The Beach Hut Next Door (17 page)

Edmund Smithers, her prospective employer, looked at her with slight bemusement all the way through the interview as if he wasn’t quite sure what she, or indeed he, was doing there. He frowned down at her details, which were sadly lacking due to the short notice, and ran his fingers through his flyaway curls, as if hoping they might be persuaded to stay put. She couldn’t put an age on him. He had a baby face yet his hair was greying. He could be anywhere between thirty and fifty, she thought.

‘Jam,’ he said, staring at her. ‘Jam. How fascinating.’

‘Well,’ said Elodie. ‘Not really. But it was my job to make everyone want it.’

‘Who doesn’t like jam?’ He seemed to give this great thought.

‘Oh everyone loves jam. But I had to make them want
our
jam. That was the trick.’

She told him about Sammy and Sally Strawberry, and he seemed tickled by the notion.

‘Were they your idea?’ he asked.

‘Oh, absolutely. No one else would have come up with anything so ridiculous.’ Elodie made a self-deprecating face. ‘But you’d be amazed how many children sent off for the badges.’

Edmund nodded. He was staring at her again, almost puzzled.

‘What do you think the most important part of this job is?’ He spoke the question as a sort of sigh, as if the question was rather unsavoury but he felt he had to say it.

Elodie wondered if perhaps he didn’t want a secretary at all, but was being forced into it. She felt as if she was supposed to say something frightfully clever and intellectual at this point, to pique his interest. But in the end, she could only come up with one answer.

‘Well,’ she replied. ‘I suppose it’s to make sure you’re happy. Otherwise there doesn’t seem to be much point at all.’

To her astonishment this answer seemed to please him greatly, and he positively beamed. Then laughed. She blushed a little, wondering if her reply had been pert or unseemly.

There was an awkward silence.

‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anything else to ask.’

‘Oh,’ said Elodie. ‘Well, thank you.’

She went to shake his hand. He looked perturbed, but took it nevertheless. She felt crushed with disappointment that she was being dismissed so quickly. The other two women had been interviewed for at least quarter of an hour. She’d only been in there five minutes.

She left the building as quickly as she could. Hats in Harrods it was.

She rushed to Bernie’s to collect Otto, who had been utterly contented all afternoon. It was the longest she had left him, and Elodie wasn’t sure whether to be offended or relieved, but it certainly boded well for the future. She scooped him up in her arms, hugging his warm little body to her.

‘I’m sorry I had to leave you,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘But this is how it’s going to have to be. Else we’ll starve.’ By way of reply, he squirmed and giggled, seemingly unperturbed by his ordeal, going limp in her arms and spreading himself out like a starfish, looking up at her with love and absolute forgiveness, his head flung back. For one fleeting moment she thought of Jolyon, and felt a squeeze of guilt that he would never know the sheer joy of his son, but then she hardened her heart. He’d relinquished any right to Otto the day he had succumbed to her mother. She quickened her step so as to get back home quickly, to immerse herself in the evening ritual of tea, bath, bedtime. Anything to stop her thinking of her past.

As soon she got back to the flat, Lady Bellnap was holding out the telephone for her. It rang only rarely, and hardly ever for Elodie, so she was puzzled.

It was the personnel officer at the BBC. Elodie couldn’t really take in what she was saying.

‘We’d like you to start as soon as possible,’ she finished. ‘Would a fortnight be enough time?’

‘Sorry?’ said Elodie, confused.

‘The job? You came in this afternoon? Mr Smithers made his mind up straight away it was you he wanted. When would you be able to start?’

Elodie looked at Otto in his high chair. Her heart gave a lurch. She had absolutely no choice in the matter. She needed to work. She had to leave him. From across the room, Lady Bellnap gave her an encouraging nod.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘A fortnight sounds fine.’

That would give her enough time to get organized, buy some new work clothes – and spend her last few days with Otto, spoiling him rotten.

She put the phone down rather dazed.

‘Splendid!’ said Lady Bellnap. ‘There we are. Shop girl indeed. You mark my words, you’ll be Director-General before we know it.’

Within a week of starting work, Elodie realized she had strayed rather by default into a rather magical world.

The job itself was complicated, varied and required immense concentration and attention to detail. As well as the usual secretarial duties – answering the telephone and taking dictation– she was to type scripts and fill out the seemingly endless forms that went with recording a drama. At first it all made her head spin as there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of it and Edmund seemed rather baffled by it himself, but she quickly made friends with some of the other staff in the canteen and worked out the logic.

‘Wait until you go into the studio!’ one girl told her. ‘Then the fun will really start.’

Gradually she got her typing up to speed and began to make less mistakes. As the weeks went by, she became more absorbed in the content she was typing up. Edmund engaged her in conversation, asking her what she thought about characters and how the plots developed, and she began to think about how each play was structured, and understand the scribbles he put in the margin, and the cuts he made to up the tension.

When they went into the studio, her job was to time each segment they recorded with a stopwatch and mark up the script, so that when Edmund went to edit the material, he could get the programme to run to time – the slots were very specific and there was no margin for error. Elodie was spellbound by the whole process – how a sixty-page script could turn into something that transported you to another world. She had nothing but admiration for the actors who brought the scripts to life, and the soundmen whose ingenuity created a soundscape. There was an immense library of sound effects which meant anything could be recreated: a medieval battle, a car crash, a football match …

It was a truly happy time for her. It was tough, of course it was, with a small baby, but by being very organized she managed it. She got up very early, at six o’clock, and had an hour of playtime with Otto before they both got dressed and had breakfast. Then she pushed him in his pram down to Bernie’s before running to catch the bus to be at work by nine. She left on the dot of five and was usually back home by six. She crawled into bed not long after Otto, barely reading two paragraphs of her book before falling asleep.

