Wonderful Short Stories Read online

  ‘There’s only one thing I can do,’ she replied calmly, although her heart began to beat faster. ‘If it’s worth considering, Perhaps you’ll let me pay it off in other ways.’

  He stared at her bleakly. She was so pretty his mind almost deflected itself from the subject matter in hand. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked naively. ‘What sort of ways?’

  ‘You know,’ she went on bashfully. ‘The sort that goes on between men and women. I’m desperate. I’ve never had to do anything like it before but now it’s a necessity.’

  ‘Are you saying that you’ll sleep with me... you’ll make love to me... in exchange for the rent?’ He couldn’t believe he was actually saying the words out aloud.

  ‘I will if that’s the only way we can resolve the problem,’ she confided sadly. ‘As I said, I’m desperate.’

  He paused to reflect for a moment. Money was his idol. He was reluctant to allow it to slip through his fingers for a few moments of pleasure. Not any of it! Yet she was such an adorable young creature. And he admitted to himself... but only to himself... that he would like to take her in his arms and make love to her.

  ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he told her, swallowing hard, which somewhat deflated her ego because she knew that most men would jump at the chance to be in bed with her.

  He left her to collect the rest of the rents and returned to her later in the day. ‘I’ve come to a conclusion,’ he told her bluntly. ‘You can’t pay the rent. In fact, you’re unlikely ever to pay it if you don’t get a job. Now I’ve come up with a solution which might satisfy both of us. You tell me you’re willing to give your body to me but that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it?’

  ‘It doesn’t?’ she echoed in a puzzled fashion. ‘What more can I give? What more do you want from me?’

  ‘Well, if we carried on together, the property ends up as being a dud in my books. No one paying the rent but both of us enjoying ourselves. It’s not really a profitable financial proposition, is it? What I suggest is that you move in with me in my house as, say, my housekeeper. After that, this cottage becomes vacant and I can let it out to someone else. Now that’s what I call an ideal situation.’

  ‘And what about any rent from me at your house if I agreed to live there?’ she enquired tentatively.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have to pay,’ he laughed. ‘I’d be getting rent from this place every week from another tenant.’

  ‘Hm, I’d like to think about that,’ she told him. ‘Only under present law it would take you about six months to evict me whereas if you tired of me at your house you could throw me out on the street without hesitation.’

  ‘How come you know so much about the law?’ he asked inquisitively, viewing her with an element of suspicion.

  ‘Because I was training to become a solicitor,’ she explained briefly, ‘but I had to give it up.’

  ‘Why? Why did you have to do that?’

  ‘Oh it’s a long sad story,’ she replied. ‘Not one to be discussed today. Anyway, you really wouldn’t be interested.

  ‘Well there you have it,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Move in with me or you’ll force me to take action against you starting with a notice to quit. It’s up to you.’

  ‘So much for my body and my offer to make love to you in repayment of the rent,’ she said drily.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he retorted sharply. ‘I strongly desire you. You’re pretty, adorable, loveable, everything a man wants. You came over so well at the initial interview I had no option but to grant you the tenancy. I’m delighted you offered to make love to me but I’m bound by respect for you. I’m not going to defile you just to satisfy myself. If we’re going to have any kind of relationship I want more than that.’

  She was surprised at his response and it influenced her thinking. ‘Very well,’ she told him. ‘In view of what you’ve just said, I’ll take my chances with you. I’ll move in with you at your earliest convenience.’

  ‘How about this afternoon,’ he ventured. ‘No... how about now?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Fine!’ she returned amiably. ‘I haven’t much here. I’ll get my things right away and you can take me to your house. By the way, I’m an excellent cook.’

  ‘Good!’ he said with a smile touching his lips. ‘I’m fed up with my own cooking. You know, I have a good feeling about this arrangement. I think it’ll work out well for both of us.’

  That evening, after she had made him an excellent meal, they sat facing each other in his lounge. Felicity felt a little uncomfortable at the sudden change of events. One moment she was living on her own in an old cottage then, almost without warning, she was entrenched in Gerald Waterford’s house as his housekeeper. She wasn’t certain where he expected it to lead him. To his disadvantage, he was relatively unattractive, being rather short, with a weasel face and a bald head, but that wasn’t the measure of the man. There was far more to him than that. She looked around the room. It was spartanly decorated with no evidence of a woman’s touch and she assumed that he had lived there alone for many years.

