Easy-peasy. And Viv’s incredibly complex sequence of correspondence folders in the filing cabinets, using Sally’s dreaded codes to indicate the subjects, had been abolished. In fact Hellen had had the largest filing cabinet bodily removed, thus freeing up a considerable amount of Hill’s floor space. She simply stored all letters in ring-binders—not too large, incidentally, to lift easily off the shelves if they were full. Each project thus had its own set of colour-coded folders labelled, for example, “Project 1. Cottesford Manor. LETTERS 1.” Inside them the letters were filed by date, the latest on top, and at the front of each folder Hellen provided an up-to-date list of its contents. It was so wonderful not to have to search through bafflingly coded files with one’s neck excruciatingly twisted to one side in order to find one sheet of paper which one couldn’t read as it lay on its side in its bloody file folder! Later Hill discovered that Hellen did track all correspondence in the database, making use of Viv’s digitising idea and scanning each incoming letter. “It’s not something you need to bother about. It’s just a failsafe,” she said mildly to her boss. It was that, all right! He’d just about gone out of his skull when Jody Carmichael had “borrowed” a crucial piece of incoming correspondence during Jennifer’s reign.
Now Hill drank his wonderful secretary’s wonderful coffee, sighed, got up, grabbed the “Chipping Abbas Preliminary Feasibility Study” ring binder (lime green), and went out into Hellen’s office. “I’d better get it over with,” he said glumly. She nodded sympathetically, tactfully refraining from mentioning the several reasons why he didn’t want to hear the words “Chipping Abbas” at this particular point in time, and Hill headed glumly for the plush comfort of Maurice’s office on the twentieth floor.
Sir Maurice Bishop, at sixty-odd, resembled a lapsed monk who’d been living the good life for quite some time. The once-lean cheeks had filled out and sagged a bit, and the thin, hawk-like nose had coarsened, though there was still something oddly ascetic about the structure of the high cheekbones and widely-set eyes.
After some preliminary woffle he came out with: “Hope it isn’t too soon to bring the matter up, but we can’t drag our heels in business. What is the position with Chipping Abbas?”
It was too bloody soon, and Hellen’s categorising of it as “indecent” wasn’t far out. It was two weeks since Col Tarlington had been killed in a car crash, driving his Lamborghini far too fast on the American freeways. Typically of the care-for-nothing Col Tarlington, the entail on Chipping Abbas had never been broken and, Col being the last male of his line, the place had reverted to the senior branch of the Tarlington family.
Hill took a very deep breath. “Maurice, several people have spoken to me about Chipping Abbas and I have to say it, the best advice I’ve had so far is to tell you to eat your shorts.”
To his astonishment there was no explosion. In fact the old man got up looking sheepish and said: “Damned sorry, Hill,” and held out his hand.
“So am I,” said Hill grimly, nonetheless shaking it.
Sir Maurice held on. “Get off home. Start your summer holiday early. Dare say your mother’ll be glad to see you.”
“Mm. Okay, I will. Thanks.”
Sir Maurice nodded, and Hill went out, his fists clenched.
The CEO of YDI sat down slowly. He pressed his intercom button. “Get in here, Julian.”
His door opened and his PA appeared, smoothing his blond hair. “He looks dreadful. You should have made him take more compassionate leave when his father died.”
Sir Maurice glared at him. “Shut up, Julian. Find out exactly what the legal position is over Chipping Abbas and what the death duties’ll be on the whole estate.”
Julian sighed. “I’m not going to ask what you said to poor Hill, though I can guess.”
“I told him to go home and start his holidays, Goddammit!” he bellowed.
“Good.” Julian poured him a glass of water and handed him a pill.
Sir Maurice scowled, but took it.
“I will spend hours doing that stuff you were bellowing about if you really want me to, but there’s absolutely no need. We can’t hurry it up, however much we know about it. And if you’re imagining we won’t get Chipping Abbas after all, don’t. For goodness’ sake! Who else would Hill offer it to?” said the PA brightly.
“Perhaps you could live in it, Hilly,” said Allan very mildly to the heir to Chipping Abbas when Mr Partridge of Wells, Partridge, Dent had run down and the silence had had time to lengthen.
Hilliard Tarlington, on the death of his father, Sir Jolyon, back in December, had become the head of the Tarlington family and, thanks to his distant cousin Col’s dilatoriness, Chipping Abbas was now hanging like an albatross round his neck. So he replied sourly to his brother’s kind suggestion: “On what? The proceeds of the sale of Coot and Swallow? The fabulous income Blackie’ll produce when we get him trained up to be a performing telly dog?”
