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Fear suddenly lanced through my heart. What if he sacked me? The possibility hadn’t occurred to me until now, because he had promised to give me the job and could not break his word. But knowing the kind of man he was, I doubted very much he would still feel honour-bound to keep me if I didn’t come up to scratch. On the contrary, he would probably be delighted to throw me out at the first opportunity.
Resolving then and there not to give him that satisfaction, I got up and plunged myself into the jungle that was Mr Simmons' filing system.
When the next message landed with a plink on my desk, I sat there, awaiting it with a serene smile.
With a flourish, I opened the message container and studied the message inside.
Mr Linton,
Bring me file 146K. Be quicker this time.
Rikkard Ambrose
I got up, walked over to one of the shelves, took out a box, opened it, took out file 146K, closed the box again, put it back on the shelf, walked to the door with the file in hand and slid it through the slit between door and floor. Then I knocked at the door and purred:
‘Your file, Sir.’
I heard him getting up and without a word taking it from the floor. All the while I stood leaning against the door, my ear pressed to the wood, grinning like an idiot and feeling like a genius.
This time, nothing came out of the hole in the wall. No message. No complaint. No scolding note. I did a little happy dance in the middle of the room. Yay! He had nothing to complain about. And I bet the fact was riling him up good and proper.
Not long after, both files were returned in the same manner I had forwarded them. Attached to the top was a note.
Mr Linton,
Bring me file 188Q.
Not a word about being quicker. If that was at all possible, my grin widened a little bit more. Quickly I scurried over to the shelves and, after depositing the returned files in their correct place, went to the next box and got him the wished-for documents.
The following hours passed in a whirl of fetched and returned files, and curt little notes exchanged via the pneumatic tubes. If he actually read half of the files I fetched for him, I’d eat my uncle’s big top hat. He seemed determined to make me mess up, to pressure me so that he would be able to find some fault with me and have an excuse to sack me.
And in every single note he sent he kept calling me Mister Linton.
But I didn’t let him get to me. I ran between the door and the shelves like a prize race horse, fetching each file in record time. The filing system had taken me some time to figure out, but it wasn’t that difficult, really, once you had taken a moment to think about it: the first two numbers on the boxes stood for years (37, for example, stood, or so I assumed, for 1837). The letters behind that were really Roman numerals, numbering the boxes relating to that particular year. And the number behind that signified the place of the box in the overall order of boxes within the room. It was really simple to find a file once you noticed that the file numbers related to that last number. You simply had to run along the shelves until you reached the right one.
Wasn't I a smart girl?
With a self-satisfied grin on my face, I pushed the fifty-second file under the door and returned to my desk to wait for the inevitable note.
In spite of my success, I couldn’t really say I was looking forward to the next note. Every time I read the greeting line ‘Mr Linton,’ I could almost feel the sparks flying out of my eyes. The arrogant son of a bachelor was completely trying to ignore the fact that I was a girl! The fact that he was the best-looking man I had ever seen in my life didn’t do much to sweeten that fact.
Why was he so determined to ignore me? Was it that he could not stand the idea of a girl in his employ, or was it me?
So what if it is you? I asked myself. That’s no problem, is it? It’s not like you want to be noticed by him.
Right. I had to remember that. It really didn’t matter as who or what he thought of me, just that he gave me my salary and independence.
But… but I wanted independence as a female! Not independence as some cheap imitation of a man. I crossed my arms. That was it. I didn’t want to be noticed by him in the way a girl wants to be normally noticed by a man, all that romantic crap and so forth. No, definitely not that, I told myself fervently. What I wanted was far harder: I wanted recognition. I wanted respect.
And I was going to get it, even if I had to shake it out of him. He couldn’t avoid me forever. At the end of the day, he would have to come out of hiding, leave his office, and then I could confront him!
Or so I thought.
About two hours later, when a long time had gone by without any missives from His Mightiness and I was just beginning to wonder whether perhaps he might have choked on one of his files, somebody knocked at my office door - the one to the hallway, not to Mr Ambrose’ office.
Surprised, I looked up. I was certainly not used to people knocking at my door as if they could disturb me doing something important. As if I were somebody important.
‘Err… come in?’ I called.
Mr Stone poked his head in. ‘Mr Linton? Are you busy?’
‘No, no.’ I quickly sat up straight and tried to look very professionally secretarial. ‘Come in, please.’
‘Thank you.’ Smiling his cautious smile, Mr Stone entered. ‘I just came to give you a message. Mr Ambrose has sent me to inform you that he has gone out on urgent business and that he will not require your services for the rest of the day.’
I sat there, dumbstruck. Could this be what I thought it was? Could he actually have cut his day short in order to avoid seeing me? Why would he go to such abnormal lengths to avoid me? Was it such a blot on his honour to have a female for a secretary?
Anger boiling up inside me, I stomped past a startled Mr Stone, went down the stairs and left the building, determining there and then not to let Mr Haughty Almighty and Annoyingly Handsome Ambrose slip through my fingers tomorrow. He would have to accept me or choke on the fact of my femininity.
Disconsolately, I wandered home through the dusky streets of London. When, every now and again, couples passed me and I saw a smile on the lady’s face that showed she was infuriatingly happy with her miserable lot in life as an inferior to chauvinists, I couldn’t help but glower at her. The man who accompanied the woman nearly always noticed, drawing a protective arm around his charge and glowering just as fiercely back at the stranger. Chauvinism. Pure chauvinism, wherever you looked.