His Girl Monday to Friday Page 12

  Barbara, of course—she’d probably tell him it was all his fault—but at least she’d get the job done with a minimum of fuss. At least she wouldn’t dissolve into tears if he made some simple observation on the simplicity of the instructions which the secretary had been asked to follow.

  Since he couldn’t go through the financial data he’d wanted, he should really get on with the background material. He took a handful of company reports out of his briefcase. Barbara was completely preposterous, he thought. It was simply not true that he didn’t talk to women as soon as he’d slept with them. As soon as he got back he would sleep with Barbara and get her out of his system and prove that she was completely wrong.

  He would help her with her career. Usually when he thought of her these days he found himself imagimng, in vivid detail, what it was going to be like to go on undressing her, what it was going to be like not to stop at kisses. This time, unexpectedly, he had a mental image of her intent, excited face as she hammered home some point about her presentation. It was as if he’d brought to life again something he’d thought he’d killed off years ago to further his own ambition.

  He was pricked by an unaccustomed feeling of tenderness. He mustn’t let it happen again, he thought. She was bright and full of promise, but she had a long way to go; he must find things for her to do where she wouldn’t be tripped up by her inexperience, fatally damaging her confidence.

  Everything was going to be different this time, he decided. He’d been selfish and egotistical in his teens, and Barbara always treated him as though he hadn’t changed. He would prove she was wrong. First he would sleep with her so she stopped getting under his skin, then he would go back to being a kind of honorary older brother—the kind of older brother he should have been all those years ago. He could go back to seeing women who didn’t interfere with his concentration, and Barbara would see how generous and encouraging and altruistic he really was and stop sniping at him every time he made a polite request of some member of his staff.

  Having reached this satisfying conclusion, he opened an annual report and put her out of his mind. He read a couple of pages and found he was thinking about her again. He gritted his teeth and read another page, and found he was reliving the moment when he had woken up to feel her mouth on his. What in God’s name was the matter with him? Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. He would sleep with her the night he got back, he decided. The sooner he stopped thinking about her the better.

  Barbara, meanwhile, was actually glad to have Charles out of the way. She grilled every member of staff at Mallory who’d ever given a pitch, then she hijacked Mike Carlin and made him give her an intensive session on the new software. She called her old temp agencies and had temps come in to try the new challenge just to see how it worked. She bought a new suit and she practised in front of a video recorder, giving the presentation again and again and again.

  It should have been easy to put Charles out of her mind since he was out of the office, but it wasn‘t—and not just because memories kept turning up at five-minute intervals. The real thing kept turning up at the end of her phone. Not that Charles necessarily asked for her. He would call the unsuspecting temp brought in while Personnel hired him a secretary, scorch the wires from Czechoslovakia until the temp hung up and stormed out of the building in tears, then call the switchboard and ask to be put through to Barbara.

  ‘Where do they find these idiots?’ he would snarl, and then throw out some question so complicated you had to be a genius or at least telepathic to understand, let alone answer it Somehow or other Barbara would get to the bottom of it, find the file, dig out the spreadsheet and fax across the crucial piece of paper. Then he would tell her she shouldn’t be wasting her time on trivial secretarial tasks.

  ‘Correction,’ Barbara retorted the fourth time it happened. ‘You shouldn’t be wasting my time. But you asked for my extension so you must have decided it was pretty urgent.’

  ‘It is urgent—that’s why I need to have a competent secretary instead of an airhead.’

  ‘Anyone competent doesn’t have to put up with the likes of you,’ Barbara said cheerfully. It felt good to be insulting Charles again; at least it took her mind off her presentation.

  ‘How’s the presentation coming along?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Barbara said gloomily.

  ‘I just did,’ said Charles.

  ‘I know the subject inside out,’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve bought a new suit. I’ve practised in front of a video camera. It’s going to be diabolical.’

