Chapter 6
Polly had just gotten back from lunch and was taking off her jacket when one of the young maintenance men came out of Jeremy’s
office carrying the portrait of Alan Eagleton, founder of Northern Eagles, which had hung on the wall in there for over a
quarter of a century. Polly felt a rush of anger sweep through her entire body.
“Excuse me,” she called to him. “What are you doing with that?”
“Taking it to storage,” he answered.
Polly’s hand unconsciously sought out her necklace, specifically the ring that was threaded onto it. She never took it off.
It had been her aunt’s wedding ring and she’d rescued it from her mother’s drawer, where it sat in a bag awaiting a trip to
the pawnbrokers. It was the only physical thing she had of hers and as such was beyond precious. Her fingers automatically
reached for it in times of stress, when she needed some strength. Her talisman.
Polly was fuming. She tried to channel her focus into Auntie Marian’s Bread, but she couldn’t. She threw herself out of her
chair and headed for Jeremy’s office. She knocked but opened the door before he had time to say “Enter,” to find him adjusting
a new photograph portrait on the wall in the place where Alan’s had been. It was of himself in a pinstripe suit, standing
with his arm resting on a mantelpiece.
“Like it?” he asked, with the tone of someone who liked it very much.
“I look very pensive, don’t I? Thought it was about time we said goodbye to old, dead Alan.
We don’t need him anymore, or his name. Behold a new era, Polly.
We are shortly to be rebranded as Business Strength.
New logo, out with the eagle and in with the bull. ”
You’re telling me , thought Polly. She didn’t offer her opinion on the picture. Jeremy’s pointy face looked extra elongated, as if it had been
squashed between two lift doors, and the photographer hadn’t been tempted to flesh out his mean line of mouth. Polly thought
his expression made him look constipated rather than pensive.
“Any initial thoughts about Auntie Marian’s Bread?” asked Jeremy, standing back to check for tilt.
“What?” snapped Polly.
“Auntie Marian’s Bread? The would-be new Warburtons?” said Jeremy, slowly and patronizingly, as if she were a doddery old
aunt with hearing problems.
“Not yet,” she said.
“What did you want then?”
She didn’t say that she’d flown in here to scream at him, Put Alan’s portrait back on the wall where it belongs, you knob . The moment had passed and it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Alan’s era was long gone and his portrait remaining on
the wall wouldn’t make any difference.
“I can’t actually remember.”
Jeremy smirked. “I think you’d better go and get yourself some of that oil of evening primrose, or whatever it is you women
take. Anyway, as you’re here, any chance of Polly putting the kettle on for me?”
Polly had worked at Northern Eagles for sixteen years now.
She’d been a temp drafted in when the head honcho’s PA retired and he’d frightened off all other potential replacements.
Alan Eagleton had a fearsome reputation, but as Polly was to discover, it was only fools he didn’t tolerate.
He was a big man in both stature and reputation.
He had built the company from the ground up and made a major success story of it because what Alan Eagleton didn’t know about how companies worked—and failed—wasn’t worth talking about.
He was the best at what he did, he knew he was, and he employed people who were passionate, hardworking, and hungry, and he rewarded them for their service and loyalty.
Had he lived longer, he would have realized that bringing Jeremy Watson into his crew was a rare mistake.
Everyone expected Alan to eat the nineteen-year-old Polly for breakfast, but he was nothing if not fair, and she gave him
no reason to bark at her. She was smart and savvy, picked up his ways and accommodated them. They quickly developed a rapport,
and even though she was only supposed to be there until they found a more experienced permanent PA, every interviewee fell
short of his expectations. Then one Friday, just before she was due to call it a day, he pulled her into the office and asked
her to sit down.
“Polly. Do you think I’m easy to work for? No bullshit now, because I can smell it a mile off.”
“I think you have exacting but attainable standards,” she answered him honestly, “and you get annoyed when others fall short.
You don’t get mad for the sake of it.”
“I don’t get mad with you, do I?” he asked her. “Because you do what I ask and you do it well.”
“Thank you.” She gave a smile, just a little one because she wasn’t sure where this was heading.
“So I’m not faffing about any longer interviewing people, will you be my new PA on a permanent basis?”
He made it sound like a proposal.
“You’ll be getting paid more than you get as a temp, plus you’ll have all the company benefits, pension, holiday, life insurance,
sick pay, et cetera, though I’d appreciate it if you stayed well. I don’t like paying people for sitting at home watching
telly.”
Polly opened her mouth but no sound came out. She’d hoped he’d take her on but never presumed he would.
“Well?” Alan prompted her.
She found her voice quickly then, knowing patience wasn’t his strong point.
“I’d be delighted,” she said.
“Good. I’ll have HR do all the forms and so on, but as from Monday you’ll be on the payroll. Now bugger off and have a nice
weekend.”
And she did bugger off and had a more than nice weekend. And the following Monday started off a wonderful phase in her life,
because being Alan’s PA became so much more than a job for her. He treated her more like a young trainee, destined to follow
in his footsteps. He talked to her about his customers and the problems they were having or what they needed from him, and
when she sat in on his meetings, taking notes, she absorbed a lot of information at the same time. Alan nurtured her interest,
and one day after she’d been there a couple of years, she walked in to find a brand-new desk had been put in place of her
old one—one of the posh mahogany ones all the execs had. “I’m making you my assistant,” he said. “More pay, two more days
holiday, but you’ll be ready for them because I’ll work you, lass.” And he did, and she loved every minute of her increased
responsibilities. They were golden days and she missed them terribly.
