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She gave him an answering smile. ‘I don’t know, Roger. I’d have to think about it. OK?’
‘You wouldn’t be doing it for nothing,’ he declared. ‘I’d pay well—or as well as whatever’s left over from my salary, anyway.’
Crystal shook her head. ‘The money aspect doesn’t worry me. It’s—’
‘Hi, Roger, and—Crystal, isn’t it?’ Ted Field stopped beside their row. ‘Know what this,’ he indicated the expectant-looking audience, ‘is all about?’
‘Haven’t a clue,’ answered Roger. ‘Take-over bid for Ornamental? Who knows?’
‘Oh, I hope not,’ Crystal put in as Ted found a seat near by. Maureen bustled along to occupy the other seat beside Crystal, and quiet descended as the platform party made their entrance.
Crystal’s eyes opened wide, her breath becoming trapped in her lungs. A man, tall and broad-shouldered, moved into the central position—a man grown familiar through his persistent appearance in her dreams.
His keen gaze swept the hall, passed across her, zipped back, rested on her for less than a second, then returned to his notes. Had he been looking for her? Of course not, she told herself, heartbeats racing, he wouldn’t even remember her, would he?
So what if he had danced with her, kissed her under mixing, moving lights? She had been just another employee, someone who had appeared at exactly the right moment to act as undemanding subordinate while he had digested his meagre meal and coped with his jet lag.
Having disciplined her thoughts, she forced herself to concentrate on his brisk words of welcome. Listening to his voice, she found herself thinking how she liked its pitch, its tone, the melodious note that made her wonder if he possessed a good singing voice—or perhaps he had Welsh forebears?
‘He can’t mean it!’ Roger exploded beside her. ‘It can’t be true.’
‘What can’t?’ Crystal asked, hitting the earth with a bump.
‘For heaven’s sake, Crystal, haven’t you been listening? Ornamental You—Worldview are closing us down!’
‘Closing what—?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘It’s not true!’ she exclaimed. ‘It can’t be. Maureen and I—we’re doing well. You must have misheard.’
‘Misheard, my foot. They’re closing them—us, all of us, he said.’
There were mutterings all around, heads turning to others, bodies twisting toward the rows behind.
‘We, the management,’ the speaker went on, ‘very much regret the step we are having to take. We do realise that it will come as a severe shock to you all. We are extremely sorry,’ Brent Akerman was saying, ‘but I’m sure you will appreciate that, however much it might go against the grain, a loss-making chain, a non-profit-producing line of business, cannot indefinitely be allowed to go limping on by any parent company.’
‘What about selling us off?’ Ted Field shouted from the audience. ‘That’d be better than what you—well, Worldview—are intending to do.’
‘That was considered,’ Brent Akerman took him up. ‘We offered the chain of shops for sale, but, despite our great efforts, there were no takers.’
‘Why weren’t we warned?’ a young woman asked, plainly near to tears.
Brows raised, Brent Akerman had his answer ready. ‘This is your warning, which we considered was the gentlest method possible of informing you of the fate of the chain you work for.’
‘What’s gentle about this?’ Ted Field queried.
Plainly impatient now, Brent Akerman replied, ‘Would each of you have preferred to have received through your letter-boxes an impersonal note of dismissal? Or a cold-blooded few words in your pay packets—“Your employment is terminated as from today”? At least we’ve laid on drinks and a buffet.’
‘Thanks a lot for that,’ Roger half rose, ‘but we’d rather have our jobs.’ There was a general murmur of agreement.
‘We at Worldview,’ Brent Akerman went on, ‘are giving you far longer notice of the termination of your employment than other firms, who merely announce their intentions to the media, or maybe take the trouble to gather together their staff on site and say, “Right, this is the end”.’
He paused. His audience hung on his every word. A born orator, Crystal found herself thinking, at first with a curious kind of pride, then, as she caught up on her own thoughts, with a twist of resentment.
‘The branch closures,’ the speaker continued, ‘will take place simultaneously one month from now. A generous redundancy payment will be made to every staff member,’ with a fleeting glance in Crystal’s direction, ‘regardless of the length of their service.’
‘I’m duly grateful for that,’ Crystal heard herself saying, discovering, to her utter astonishment, that she was on her feet, ‘but what I can’t understand is why you’re closing down all of us when, for instance, Maureen Hilson and I are doing so well at our particular branch.’
‘Hush, dear,’ whispered Maureen anxiously.
