‘What time did he say he would be here?’ she heard one of the others asking the chairwoman.
‘Well, I suggested he leave it until a quarter to nine to give everyone time to arrive, so he should be here any minute now.’ She glanced at her watch as she spoke, and, as though on cue, someone rapped firmly on the door and then opened it.
Since Miranda had been told of Ben’s imminent arrival, it seemed scarcely necessary for her heart to start beating as frantically as though it had just received a sudden shock, she told herself irritably as she deliberately refused to do anything more than briefly acknowledge his presence with a small inclination of her head, leaving it to Alice Thornton, their chairwoman, to go forward and welcome him.
He was carrying a roll of paper: the much-vaunted plans, no doubt.
Alice Thornton was in her early sixties, the old-fashioned, rather formal type who, as Miranda had known she would, insisted on making Ben personally known to all of them. Whether by accident or as a gentle reproof because she had been late, Miranda had no idea, but somehow or other she was the last to be introduced to him, but before she could say anything he was smiling at her and saying warmly, ‘Oh, Miranda and I already know one another,’ and, as they all sat down, Miranda was forced to make a response to her neighbour’s excited questions.
‘You know him? How did you meet? Is he married, do you know, or…?’
Reminding herself that this kind of direct questioning was one of the penalties one paid for living in a small town and for having a father who was known to almost every single one of its longstanding inhabitants, she answered her neighbour’s questions as quickly as she could, explaining that they had met through her father, adding as coolly as she dared that as far as she knew Ben was not married.
‘He’s very good-looking,’ her interrogator said wistfully. She was a small quiet woman in her late forties, who to Miranda’s knowledge had been contentedly and happily married to her husband for twenty-odd years, and so this response caused Miranda to repeat to herself her own earlier warnings about the dangers of allowing herself to become vulnerable to the allure of surface looks and facile charm.
The chairwoman was standing up, commanding their attention, announcing that Mr Frobisher had kindly suggested coming along to allay their fears about the conversion of the house he had bought in the High Street, and that for this purpose he had brought with him his plans.
Though he thanked her with an ease that suggested that he was not unfamiliar with public speaking—even if the warmth in his voice did suggest that it was a special pleasure to be with them in a way that Miranda told herself she could only despise because it meant that he was deliberately trying to charm and befuddle them—no doubt while he was talking to them he would be secretly laughing at them, amused by their small-townness and amateurish approach. But at least they were genuine in their emotions and beliefs, she thought irefully, while he…
He was spreading the plans out on the table, making it necessary for them to crowd closer together in order to see them.
As she listened to him pointing out where special features were being retained, even at the expense of convenience and cost, she tried not to admit how much she enjoyed listening to his voice.
‘Miranda, you can’t possibly see from there,’ Bob Voysey, their treasurer, whispered fussily.
Bob was a bachelor of around her father’s age, who, until her death three years ago, had lived with his mother. One of Miranda’s friends had gig-glingly suggested that she suspected he had a crush on Miranda and that she’d better watch out if she didn’t want to take his mother’s place in his life.
Miranda hadn’t been amused. She liked Bob and felt a little sorry for him in his obvious loneliness, but ever since hearing that light-hearted comment she had taken good care to make sure that she treated him with a formal distance that made it plain that, while she respected and liked him, she considered him to be a member of an older generation in whom she had no romantic interest.
Now as he whispered to her she flushed, more out of an awareness that Ben had focused on them and was watching them, his attention no doubt drawn to them by Bob’s whisper, than because she was embarrassed at not being able to see the plans.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Ben smiled. ‘I’ve already arranged to show Miranda the plans. In fact, that’s what gave me the idea of coming here to see you all tonight. When we were out the other night, Miranda made it so plain to me how much concern there is locally about the way in which so many of your older buildings are being destroyed that I wanted to come here myself to set your minds at rest where my building at least is concerned.’
Furious with him for implying, even if unintentionally, that their relationship was far more intimate than it ever was or could be, and knowing how eagerly and enthusiastically this snippet of information would be passed around the town, duly garnished and embellished, Miranda gritted her teeth and all but snapped at him.
‘Yes, but isn’t it a fact that, where computers are concerned, equipment needs to be housed at certain static temperatures and in certain stable conditions which will mean that the interior of the building will virtually have to be ripped out?’
