I didn’t hold Mr. Sharpe in quite the same esteem. Honestly, he never stopped trying. It was pathetic. Even followed me home, once. The professor was always apologizing for his behavior.
One didn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to work out that Mr. Bloor despised Mr. Sharpe, too. He began abbreviating his moniker to “Algy,” as if he were a slimy, low-growing plant.
In return, Mr. Sharpe started openly stating that Mr. Bloor was “bent as a hairpin, and a right nutter with it.” The latter’s passion for counter-espionage didn’t help. Just that week he’d been on the telephone quoting the cost of a scrambling device for his own.
My gran would have said Mr. Sharpe had the gift of the gab. He was becoming increasingly late, always with an excuse. Black ice. Mislaid keys. Shocking traffic snarls on the M4.
I had the honor of delivering these telephone messages, po-faced, to the professor. He’d purse his lips, arch one eyebrow, and steeple his hands, as if he was deep in thought about the molecular structure of a new product.
It was just before Christmas when the snow really hit.
...George down Portobello said yesterday it was cold enough to snow. Last night it did! In the shower upstairs this morning it was as though someone was sitting on the roof tipping soap flakes against the outside window. The street looks like a Christmas card. Walked outside and nearly broke my neck.
Back at the house that weekend, I was planning to cut across Kensington Gardens to the Royal Albert Hall. Vonnie was coming in for a carol concert. Phillip had declined. He had a new roommate moving in.
He did the introductions on the landing.
“Rosie! Meet Harley.”
Harley was swarthy, short, chunky, and bouncing on the balls of small feet which were snug in designer trainers. Like he was warming up for an international athletics event. His hands were thrust into the pockets of a distressed, tan-leather bomber jacket, which I coveted at first sight. His smile was white and straight, like an “after” picture in an orthodontist’s waiting room.
“Ro-sie!” He flung his arms wide and grabbed me in a bear hug, as though we were old friends meeting after some considerable time apart.
“Harley’s rooming with me over the winter,” Phillip said.
“Great.” I was genuinely pleased as I rubbed the back of my neck. “You’ll save heaps, for when Julia gets here.”
I turned to Harley. “Where’re you working?”
He laughed as if I’d recited a particularly killing punch line at The Comedy Theatre.
“I work for God, Rosie.”
“Great!” I managed. Just. My neck was still spasming. Besides, Harley didn’t look humble enough. Designer trainers. Designer teeth. That fabulous jacket.
Phillip eagerly explained that Harley was a pilot, from Cape Town. He’d given up life as he knew it to answer The Calling. He’d be setting up the “youth arm” of a religious group I’d never heard of.
“Great,” I heard myself repeat. I issued a vague invitation for coffee sometime later and hurried away to the Royal Albert Hall.
...saw a robin in the snow. Kids sledding down a hill near the Round Pond. Roasted chestnuts a disappointment; too floury. The Duchess of Kent (presents Wimbledon trophy) was in the Bach Choir. A dusting of snow as we emerged. Dried hair kneeling in front of the oven, door open...
Harley caught me next morning.
I’d popped out to buy the Sunday papers and had left my door ajar. I was only gone a few minutes, but when I got back he was fingering the spines of my old and antiquarian books. Sopwith Scout 7309 lay open on my bed. He’d even put the kettle on, ready for “that coffee you promised.”
“Shouldn’t you be in church or something, Harley?”
“God bless you, Rosie.” His smile was blinding. It lit up my entire personal space. “The world is my church. This room is my church.”
I made him coffee and endured an hour of philosophical debate. Harley had Gran’s “gift of the gab” real bad.
If I hadn’t issued another vague promise to let him read my precious first edition at some undisclosed future date, he’d probably still be there.
After he’d gone, I couldn’t even concentrate on the Sunday papers. And that really rankled.
But it was nothing to how I felt next morning when I found myself alone in the office with Algernon Sharpe. The professor was addressing an agribusiness conference in The Hague. Mr. Bloor had dashed down to Kent due to some sort of crisis with his trial plots.
With my usual confidant away, I heard myself babbling about Harley and his irritating, forward manner.
“Scoundrel,” the Right Dishonorable growled sympathetically. Well, it takes one to know one. “Sounds like someone needs to shake him down a peg or two.”
He didn’t indulge me long. He had a mound of paperwork for me to move. The firm really extracted its seventeen pounds’ worth of flesh that day. Used up the best part of a cassette, that’s how much typing I did.
I was due to finish at Christmas, mind, so I guess poor Mr. Sharpe only wanted to make use of my services while he could. He could see I was pushed, and said not to bother doing copies, to save time.
That was not standard office procedure, as I felt obliged to inform him.
“I think the professor...”
Mr. Sharpe cut me off by stroking my cheek. “You’re not paid to think, Rosie.”
That night, Phillip was on the phone again to Julia. They were moving in different directions, he told her. Greece was off.
God moved in mysterious ways that week. On Friday, Phillip’s yellow ten-speed racer was stolen. He was heading up to his room, then straight down to the police station to report it, when we met on the stairs.
“It’ll be in some motorway car park, on its way to being someone’s flipping Christmas present.” His pale face was red and his Adam’s apple was bobbing like a Cox’s orange pippin in a tub at a fair.
But he’d calmed remarkably by next morning. On my way to buy the vegetables I asked how he’d fared with the police.
“Didn’t bother,” he said, beatifically. “Harley explained that it was God’s will my bike was stolen.”
“Did he, Phillip?” I croaked.
...Sprouts have gone up from sixteen pence to thirty pence per pound with the cold snap; carrots from six to twenty pence per pound. Last night I left the window open and someone in the street threw a snowball right into my room!
Mr. Sharpe phoned to say he was delayed again on my last day before Christmas. I sat dredging up memories of particularly grim funerals, before striding in to the chief.
“Mr. Sharpe’s been delayed. His radiator hose has popped its connections.”
I watched the prof’s right eyebrow slowly arc and his fingers start to steeple. “Fourth radiator hose to go in a year,” he said tiredly.
Poor Mr. Sharpe was too late to join us for a slap-up turkey buffet. So he missed the professor’s Christmas surprise.
“Enjoyed your time with us, Rosie?”
“Brilliant,” I said.
“Off to the wilds of Cambridgeshire for the festive season?”
“My mother’s cousin, Prof.”
“And then?”
“I’ll be back in London, temping until May. A few of us are going to hire bikes and cycle around Holland.”