With My Little Eye (4 page)

Douglas had previously only seen her in a singularly unflattering school uniform. She had arrived late at the party after walking back from a music lesson in the nearest village and had delayed her entrance while she changed into something more becoming. Mrs Jamieson admitted later that she had realized that Tash, having reached an age for attracting the attention of the opposite sex, could not be segregated indefinitely and instead she had given Tash a very serious lecture, not so much about the birds and bees but more concerning viruses, spermatozoa and the fickleness of men, and had then allowed her to choose her own leisurewear. The outcome could have been disastrous but in fact it had resulted in a dress in mossy green that flattered her hair colour but also did things for her figure without quite clinging or catching the light. The sheen of nylon did wonders for her already delightful legs. Douglas now saw for the first time that Tash was an exceptionally pretty, not to say beautiful, girl with a sexual attraction that would have made a saint turn his head. His first impulse was to protect her from predatory males by predating her himself. This was followed immediately by a sense of shame and a determination to do something unspecified but very special for her protection.

It also became clear that along with education and intelligence Tash was gifted with a sense of humour. The party was winding down into the peace of a fine evening. The two resident ladies had taken over the cooking end of the kitchen-dining room to begin preparations for an evening meal but others were strolling on the grass.

‘You're not married, are you?' Tash asked.

Douglas pushed aside the hope that she asked the question because her interest was in him as a prospective bridegroom. Although he had chosen to make for himself an apartment with three bedrooms and two baths, this had been partly with a view to long-term profit. He had managed to lose some of the extra cost among the general building works although he might have admitted that somewhere at the back of his mind lurked the thought that ladies might be encouraged by the signs of a family-sized house.

To Tash, he admitted his single state and explained that he hoped to need office space in the not too distant future. His tongue was loosened by the wine. ‘I was engaged once,' he said, ‘but she went …' He paused. He had been conscious of the Englishness of his voice making a reappearance where he was not sure that it would be welcomed, and the word ‘off' was dangerously close to emerging as ‘orf', a serious giveaway. ‘She went away with somebody else,' he finished. The story was true though he rarely told it, partly because the betrayal had been rather a relief. That fiancée had been becoming possessive.

Tash was obviously moved. Her very blue eyes were usually clear and bright, the irises flecked with brown and green. Douglas was sure that he could detect a tear. He was in danger of losing the thread of their conversation when Hubert Campion, the professor's companion, fell foul of Harry, Seymour McLeish's son. Harry was at the age to despise absolutely everything, especially a male preoccupation with clothes, and he soon tired of Campion's complaint that certain fabrics were prone to producing little woolly balls. Harry's patience had very soon failed.

‘If you talk any more about little woolly balls to me,' he said, ‘you'll get a kick in the little woolly balls.' He stalked out of the room, rather pleased with his turn of phrase.

Mrs Jamieson chased after him and her voice could be heard scolding him for his rudeness.

In search of more congenial company, Campion tried Stan Eastwick but soon tired of a long-winded explanation of why he grudged paying VAT on somebody else's work and intended to make use of his own and his brother's skills to finish the fittings and finishes in his flat. Campion transferred his attention and decided to join Tash and Douglas in their duologue.

Douglas consoled himself with the reflection that at least Campion, as a presumed homosexual, should be no danger to Tash; but this was overset by the fact that Campion was suffering from a passing deafness. Having difficulty hearing the words of others he proved quite willing to do the talking. ‘I hear my own voice reverberating inside my head,' he said loudly.

‘You must find that terribly boring!' Tash said. Douglas masked his amusement at the hidden insult.

‘Well, it is,' Campion said. ‘My doctor says that there's no wax in there, it's just that my passages are very narrow.' (Tash and Douglas avoided each other's eyes.) ‘He said the only treatment was to hold my nose and try to blow hard, to keep them stretched open.'

