CHAPTER SIX: HARRY’S FLAT
Harry tried hard to focus on his screen after dining – Anne was watching television in their drawingroom, but he still needed to think a few things through on the Wide Horizons front. He had eaten well: Mrs. Bates cooked a nice breast of duck, keeping it virtually raw at the core, the way he liked it, and it went down well with a small helping of buttered rice and a glass of Pomerol, just a single glass, with a small slice of Roquefort to follow. But his mind kept straying towards a telephone next to his keyboard. It was a dedicated line that he kept mainly as an Internet link, but he used it from time to time to call Sylvia. He smiled to himself. A loveline.
The telephone buzzed at him gently, and he started. Sometimes he called Sylvia, to make arrangements, but Sylvia was forbidden to call him, and he had not given his number to the girl. He answered cautiously, and then eased. It was Levon.
‘How’s it going, Harry?’ Levon’s voice was as clear as a bell, even though he was four thousand miles away.
‘It’s going to be nice and easy, Levon.’
‘You talked to the man?’
‘We had a deep discussion. I think we’ll close this week.’
‘That sounds good, Harry. Everything in place?’
‘Just waiting for the paint to dry.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The phone was silent for a moment, before speaking again. ‘Tread with care.’
Harry tenses. Everything was ready to go, and he wanted no interference. ‘Why?’
‘The Shark wants in.’
‘Oh, shit.’ Harry swallowed. Douglas Marshall, also known amongst those who disliked him – and most of his acquaintance did – as the Shark, fancied himself as another Harry Chapman. Harry imagined that he must have caught wind of him talking to Union Funds about tying up an offer. He thought for a moment. The Shark might be serious, or Union might want to flush out a bid. He weighed his homework, and knew it was time to strike. ‘We’ll have to pounce.’
‘Can we do it?’
‘Have we got the cash?’
Levon was close to a bank, one of the world’s biggest.
The telephone chuckled. ‘How much do you want?’
‘Not more than a bar.’ Harry was targetting forty to sixty mill as a killing zone. But he also needed room to manoeuvre, just in case the Shark did join the bidding. A hundred million would deal Marshall a death blow.
‘I’ll call my friends right now.’ Haris paused. ‘Set up a board meeting to put things in place. I’ll fly in tomorrow.’
Harry looked at his watch. It was coming up to nine o’clock. Levon kept his private jet permanently on standby, and was around seven hours distant. He would sleep on the way, and arrive in time for an early breakfast. He needed to relocate to the flat.
He thought of the girl again. She could be nice at Canary Wharf, somebody to help him unwind during the week, more companionable and less heavy than Sylvia. He opened his notebook. It might be worth a try.
His phone rang for about half a minute, and he was on the point of closing the call, when a girl’s voice answered.
Harry swallowed. He was in wholly new ground, unexplored territory, and he needed to move at speed. He spoke quickly. ‘I’m Harry. What are you doing?’
‘What, right now?’ Doreen heard the small voice in her mobile, and her own voice was a sharp little squeak of excitement. She was now back home, with her case packed, ready to move with Jason. But her very own shiekh was online. Perhaps he was galloping to the rescue. She tried to collect herself, but she was all at sixes and sevens.
‘I’ve got to go to London in about half an hour, I’ve got a flat there. Do you want to come with me?’
She pinched herself to make sure she was not dreaming. The house was empty, and she and Jason had been taking turns to guard the front door. Neither wanted ever to see Marje again. They were being thrown out, and she was about to lose her own small personal sanctuary. Yet now heaven suddenly seemed to be opening. She closed her eyes as she breathed her assent. She was dreaming. She must be dreaming.
‘Where are you right now?’
Harry’s question brought her back to reality. ‘I’m at home, on the estate.’
‘What number?’
Doreen twitched. She was at home, what had been home. But she did not want her sheikh coming face to face with Marje. She thought quickly. ‘I’ll come out on the main road and wait for you.’
Harry hesitated. He was asking a teenage girl to stand on a street corner. ‘Is that safe?’
‘I’ve got my brother with me.’