‘Yes, that is true,’ Ben agreed evenly. ‘But since we are concerned with producing and writing software, and not computers, the excellent cellars beneath the building are ideal for conversion for that purpose.’
Miranda knew she was flushing again. This time with anger. He was making her look a complete fool, she thought bitterly.
As though he had read her mind, Ben continued quietly, ‘I have to admit, though, that your point is a valid one, and that one of the reasons I bought that particular house was to overcome the problems of housing modern computer equipment in an old building.’
‘In that case, why not use a purpose-built complex somewhere outside the town?’ Miranda suggested grittily.
The smile he gave her made her stomach muscles quiver. Sternly quelling such rebelliousness, she refused to respond to it, fixing her gaze on a point just over his shoulder, wishing desperately that she had never opened this argument, but stubbornly knowing that now that she had she wasn’t going to back down.
‘Computer programmers are human too, you know,’ Ben responded wryly. ‘They are as vulnerable as the rest of society to their surroundings. I’m afraid it is a myth that all of them want to live, eat, sleep and work in the kind of minimalistic and arid atmosphere beloved of certain glossy magazines.
‘In theory, no doubt, there are those who do actually enjoy living and working in a stark white room, broken up by two or three pieces of carefully chosen and very uncomfortable-looking black furniture, but I rather suspect that the majority of my employees would have something very unpleasant to say to me if I tried suggesting they work in that kind of hi-tech environment.
‘As a matter of fact, my secretary has already informed me that if a black leather settee or chair dares to put in an appearance anywhere in the building, she and the rest of the staff will go on strike.’
There was a small pause while everyone laughed and the tension that had begun to grip them eased.
When it came to gamesmanship, he was a master player, Miranda reflected sourly. He had the others eating out of the palm of his hand. Another half an hour or so of his skilled verbal manipulation and they would be praising him as the vanguard of a new kind of environmentally conscious and considerate businessman. They might even start proposing giving him a medal for it. Well she wasn’t going to be hoodwinked and soothed into complacency. She knew the kind of work Ralph Charlesworth did.
Compressing her mouth, she lifted her chin and demanded coldly, ‘You state that you are anxious to conserve the character of the building, and yet the contractor undertaking the work for you is no-tor—well-known for his belief that anything over ten years old should be razed to the ground.’
Miranda could hear the stunned gasps from the other members of the committee. No matter how much they all might disapprove
of what Ralph Charlesworth was doing, no matter how much they might carefully and in low whispers and only among themselves criticise him for it, it simply was not done to voice those views out loud, especially not in front of an outsider… an incomer. Ralph was after all one of their own.
‘Yes, I’m glad you raised that,’ Ben responded quietly, silencing not only the gasps of the others, but the impulsive torrent of words she had been about to utter as well.
She stared at him, too taken aback to speak, thus giving him the advantage to continue.
‘I have, in fact, engaged another firm of contractors, one whose work is, shall we say, rather more in sympathy with my own ideas than those of Mr Charlesworth.’
This time everyone was too shocked to gasp, and no wonder. Miranda could hardly believe it herself. He had actually changed contractors! Ralph wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t like it one bit, and, besides, who on earth had Ben found to take his place? Ralph was the largest and best-known local builder, and there were even occasionally rumours to the effect that he wasn’t too fussy about how he dealt with any potential competition.
‘But there isn’t anyone else,’ Bob was saying, certainly voicing all their thoughts.
‘Not locally, perhaps,’ Ben agreed. ‘But if one looks hard enough one can generally find what one is seeking.’
He looked directly at Miranda when he spoke, and for some reason that look set off a chain of explosive physical reactions inside her body, making her long to be able to sit down so that he wouldn’t be able to see that she was actually almost visibly trembling from the effect he was having on her.
‘I contacted the Georgian Society,’ he added by way of explanation, ‘and they were able to put me in touch with a firm in Bath, who, as luck would have it, are just between contracts at the moment.
‘I’ve been to see them, and it’s arranged that they will take over the work with effect from tomorrow.’
There was a small silence while they all assimilated what he had said, and Miranda suspected that she wasn’t the only one wondering how on earth Ralph had reacted to the news that he was being supplanted.