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She put the phone down. Now what was she going to do? She had almost barricaded her desk in with the wretched things, and she could just see Dr Fergus Browne storming in tomorrow and accusing her of mucking around with his precious books—he was just the kind of contrary person to do that!
But wait a minute—he wasn’t going to be in tomorrow, and neither, officially, was she. Tomorrow was Saturday and the day after was Sunday. Which gave her two clear days to get the shelves up!
She gave a small smile as she mentally applauded her brilliant brainwave, and at five-thirty she set off home, to tell Ella all about what had happened.
Ella slammed her way into the flat at just gone seven to find it strangely silent. Poppy usually had music blaring out from the sitting-room.
‘Poppy?’ she called hesitantly.
‘In here! I’m in the bathroom.’
Ella hung up her jacket and left her basket on the table and, picking up an apple which she began crunching into, walked into the bathroom, where she found Poppy, clad only in a black lace bra and knickers, bending down and peering at herself in the badly placed mirror.
Without turning round she spoke in a gloomy voice.
‘Do I remind you of a marshmallow?’
Ella swallowed a pip by mistake. ‘What? I knew this would happen. I always said it—one day Poppy Henderson will finally flip!’
‘Shut up—I’m serious. Do I or do I not remind you of a marshmallow?’
‘Of course you don’t. You remind me of Marilyn Monroe—everyone says so.’
‘Marilyn Monroe was fat.’
‘She wasn’t fat, she was curvaceous. Nice bust, small waist, good legs—just like you.’
‘Fat,’ muttered Poppy dejectedly. ‘Do you think I wear too much make-up?’
Ella shifted uncomfortably. ‘It is a bit much, sometimes—especially by day.’ She saw Poppy’s face and hurriedly changed her tack. ‘I mean, it was different when you were working at Maxwells—that whole look was part of your job. But you’ve got such lovely skin and eyes that it seems rather a shame to cover them up. And if I had hair as shiny as yours I certainly wouldn’t dye it blonde.’
‘You would if it was mousy,’ Poppy pointed out, the harsh light falling on her finely-boned face to cast deep shadows under her cheekbones.
‘It’s golden-brown, not mousy—and what the hell has got into you tonight, Poppy? I’ve never known you to be so negative. Do I take it that you’re one of the many unemployed, and that this is responsible for a face as long as your arm?’
Poppy shook her head, so that the pale curls flew like angry snakes around her face.
‘Not at all—I’ve got a job, and that’s the problem.’
Ella’s face broke into a huge grin. ‘What are you talking about? You’ve got a job, that’s fabulous! You should be jumping up and down for joy and offering me a large glass of wine to celebrate.’
Poppy sighed. ‘Wait till you hear! I’ve got a job working for the most bad-tempered doctor you could ever imagine.’
‘A doctor? But you can’t. . . I mean, you don’t. . .’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Poppy grimly. ‘I know nothing about medicine. I don’t understand what he does, and I certainly haven’t got a clue how to spell the words.’
‘Then how come. . .?’
‘I’m the agency’s last hope. He’s driven away countless others. And that’s the second bad thing—he hates secretaries. From what he’s said I can imagine that a slug eating his prize cabbage would get more respect and affection!’
‘He sounds ghastly.’
‘Believe me, he is. Then there’s the third awful thing,’ added Poppy.
‘Go on.’
‘Someone jokingly told me that he was a professor, and so that’s what I called him—after, I might add, I mistook him for one of the maintenance men.’
Ella stifled a giggle. ‘Oh, Poppy!’
‘How was I to know that “Professor” was the nickname he hated which he’s had since medical school?’
‘You’re making all this up!’
‘Oh, that I were! And now I’ve got to try and get some shelves up in his room before Monday, or else he’ll hit the roof when he sees how I’ve rearranged his blessed books. Do you have Mick Douglas’s number?’
‘It’s in the book,’ replied her friend with a fond but sinking heart. Why had Poppy insisted on rocking the boat in order to do a job that she clearly wasn’t suited for?
Professor indeed! She couldn’t see this job last the week out.
Fergus left the side room and walked quickly into the office, his professional demeanour of calm assurance crumpling into brief despair. It never got any easier. How could it?
The charge nurse looked over at him sympathetically. ‘Coffee?’ he asked.
Fergus shook his head. ‘No, thanks, Geoff.’ He began to write in the patient’s notes ‘systemic lumpus erythematosus’. In his untidy hand he scrawled the inevitable syptoms—the outaneous signs which included the well-known ‘butterfly’ erythema on the face, frontal alopecia, mucosal ulceration. He refrained from writing the two words which the disorder signified to most of the staff on the ward—potentially fatal.
Today was Sunday and he shouldn’t even have been here, but how could he not be here? He had come in himself as if to lessen the blow of the news he’d had to impart.