The exchange was quickfire, and decisive. Harry glanced at his watch, calculating timing. ‘It’s nine now. Can you be there at ten?’
Doreen felt like shedding tears of joy. ‘I’ll be there.’
Harry cleared his line and swung into a whirl of action. He thought of asking Anthony to drive, but brushed the idea aside. Anthony had already made made one early trip to London to buy fish, and he would not ask him to make a second. He also wanted to keep the girl under wraps. He booked a chauffeur-driven car, and then hurried from his screen to brief Anne.
‘Something has come to a head. Levon is flying in overnight, I’ll need to spend some time at Canary Wharf.’
Anne lay curled up comfortably on their big sofa, watching a Rolf Harris video – she lately developed an interest in painting, and signed up to art classes at Maidenhead College. But she immediately closed the video with a click of her remote. Harry often made last minute plans, and always needed backup.
‘You’ll need a dozen shirts, clean underwear, silk socks.’ She ran through a mental checklist. ‘How many suits?’
Harry was already back in his study busily saving files to disk. She followed him to stand in the doorway. ‘I’ll pack a couple of dark ones.’
He looked up. ‘Some casual stuff as well.’ He imagined the girl might want to go clubbing.
‘Casual things for your evenings?’ She smiled indulgently. ‘But not too many late nights.’ Anne knew men. They tended to get up to mischief when left on their own.
The chauffeur-driven car arrived just as Harry finished. A nice big Mercedes similar to his own, very solid. He pecked Anne in farewell, and sat on the edge of his seat as the car edged out of the Manor House drive. He realised that he did not even know her name.
Doreen stood waiting at the corner of the road leading into the estate with Jason beside her. They were alone, and both were uncertain. She had told her brother that she had found a protector, and he guessed that she was running off with Mr. Chapman, but he was still not very happy. Doreen could be rash at times.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’
She nodded firmly. ‘I’ll be ok.’
‘Where will you live?’
Doreen shrugged. ‘It’ll be part of the package.’
‘But you’ll call me if things don’t work out?’
‘I’ll call you.’ But she knew things would have to fall apart very badly to force her back to the village. She was starting a new life, and she prayed that it would be a good one.
A car pulled in to the kerb a little way ahead them, and a man opened the rear door to get out. Doreen shivers. She recognised Harry Chapman, and knew she was standing at the entrance to a new world. She kissed her brother quickly. ‘Here he is.’
Jason put his arms around her. ‘You promise you’ll call?’
‘I promise.’ She pulled away. She was burying one life, for better or worse, and starting another. She took her case, and walked towards the car, and the man was holding the door open for her, and suddenly all her dreams were becoming real.
Harry smiled. ‘Was that your brother?’
Doreen nodded. ‘He thinks I’m walking into a lion’s den.’
They were both silent as the car pulled away. Then Harry looked at her curiously. The car was dark, but he could see the outline of her face against the street lights.
‘Are you?’
Doreen was silent for a moment, and then looked at him, full in the face, her eyes searching his. She saw a man in his middle years in the shadows, a man who was lost, and she had something to give him, and her gift was her youth. She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. You don’t look like a lion to me.’
Harry laughed softly. Suddenly he wanted to touch this girl, so much now in his power, enfold her and hold her against him, but he held back, and realised that he must also win her. He was not a man to try and rape girls. He held out his hand. ‘You know my surname. I’d like you to call me Harry. It’s what my friends call me.’
‘I’m Doreen Simmonds.’ Doreen paused. ‘Some people call me Sparkles.’ She leaned towards Harry, still holding his hand, and raised his fingers until they touched her cheek, and it was a reprise of their last encounter. ‘Are you really going to take me away?’
Harry kissed her. It was a warm kiss, rather than a kiss of passion. He imagined that the chauffeur might be keeping an interested eye on them. But he felt a soft mouth open under his, and the tip of a questing tongue probe along his lips, and he felt desire gather within him.
‘Let’s see how we get on together.’
