Free Spirit

They found the office down a long corridor, a small boxlike room furnished with a basic desk, a chair behind it and then two other chairs in front of it. Behind the desk was a set of filing cabinets and some open shelves full of bulging files, books and other papers. Hannah could see all this through the glass partition of the door as she knocked briefly on it and waited for the young man working behind the desk to lift his head and invite them in.

He did so very politely, and Hannah read in the grimness behind the polite words and the tiredness she could see in his eyes the kind of strain that comes from long, long hours of work, when the worker knows that no matter how many hours that he or she puts in the work itself will never diminish. Hannah introduced herself, firmly shaking his hand and advising him that she would be representing Linda.

She sat down and explained calmly and concisely that an error had occurred, but that it was merely an error and not an attempt to defraud the Revenue. The inspector looked unconvinced, which was no more than Hannah had expected. Linda, however, shot her a nervous, agitated glance, quickly bursting into a muddled explanation of how the error had first occurred.

The interview lasted far longer than the young inspector could have anticipated. Hannah was tireless and relentless in putting forward Linda’s case, checking every move that the young man made, calmly and coolly putting forward a very strong defence of Linda’s errors. Hannah saw him glance surreptitiously at his watch. A date? she wondered, seeing the tiny frown touch his forehead.

His telephone rang and he excused himself to answer it. He listened for a few seconds, and then said tersely, ‘Yes, thank you. Can you ask him to wait down there for me, please?’

Whoever was at the other end of the line said something else, and then the tax inspector said, ‘Oh, well, if he’s already on his way up…’

As soon as he had replaced the receiver, Hannah said smoothly, ‘I’m sorry we’re taking so much of your time, but you can understand Linda’s concern over the whole matter.’

‘We, too, have been concerned,’ the tax inspector responded tersely, but he wasn’t looking at her, Hannah realised. His attention wasn’t focused on them the way it had been before. Instead he was looking at the door.

They heard the footsteps on the uncarpeted corridor, long before the door opened. Male footsteps, firm and very, very sure of themselves. The door opened, but Hannah didn’t turn round to look to see who had come in. Whoever the visitor was, she suspected from the look of strain on the tax inspector’s face that he wasn’t entirely welcome. She wondered if it was a more senior inspector come to check on the young man’s progress, and decided that she was right in her assumption when she heard him saying awkwardly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite finished here.’

Seeing an opportunity to put Linda’s case before a more senior authority, Hannah turned toward the newcomer, only just managing to suppress her shock as she saw him for the first time.

Her first impression was that he made the small room seem even smaller. He was leaning on the back wall of the office, his arms crossed negligently in front of him, his tall, broad-shouldered frame encased in a suit that Hannah’s practised business eye recognised immediately as coming from Savile Row. The fabric alone must have cost a fortune—that kind of wool and silk mixture was unbelievably expensive, as she knew to her cost.

His suit was charcoal grey—the same colour as his eyes, she noticed absently—his shirt impossibly white, the cuffs fastened with plain, expensive gold links, the old-fashioned kind of double links in wafer-thin old gold. Instead of the uniform striped tie, though, his was a bright, sharp red. She focused on it, studying it, a tiny frown touching her forehead, and as though he sensed her confusion amusement curled the corners of his mouth.

Hannah didn’t see the amusement, though; she was too busy wondering in outraged disappointment how a tax official, no matter how lofty, came to be wearing a suit which her astute brain told her had probably cost upward of one and half thousand pounds.

Behind her, she heard the young inspector make a murmured comment which she didn’t quite catch. She suspected the young man was fully aware that Linda had had no intention of deliberately defrauding the Revenue, and she also suspected that he was being over severe with her friend to warn her in future to keep a better grip on the financial side of her business. But Linda was beginning to look pale and sick, and Hannah had tired of the unchallenging game of outmanoeuvreing the young inspector.