And at the weekend, she had two full days to spend with her boy. She usually packed a picnic and they walked up through Kensington to Hyde Park, and he learned to take tentative steps on the paths that wound alongside the Serpentine.

And if sometimes, she thought about The Grey House, and how much Otto would enjoy being on the beach, and splashing about in the shallows, and digging in the sand, she soon banished the thought. This was her new life. She wasn’t going to reflect on her old life. Or anyone in it. Not for a moment longer than necessary.

After a year, she had saved enough to move to her own little flat – not in grand Kensington, which she couldn’t afford, but in Ealing. She still had to share a bedroom with Otto, but she didn’t mind, and she need no longer worry about getting in Lady Bellnap’s way or disturbing her. She cried copiously the day she left.

‘You’ve been like a mother to me,’ she sniffed, thinking that actually Lady Bellnap had been far more. And, for the first time ever, she found herself folded in Lady Bellnap’s arms, as the old lady squeezed her to her ample bosom with what Elodie thought was probably the most impulsive gesture she had made for years.

‘I’m only a bus ride away,’ said Lady Bellnap in a voice gruff with unshed tears. ‘I’ll be livid if you don’t call in with Otto at least once a fortnight.’

She sent Elodie off with a stack of linen sheets and pillowcases, a set of coffee cups and some silver teaspoons for her new flat.

In the meantime, Elodie became more and more absorbed by her job. Edmund didn’t treat her like a secretary, more an assistant. He valued her opinion. Demanded it, even. He took her out to lunch with any writers he was working with, expecting her to stay drinking wine with them rather than return to her desk at two o’clock, and she loved listening to them discussing the plays they were working on, and dissecting other people’s work. She loved being part of the fictional world Edmund created for the listener.

‘It’s an escape,’ he told her. ‘Everyone needs to escape.’

She didn’t tell him how very well she knew that.

And on Friday afternoons, more often than not, he told her to slip off a couple of hours early.

‘I’ll tell Personnel I’ve sent you off to get something I need for next week’s sound effects,’ he told her. ‘Should anyone ask.’

She appreciated his kindness, and the truth of it was she worked twice as hard for him as she would otherwise.

Two years puttered by, and Otto grew strong and confident and brought her more joy than she could imagine. At work, she became more involved in the productions than any of the other secretaries she knew. She talked at length about the plays Edmund was producing, made suggestions, even came to him with ideas for adaptations. And he entrusted her with his slush pile – the dozens of unsolicited scripts that came his way for consideration. She compiled a detailed report on each, and was thrilled to bits when one of her recommendations went into production. It might never have seen the light of day otherwise.

Of course, all of this was beyond the duty of a mere production secretary, but Elodie didn’t mind that she wasn’t being paid for what she was doing. She loved it, and that was all that mattered, and she didn’t feel exploited, or as if Edmund was using her to his own end. He always gave her credit for what she had done, and praised her work. She felt they were a team, and nothing gave her more joy than the afternoons they played back the programmes they had recorded in their entirety. It was so satisfying listening to what they had shaped; to hear the pages leap from the script and into life. Often the actors and writer would come in to listen too, and they would end up drinking wine in a celebratory fashion.

One particular lunchtime, after the playback of a new detective drama serial, Edmund and Elodie sat down to finish the last of the wine once the actors had gone. They were in a self-congratulatory mood, because the head of drama had commissioned another five episodes, and the writer had been a recent discovery of theirs, so they felt particularly jubilant.

Edmund cleared his throat as he topped up her wine. He looked awkward.

‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ he said.

Elodie’s heart hammered. He was going to tell her he was moving on. He was always being offered jobs in television or theatre. It was inevitable that one day he would take up one of those offers. But where would that leave her? She couldn’t bear to think of his replacement, who might relegate her back down to her official duties, and might not appreciate her input.

She sighed. Nothing stayed the same for ever.

‘I suppose,’ Edmund carried on, ‘that I should have bought a ring …’

‘A ring?’ Elodie tried to recalibrate her brain to take in what he was saying.

He was blushing. Right to the tips of his ears.

‘I wanted to ask you … if you would marry me.’

Blood pounded in her ears as she realized just what he had asked. She’d had no inkling whatsoever that he might. She was astonished. She stared at him, unable to answer.

He backed up his proposal.

‘I think the world of you. I think you are astonishingly talented and I want to help you make the most of that talent. And I want to look after you. And Otto.’

She’d brought Otto into the office quite a few times. Edmund had always shown a kindly interest and let him play with his headphones.

Elodie felt shock and panic in equal measure. She put down her glass, suddenly unable to stomach any more of the warm, indifferent wine that Hospitality provided.

What on earth was she going to say? She liked Edmund. More than liked him: she nurtured a warm fondness for him that had depth and breadth and would endure. She respected him and valued his opinion and admired him possibly more than anyone else she had ever met. She was in awe of his intellect; touched by his kindness. His friendship and guidance meant more to her than anything in the world.

But marry him? No. She just couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t put her finger on why. It was excruciating. She wished she were anywhere else in the world. She wished he had never asked, because she didn’t want to say no to him: dear, kind, precious Edmund, whom she knew had agonized over this question. He hadn’t asked her lightly.

She picked up her glass again and took a gulp of wine, to moisten her dry mouth. How could she find the right words? She couldn’t find a single syllable that seemed appropriate. Her mouth opened and closed once, twice. She felt hot with panic and fear and misery. This was the most awful situation she had ever found herself in.