But how did you tell a young girl of twenty-three, poised on the brink of her professional and emotional life, that she might not see the year out? A beautiful young girl with the face of a Madonna, a classical pianist with so much life and talent in those hands, whose equally young husband had stared at him with bewildered eyes, as if he were some idiot who had made some fundamental and terribly wrong mistake, not the consultant in charge of his wife’s case.
He finished writing in the notes and stood up slowly.
‘What are you up to today, Fergus?’ asked Geoff. ‘Nice day for a country pub!’
Fergus half smiled. ‘No such luck, I’m afraid—I’ve an article waiting at home which won’t write itself.’
Geoff groaned. ‘Rather you than me!’
Fergus left the ward, mentally agreeing with the charge-nurse. He wished he had arranged something today, something which was a million miles away from this damned job.
Still, he’d feel good once it was written, and afterwards he’d reward himself with the luxury of all the Sunday papers and a plate of spaghetti alla carbonara while Vivaldi played gently in the background. An almost perfect evening.
He was just about to leave by the main entrance when he remembered the book. Blast it! His run-in with the latest dizzy blonde secretary meant that he had left the office on Friday without Jacob’s definitive work on skin diseases, without which he couldn’t hope to write the kind of well-founded article the Journal would naturally expect from him. Thank goodness he’d remembered before he’d gone all the way home.
He was pleased to be able to arrive at the door to his office without encountering anyone he knew. He had been dreading running into Veronica Entwistle—the staff nurse on one of his wards, who had told him at least four times that she was on an early Saturday, followed by a late on Sunday, ‘so if you’re short of company, Fergus. . .’ The woman was about as subtle as a sergeant-major!
As he turned the handle of the door he became aware of two discrepancies—a muffled expletive assailed his ears and he heard some tinny kind of banal rubbish playing, which he assumed was the radio.
He flung the door open and the first thing he saw was the sight of a very long, very slender leg, clad in faded denim so clinging that he was immediately convinced that the wearer’s circulation would be seriously affected. The shapely thigh became an extremely attractive bottom and in turn a tiny waist topped by the most splendid bust he’d ever seen.
Fergus had been many things in his life, but he had never before been quite so taken aback, and it took a few seconds for it to dawn on him that he was standing staring like an idiot at the curvaceous shape of his new secretary. She was standing frozen into immobility, screwdriver in her hand. In the corner stood a worried-looking fair-haired young man whose huge shoulders and stature marked him out as a born rugby player.
Fergus set his mouth in a grim line. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what you’re doing hanging off a step-ladder, Miss Henderson? No, don’t tell me, let me guess! Your local amateur dramatic society is holding auditions for its production of Peter Pan, and you’re just getting in a bit of practice?’
Sarcastic so-and-so! thought Poppy as she carefully picked her way down to his level, peering up at him with a fixed smile on her face.
‘I’m putting up some bookshelves for you, Dr Browne,’ she informed him brightly. ‘Do you like them?’
It was true. He could see symmetrical shelves, four rows of them already in place on one side of the fireplace, and at the same moment he realised that she’d changed his whole office round.
‘What?’ he boomed, so loudly that Poppy took a step back. ‘What have you done with my books?’
Poppy smiled as patiently as if she were dealing with a simpleton. ‘I’ve been sorting them out for you, Dr Browne. Obviously we couldn’t have them lying around in piles on the floor, could we?’
‘Oh, couldn’t we?’ he snapped petulantly. ‘Well, I want a copy of. . .’ He rattled the name of the textbook off quicker than a laser. ‘And I don’t want it next week—I want it now. So either you produce the book within the two minutes I’m giving you, or you find yourself back in the dole queue first thing in the morning!’
Damn cheek, thought Poppy rebelliously as she scurried over to the alcove—she’d never been in a dole queue in her life.
The silence in the office was like a time-bomb waiting to go off. Fergus stood looking out of the window, his back to the giant in the corner, studiously avoiding all contact with him.
Mick Douglas watched as Poppy scrabbled to find the list she’d made of all the volumes. To think he could have been down the pub with his mates, instead of stuck in this chilly room with this hotheaded maniac! The guy needed locking up. Fancy speaking to her like that! Mick sighed. Poppy had a lot to answer for. She had a way of looking at you that made it impossible to refuse her anything, and she had meant it when she’d said that she wanted to put the shelves up, not him. ‘You’re just here in an advisory capacity,’ she had told him grandly. Mick eyed the brooding figure by the window warily. He must be a good twenty pounds lighter, but he’d hate to get on the bad side of him.
Fergus had begun drumming his fingers on the windowsill as the final seconds ticked away, when Poppy gave a great shout of delight.
‘Here we are! Dermatological Disorders Discovered by Professor Donald Jacob.’ She held the book out with smiling eyes, the laughter quickly leaving them when she saw the expression on her boss’s face as he strode over from the window to take the book from her.
‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to step outside for a moment?’ he asked in a deliberately polite voice which did nothing to disguise his ill-humour.