Now, as she raised her glance from the older man’s tie to his face, she went crisply through the small saga once again, this time to the older man, pointing out that there were considerable losses for Linda’s first year of trading which she in her ignorance had not claimed back, and that these more than offset the amount she owed in unpaid tax.

There was an odd silence in the room after she had delivered her argument. She saw the look the older man gave the younger: grave and considering. The younger man coloured slightly, opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again at a tiny shake of the older man’s head, which Hannah only just caught. She took advantage of it, adding smoothly, turning back to address the younger inspector, ‘In fact, if you had checked through the first year’s accounts, you would have seen that there were trading losses.’

His colour deepened, and he looked uncomfortably over Hannah’s head towards the older man.

How much older? Ten years—a little more? He was somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, Hannah estimated, with features that almost had too much visual impact. His skin was dark as though tanned, but she suspected the olive tinge was natural, hinting at perhaps Spanish or Italian blood somewhere in his background, his nose aquiline and emphasising the arrogance of his profile. High cheekbones jutted beneath the grey glitter of his eyes, his hair thick and very dark, immaculately shaped to his long skull.

Now for the first time he spoke directly to her, his voice deep and paced, without holding any inflection other than a certain malicious silkiness as he pointed out, ‘But surely that’s your job as this young lady’s accountant to point those losses out to the Revenue, not theirs to point them out to you. The Revenue is hard pressed enough as it is, undermanned to an extent that in private industry would be considered criminal; its staff are expected to produce miracles and are constantly under siege from those sections of the population that deem it—er…unjust that they should abide by the taxation laws of this country, while of course expecting to have the full benefit from being a British citizen. Besides, I think you’ve tormented this young man enough, don’t you?’ he asked her wryly, wringing an unwary start of surprise from her.

‘An error appears to have been made—on both sides,’ he continued. ‘I suggest that you leave your papers here so that we can have time to go through in a less…combustible atmosphere. The Revenue takes no sides. It simply seeks to fulfil its duty in ensuring that the country’s citizens pay their full dues.’

For the first time in a long, long time Hannah felt her colour rise. She was being told off…reminded very promptly and calmly of the stresses the young inspector was under…made to feel almost childishly unkind in her clear-cut definitions of his errors. She felt small and mean, and just a tiny little bit ashamed of herself.

Which was surely completely ludicrous. If she hadn’t come with Linda to help and support her, her poor friend would have been in a state of complete panic and would have probably been browbeaten into paying out tax which she simply did not owe.

She opened her mouth to say as much, and then closed it again. Taking her critic’s comments personally would not do Linda’s case any good. Summoning the self-control she had taught herself so hardily over the years, she curved her mouth into a cool, professional smile and said in an equally cool and professional voice, ‘Of course. We’ll leave it with you, then.’

And she got up and shook hands briskly across the desk with the younger man, waiting for Linda to do the same.

For some reason, as she walked the small distance to the door, she didn’t offer her hand to the older man; and she even found that she was deliberately keeping a greater distance between them than was at all necessary.

Why? Because she found his sexuality intimidating? Nonsense. Why on earth should she? What was there to be frightened of? That he might try and pounce on her? She stifled a mirthless laugh. Hardly…On looks alone he could have women beating a path to his door, and was hardly likely to find it necessary to do something so unprofessional as to make a pass at her. So she stopped at the door and turned round, gravely proffering him her hand. She saw the smile that twitched at his mouth and frowned, wondering what had caused it. Not her, surely? She bristled a little at the thought and gave him a clear, frosty look from her tawny eyes.

‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ Linda breathed as soon as they were out of earshot of the office. ‘What do you think will happen?’

‘I’m sure you have nothing to worry about,’ Hannah soothed her, ‘but if you’re at all worried, just give me a ring at the flat. You’ve got the number.’

The late summer sunshine was casting long shadows as they walked out of the building.

Just as they were about to cross the road, Linda remembered that she had some letters to post, so they retraced their footsteps back to the post office.