Polly took Jeremy a coffee, then exited his office, dropped into her chair, and made a huff noise that cleared all the air
out of her lungs.
“You look royally pissed off,” said Sheridan.
“I am very pissed off,” came her reply.
“Anything to do with that portrait?”
“Everything to do with that portrait.” Polly could feel the increased pace of her heart underneath her rib cage. “Storage.”
She humphed. Alan’s daughter was offered the portrait when he died, and she didn’t want it, so it stayed on the wall. Alan
once told her that they had a fractious relationship. She was stony-faced at his funeral, sitting with his equally stony-faced
ex-wife, an older and younger version of each other. Polly had cried buckets. She knew that parent-child relationships could
be complicated, blood ties no guarantee of affection, because she hadn’t gotten on too well with her own mother. She’d been
manipulative and self-centered, but Polly couldn’t believe that Alan would be anything other than easy for a daughter to love.
Alan only spoke about his family once to her. It was Christmas and they’d been working late and had stopped for a break: tea
and canteen sandwiches in his office. She couldn’t remember how they’d gotten onto the subject, but he’d told her that he’d
divorced his wife years before, though if he’d known he’d have lost his daughter too, he’d have put up with the loveless state
of his marriage. He always hoped the poison she dripped in their daughter’s ear would eventually be neutralized by her own
judgment as she grew up, but it never was, and that haunted him. She didn’t want to know him, though she was quite happy to
be acquainted with his fortune: the pony, the private school, the new car when she passed her driving test, the house he bought
for her twenty-first birthday.
“I always liked that picture,” said Sheridan. “He looked a nice man. Was he?”
“He was great, unless you were an idiot,” replied Polly with a fond smile. “He was a brilliant man. Beyond kind.”
He gave her as much time off as she needed when her mum played up. For as long as she could remember, she’d been forced into
acting as her own parent’s parent. No wonder she went off the rails at sixteen and ended up pregnant on that holiday in Benidorm.
Maybe it was an unconscious cry to call her mother to arms, but if it was, it didn’t work. Her mother wasn’t any support to
her through any of it. Even when she finally let go of her tiny stillborn daughter and handed her to a waiting nurse, all
she could remember was her mother sitting there dry-eyed and saying, “Well, it’s for the best.”
Then she got the job here and working became her salvation; it gave her the energy to deal with her many responsibilities
at home. And Alan Eagleton’s presence was like a lit, scented candle in a life that was darker than it was light.
“He was lovely. So well respected,” Polly went on. “Everything a man should be.”
“You sound like you’re talking about your dad. Or a lover,” said Sheridan, tossing a Ferrero Rocher over the desk division.
Polly never knew her dad. Her mother only knew him for ten minutes.
But no, she didn’t think of Alan as a father figure, despite the vacancy.
Nor did she think of him as a lover, but she thought she did love him, even though she wasn’t sure what sort of a love it was.
She couldn’t ever see herself in bed with him, but she could visualize them going out for dinner, her arm linking his, talking into the wee small hours, locking the door against the weather and enjoying each other’s company in front of a roaring fire and a good TV drama.
It was a love that defied a pigeonhole slot, and when he died, it had felt as if she’d lost one of the closest people in her life.
She still missed him. It didn’t hurt any less, just less often.
“What happened to him?” asked Sheridan.
“He had a heart attack at home. His cleaner found him. He died alone and he shouldn’t have. He was too loved, too gregarious
for that. He was barely buried when his daughter sold the firm to Charles Butler, and the rest is history. Very few of Alan’s
people stayed. And Charles, for some reason, really took to Jeremy.”
“How can anyone take to Jeremy?” Sheridan stuck out her tongue. That made Polly laugh a little.
“Jeremy’s very good at smarm and Charles likes to be flattered, plus he wanted some continuity in the company, someone who
knew Alan’s ways.”
“Like you, you mean.”
“Yes, but I’m a woman. So it was Jeremy he elevated to be his MD, leaving him in charge so he could play golf and just poke
his head in every so often to see how things were running. They made me apply for my own job, well, at least a role that was...
much reduced, as was the pay.”
Sheridan’s mouth opened so wide, she almost lost the piece of tiffin that was sitting in it.
“Jesus Christ, Pol, why did you stay on in this snake pit?”
“Because no other firm would take me seriously without any qualifications, Sheridan. They’re all looking for business graduates these days and I haven’t even got an A-level.
At least here I still had a chance of putting into practice everything I’d learned.
Charles Butler was quite aware of the successes I’d had and he thought I was best employed serving Jeremy.
I did hope in time they’d come to see what Alan had seen in me and promote me back to where I was. ”
“But, Pol, they do see that already, but they’re not going to give you the top job when they can keep you where you are and
just nick all your best ideas. Don’t you think you’ve wasted enough time waiting for things to change that aren’t going to?”
That was her life right there in a nutshell: waiting, hoping, nothing.
Polly nodded. Seeing them take out Alan’s portrait today hurt her more than she could say. She felt all mixed up inside, angry
and sad, as if she were pacing around inside herself not knowing what to do with all the dark energy it generated.
“It’s really upset you, that, hasn’t it?” Sheridan gave her a small smile of sympathy.
“Yes,” Polly answered. It meant the end of something, and there were too many endings occupying her brain at the moment.