“It’s all right, Blackie, we won’t,” said his mother, patting the panting Blackie. “Don’t be like that, Hilly, darling,” she added with a sigh. “Your pa couldn’t help having nothing to leave: most of it went on death duties back in the Twenties. And we wouldn’t even have the land if they hadn’t got the insurance when the old house burned down before the War.”
Hill bit his lip. “No. Sorry, Ma.”
Harriet put in brightly: “Hilly, you could live at Chipping Abbas and turn it into a hotel!”
“It’s an idea, Hilly,” agreed Allan. “Why not make an agreement with YDI whereby you live in part of it and they put in a professional manager?”
“Uh—I suppose it’s not impossible,” he said feebly. “I never thought of living in the dump. Though very possibly the idea’s occurred to Maurice Bishop.”
“Yes,” agreed his brother drily. “You’d only just started that project management qualification when you applied to join YDI, and all you had behind you was that silly stint racing about on the moors with paint guns. There must’ve been a terrific lot of real project managers out there miles more qualified than you.”
“Quite. And not related to Uncle Hubert or his security systems, either. –It’s all right, Ma,” he said to his mother’s feeble, red-faced protest: “their possible ulterior motives dawned on me at the time they agreed to give me an interview. Though I admit it didn’t dawn that Maurice was after Pa’s Stubbs until I’d been with them three months and he invited me to dinner at that barn of his in Hampstead and showed me his bloody collection.”
There was a short silence. Then his mother said somewhat faintly: “Hilly, dear, it’s your Stubbs now.”
Hill went very red. “He’s still not getting it,” he said grimly.
Mr Partridge cleared his throat. “I should say that it’s not impossible that Sir Maurice Bishop would agree to your residing in the house, Sir Hilliard.”
Hill smiled at him. “Mm. With a clause stipulating that I have to parade in front of the guests at an appointed hour every day looking affable.”
“Impossible!” said Allan with laugh.
“Would it kill you?” demanded Harriet fiercely.
Hill blinked. “Well, no. But I’d rather work for a living, frankly, Harriet.”
“But it’s such a nice house!” she cried on a note of anguish. “One of the nicest in England!”
Hill looked from her to her husband in bewilderment.
“That tour of stately ’omes we did—don’t ask,” said Will, closing his eyes briefly.
“Yeah. Um, well, do you types want to live in it?” he ventured.
“No,” said Will hurriedly.
“No! We couldn’t possibly!” said Harriet crossly—and, her brother began to perceive, untruthfully. Help. “I mean, Will can work anywhere”—Will was a scientific editor for a large academic publishing house: he eyed her somewhat drily but didn’t point out that although he did work from home he had to get into the office fairly regularly—“but there’s the boys’ schooling to think of. And we can’t neglect Jolyon’s music!”
“Joe,” corrected Will with a sigh. “He won’t answer if you call him Jolyon, and who can blame him, poor little tyke?”
Harriet gave him an evil glare. “It’s a beautiful name.”
“It’s a damned silly name,” replied Will firmly.
“Jolly always loathed it, too,” said the late Sir Jolyon’s widow calmly.
“Um, yes, ’course he did, Ma,” agreed Will uncomfortably.
“His mother got it out of Galsworthy, it’s never been a family name,” she added.
“Unlike Hilliard,” noted Allan dreamily.
“Shut up,” he said, grinning. “Look, there’s no reason why not, if you types fancy it. Ditterminster School isn’t bad, and the cathedral has a very decent choir.”
Will was now very red. “We couldn’t possibly, Hill. I mean, of course we’d insist on a decent rent, but it wouldn’t go a fraction of the way towards the upkeep of a place that size.”
“No, but if Harriet’s full scheme comes off it won’t need to, will it?” he said drily.
His sister glared. “You can’t just let it go!”
“Harriet,” said Hill faintly, “it’s not as if it’s our old ho—”
“It’s part of England’s heritage!” she cried. “You persuade him, Mr Partridge!”
The unfortunate lawyer blenched. “Er—well, it is an attractive house, yes, Mrs Blaiklock.”
Harriet bounced up. “Why did it have to come to him? Pa wouldn’t have let it go out of the family without a fight!” She ran out of the room, sobbing angrily.
“Sorry about that, Mr Partridge,” said Hill quickly. “She’s still very upset over Pa going—though it wasn’t unexpected, of course.”
Will made to get up but his mother-in-law said calmly: “I’d leave her to it, Will. Harriet’s one of those people who can’t really grasp that things have to change. She was just the same when her granny went.”