Crystal did not heed the warning. ‘You...’ she looked around, seeing faces as surprised by her outspokenness as she was, then swung her gaze back to the man she was addressing, recoiling a little at his irritated expression ‘...you know that our branch achieved highest sales, because it was you who presented me with the prize. So couldn’t you just—just—’ her bravado, which she had never even known she had, was running out ‘—just be selective in your closures?’
‘You mean,’ he responded, his tone just this side of cutting, ‘allow Miss Crystal Rose to keep her job, and fire all the rest?’
Her cheeks burned at his calculated sarcasm, even as her mind registered amazement that he had actually remembered her name.
‘No, of course I don’t mean that, Mr Akerman.’ Was it really she, Crystal Rose, addressing the top man in that tone? ‘I mean, couldn’t you give some of us another chance, let us try to push up our sales before you shut down the whole chain?’
‘It’s an interesting idea, Miss Rose,’ came the drawling reply, ‘but the world of big business, of which you doubtless know only a minimal amount, doesn’t make decisions based simply on hope rather than the distinctly disappointing, if not to say dismal, sets of figures put in front of it by their accountants.’
‘Nor does it allow,’ she retaliated, sweeping together the crumbs of her courage, ‘for the human factor. I love my job, as I’m sure we all do here, otherwise this crowd,’ she flapped her hand over their heads, ‘wouldn’t have bothered to show up. After all, the letter we received gave no indication of what the meeting was about.’
‘I guessed,’ said someone in the front row. ‘Our sales have taken a shocking dive lately.’
‘Ours, too,’ said another man.
Crystal’s heart sank. They all seemed intent on letting her down, yet if they were all speaking the truth... She would have to fight even harder, the employees as well as the management.
‘So why have ours—Maureen’s and mine—been so good?’ she asked the meeting in general.
There was indulgent male laughter. ‘Must have been a magnet somewhere in your shop that drew ‘em in,’ was one young man’s comment, and he turned his head to get a good look at the lady speaker. ‘A “hidden persuader”, I think they’re sometimes called in the trade.’
‘In the form of a good-looking lady assistant,’ another man qualified, ‘who’s got what it takes.’
On the platform Brent had taken the central seat, sitting back, arms folded, legs crossed, a smile lurking, seeming content to watch and wait, while his two colleagues appeared to share his barely veiled amusement.
Crystal shook her head, her auburn hair swirling around her shoulders. ‘You’re on the wrong track. Our stock appeals to young women—beads, bangles, headscarves, perfumes.’
‘And what about the men?’ Ted Field turned in his seat. ‘Don’t you get a single male in your shop?’
‘Well, yes. Boyfriends, husbands...’
‘All looking for gifts for the women in their lives. There you are, then. They see a pretty girl assistant and in they go.’
Crystal shook her head, bemused by the banter. ‘But I’m—’ I’m not that attractive, she had been about to say. She rounded on the members of the audience. ‘I don’t know how you can take it all so calmly. It’s your livelihoods you’re being deprived of, yours and mine. What about your families, your way of life? They,’ she indicated the platform party, shutting her eyes to the increasingly darkening features of the chairman of the meeting, ‘are threatening to take away your jobs, make you all unemployed—’
Roger’s agitated hand tugged at Crystal’s. ‘Leave it,’ he urged. ‘You’ve said enough.’
‘Yes,’ whispered Maureen, ‘he’s right. Please, Crystal, sit down. It won’t do us, or you, any good at all.’
Brent Akerman got to his feet. ‘Not threatening, Miss Rose,’ he grated, ‘intending. Thank you for your intervention. I think your colleagues have provided the answers to your queries.’
Crystal was on her feet again. ‘A management buy-out,’ she exclaimed, ‘that’s what we want!’
‘It’s the management, Miss Crystal,’ Brent Akerman clipped, with a mocking curve to his lips, ‘who intend to close the chain. Don’t you mean an employee buy-out?’
If his words had been intended as a put-down, he had succeeded. Cheeks hot, hand shaking a little as she smoothed back her hair, Crystal subsided, not completely sure as to just what had come over her. It must have been a side to her character that had been lurking below the surface for years, undisturbed and unprovoked, completely unknown even to herself, until that man, the man who stood on that platform so confidently, had prodded it awake.
More, she thought with dismay, he had prodded awake feelings within herself which she hadn’t been aware of before and which, even as she gazed up at him, were making themselves felt only too plainly.