  ‘You’ll wow ‘em,’ said Charles. ‘Does it have a short skirt?‘

  ‘Ish,’ said Barbara.

  ‘I knew I was right to hand this one over to you,’ said Charles. ‘Do you know how to say “I can’t get you out of my mind” in Czech?’

  ‘No,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Charles. ‘And if I did you wouldn’t understand it, but the English sounds so corny. How’s your Hungarian?’

  ‘It doesn’t stretch that far,’ said Barbara.

  ‘And mine’s non-existent. Well, we’ll just have to consider it unsaid. Sayonara, darling.’

  The line went dead. Barbara stared at her receiver, then slowly replaced it Could he possibly mean it? Just for a moment a warm glow spread through her, but then she remembered. Charles could be charming when he wanted to be, and he always did want to be before he’d slept with someone. You couldn’t take it seriously. Besides, if this presentation was the complete fiasco it was almost certain to be, he wasn’t going to be wasting much more of his charm on her. She shuddered and started going through her presentation for the fortieth time.

  It was easy to talk herself into sense when she wasn’t talking to him. The end of the week was a relief because at least he wouldn’t be turning his secretary into a wet rag and then asking to be put through to Barbara instead. But no sooner had she got home on Friday night than the telephone rang. It was Charles.

  ‘I’m off duty,’ said Barbara.

  ‘So am I,’ said Charles. ‘Wish you were here.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Barbara, with heartfelt sincerity. ‘Then someone else could do this presentation.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ said Charles.

  ‘Is there something I can do for you?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘No, this phone call is purely altruistic,’ said Charles. ‘I just wanted to talk to you. Are you sitting on the sofa?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Wish I were there,’ said Charles.

  Barbara couldn’t say anything. For a moment the memory of lying there with him beside her was too vivid.

  ‘Say something,’ he said softly, a hint of laughter warming his voice. ‘Do you wish I were there?’

  ‘I can hardly say no,’ Barbara said tartly.

  ‘Sure you can,’ Even down a phone line, hundreds of miles away, she could hear him grinning. ‘If you think it.’

  Barbara closed her eyes. Why did it all come so easily to him? He wasn’t terrified of rejection; he just said whatever he thought. So why couldn’t she?

  ‘Well, I…’ she began. ‘I… I wish you were here too.’

  ‘I think of you when I wake up,’ he said. ‘Do you think of me?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Only sometimes?’

  ‘Sometimes I wake up and think about the presentation,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I think of you.’

  ‘I think of you just before I open my eyes,’ he said softly. ‘I imagine opening my eyes and looking into eyes like sapphires. Did I ever tell you you’re beautiful?’

  ‘A couple of times,’ Barbara said. She’d heard his side of this kind of conversation before; funny how it didn’t make any difference, knowing how often he’d said this kind of thing—how she felt a terrible rush of pleasure when she heard them said to her.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Barbara. ‘It just feels funny, heari
ng you say these things to me.’ She couldn’t imagine saying it to his face; somehow it was easier over the phone.

  ‘Meaning, you think it’s just a line?’

  ’N-not exactly,’ she said. ‘I mean, I think you really do want to sleep with me.’

  ‘To put it mildly.’ Laughter warmed his voice. ‘Is there something wrong with that?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Barbara.

  ‘But you think you’ll never hear from me again after the morning after.’

  ‘I would never hear from you after the morning after if there were a night before,’ said Barbara. ‘Which there won’t be because I have to be on speaking terms with my boss.’

  ‘Do you know how to say “I’ve got you under my skin” in Romanian?’ asked Charles.

  ‘No,’ said Barbara.

  ‘You spend all this time studying these languages, and you never seem to know how to say anything useful,’ he said. ‘Never mind, darling, I’ll sweep you off your feet when I get back and then I’ll prove you wrong.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you happen to have a Czech-English phrasebook handy?’

  ‘Somewhere—why?’ She could tell he was still grinning.