When they returned to the car park, Hannah discovered an elegant Daimler saloon was parked next to her own car. She looked at it enviously, wondering who it belonged to.

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ Linda said wryly. ‘I only hope for its owner’s sake that it has better fuel consumption than my old one.’

When Hannah stopped her car outside Linda’s shop, Linda invited her in for supper but Hannah shook her head. She would be late enough as it was, and she had some reading up to do on the Jeffreys Group before her interview on Monday.

‘What a pity you couldn’t have taken a longer break,’ Linda commiserated as they said goodbye. ‘You must miss Dorset…’

‘Yes, I do,’ Hannah agreed honestly—an admission she would never have made to any of her colleagues who were such dedicated city dwellers. There were times when she felt almost claustrophobic in London, but living virtually on the river helped to banish that feeling, although nothing could ever really replace the spaciousness and rural beauty of her parents’ home village.

‘Unfortunately, London is where the jobs are. London and other capital cities.’

She wondered what Linda would say if she told her she was taking a special language course in Japanese; not that she intended to go and work in Japan, but the world was shrinking every day and the Japanese money markets were fast-growing business areas. One had to think of the future…

‘Don’t you ever envy the girls we grew up with, Hannah?’ Linda asked her a little wistfully, her hand on the open passenger door of the car. ‘I mean, they’re all married now with children…families…’

‘Not at all,’ Hannah told her crisply. ‘I’m not decrying marriage, Linda, but how many of those girls ever fulfilled their true potential? Oh, I’m not saying that being a wife and mother isn’t fulfilling…of course it is, but I can’t help wondering how many of those girls will turn round in ten years’ time and find themselves alone, their marriages broken up and themselves the sole breadwinner, and how many of them then will regret not having trained for a career…in not having some sense of themselves, apart from their husbands and children.

‘I prefer to rely on myself, rather than to rely on others,’ she added firmly. ‘It’s much safer.’

Linda’s mouth twisted a little bitterly. ‘And that’s a major consideration for our generation, isn’t it? Safety. Have you ever noticed how much the word “safe” occurs in our conversations? We’re almost obsessed by it.’

‘With every good reason,’ Hannah pointed out calmly. ‘The world—today is a very dangerous place, made dangerous by we who inhabit it.’

She gave her friend a final smile, and when Linda had closed the door and disappeared inside her home she set the car in motion again, heading for London.

CHAPTER TWO

‘HANNAH, where the devil are those figures on Hanson I asked you for last week?’

Refusing to react to the biting, bullying tone of her boss’s voice, Hannah went calmly to his desk and removed a file, which she handed to him without showing any signs of either chagrin or triumph.

This was one of the main reasons she had applied for the Jeffreys’ job. Ever since Brian Howard had been head-hunted by the directors, and appointed into a senior managerial post with the company, he had made her a target for his prejudice against her sex. A prejudice, that was, of her sex working in the same professional field as himself.

When he’d first joined the company, he had mistaken Hannah for one of the secretaries; his manner towards her had been insulting in the extreme and, as Hannah had told him coldly at the time, she sincerely felt for the secretarial staff if his behaviour towards her was indicative of the kind of sexual harassment they had to endure.

He had resented the tone she had taken with him, resented her sheer skill in her work and the professionalism that would not allow her to betray how much she disliked working for him.

He was forever needling her, criticising her and generally trying to put her down. And Hannah had resolved to herself several months ago that it would be sensible for her to look for another job. She was not a girl who believed in taking her problems to others, nor expecting them to solve them for her. The man was at fault, but since she knew quite well that what he wanted was a confrontation, whereby he could bully and browbeat her into feminine defensiveness and retreat, if possible accompanied by her loss of temper and, even better, her tears, she knew that to try and reason with him as she might have done with another man would be a sheer waste of time.

He resented her and he feared—not her—but her intelligence, her calm air of authority, her sheer ability.

