Free Wishing Water by Freda Lightfoot Page A

such horse play during office hours.
    He got up from behind his wide mahogany desk, tugged at his waistcoat, then took off his spectacles and polished them furiously. The glass in them was quite plain but they were useful as they gave dignity and an air of authority to his somewhat boyish face. He replaced them carefully, hooking the wire frames around each ear as he again peered through the gold lettering.
    Christine was squealing, dropping papers all over the place as she put up her hands in weak defence, her breasts bouncing beneath her white blouse in delightful unison. Philip contemplated how they would feel pressed up against him. His hand twitched convulsively as if testing their softness in his hand. Perhaps as a pillow for his head. For a moment he envied Derry then felt guilt wash over him like a hot tide.
    Blinking furiously, he straightened, stiffening his spine to a more proper posture. What was he thinking of? He thrust open the door and stepped into the outer office.
    ‘Have you finished with the morning post, Colwith?’ he asked in his quiet voice, and the occupants of the room froze, as if captured on camera.
    Derry was the first to recover. ‘Won’t be a jiff.’  
    Philip winced. ‘Can we use the English language within the precincts of the office? Bring them through when you are done. Five minutes, if you please.’  
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Derry, adopting a suitably sober expression. Christine had fled to her big black typewriter in the corner and was already pounding heavily upon it, bent on proving how hard she was really working.
    Miss Henshaw was looking flustered as if it had been she who had been running about and squealing so outrageously. Philip glowered at her before returning to his desk, to let her know that he did hold her largely responsible. She flushed a dark red and bent her sensible, neatly cropped grey head more arduously to the conveyance she was laboriously typing. When the telephone shrilled at her elbow she almost snatched it up.
    ‘Brandon Solicitors. Can I help you?’ she trilled in her bright telephone voice, pencil. poised over her pad. ‘Of course. One moment, please.’ Miss Henshaw flicked switches and pulled plugs on the ancient switch board. ‘Mr McArthur.’  
    ‘Thank you,’ said Philip, in a tone meant to show she was not forgiven. Miss Henshaw took the point and got back to her typing. ‘Behave, you two. You’ll get us all the sack.’
    Derry only had to look at her with that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth smile and she was putty in his hands. It made her day just to watch him strut up and down the office. He certainly gave her a giggle and something to think about in her cold lonely bed at night. Vera Henshaw rather liked young men. She’d used to dream about Philip at one time, about what might have been between them had things been different and he not a man of affairs and she his simple secretary. Foolish even to have considered the possibility. Didn’t every secretary fall in love with their boss? And Vera knew she wasn’t really his type. He preferred smart, attractive young women, not tired ones in floppy cardigans with the first signs of varicose veins.
    Vera Henshaw sighed. It could have been so perfect, she a mere thirty-nine, or thereabouts, and he a mature thirty. But of course he would never marry, not now Felicity, his fiancée, had died. How that poor girl had suffered! But Philip had remained loyal. He’d not so much as glanced at another woman in all the three years since, the dear man. It was as if he was afraid to. As if by doing so, he would in some way blight her sweet memory. Though in Vera’s considered opinion he sorely needed a good woman to shake him out of his mourning. Unfortunately, she was not that woman.
    She mopped up a tear and on finding herself the object of scrutiny from her fellow workers, threw them a sour look. She put back her spectacles which hung from a cord about her neck and took out her frustration on