Poor Oscar, thought Harriet sitting down in a lemon yellow chair, hoping her laddered tights didn’t show too much.
Then she studied some photographs on a side table. Two were of very beautiful children, a boy and a girl, with long blonde hair and dark slanting eyes. Another photograph was of a racehorse. Cory Erskine, she remembered, had once been famous as an amateur jockey. The fourth was of Noel Balfour, herself, in a bikini, looking not unlike a sleek and beautiful racehorse — long-legged, full bodied, with the fine head, tawny eyes, classical features and wide sensual mouth that were so familiar to cinema audiences all over the world.
And what of the man Noel Balfour had been allegedly happily married to for so long? Harriet turned back to look at Cory Erskine, examining the aloof, closed face with its deadpan features, high cheekbones and slanting, watchful eyes. He looks like a Red Indian, she thought, inscrutable and not very civilized at that.
As he came to the end of his conversation, a shaft of winter sunshine came through the window, lighting up the unhealthy pallor of his face, the heavy lines around the mouth, the grey flecks in the long, dark hair.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said, putting down the receiver. He picked up a half empty whisky bottle. ‘Have a drink?’
Harriet shook her head. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunchtime, and a drink the size of the one Cory Erskine was pouring into his own glass would put her out like a light.
When he offered her his cigarette case, however, she couldn’t resist taking one, although she knew one wasn’t supposed to smoke at interviews. Her hand shook so badly when he gave her a light that he had to steady it with his own hand.
He straightened up and looked at her for a minute. ‘You’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t you?’ he said abruptly. ‘How long is it since you had the baby?’
‘Three months,’ said Harriet. ‘I wasn’t awfully well afterwards; but I’m fine now.’
‘Who’s the father?’
Harriet blushed.
‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘I don’t make a habit of rushing round on roller skates with a megaphone, as soon as anyone tells me anything.’
‘He was an undergraduate,’ said Harriet, ‘called Simon Villiers.’
Even after so long, the mention of his name made her mouth go dry, her throat tighten.
Cory Erskine looked up.
‘Simon Villiers? Good-looking boy, blond? Loaded with money? Doesn’t he want to go on the stage?’
Harriet started shaking. ‘You know him?’
‘I’ve met him. I had to give a couple of lectures on drama at Oxford last summer. Simon Villiers was allotted to look after me.’
‘How was he?’ asked Harriet in a strangled voice.
‘Extremely pleased with himself. Don’t you see him now? Doesn’t he help you?’
‘He gave me a lot of money to have a proper abortion, but I funked it so I bought some contact lenses instead and kept the baby.’
‘Does he know you’ve had it?’
‘I wrote and told him. He didn’t answer. I think he’s probably abroad. He wasn’t in love with me.’
‘Won’t your parents help?’ he asked.
‘Only if I have William — that’s the baby — adopted, and I can’t bear to do that.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘I’ve left him with a friend — but only for the afternoon.’
Her stomach started rumbling with hunger. She felt at a distinct disadvantage in his lemon yellow chair, her bottom much lower than her legs.
Cory Erskine shook the ice round in his whisky. ‘And you want to look after my children?’
Harriet nodded, trying desperately not to appear too eager. He pointed to the photographs on the table.
‘Jonah and Chattie, aged eight and five. Contrary to all the rubbish you’ve read in the papers about Noel’s and my married bliss, they’ve had a very rough time. Ever since Jonah was born, Noel’s been making her mind up whether or not to leave me. The children have been used as pawns. Now she’s finally decided she wants to marry Ronnie Acland.’ His voice hardened. ‘And we’re getting a divorce.’
‘I’m abroad a lot. The children live up in Yorkshire in my old family home. Noel has never got on with any of the nannies. As a result, they’ve had a succession of people looking after them. They desperately need someone kind, loving, responsible and permanent to give them security.’
He looked at Harriet, taking in the pitiful thinness, the long legs sprawled like a colt’s, the lank dark hair drawn back in a crumpled black ribbon, the irregular features, sallow skin, huge frightened eyes, full trembling mouth.
‘Have you any idea what you’ll be in for?’ he said. ‘It’s a dead-end part of the world. Nothing ever happens there. All the locals ever talk about is hunting. I go up to work there because it’s more peaceful than London. Could you throw yourself into looking after two children? Because if you can’t, there’s not much point your coming. How old are you?’
‘Nearly twenty,’ said Harriet.
‘But Mrs Hastings said you’ve got a degree.’
‘No, I dropped out when I got pregnant.’
‘But you do have experience with children?’
‘I’ve looked after friends’ children a lot.’
‘But I gathered you’d had a job, or was that just part of Mrs Hastings’s meticulous inaccuracy? How long did it last?’
Harriet shuffled her feet. ‘Only one night,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It was a housekeeping job for a man in the country.’
‘And?’
‘He. . he tried to rape me the first night.’
Cory Erskine raised an eyebrow. ‘Quick work! How did he manage that?’
‘He came into my bedroom j-just after I’d turned out my light and. .’
‘And you didn’t feel it worth your while to capitulate. Very admirable.’
Harriet flushed angrily. If she had expected sympathy, she was quite wrong. Cory Erskine’s face was without expression.
‘And the baby,’ he went on. ‘Is he good? Does he cry much?’
Harriet took a deep breath. She might as well be honest, as she obviously wasn’t going to get the job.
‘Yes, he does; but I think babies are barometers. They reflect the mood of the person looking after them. I mean,’ she floundered on, ‘if I were happier and less worried, he might be, too. It’s just that I haven’t been very happy lately.’
Cory Erskine didn’t appear to be listening. He was examining the page in his typewriter. He turned it back, and typed in a couple of words with one finger.
Bastard! thought Harriet. How dare he be so callous!
‘Well, if he cries that’s your problem,’ he said without looking up. ‘We’ll put you both at the far end of the house, and then no-one but you will hear him.’
Harriet gave a gasp.
‘You can cook and drive a car?’ he went on.
She nodded.
‘Good. You don’t have to do everything. There’s a housekeeper, Mrs Bottomley. She’s been with our family for years, but she’s getting on and the children exhaust her. Jonah’s a weekly boarder at a prep school, and Chattie goes to day school. You’d have to look after them when they’re at home, ferry them to and from school, see to their clothes, cook for them,
‘Do you mean you’re really going to hire me?’ asked Harriet in a bewildered voice.
He nodded. ‘I only hope you won’t be horribly bored.’
‘Bored?’ said Harriet slowly. ‘That’s like asking a drowning man if he’d be bored by a lifebelt.’
It was the first time Cory Erskine had smiled, and Harriet could suddenly see why Noel Balfour had once