Maureen nudged her gently. ‘That’s good, that’s very thoughtful,’ she murmured.
‘What is?’ Crystal asked, coming, a little bewildered, out of her dream.
‘Aren’t you listening, dear? You really should be. They’re giving us six weeks’ pay over and above our notice, so that we can keep paying our bills and try and find other employment at the same time. And,’ Maureen paused for effect even as Brent Akerman talked, ‘they’re giving us a very generous sum as redundancy pay.’
‘In addition,’ the chief executive concluded, ‘we will do our best at Worldview to absorb back into the company, or into one of its subsidiaries, as much of the workforce as we can.’
‘How’s that for consideration?’ Roger whispered in her ear. ‘If they can find me only part-time work it’ll help to fund my studies.’
Brent Akerman’s hand waved to the long, laden tables that stretched down one side of the room. ‘Having completed the unpleasant part of this meeting, I invite you all to help yourselves to the food provided.’
The platform party of three filed off, and as they did so Brent Akerman put his hand to his mouth to cover a wide, shuddering yawn. So he’s bored to his core, is he? Crystal thought resentfully, following the others as they beat a path to the consumables. A small bar had been provided as a thoughtful postscript by the regretful, if unrelenting, Worldview management.
Crystal discovered that she was hungry, having had no time even for a scratch meal before leaving home. As she filled a plate and forked the delicious savouries into her mouth, others, doing likewise, joined her.
Maureen picked at the food on her plate, her mind plainly on other things. ‘However will I manage without a regular wage coming in?’ she asked the company in general.
‘Find another job?’ Crystal asked gently. She, like all the others, knew about Maureen’s semi-invalid mother, who lived with her.
‘At my age? And within cycling reach of my home, the way the shop is?’ Maureen shook her head.
‘Heaven knows,’ Ted Field commented worriedly, ‘how I’ll manage to keep going financially. What did you have in mind,’ he turned to Crystal, ‘when you suggested a buy-out?’
‘Yes,’ a rounded fair-haired young woman took him up, ‘have you got access to a gold-mine or something?’
Crystal recognised her as the girl who had spoken to her in the cloakroom after the prize-giving dinner a fortnight or so back. Shirley Brownley, she recalled, was the young woman’s name.
‘I wish I had, Shirley,’ Crystal responded, drinking a mouthful of wine. ‘But we could raise a loan, couldn’t we?’
‘Anyone around here,’ said Roger, grinning, ‘got a friendly bank manager?’
‘Or a rich daddy?’ asked Ted. ‘And I do mean father—nothing else,’ he added as the others laughed.
‘Mine’s with my mother in Denmark,’ Crystal declared, ‘staying with old friends of the family. Anyway, he took early retirement and he’s anything but rich.’
‘Oh, dear. So that’s that idea knocked on the head,’ said Shirley.
‘Let’s try again,’ Crystal urged. ‘What about savings? Couldn’t we all pool them and—?’
‘Mine are non-existent,’ said Ted.
‘Mine are sacrosanct,’ Roger averred. ‘They’ve got to tide me over financially until I get my degree. Especially as I’m now about to get the push.’
Most of the others seemed to be entirely in agreement with him.
‘Mr Akerman did promise,’ Crystal ventured, ‘that those who weren’t offered positions in the company’s other subsidiaries would receive good redundancy pay. How about—?’
‘Using that?’ An older man shook his head. ‘I’ll need mine to help pay the mortgage and keep the bailiffs at bay.’
‘Me, too,’ chorused many of the others.
There the conversation tailed off, the group dispersing to help themselves to more of the food and fill their glasses with the surprisingly good-quality wine. This last, Crystal calculated, with unaccustomed cynicism, Worldview had surely provided not only to soften the blow of dismissal, but also to keep reality from bursting in before the doomed employees reached home.
Hunger appeased, she wandered somewhat despondently away from the crowd, finding herself in the open air and standing at the edge of a softly illuminated paved area set about with wrought-iron tables and chairs.
Other guests sat under the evening sky, some alone, others in cosy twosomes, plainly at one with the world, secure in their jobs and their ways of life. Unlike, Crystal reflected, herself and her colleagues, who had just been informed of their impending loss of employment and plunge into near-poverty, if not actual destitution.
Losing the job she loved and the salary that went with it was a double blow. It was money she needed to enable her not only to eat but also to pay the rent of the old but cosy two-bedroomed end-of-terrace cottage she lived in.