‘Will you give me pocket money, and help me find a job?’ Doreen was unsure how comprehensive a rich male’s support might or should be. She had a vague idea that pop stars set their girl friends up in style, billowing with furs, and charge accounts at all the smartest stores. But she was still feeling her way, and it was still not yet Christmas. She imagined furs and trips to exotic destinations might come a little further along her learning curve.
Some of Harry’s mounting euphoria ebbed a little. ‘How much will you need?’
Doreen realised that she had said the wrong thing. ‘I won’t need much.’ She almost added the words ‘to start’, but thought better of it. ‘I’ll just need some clothes and such.’
‘I’ll give you a budget.’ Harry had a budget for Sylvia, but Sylvia had begun to grow a little grasping. She liked to wear designer dresses with astronomical price tags. He imagined Doreen might also grow ambitious in time. But it might take her quite a while to climb to Sylvia levels. ‘I’ll give you a couple a week, to start you off.’
Doreen frowned. Marje had given her a fiver a week whilst still at school, but now she was out in the world. She supposed free bed and board might be worth a bob or two. But a couple would barely buy a cup of coffee.
Harry sensed her disappointment, and fished for his wallet. He always carries a few hundred in fifties, just for emergencies, as well as a clutch of twenties, tens and fivers. He pulled four fifties free. ‘This will keep you going for the first week.’
Doreen stared at the pink banknotes in amazement. ‘Two hundred? I thought you meant a couple of quid.’
Harry grinned. ‘Spend them carefully.’
It was past eleven when they reached Canary Wharf. Harry’s flat formed part of a converted Dockland warehouse, with a neat little entrance lobby, a large main room with a panoramic view along the Thames, a decent sized kitchen, a room that he used as an office when he needed to work though an evening, one big bedroom and a couple of smaller ones for visitors, with a series of en suite bathrooms. He had furnished it comfortably but sparsely, with a couple of huge colourful abstracts dominating the main room to create a sense of space. It was very much a pad for a rich bachelor.
He paid off the driver with another fifty, hefted his bag and his laptop, and jerked his chin at a security gate barring the way to a wrought iron staircase climbing on itself. ‘We go up there.’
The gate worked both on a key, and on voice recognition, a handy toy picked up doing business with some whizzkids, and the door to the flat swung open automatically on optical identification as he glanced into the sensor. The gate and the door were only a few feet apart, but they served as a useful deterrent against prowlers.
Doreen stood in the lobby and stared. She has a feeling that she was entering a small palace. The room stretching away in front of her could have swallowed her home in Tithing St. Mary three or four times over, and left a fair bit of space to spare. She looked around and realised just how much she was entering a different world. She would not have to make a bed up for herself on this man’s sofa, no way. She began to prowl as Harry dropped his laptop off in his office, and wondered how she might spend her time when he was away during the day, and she was on her own. She pushed at a door opening into a bedroom, and judged the bed several times the size of the tiny room she had left only a few hours before.
Now she knew both that she had truly fallen on her feet, and also that she must consolidate her new standing at speed. She had known a few men, and all trod pretty similar paths to coition. She began to undress, until she was standing naked by the bed. She heard a noise, and turned to see Harry standing by the bedroom doorway staring at her, and cupped her hands under her breasts, lifting them slightly to point her nipples at him.
‘This was my part of the bargain.’ She heard herself speak, and her voice was hoarse. She could see that he was waiting, unsure how to respond, and she moved to stand close in front of him, circling one arm around his neck whilst she began to roll up his silk poloneck, stroking the flat of her hand against the small of his back. She kissed him, and then they were both kissing, and she was freeing him from his poloneck, rolling it over his head, and could feel his hands stroking her hips, and he was bending to kiss each of her nipples in turn, and she could feel herself start to burn. She released his belt, pushing down on his slacks and underpants, and felt his maleness rising against her stomach, and then they were both moving as though in slow motion, in a mutual dance of movement that must inevitably bind them together, and she pulled him backwards onto his bed, waiting for him to position himself on her, and knew both that her gate was open to welcome him, and that she has herself was passing through a portal to a new life.