‘Certainly, Dr Browne. I shan’t be more than a moment, Mick,’ she called to her friend. I hope. She had been reading 1984 by George Orwell last night, the bit where they had recited the old nursery rhyme: ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head’. How appropriate that seemed just at this moment, following old Grumpy out into the corridor. ‘Chip-chop. Chip-chop. The last man’s. . .’
‘Miss Henderson?’
‘Dead!’ she blurted out, before she could stop herself.
He frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’ She realised what she’d said. ‘I’m so sorry, Dr Browne—I was miles away.’
‘Obviously.’
He looked as if he’d spent the morning sucking a lemon—he was so sour-faced, she thought as she waited. He was bound to get rid of her now.
He was about to tell her not to bother coming in tomorrow when he caught a glimpse of such a resigned expression on the na
ve young face that he felt strangely touched. If you took away all the face paint and the fashionable clothes, underneath wasn’t she a girl like any other, trying her best to survive in an increasingly hostile world?
And hadn’t he rather admired the spunky way she had spoken to him on Friday? It was a sad but inevitable fact that the higher up your particular ladder you got, the more distance it created between you and the people around you. He disliked people toadying to him—simpering sycophants who thought that tacking ‘yes, sir’ on to the end of every sentence would make them an instant crony.
Apart from Catherine, he couldn’t remember anyone who had spoken to him as directly as this girl in a long time.
He forced himself to be pleasant. ‘It was good of you to give up your weekend to rearrange my office, but I would have preferred it if you’d consulted me first. . .’
‘I will in future,’ Poppy butted in eagerly.
Fergus sighed. She was like an exuberant young puppy, completely unsquashable. He rearranged the softer expression which had crept over his features and looked down at her sternly.
‘In future, however, you will not bring your boyfriend into my office, not without my permission.’
‘But he’s not my. . .’ she protested, but he shook his head.
‘I’m not interested in your private life, as I hope you’ll be uninterested in mine. And, now if you’ll excuse me, I have an article to write. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.’
Weakly she nodded, leaning against the wall of the corridor as she watched him walk away, unsure whether to cheer or howl.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9aa1e34e-b275-539b-ad7f-99ddab8c4551)
POPPY arrived punctually at her typewriter at nine o’clock on Monday morning to find the office empty, and she stood in the centre of the room rather uncertainly, unsure of what to do next—she didn’t dare try to alter anything else, not without the permission of Grumpy! And she had decided not to introduce the kettle or any plants until she had a better idea of just how long she would be staying!
One thing was for sure—his office looked a million times better—more spacious and less cluttered. And what was it they said? A tidy room means a tidy mind—maybe the quality of his articles would improve, and then he’d be forever in her debt!
She was bent over her desk, flicking dust off the electric typewriter and ineffectually moving pieces of paper around for something to do, when the door flew open with a crash and she looked up, startled, expecting to see Dr Browne; instead she was confronted by the sight of a girl of about sixteen, her eyes red from crying, her hair flying wildly around her face, and some poorly applied foundation attempting to cover what Poppy could see were angry red spots on her face.
‘Where is he?’ the girl demanded, on a note that sounded as though it could become a sob without very much provocation.
Poppy smiled encouragingly. ‘You mean Dr Browne? I’m expecting him in any time now. Won’t you take a seat?’
The girl flopped into the chair Poppy had indicated, and with trembling hands started fumbling around in her handbag. She pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and had extracted and lit one, exhaling deeply, before Poppy could stop her. The familiar acrid smell of the smoke assailed Poppy’s nostrils and she was filled with a wave of nausea.
She spoke as politely as possible. ‘This is a hospital, you know. I don’t think it’s a very good idea if you smoke, do you?’
The girl stared at her belligerently. ‘I don’t think a lot of things are a good idea—like the fact that I resemble Frankenstein’s monster with this face of mine, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.’ She took another deep drag of the cigarette.
Poppy coughed. The room was filling up with smoke and she couldn’t bear it, and neither, she was pretty sure, would Dr Browne.
‘Please put it out,’ she requested firmly.
The girl’s bottom lip jutted out. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because my uncle died of lung cancer through smoking, and I’d hate to think that you might do the same.’ Her voice shook a little as she said it.
The girl looked up at her, distraught, her eyes filling with tears, and she held the cigarette out helplessly towards Poppy, bursting into noisy, childlike sobs.
Poppy took the cigarette and swiftly ran it under the tap of the sink in the corner, before dropping it in the waste-paper bin. She pulled out a paper handkerchief from her handbag and handed it to the crying girl.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the girl sobbed. ‘I’m a horrible person. But it’s not how he said it would be—he’s got no idea!’
Poppy tried without success to make some kind of sense of the garbled sentence. ‘Who?’ she asked.
‘Fergus,’ sobbed the girl again. ‘He doesn’t know what it’s really like.’