This statement reminded Tash of the words of her least favourite games mistress. She paraphrased. ‘Breathe in through the mouth and out through the ears,' she said.

‘It isn't as simple as that,' Campion persisted. ‘I can hear it coming out through my good ear, but the one that had the mastoid operation … nothing.'

Douglas let Tash see him palm a peanut from one of the dishes. ‘Tell your doctor that it needs some attention from Dyno-rod drain clearance. Of course, it may wear –' he gathered control of his tongue ‘–
off
in a year or two.' He paused and rearranged his mouth. ‘Let's see if we can hear it,' he suggested.

‘You can't see whether you can hear something,' Tash objected. ‘'s a contradiction in terms.' She had only been sipping at a glass or two of wine to which her mother had turned a blind eye, but her system could not emulate Douglas's more practiced resistance to alcohol.

‘I don't think it's loud enough for anyone else to hear,' said Campion seriously. He had had his share of the wines and perhaps a little more.

‘Let's try it,' Douglas said. With their eyes, Douglas and Tash were sharing the emerging foretaste of a joke.

Campion looked unconvinced but he took a grip of his own nose and blew. His eyes seemed ready to pop. Douglas put his left ear close to Campion's left. He was looking past the other man and into Tash's face as she put out the tip of her tongue and made a farting sound.

Douglas kept his face straight, pulled back his head and showed Campion the peanut. ‘Was this in your ear?' Douglas asked.

The other seemed uncertain. ‘I don't think so,' he said. ‘Did you make that noise?' he asked Tash.

Tash was the very picture of wounded innocence. ‘Certainly not! What are you suggesting? Do you think I'm the sort of person …?'

‘Not particularly. Oh my God! What's happening to me?' Campion turned and lurched out of the room.

Tash and Douglas collapsed onto a convenient settee and wept tears of laughter onto each other's shoulders. Her mother watched from the doorway but they had not passed beyond the bounds of propriety.

T
he new occupiers of Underwood House had to adjust to changes of company and environment but, once the altered background was accepted, old habits reasserted themselves and life, as is its habit, rolled on its way little changed.

Douglas was gratified to find that some of his employer's earlier clients preferred his more relaxed way of working and had decided to follow him. His reports were not rigidly formal but were slanted to ensure that the client understood the ramifications. He was kept busy. He might have foundered under the weight of divided responsibilities, but, out of the blue, Tash spoke to him.

‘You need a typist, telephonist and filing clerkess,' she said. ‘They spent ages trying to teach me secretarial skills at school.'

This was interesting. ‘Did they succeed?' He had wondered why she had come to breakfast in a businesslike skirt and jumper and with her hair pulled back.

‘We have to find out. I think I should spend my gap years as your dogsbody.'

‘Could you hold the end of a tape measure?'

She smiled and he thought that she probably did not realize how beguiling her smile was. ‘I think that's within my capabilities. And I'm not proud. How about it?'

Douglas was not reticent in agreeing.

The arrangement worked well. She enjoyed the work because it was crisp, factual and responded to a methodical approach. Douglas accepted her because she was cheap, well trained, easy on the eye and biddable. Her mother developed the habit of popping in unexpectedly to ask some question about their flat but never had cause for concern.

The other residents were already embedded in routine.

Seymour McLeish spent most of each weekday at the service and filling station but was happy to socialize in the evenings and weekends. He had chosen his staff well and money was being made for him without stretching him too far.

Geraldine McLeish was of a similar age to Tash and the two were regular companions if not always friends. Geraldine, who acted as cashier and pump attendant at the service station, had no ambition beyond waiting for Mr Right to come along; Tash watched her to be sure that she was not considering Douglas Young in that rosy light.