‘Miss Rose.’ Her name wafted, a mere whisper, on the cool evening air. ‘Over here, Miss Rose.’ Crystal swung towards a shaded corner of the wide patio from which the voice had come.
A figure half reclined against a plinth that supported the statue of a somewhat scantily robed woman rising with dignity and proud beauty towards the darkening sky.
The height of the man, the width of his shoulders, the elegant suit, not to mention the fine shape of his head and slightly indolent pose, told Crystal at once who he was. But should she go at his bidding? Her feet made the decision for her.
‘Yes?’ was her whispered answer as her closer proximity to him allowed her to survey the features she had come to know so well through their constant appearance in her dreams.
He seemed to have no answer to offer, except to hold out the dish of savouries he had selected from an assortment of edibles that rested on the statue’s standing area. It was so reminiscent of the first time they had met that laughter tugged at Crystal’s throat, and a brilliant grey-eyed smile echoed her amusement.
‘I’m full, thanks,’ she answered his gesture, but, as before, the dish was proffered again, so she accepted, and wondered at the strange improvement in the taste of the titbit on that of those she had eaten inside. It wasn’t that the quality was better, she was sure of that. It was...what was it? The time, the place and the man standing there that had imbued the savoury with the flavour of nectar?
Should I, she found herself wondering, in view of the unhappy circumstances that now prevailed, really be on such—well, friendly terms with the top man? Wasn’t she in danger of letting her colleagues down?
‘You—you haven’t just returned from a trip abroad, I suppose?’ she queried, accepting—as before—the paper napkin he offered.
He nodded, consuming another portion of the mini-meal as if he could not appease his hunger fast enough.
‘I thought I recognised the signs,’ she commented with a smile, which he returned, with a devastating effect on her pulse-rate. ‘Your dislike of airline food?’
‘Full marks for an excellent memory.’ A sliver of salmon atop a bed of lettuce on a finger of toast was demolished by a crunch of formidable white teeth.
‘Where—where from this time?’
He swallowed, licking his fingers then using a paper napkin, looking vaguely round for a waste-bin. Crystal took the scrunched paper from him, depositing it on a plate.
‘Japan,’ he just got out before another colossal yawn enveloped him. For a couple of seconds his eyes closed. Allowing himself a mere moment for recovery—his stamina, Crystal found herself thinking, must be remarkable—he reached across the plinth for a wine bottle.
Having secured it, he realised that, with the other hand holding a savoury, he had no hand free with which to pick up the glass that perched precariously on the stone base.
It took Crystal a mere second to react, seizing the glass by its stem just before it toppled. Taking the bottle, she poured him a generous supply. This he gratefully accepted, raising the glass in a salute and drinking deeply, his eyes reflectively on her as he imbibed.
Then they narrowed and she heard him ask, ‘Who taught you to anticipate a man’s needs so promptly and so skilfully?’ The wine bottle was almost empty now.
‘Instinct, intuition. Maybe my genes?’
A smile flirted with his expressive mouth at her playful reply.
‘I,’ he straightened, hands in pockets, ‘would put my money on a demanding boyfriend.’
‘Then, Mr Akerman, you’d be throwing your money away.’ She didn’t want to talk about Mick. It hurt even now, just thinking about him.
A reflective pause, then ‘So keep off. I can hear it in your voice. OK, I won’t trespass on private grief.’
‘No, no, it’s not like that!’ And strangely, incredibly, it wasn’t. Out of the blue, she discovered that she just didn’t care any more about Mick Temple and the heartless way he’d thrown her over for another girl.
‘So tell me, then,’ he asked, ignoring her outburst, ‘who taught you to be so belligerent and bellicose?’
Crystal’s mouth fell open. ‘You can’t be talking about me?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Carefully he recorked the empty bottle. ‘Who jumped to her feet this evening at every opportunity and challenged the platform?’
‘Who—?’ How could she tell him she had been as surprised as he was? ‘Oh. I’m—er—sorry about that.’ A pause, then, tossing her head, ‘No, I’m not. What I said came from the heart.’
‘Crys—tal? Hey, Crystal! So this is where you’ve got to.’ Roger came round a corner and stopped dead, looking from one to the other, frowning uncomfortably. ‘Sorry to butt in, but Crystal, I—er—we missed you. Thought you might have gone home without telling us.’ With an apologetic lift of the hand, he made to leave, but checked himself. ‘About that other matter, Crystal—could I call you, reference what we discussed?’