  ‘See if it explains the English word “no” anywhere,’ she said. ‘I take it you haven’t come across it before. Goodnight, Charles.’ And she hung up.

  It immediately started ringing again, but she ignored it. Serve him right. Then it stopped ringing and she wished she’d picked it up. She’d have years and years of not hearing Charles rave about her eyes—why waste one of the last chances she’d ever have?

  He called again on Saturday night and Sunday night, telling her how the deal was going, and about Prague, and about how he wished she’d come with him. She couldn’t remember Charles ever taking so much trouble even when he did want to sleep with someone-but then, of course, she’d never seen him when he was divided by the whole of Western Europe from the person he wanted to sleep with. She sat curled up on the sofa, teasing him and insulting him, while he laughed and told her he’d make her eat her words, and sometimes she believed him—for a moment.

  When Barbara got to Barrett on the big day—Monday—she found her two rivals already there, looking each other up and down like wary dogs. They cast her a glance when she walked in, then went back to looking at each other with an indifference that spoke clearer than words. Neither thought she—or Mallory—presented any threat to the big players. Barbara gritted her teeth; she’d see about that.

  The three rivals were shown to a small conference room where a number of people from Barrett were waiting. Mallory was to go last.

  Three hours later Barbara was feeling better. Her rivals had gone through their paces with the ease of long practice. She could see old Mr Barrett scribbling notes on a pad, his bushy white eyebrows scowling; it was as if she were seeing it through his eyes, seeing umpteen flashy features which no productive member of staff should be using in the first place.

  Then it was time for lunch.

  Just as everyone was about to sit down Barbara pulled her trump card.

  She walked over to the head of services and said pleasantly, ‘I’m sorry to bother you. Could you have Personnel arrange twenty temps to turn up for two o’clock?‘

  The head of services raised an eyebrow at this colossal piece of impertinence. ‘I don’t know what qualifications you’re looking for,’ he said drily, ‘but you’ll be lucky to get them at short notice.’

  Barbara smiled. ‘Quite,’ she said coolly.

  There was a short pause while everyone in the room registered that something was happening. There was a flicker of interest in the eyes of the head of services. ‘What qualifications are you looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘I want ten temps with experience of Mr Rogers’s package,’ she said, with a smile at Rival A, ‘and ten with experience of the latest version of Mr Peters’s package. If Personnel can’t drum them up in an hour, they can make up the numbers with whatever they can find.’

  A little smile cracked the head of services’ rather dour features. ‘Well see what we can do,’ he said. He picked up a phone and barked orders.

  Barbara gave a smile of angelic innocence at her rivals. Her blue eyes gazed limpidly around the room, before settling upon the buffet. ‘Ah, lunch,’ she said benignly.

  After lunch she escorted everyone to the training room. She had arranged for it to be set up ahead of time: ten machines had Rival A’s package, ten had B’s and ten had Mallory’s. As the temps arrived she directed those trained on B to the A machines, those trained on A to the B machines. Most of the temps complained that they had never used the package before. Barbara smiled angelically. Then they were joined by ten members of Barrett staff, who were shown to the Mallory machines.

  Barbara explained the trial. Everyone was given three documents to produce. When they were through they were to come to the lecture room and drop off their sheets in the boxes provided.

  She returned to the lecture room with her companions and launched into her presentation. Within fifteen minutes all the Mallory documents were back in the Mallory box. They were followed half an hour later by a straggling group of temps with documents from package A and package B.

  ‘It’s not so long ago,’ said Barbara, ‘that you could call a typing pool and count on getting someone in at short notice who could use whatever equipment you had.’ She smiled and looked straight at Mr Barrett. ‘Things aren’t so simple now; progress isn’t always an improvement on all fronts. The more sophisticated a package is, the greater the danger that only people trained on it can use it That’s why it’s so important to have the option of simplification. You shouldn’t ever have to stretch existing staff just because people are sick or on holiday and substitutes can’t be found.’