Confrontation was not Hannah’s way; she had tried it too often with her brothers as a child and lost. Nor did she intend to go behind his back and solicit the support of others. She preferred to handle the situation in her own way.

It had come as an unpleasant shock to realise what other members of her sex had to endure in the workplace. When she had said as much to one of the senior secretaries in an unguarded moment, the other girl had grimaced, and said, ‘You don’t know the half of it! Talk about pandering to the male ego…Some of them are sweeties and the worst you can say about them is that they haven’t bothered to keep up with the new technology and that they expect their secretaries to do their work for them, and to keep quiet about their contributions when the plaudits are being handed out. But that’s the best of them. The worst—’ She had rolled her eyes and added grimly, ‘I advise every junior secretary I train to make it plain right from the start where they stand when it comes to sexual harassment.’

‘But how?’ Hannah had asked, remembering how hard she had found it to get it through her boss’s arrogant conceit that she found his advances repulsive.

‘Oh, it’s not easy, but there are ways. No provocative clothing, no flirtatious or misinterpretable remarks, unless you know the guy on the receiving end is going to take them the right way. And if you do get someone who steps out of line…well, depending on how far out of line he is, there are one or two tricks of the trade to make him see the error of his ways. Spilling his coffee over him, dropping a couple of files where it’s going to hurt, mentioning his wife and saying you think your mother knows her.’

Even though she had laughed, Hannah had been appalled that such measures were necessary.

Now she waited as he studied the figures she had given him, his small mouth pursing meanly. He put down the papers and leaned across her desk, bracing his hands on the edge of it, a threatening sexual stance, which Hannah ignored.

‘Two days off this week. Another off on Monday. Got a boyfriend, have we?’

Hannah bristled mentally at the overt prurience in his voice, but didn’t lift her head from her work.

Her boss was balding and forty-odd, his body running to fat. He had a penchant for strong aftershaves which were unpleasant at close quarters. He was well-groomed, as one would expect of a man in his position, but Hannah reflected that it was more due to his wife than to him. The wife whom he openly boasted about keeping short of money at home…jocularly adding that it was the best place for women to be, while leering at the office junior as she whisked past in her fashionable short skirt.

Hannah detested him and all men like him, but she was wise enough to know that no amount of protesting would change his attitude.

She was glad when her telephone rang, making it unnecessary for her to answer his questions. At least it was Friday, and she had the whole weekend in which to prepare herself for Monday’s interview.

WHEN SHE WAS at home in her docklands apartment, Hannah dressed completely differently from the way she did for work. Jeans and sweatshirts were the order of the day, while she worked happily on decorating the apartment more in line with her own tastes than those of the builder.

She had opted for one of the more expensive apartments, with a generous balcony area and marvellous views of the Thames.

On Saturday morning, drawn outside by the sun, she ate her breakfast sitting by the balcony, lazily watching the world and his wife go by—most of them apparently driving bright scarlet Porsches, and wearing clothes from a very small and select group of designers.

‘Yuppies,’ the media designated them with fiendish joy, but to Hannah, who was part of them professionally and yet apart from them personally, they sometimes seemed to be a sad, uncertain group, huddled together clone-like for comfort, desperate to conform to their own rigidly set standards. But then she allowed fair-mindedly that any group must seem like that to those on the outside.

She rested her chin in her hands as she stared out across the Thames, busy with craft as people made the most of the sunshine.

She ate the rest of her croissant, bought from the small specialist baker who had opened in the elegant shopping arcade not far from her apartment, acknowledging that she was lucky in her tall slenderness in that she never had to worry about putting on extra pounds.

Her eldest brother Matt had called at the apartment just after she’d moved in. He had been making an overnight stop in London, en route for Alaska and the pipeline whose constructions he had been heavily involved in.

‘Very swish,’ he had approved, grinning at her, as he inspected the stark black and white de´cor and furniture. ‘Not much like home, though, is it?’

