I’d survived the first week, formed opinions, and set them in concrete. The pack wanted to know every detail. We were hopelessly nosy like that, all of us. Shamelessly intruding into the “innumerable little lanes and courts” of each others’ minds.
“The chief executive officer’s a professor of organic chemistry,” I told them. “Travels a lot. Kind, fair. And a brilliant scientist.”
The pack “ooh-ed” approval.
“Then there’s Mr. Bloor, the agronomist, who tests everything. A widower. Wears shiny suits that’re a bit crumpled. He’s writing a scientific paper on weed control in potato crops.”
“Dear old Mr. Bloor,” Vonnie mimicked, through a mouthful of salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps. “Sounds a right bore.”
“He has a military background. Is totally eccentric. And has a passion for counter-espionage.”
The “oohs” racked up several notches.
“Professor Higgins and Colonel Fancy, double-oh-seven.” Caris was always a wit. “Should keep you out of trouble, Rosie.”
“There’s a third. The company sales manager.”
No one spoke for a second or two. “Go on,” urged Bridget, eventually.
I waited until Vonnie lifted her dry martini to her lips.
“The Right Dishonorable Algernon Sharpe.”
Several of us wore dry martini after that.
“How dishonorable, Rosie?” Mitch, man-about-the-pack, considered himself the muscle. He was really flexing.
“Smarmy, but harmless,” I assured him. “Calls me Flower. First day there he offers me an invitation to take dictation, sitting on his knee.”
“Oohs” turned to “erghs.”
Only Christina’s baby-blue eyes flicked to high beam. She was a bit younger than the rest of us. “Whatever did you say to the creep, Rosie?”
“Said I’d love to, if only my boyfriend didn’t insist on carrying a knife.”
Chrissie’s head was swiveling. “But, you don’t have a steady boyfriend.”
Mitch didn’t need a set of diagrams to explain my meaning. “Still employed?”
I described the glorious IBM with reloadable cassettes. “I’m staying, even if it means stretching my diplomatic skills to the max.”
Within two days, the pack had split. The “brilliant value” hotel immediately lost its shine. The travelers who moved in to replace those who’d left were fresh and green as newly minted coins. Unlike me. I was already on first-name terms with the kebab-sellers in the Lebanese pastry shops fringing Queensway.
The Kensington bedsit was advertised that Saturday, in one of the travel magazines we Australians swooped on for news from home, sports results, the stuff of life. I’d spent the morning inspecting dingy cupboards advertised as “studios.” Then I saw the ad. By some miracle, I was first cab off the rank. The landlady lived in the basement flat. She was from Queensland, and had worked in London long enough to have developed a Chelsea accent. The tiny room felt right, safe. It was mine as soon as I supplied a couple of reliable character references.
“Hiya, Rosie?” A familiar face appeared around the door.
“Hey, Phillip!”
The landlady did a double take. “You two know each other?”
She didn’t bother checking out the character references. Phillip had a room upstairs. Model tenant. Never a peep. I paid the deposit and two weeks’ rent, collected my keys, and moved in.
Later that afternoon I walked down the Portobello Road and bought some crocus bulbs and an elderly, sit-up-and-beg bicycle. A busload of Russian tourists took photos as I rode it home, the basket brimming with fen carrots, broccoli, and leeks.
I capped off a memorable day by bussing in to the half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square.
There was a busker with a performing dog and budgies on a perch. The dog was some sort of terrier, in a peaked cap and green jumper. He held the perch in his mouth, and the budgies did tricks. Got tickets to The Sound of Music with Petula Clark and June Bronhill.
The bedsit was clean and white. It had a hand basin, a desk, and a small bookcase for my growing collection of rare and antiquarian books. In pride of place was a tea-stained but treasured copy of Sopwith Scout 7309, an account of life in the Royal Flying Corps. I’d forked out a week’s rent on a first edition.
Now I could cycle to work. I traded the walking boots for low heels. Often I took soup for lunch, in my tartan thermos. The route took me through Kensington Gardens and alongside Rotten Row, to Hyde Park Corner. Trees were flaring every shade of autumn.
My life began ticking like a well-oiled clock, and soon I had the office running to a comfortable beat. I’d arrive early, sort through the mail and catch up with any filing that needed doing, then work on typing up Mr. Bloor’s handwritten scrawl. Bless him.
A steady pile of spent cartridges began accumulating in my bottom drawer. I wrote the date on each with a permanent marker, a legacy of my training as a journalist, I guess. We’d been well-drilled in the importance of keeping notebooks, meticulously dated, in the event of having to verify the source of a quote or fact. Now I filed cassettes instead. Like a squirrel, hoarding nuts.
The professor was so absorbed with his chemistry, he didn’t appreciate my mundane but necessary office habits. A bit like Mr. Bloor. So wrapped up in his “azines” and “quats,” I could have been doing anything, rattling around at my desk. And poor Mr. Sharpe was too busy leering to take a blind bit of notice of my secretarial splendour.
“Smashing frock,” he’d say, often with a wolf-whistle chaser. Or: “Sex-x-xy ankles,” if I wore tights with a diamante motif at the ankle. Tragic, really. He’d hit forty hard; a dangerous age for a man.
His behavior disgusted the gentleman professor and the upstanding Mr. Bloor.
When the princess we still affectionately called Lady Di turned on the Christmas lights in Regent Street, Phillip phoned his girlfriend, Julia, specially to tell her. My room was right over the stairwell and I couldn’t help smiling at his sweetness. Holly was already in berry in Kew Gardens. Another portent of a cold winter, according to my reliable source down Portobello Road.
The next Monday, I cycled to work with cold clawing at my throat. I’d recovered by the time Algernon Sharpe made one of his grand but increasingly rare entrances. His standard dress was a porkpie hat, tailored suit, and red satin waistcoat. And shiny, patent leather shoes, with pointy toes. I could never work out if he was ahead of the fashion or behind it. He reminded me of a cock robin. All chirp and show.
“Good mor-ning!” He side-stepped in, entering stage left, like a vaudevillian. Arms outstretched, doing the shuffle, the whole catastrophe. He held an umbrella in one hand and his briefcase of samples — pure alligator hide — in the other.
Mr. Bloor simply huffed into the strong black tea, two sugars, I’d just made him. He’d been scribbling since eight, hard at his draft. He was quietly excited because the professor had made “an agronomic breakthrough that would revolutionize management of broadleafs.” Not that I’m at liberty to discuss details. I had, of course, signed a confidentiality agreement.
My own response to the entrance was a bit out of character. Something I blamed, later, on The Sound of Music.
“GOOD MOR-NING, MR. SHARPE!” I flung back in my best soprano. June Bronhill would have been chuffed, honestly. It certainly surprised Mr. Sharpe.
Mr. Bloor said later I was “a real cracker.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that in Australia a “cracker” is a sheep that’s past its use-by date. And usually toothless. He’d have been the last person to offend. Working close as we did, Mr. B. and I were starting to meld at the hip. Another loyalty was springing up. I realized later that he felt protective of me, in the same way I felt protective towards Phillip. No funny business, mind. He was old enough to be my father and I’d taken a vow of celibacy in the interests of an uncomplicated life.