Hubert Campion, the professor's partner, was also employed by the university as a technician. The university had been plagued by a spate of thefts and a security purge was making inroads into his leisure time. Campion was very often late home for the evening meal. He said, with a sigh, that universities were an easy target for thieves; there were too many faces to remember and nobody walking the quads carrying papers was ever challenged. There was too ready a market for anything containing electronics. Until someone was scared away or caught, computers, microscopes and particularly any electronic gear had to be locked up at night, a duty that fell to the already overburdened technicians such as himself, he said.

In most of the new apartments the fitting out of kitchens was left to one of several specialist firms and the work of decoration went on at its own pace whenever the occupants felt so inclined. Stan Eastwick's flat, however, had been cobbled together, including the original kitchen adjuncts of a scullery, a larder, a laundry room, a coal cellar and other humble holes and corners, and although the building contract had embraced the opening of essential new windows, turning the dark dungeons into comparatively bright little rooms, some brick partitions had to be removed to make rooms of useable size. The dirt and grease of ages had to be scrubbed away and the exposed mess painted or papered over. Stan was also making his own kitchen with fitments purchased from a major DIY supplier. Stan's brother George turned out to have skills as a bricklayer and also at plasterwork. George and Stan virtually lived in what had been the housekeeper's room while the flat developed around them.

The brothers were not dissimilar in appearance but whereas Stan was a quiet but jolly soul his brother was definitely dour. He was easily displeased and always ready to let the world hear about his displeasure. Until his retirement date, Stan still went off to his work at the university each weekday and kept the Underwood House gardens in check in the evenings. (Gardens in the plural is perhaps an overstatement, but there was a spreading rose garden beside the front door and beds of flowering shrubs elsewhere. Grass had been sown in walkways and small lawns around the house and, though summer had not yet arrived, spring temperatures were now high enough for grass to grow and when grass grows it has to be mown. Some of the residents were already talking about croquet and clock golf.)

When his retirement was finalized Stan spent his days overtaking the backlog of gardening work and George was left to interpret Harris Benton's drawings as best he could. At least once, a shouting match between the two brothers penetrated through the special flooring as far as the flat above. As a disinterested observer, but all too often faced with George's glare, Douglas was driven to the conclusion that George was not simply reacting against imagined hostility but was himself full of hate for everybody and everything and so attracting the very real hostility that he had been imagining.

On a Wednesday in April, the silver birches were already fuzzy with infant leaf and the other trees were preparing to follow. Rock plants and alpines were splashing their yellows and purples around the edges of the borders. Girls wore shorter skirts and thinner dresses even though they shivered in the cold.

D
ouglas and Tash were ignoring the spring sunshine and golden outlook. The two worked well together. They had finished preparing a report and final accounts for the contractors' work at Underwood House. Most of the necessary payments had been made and Seymour's advance repaid. They had switched their attention to reports and valuations of Edinburgh properties for the building society that had fallen out with Douglas's previous employer but liked Douglas's style. Douglas was quietly contented. Rowan was at his feet. In Douglas's mind, a home was not a home without a lovely girl to do his bidding and a Labrador snoring and farting under his chair.

That day, the tranquil flow of work was broken by the arrival of George Eastwick. No visitor was welcome during working hours unless he came bringing more work or money and George brought only the indiscriminate hatred that he incessantly broadcast. However, at least George, who was acutely aware of the value of money, took off his boots before venturing onto new carpets.

Douglas welcomed him with apparent sincerity and indicated a chair. ‘George. Good morning, what can I do for you?'

George looked around appreciatively, as well he might. The last occupiers of the house had entertained on a lavish scale and their dining room (over the former kitchen and served by a dumb waiter) was appropriately large and panelled. Douglas, looking towards the day when he hoped to be chairing meetings of a syndicate of investors, had retained it. His desk, vast and ornate and topped with glass over leather, had come out of an auction house at a silly price – it was too big for most offices and there had been some attack by furniture beetle, now eradicated, so that Douglas's bid had been the only one. The glass top was covered with plans and A4 pages.

‘I just looked in,' George explained with unusual moderation, ‘to ask if you'd seen my brother around.'