‘It isn’t meant to be,’ Hannah had told him sharply, not liking the hint of amusement she sensed beneath his admiration.

Was that why she had almost deliberately set out to soften the harsh lines of the apartment’s design, by bringing in rich textiles, silk damasks in scarlet and gold, India rugs that warmed the bare floorboards?

And in her bedroom she had given way fully to the imaginative side of her nature, the side she normally kept strictly under control, falling for and buying some French bedroom furniture in smooth, strong cherrywood.

The bed had high scrolled head and foot-boards that made her think rather fancifully, when she lay in it looking at the river, that she was lying in her own private barge, perhaps waiting for the tide to take her upriver to the heart of the city, or down-river and out to sea like an Elizabethan buccaneer.

The bed had a rich blue, silk damask quilted eiderdown and matching spread; the silk had cost a fortune and she had wondered if she was a little mad after she had committed herself to its purchase, but there was something about the sensation of the silk, about the richness of its colour, about the sheer luxury of the fabric, that was worth every penny she had spent.

Curled up in the Lloyd loom chair she had filched from her bedroom at home, she studied the fact sheets she had assembled.

The Jeffreys Group had been started as a single cell company almost fifteen years before by Silas Jeffreys, who had seen an opening selling financial services to his fellow ex-graduates as they found their way in the business world. He had advised them on their tax affairs, their pensions, their investments; his financial acumen was so keen that he had been retained by several small, successful companies to reorganise their financial departments, and so his own business had grown.

He was one of the few new-wave financiers who did not feel it necessary to operate from New York as well as London, although he had been approached by various American concerns as a consultant.

The share crisis which had stunned worldwide stockmarkets in 1987 had left him unscathed, which had added to his aura of mystique.

Hannah put the papers to one side and thought of the people she knew by repute who worked for his organisation, all of them with formidable reputations. Jeffreys Group never head-hunted staff—it never needed to. The prestige of working for it was such that Silas Jeffreys could choose his own workforce from among the best financial brains in the country.

Would she be eligible to join that number? She pressed her hand to her stomach to quell the unfamiliar sensation of butterflies fluttering there.

Until now she hadn’t admitted even to herself how important getting this job was. She had developed caution during her teens when she had discovered how much her enthusiasm for maths set her apart from her peers…Seeing how much they, especially her male peers, resented her success and her enthusiasm, she hadn’t allowed herself to want anything too much. She could vividly remember as a teenager the excitement of being invited out on a date and then finding that the boy concerned didn’t share her thirst for knowledge, her determination to use her talents to the full.

Was it then that she had started to teach herself to make a choice? To accept that, no matter what the media hyped, it wasn’t possible to ‘have it all?’

Among her acquaintances there were several couples with high-profile careers and marriages which seemed to thrive on busy schedules and frantic efforts to spend time together; they were happy and fulfilled, these energetic, busy couples who filled every moment of their lives, but Hannah wasn’t sure if she possessed the ability to match such diversification, whether she had it in herself to make a success of marriage and a career. The men she had known had demanded too much from her, making her back off from them, making her fear that they would try to woo her away from her career.

She would like to be one of the enviable few who had it all: a satisfying career, plus a partner with whom she could genuinely share the joys and disappointments of her life, who would genuinely accept her as his equal, who would understand her desire to be part of the busy, thriving world of finance. And yet someone who at the same time understood her nostalgic yearning for a home such as the home her parents had built: comfortable, welcoming…a home where muddy boots and muddy paws were equally welcome, a home where children thrived, a garden full of sunshine in summer and snow in winter, comfortable rooms full of old furniture. And it was this ambiguity within her that insisted she make choices, that insisted that for her a career and marriage could not go hand in hand.

It might be different if she had ever met a man who mattered…a man so essential to her life that he would be the very core of it, and yet instinctively she feared that dependence, that emotional needing.