had spent all his working life representing or at least acting as an officer for the Church, his reluctance to discuss matters of the spirit or of emotional depth was a tiresome handicap, but one which he had managed to overcome by hiding behind the comforting rituals of the job. He had coped quite happily with his parishioners’ divorces, bereavements, illnesses and deaths by not only using the designated paragraphs from Prayer Book or Bible, but by trotting out the well-used formulaic words of comfort that he had copied from older and wiser colleagues during his training. But if anyone ever looked him in the eye and attempted a direct conversation with him about what he really believed in himself, or tried to tell him, really tell him, about their passion, agony or a dark night of the soul, he would dip his head in embarrassment and change the subject.
Now there was something in the way Eleanor had spoken that made him think that something very emotional indeed was about to come his way, and he curled his toes at the thought of having to face it.
After lunch the office always tended to quieten down a little, and John found a moment to pop over to see Ruth across the corridor.
‘Oh hello, Mr Hamilton,’ she smiled at him, ‘how was the lunch?’
‘Good, thank you, Ruth, very good. That’s all well on course and the client seems very happy. The last house should be finished next week. Thanks for all your help on that as usual – and the food was excellent, too. We should use that place again.’
‘Yes, right, I’ll make a note of it. Did you want me for some letters now?’
‘No, don’t worry, we’ll leave it for now. Come and do them about four, would you?’
‘Of course, Mr Hamilton.’
Just as John turned to leave he remembered what he had come to ask her.
‘Did you manage to get that spot of shopping done for me, Ruth?’
‘Yes, of course I did. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Much better, in fact. Much better.’
She gave him a little encouraging smile and he nodded back at her.
‘Jolly good. Thanks again. See you at four.’
He walked back to his own office and shut the door behind him, feeling more settled than he had during the morning, now that things seemed to be getting sorted out. Ruth had become indispensable during the five years she had worked for him. She was pleasant-looking, too. What was it she was wearing today? He knew he wasn’t too good at women’s clothes, but he tried to picture her attractive body as he had seen it seated at the desk not a minute before. Pale blue. That was it, wasn’t it? A pale blue jumper of some sort; pleasingly tight. Her pretty red hair fastened up in one of those slide things. Very nice. He smiled a little to himself and shook his head. He gave a little sigh as he smoothed his straight greying hair back with both hands and then sat heavily into the leather swivel armchair behind the desk, hitching up both knees of his trousers automatically as he lowered himself into it, regretting the Stilton and biscuits he had unwisely indulged in after the chicken, but congratulating himself on having stuck to mineral water. He shook his head a little and smiled to himself as he thought, not for the first time, how lunches had changed since before he had become chairman. In those days they had taken place in the office dining room and lasted two or three hours; good, rich food – three courses minimum – always accompanied by plenty of claret, a Sauternes perhaps with the pudding, and port with the cigars. A certain sleepy fullness hung over everybody who had taken part for the rest of the afternoon – certainly there was not much work accomplished, or if it was it had always been a wise precaution to look over it carefully the next morning. On taking over on his father’s retirement, John had moved quickly to curtail such enjoyable excess, and, just as he saw his friends in the City doing, he cut his own and all the staff’s lunch breaks to a maximum of one hour when taken as part of the normal office routine, or an hour and a half when entertaining clients. The in-house catering had had to go: pleasant though it was to be cooked for by a regular small team who knew one’s every taste in food and drink, it was an extravagant indulgence that the company could do without.
The plans for the development of fifteen four- to six-bedroomed detached houses on the estate just outside Manchester were still spread out across the desk, and he pulled them over towards him, swivelling the large photostatted sheet round to face him. He was particularly proud of this project: the houses were going to look elegant and well-proportioned, with just enough garden round each one to give a feeling of privacy, in spite of his having insisted on squeezing in one more than the originally scheduled fourteen. He had listened to his architects’ arguments about angles of building height, diagonals of wall relative to ground span, proportion of garden size to number of rooms, but he was convinced the illusion of space given by the carefully planned hedges, arches and strategically placed walls would make up for the small amount of land he took from each plot. His speech to the planning officer had been masterful, even if he did say so himself.
It wouldn’t be long now before they finished the final plastering, and the interest from local estate agents had been extremely encouraging. He particularly wanted a quick turnround for these, and reached for the phone to check on the progress of the show house, and to remind himself of the date of its opening.
‘Ruth, get me Martin, would you? Did Mrs Hamilton show him the colour schemes this morning? I didn’t see her go – did she manage to get together with him, do you know?’
‘I don’t think she did, Mr Hamilton. I didn’t see her go either, I’m afraid. Do you want me to try and get hold of her?’
‘No, don’t worry. Just put me through to Martin, would you?’
He wondered idly why Eleanor had gone without saying goodbye – hadn’t she asked for a cup of tea or something? Usually she would bring her drink into his office and fill him in on her latest ideas for design, but maybe she’d had somewhere to go on to today. The large variety of charity work, church organising and general local do-gooding that she was involved in meant he was never quite sure what she was talking about when she discussed anything relevant to their life in Surrey. Perhaps she’d had something to go back to this afternoon – but then it was odd that she’d bothered to come up to town at all. She certainly wouldn’t have driven in just to meet Martin and show him her samples; there must have been something up in town for her to do. He knew it was no good his thinking back over their conversation this morning; she had said something about her plans, but as usual he hadn’t really been listening. During such conversations he generally managed to reply often and noncommittally enough to convince her that he was interested and aware, but all he could remember from this morning was a vaguely uncomfortable feeling that she had brought up the old whirly ceiling business again, and that he had half known she had unwittingly hit the nail on the head in that particular instance. The Devon houses weren’t going to be one of his better schemes: they would sell because there was a desperate shortage of houses in that area of this particular type and price bracket, but they were overpriced and ugly, and the sooner they were finished, sold and forgotten, the happier he would be.
He gave up waiting for Martin to come to the phone, and instead pressed the speed dial button on the telephone that was programmed for the Surrey number, ready to leave a warm and thoughtfully interested conjugal message on the machine to greet Eleanor when she returned, but was surprised to hear her voice answer in reality, rather than via the rather strained message that she had recorded on the answering tape.
‘Hello?’
John thought she sounded quieter than normal, almost hesitant. Eleanor’s middle-class tones usually had a quality of stridency about them that cut across the most crowded of rooms; this softly spoken one-worded question was almost