  Mr Barrett wasn’t the type to smile, but he wore less of a scowl than he had all morning.

  ‘Mallory isn’t the best known,’ Barbara concluded, ‘but maybe it should be. Members of your staff have just produced three standard documents with no previous training in the software. I’ve covered some of the latest features in our package, but I think for sheer value for money the best thing we can offer is the simplicity which enables you to make the most of your greatest asset—your own staff.’

  She gave another angelic smile to her competitors and stepped away from the podium.

  Mr Barrett came up and shook her hand. The head of services came up and gave her a broader version of the dour smile. The look of strained good humour on her competitors’ faces told its own story.

  Barbara put her papers and transparencies back in her briefcase.

  ‘I’m sure you realise that there’s absolutely nothing in this that couldn’t be done quite easily with our package,’ Rival A said to Mr Barrett, with a forced smile.

  ‘As a presentation this was quite a performance,’ said Rival B, ‘but if you look at the actual product nothing about this is new.’ He flashed Barbara a look of acute annoyance. ‘I could perfectly well have put together something along these lines.’

  Mr Barrett gave him an unenthusiastic look. ‘Yes,’ he said drily. ‘But you didn’t.’

  Rivals A and B drove off in their company cars. Barbara took the train back into central London. She kept shaking inside, looking back over the presentation.

  Charles was coming back tomorrow night, she remembered. Suppose, just suppose, she actually did sleep with Charles, and suppose the presentation was spectacularly successful—would that make a difference? Would he go on speaking to her afterwards?

  She was walking casually down the street, mulling over this question, when a terrible thought struck her. She’d implied to Charles more than once that she’d had lots of sexual experience. What on earth was he going to think if they ever did go to bed? What if he guessed the truth?

  She happened to be walking past a bookshop. Barbara strode inside and went down the section on intimacy. There seemed to be lots of illustrated books which would be helpful if she
only had the nerve to buy one. Steeling herself, she took down Yes! You Can Satisfy Your Man, took it to the till and paid for it.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon. She was too restless to go back to the office. Well, she’d just take the rest of the afternoon off and study.

  Three hours later Barbara sat with burning cheeks on her sofa. Her new book was full of helpful suggestions and illustrations just in case you didn’t understand the suggestions. The problem was, she just couldn’t imagine trying any of them out on Charles. All the other women he’d slept with probably took it all completely for granted—in fact, one of them had probably written Yes! You Can Satisfy Your Man—and as soon as he slept with her he’d see that she was completely inexperienced.

  She was just about to go through one of the earlier chapters again when she remembered a little detail she’d overlooked, which wasn’t covered in the book. The fact was that a whole encyclopaedia on the subject of how to satisfy your man wouldn’t have helped on this one. The book took it for granted that somewhere along the line you’d slept with somebody a few times before; you already had the basics—now you just wanted to improve your technique.

  It didn’t give any tips on how to fool Don Juan into thinking you’d played the field when you were actually still a virgin, the reason being, she thought bitterly, that it couldn’t be done.

  Barbara tossed the book aside. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried, she thought indignantly. She’d have liked nothing better than to take her mind off Charles, if not with a grand passion then at least with a fling. She’d tried going out with other men, but if you got bored just kissing someone, what were you supposed to do?

  Barbara grimaces. She’d been telling Charles, of course, that she had no plans to sleep with him, but deep down, she realised, she’d been thinking she should take the chance while she had it. It might not be the best deal in the world, joining the ranks of his conquests between numbers 3,372 and 3,374, but it was better than nothing.

  Just lying here on the sofa with him that one night—seeing that look in his eyes—was probably the best memory she had, followed in close second by waking up beside him and in close third, fourth, fifth et cetera by all those other kisses. It wasn’t a choice between life with the man she loved and a one-night stand—it was a choice between life without the man she loved and life without the man she loved with memories of one night in his arms.