years old. For several seconds he continued to look up at her with an expressionless face; she remained smiling down at him. Then he turned and walked rapidly away up the High Street.
THE INTERIOR of the Kingfisher Agency was pleasantly warm. Hazel Ratcliff pulled off her coat as she came into the first-floor office. ‘That wretched bus,’ she said in a voice of habitual grievance. ‘It gets later every morning.’ She went over to the window and stood beside Tessa Drake who was looking down into the street. ‘What’s so interesting out there?’ she asked. Her eyes followed Tessa’s gaze, lighted on a tall broad-shouldered man walking swiftly up the road. Still an eye for a well-built man, Hazel Ratcliff, in spite of the years slipping well past thirty; still hopeful in spite of precious little encouragement.
She turned from the window. ‘Come on, we can’t stand here all day,’ she said forcefully. ‘To work!’ She dealt Tessa a would-be playful blow on the shoulder with twelve solid stones behind the punch. ‘If we don’t get started we’ll have Mrs Rolt after us.’
‘You ought to find somewhere to live in Barbourne,’ Tessa said idly. ‘Then you wouldn’t have this fuss about being late. I can’t think why you want to live in the country.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Hazel said with energy. ‘Not now.’ She was one of the staff who had come over in the summer from Tyler’s. Her widowed mother had died shortly afterwards, leaving Hazel bereft of immediate family. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to give up the cottage and move right into town,’ she said. ‘But you tell me where I can get a decent flat at a reasonable rent.’
The office manager put his head round the door. ‘Come along, ladies,’ he said in his precise way. ‘Mustn’t get the week off to a bad start.’ He gave Miss Ratcliff a speculative glance; he had caught the tail end of the conversation. A flat … just possible that he might be able to help her. A heavily built woman, Miss Ratcliff, unpleasingly wide in the hips. But a good skin, all that country air. And rather large, quite pretty eyes.
‘Just coming, Mr Yoxall,’ Hazel said. ‘Has Miss Padmore been asking for me?’
He shook his head. ‘No, but she will be, in a minute or two.’ If Hazel were to lose two or three stones, package herself a good deal less dowdily, lighten the colour of her hair, she might turn out to be quite passable. He followed the two females into the corridor. He didn’t turn an assessing eye on Tessa Drake, knowing that the most extravagantly drawn bounds of possibility couldn’t be expected to include eighteen-year-old girls with willowy figures and pretty faces.
He went up the short flight of steps to Mrs Rolt’s office and knocked at her door. ‘Just one moment,’ she said when he came in; she was sorting a bundle of papers. He stood silently by the desk, watching her with a calm, detached look. Without doubt a striking-looking girl, though not altogether to his taste. He didn’t particularly admire the evident traces of foreign blood. He understood that her mother had been the daughter of a Greek artist, a sculptor or something of that sort. Quite an arty background really, her father had taught art here in Barbourne.
She dealt with the last of the papers, sat back and gazed at him. Then all at once she remembered his uncle’s death; her face took on a look of commiseration.
‘I was sorry to hear about your uncle,’ she said. Old George Yoxall had died early on Saturday morning, in the local hospital where he had been taken a few weeks previously after a heart attack. He had been Mrs Rolt’s landlord; he had occupied the top flat in Fairview. The middle flat had been tenanted by a pair of young men during the time Alison had rented the garden flat. Not the same pair of young men but a rather bewildering succession of young men connected to each other in a variety of ways: friends, relatives, colleagues. The last young man had gone abroad just before George Yoxall’s heart attack and the matter of the tenancy had been allowed to stand over while he was in hospital.
‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ Yoxall said. ‘To ask if I might take tomorrow afternoon off to go to the funeral.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Highly inconvenient, but she could scarcely refuse. She would have liked to ask him what was going to happen to the flats but it seemed hardly politic to raise the question at this moment. He had a somewhat withdrawn air. Had he been deeply affected by his uncle’s death? He certainly used to visit the old man regularly, she was accustomed to seeing him on the stairs at Fairview. It had been through him that she had heard about the flat in the first place, shortly after she had joined Kingfisher.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here for the morning as usual.’
She stood up. ‘Oh, while I think of it—’ She went over to a filing cabinet and pulled open one of the lower drawers. ‘You remember the girls we interviewed the week before last for that post with the textile firm?’ She knelt on the floor, leafed through papers. ‘If you’d just glance at these two applications. I think we might see the girls again.’ She passed him the sheets. ‘One of them might be suitable for the job at the transport depot.’
She sat back on her heels and considered him for a moment as he bent his head over the pages. Might he have expectations from his uncle? Old Mr Yoxall had owned quite a bit of property. There were other relatives, she knew that, she’d glimpsed them sometimes.
She picked up a folder, glanced through it. Ah well, either Mr Yoxall or one of the executors would tell her soon enough if she’d have to move. She gave a faint sigh. She very much hoped she wouldn’t have to start looking for somewhere else. Fairview would suit her very well for the remainder of the time she envisaged living in Barbourne. She liked the house; it was spacious and comfortable, the large garden so agreeably private, with a gate that gave direct access to the hill.
She stood up. ‘You might take those application forms with you,’ she said to Yoxall. ‘Have another look at them, let me know what you think.’
At ten o’clock Alison closed the door on the rattle and clack of the large main office and walked briskly upstairs. As always on a Monday morning there were a dozen matters she must discuss with her senior partner. She came up to the landing and saw that Hazel Ratcliff was just coming out of Miss Padmore’s room. The half-smiling look Hazel wore changed abruptly to one of impersonal coolness as she caught sight of Alison. She stood back against the wall to let her go by, in a posture of almost aggressive deference.
Oh Lord, Alison thought, suppressing a sigh, her attitude seems to be getting worse instead of better. She had known Hazel during the eighteen months she had worked at Tyler’s and had got on reasonably well with her in spite of what Alison always felt to be Hazel’s instinctive dislike for an obviously more successful and attractive female.
Hazel was the kind of woman to identify herself with her employer, particularly if the employer was a man. She had been very loyal to old Mr Tyler and when, very shortly after his death, Alison had announced her intention of leaving Tyler’s, Hazel had behaved as if she thought Alison guilty of the grossest treachery. An opinion she saw no reason to modify when she realized that Alison was taking with her to Kingfisher a substantial number of Tyler clients.
Even though Hazel had now joined Kingfisher herself there was little sign of any thaw in her manner. She seemed to feel the ceaseless necessity to make it clear that her own connection with Kingfisher was due solely to the lamentable demise of Tyler’s, a calamity she appeared to think Alison had helped to precipitate by her departure.
Alison smiled now with determined friendliness at Hazel standing back against the wall. ‘Good morning, Hazel,’ she said resolutely. ‘Is Miss