“Actually, that’s right,” remembered Hill. “Though she was only eight at the time. Well, thank you very much for bothering to come down and explain it all to us, Mr Partridge.”
“Absolutely!” agreed his mother quickly. “So very kind—and you know, Hill could have just gone up to your office. Now, I think we should have our tea. There’s a lovely Madeira cake, so don’t say you have to hurry back to town!” she adjured the lawyer.
Feebly Mr Partridge accepted this kind invitation and she hurried out to put the kettle on.
The four men looked at one another somewhat weakly.
“We’re really not that badly off, Mr Partridge,” admitted Hill. “Well, you should know that, if anyone does!” he added with a smile. “But being landed with a second country place is really the last straw!”
“Um, look, Hilly, old man,” said his brother awkwardly, “I should—”
“Allan, I am not grinding rent out of you and your little girls to live in your own home! And God knows this place should start to show a profit from the organic produce pretty soon.” He got up quickly and grabbed the heavy silver tea service off his befuddled Ma. “I’m not asking why you’ve trotted this lot out,” he warned.
“I thought Mr Partridge might like to see it,” she replied placidly. “It’s William IV, Mr Partridge: it’s a tea service that Aden Tarlington bought for his wife before his father died and they had to leave Chipping Abbas and come back to Guillyford Place. It wasn’t part of the patrimony, you see, it was bought with some of the fortune he inherited from old Jeremiah Aden, so it went to… a granddaughter, I think. Well, in any case it’s been in the dower house forever, so that’s why we’ve still got it!” she finished, beaming.
Mr Partridge, her elder son reflected wryly, probably knew this—the lawyer knew the family history better then any of them did. But yes, it did explain why the Tarlingtons of Guillyford Place still had the silver tea service that had been used by that Henrietta who adorned the walls of Chipping Abbas, while the rest of the Tarlington ancestral plate had melted down in the big fire of 1932 that destroyed the great house of Guillyford Place and incidentally ensured the senior branch of the family could remain, albeit as humble farmers—more latterly humble organic farmers—in the small dower house on what was left of the ancestral estate that had once occupied a good deal of the lower half of Sussex. Chipping Abbas itself had gone to Aden Tarlington’s second son and his line.
After tea the Blaiklocks headed for home, Harriet telling Hill as a parting shot that he’d regret it if he just handed Chipping Abbas over to YDI and Will trying to shut her up.
Mr Partridge was also about to take his leave; quickly Hill asked him if the lawyers had managed to discover what had become of Col Tarlington’s family by his first marriage. The answer was a lemon: they’d only discovered what the family already knew, that the wife had moved to New Zealand, taking the baby girl with her. And Mr Partridge felt it incumbent upon him to point out that Sir Hilliard had no obligation there. He meant well, of course.
Hill tried to smile at him. “No, but I’d just like to be sure that they’re not in want.”
To his relief the man didn’t raise any more objections. Hill shook his hand warmly, thanked him for all his good offices, and saw him into his Bentley with a sigh of relief.
Back in the pretty sitting-room of Guillyford House his mother said thoughtfully: “I think I might accept your Aunt Lou’s invitation to go over to Florida this summer. Your pa never fancied it—well, he couldn’t stand Lou even back before the first face-lift. I tell you what, Hilly: why don’t you all stay at Chipping Abbas these holidays?”
“What?” he sighed.
“Er—I can’t leave the farm for too long, but shall we think about it, Hilly?” put in Allan.
Hill got up, sighing. “If you like. Excuse me, I’m going for a stroll.”
In his absence Lady Tarlington knitted placidly and Allan eyed her uneasily.
“Um, Ma, I suppose there’s no hope he can sell bloody Chipping Abbas?”
“No, dear. It’s entailed.”
Allan nodded. “Mm. Um, well, of course he has looked at it for the firm. But I suppose it couldn’t hurt to spend a few weeks there. And he needs a holiday: he’s looking tired.”
“Yes; he’s had a lot on his plate these last few years. And he’s never got over that Hattie girl that he let slip through his fingers because he was so sure he couldn’t fall for an ordinary plump girl with an Australian accent that worked in computers and didn’t fall into his arms when he made one of his usual passes.”
Allan swallowed hard. “He hasn’t mentioned her for years!”
“I know.” She knitted calmly.
Finally Allan said weakly: “I suppose Chipping Abbas isn’t too far. Harriet’ll probably be keen. And they have sold that place in France… I’ll see what Will thinks.”
His mother knitted placidly. “Good.”
Next chapter:
https://theprojectmanager-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/04/abbots-halt.html
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