‘Why not? Any time.’
Roger seemed pleased, and Crystal hoped he had not read more into her invitation than her agreement to do some office work for him.
‘You’d better go, Miss Rose,’ came the dry remark, Brent Akerman having plainly made his own—wrong—interpretation. ‘Betts is missing you.’
Brent Akerman, the chief executive of the group known as Worldview International, actually remembered Roger’s surname?
‘The others, too,’ he waved his hand vaguely, ‘are missing their leader, their spokesman.’ He folded his arms and leaned against the plinth, smiling mockingly. ‘Oh, dear. Womankind will be after my—’ an eyebrow darted upward ‘—be after me. I’d better feminise that word fast—spokeswoman. And,’ his head went back to rest on the statue’s hard bare thighs, ‘do let the management know, won’t you, if there’s going to be a strike, or a sit-in? Or even a march in the town. You must inform the police about that, did you know? The management would hate to see the lovely Crystal Rose thrown into gaol through ignorance of the law.’
Annoyed by his cynicism, she was about to retaliate when she saw that his eyes had closed. ‘Mr Akerman,’ she whispered.
‘Yes?’ without lifting his head.
‘Shouldn’t you go home? I’m sure your wife will be anxious. Could I—shall I use the hotel phone and tell her you’ll soon be on your way?’
‘Call my place, by all means,’ came from him harshly, ‘but there’ll be no answer. I have no wife, no clinging little woman waiting for me.’ The bitterness was almost tangible.
‘No one there?’ Crystal asked, astonished that such a man, such a masculine man, had no woman in his life.
‘No one,’ he repeated, eyes still closed. ‘I had my fill long ago of the “two hearts that beat as one” myth, of “devotion”, and declarations of life-long love. There’s a heart where a man’s heart usually is, Miss Rose, but mine is ice right through.’
‘It sounds,’ Crystal offered into the taut silence, her own spirits unaccountably having taken a dive, ‘as if you’ve been hurt very badly.’
‘Does it?’ he responded indifferently.
Eyes fluttering open, he pulled himself upright, swaying just a little. Crystal’s hand on his arm steadied him and he looked down at it as if wondering how it had got there.
‘I think, Mr Akerman,’ she offered gently, ‘that you might be just a little bit—intoxicated.’
‘Think again, Miss Rose. The wine bottle was half full when I accepted it at the bar counter. One of the residents said he didn’t want it and kindly offered it to me.’
‘But you drank most of it on an empty stomach.’
‘True. So?’ The faint shrug and the light in his eyes convinced Crystal that most of his faculties were alive and well, if not entirely under his command. Then he swayed again. He swore under his breath and commented, ‘I’m tired, Miss Rose, deadly tired.’
Crystal, hoping to humour him, tried reassurance. ‘Jet lag probably, Mr Akerman.’
‘Plus three late nights—or should I say early mornings?—in a row.’
‘Are you going to drive yourself home?’
‘Nope. I came here by taxi straight from the airport. If you’d call another for me, Miss Rose, I’ll be eternally grateful.’ His head was back against the statue, eyes closed again.
‘Taxi, love?’ the barman said. ‘This time of night they’re almost impossible to get hereabouts.’ He indicated the wall telephone. ‘But you’re welcome to try.’
Someone was using the phone, which would mean a wait. So...she would take him home, in the car she had borrowed for the evening. Returning, she found him as she had left him, leaning, as still as the statue he rested against. Was he asleep on his feet?
‘Mr Akerman,’ her hand resumed its perch on his arm, ‘this is the way outside. Will you come with me?’
With his eyes still closed he said softly, ‘To the end of the rainbow, Miss Rose.’
His eyes opened and he looked straight into hers. It was like a bright light being switched on after intense darkness, and she found herself wanting to shield her own.
His gaze for once held no mockery, no warmth, yet no coldness either, but there was definitely a hint of something that sent tingles racing up and down her spine. Then his glance slanted down again at her hand. Maybe it was a presumptuous gesture, in view of who he was, but she had to get him outside somehow.
She had discovered a rear entrance that led on to the car park. Helping him into the front passenger-seat of the small car, she heard him mumble an address. Let him think it was a taxi driver he was addressing. He was too far gone, anyway, she reflected, pulling out into the road, to care whether his conveyance was a cab or a private car. She had caught enough of the address to let her know in which direction to point the car.