A POCKET FULL OF RYE
A POCKET FULL OF RYE
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IT was Miss Somers’s turn to make the tea.
Miss Somers was the newest and the most
inefficient of the typists. She was no longer
young and had a mild worried face like a
sheep. The kettle was not quite boiling when
Miss Somers poured the water on to the tea,
but poor Miss Somers was never quite sure
when a kettle was boiling. It was one of the
many worries that afflicted her in life.
She poured out the tea and took the cups
round with a couple of limp, sweet biscuits in
each saucer.
Miss Griffith, the efficient head typist, a
grey-haired martinet who had been with Consolidated
Investments Trust for sixteen years,
said sharply: “Water not boiling again, Somers!” and Miss Somers’s worried meek
face went pink and she said, “Oh dear, I did think it was boiling this time.”
Miss Griffith thought to herself. “She’ll
last for another month, perhaps, just while
we’re so busy . . . But really! The mess the
silly idiot made of that letter to Eastern
Developments–a perfectly straightforward
job, and always so stupid over the tea. If it
weren’t so difficult to get hold of any intelligent
typists–and the biscuit tin lid wasn’t
shut tightly last time, either. Really—-”
Like so many of Miss Griffith’s indignant
inner communings the sentence went unfinished.
At that moment Miss Grosvenor sailed in
to make Mr. Fortescue’s sacred tea. Mr.
Fortescue had different tea, and different
china and special biscuits. Only the kettle and
the water from the cloakroom tap were the
same. But on this occasion, being Mr.
Fortescue’s tea, the water boiled. Miss
Grosvenor saw to that.
Miss Grosvenor was an incredibly glamorous
blonde. She wore an expensively cut little
black suit and her shapely legs were encased
in the very best and most expensive blackmarket
nylons.
She sailed back through the typists’ room
without deigning to give anyone a word or a
glance. The typists might have been so many
blackbeetles. Miss Grosvenor was Mr. Fortescue’s
own special personal secretary; unkind
rumour always hinted that she was something
more, but actually this was not true. Mr.
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Fortescue had recently married a second wife,
both glamorous and expensive, and fully
capable of absorbing all his attention. Miss
Grosvenor was to Mr. Fortescue just a
necessary part of the office decor–which was
all very luxurious and very expensive.
Miss Grosvenor sailed back with the tray
held out in front other like a ritual offering.
Through the inner office and through the
waiting-room, where the more important
clients were allowed to sit, and through her
own ante-room, and finally with a light tap on
the door she entered the holy of holies, Mr.
Fortescue’s office.
It was a large room with a gleaming
expanse of parquet floor on which were
dotted expensive oriental rugs. It was
delicately panelled in pale wood and there
were some enormous stuffed chairs upholstered
in pale buff leather. Behind a colossal
sycamore desk, the centre and focus of the
room, sat Mr. Fortescue himself.
Mr. Fortescue was less impressive than he
should have been to match the room, but he
did his best. He was a large flabby man with a
gleaming bald head. It was his affectation to
wear loosely cut country tweeds in his city
office. He was frowning down at some papers
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on his desk when Miss Grosvenor glided up
to him in her swanlike manner. Placing the
tray on the desk at his elbow, she murmured
in a low impersonal voice, “Your tea, Mr.
Fortescue,” and withdrew.
Mr. Fortescue’s contribution to the ritual
was a grunt.
Seated at her own desk again Miss Grosvenor
proceeded with the business in hand.
She made two telephone calls, corrected some
letters that were lying there typed ready for
Mr. Fortescue to sign and took one incoming
call.
“Ay’m afraid it’s impossible just now,” she
said in haughty accents. “Mr. Fortescue is in
conference.”
As she laid down the receiver she glanced at
the clock. It was ten minutes past eleven.
It was just then that an unusual sound
penetrated through the almost soundproof
door of Mr. Fortescue’s office. Muffled, it