  ‘I’m intrigued,’ he ventured eventually. ‘You say you were studying law and then had to give it up. Why?’

  She paused to reflect before replying, tucking her legs in under her on the settee. ‘I was working for a fairly large firm of solicitors, completing two years with them. Everything was going well. Then one of the partners who already had a wife decided he fancied his chances of an extra-marital affair and he chose me. It was a case of sexual harassment.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ asked Waterford. ‘You could have reported him going through the usual channels.’

  ‘It wasn’t as simple as that,’ continued Felicity. ‘You see, he was the senior partner in the firm. He told me that if I made claim against him, he would turn the tables on me by saying that it was all my fault... that I was the one chasing him. And who would they believe? Certainly not me. I was just a nonentity studying law. So I was forced to leave. Unfortunately, he was a real bastard because he soured my name with every firm he could think of. I was a pariah in the business which forced me to leave town and come to Barnbridge. I once had an uncle here but he died a few months ago. I understand that you bought his cottage after his death.’

  ‘What was his name?’ asked Waterford casually.

  ‘Tom Gladden,’ she replied smoothly. ‘He lived here all his life working the fields for a local farmer.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said reflecting the purchase. ‘Number thirty-two, Dolman Street. That’s the one.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said in agreement. ‘What a rotten thing to happen to you!’ he went on. ‘But I’m also intrigued to know why an attractive intelligent woman like you offered yourself to me. I mean, in the first place, you could have stayed at the cottage for six months while I took proceedings against you. In the second place, I know full well I’m not good-looking. Is it your intention to get something out of me?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ she demanded with a tinge of anger in her voice. ‘Firstly, let me say that there’s more to a man than his looks. Much more. You’ve already shown me how kind you are by your respect for me. Secondly, if you think I’m trying to get something out of you, I suggest you throw me out right away. As far as I’m concerned, you’re helping me out at a difficult time in my life and I appreciate that. In return, I’m willing to lower my guard and concede certain favours.’

  ‘It may surprise you to know but I’ve never had a girlfriend, or a partner. I’ve never been with a woman. So the passionate side is not really in contention. Offering yourself is your option not mine. I’m aware of our age difference and I’ve no intention of imposing myself on you.’

  ‘But you do fancy me. You told me that before.’

  ‘Like madness itself. But you’re so young. You could be my daughter. As for me, well I�
�m getting on now.’

  ‘You’re as old as you feel,’ she commented with a smile on her face. ‘The longer I know you, the more I like you.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘My only interest in life has always been money. Collecting it, acquiring it, gathering it, counting it. I’m a real miser. You can see by the state of this house. I’m more impoverished than any of my tenants.’

  ‘Maybe I can help you get over that notion,’ she suggested.

  ‘What... by spending my money? I don’t think so,’ he riposted sharply. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’ve got me all wrong!’ she persisted. ‘The last thing I’m interested in is your money. I don’t want any of it.’

  He stared at her eyes trying to determine whether she was telling the truth or not. If she meant what she said, all would be well. If not, then he would be forced to take other action. ‘Okay,’ he said simply. ‘I believe you. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘You can either accept me as your housekeeper and give me a few other jobs to do, or you can use me in any other way you want. It’s entirely up to you.’

  He thought about her remarks for a while before coming to a decision. ‘Very well,’ he said eventually. ‘You can be my housekeeper undertaking a few extra jobs on the side for the present time and we’ll see how we get on. But no spending any money on decorations or furniture or anything else. I want you to be quite clear on that. Is that understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ she replied smiling. ‘I spend no money.’

  The days passed by quite pleasantly for both of them. Gerald continued to collect his rents and check all his financial accounts. Felicity kept the house clean, did the cooking, made the beds and, in addition, he allowed her to double-check the accounts. However, there was one cupboard in the house which she could never open.

  ‘That cupboard’s always locked,’ she commented one day. ‘What do you keep in it?’

  ‘The deeds to all the properties I own,’ he revealed readily. ‘They’re all in there.’

  She stared at him solemnly with a serious expression on her face. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you keep them all here.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied blankly. ‘They’re all in the cupboard.’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘Do you realise that if this house burned down you’d have all kinds of problems with regard to those deeds. You really ought to keep them in the steel safe at your solicitor’s office.’

  ‘I’ll need to think about it,’ he retorted thoughtfully.

  ‘You’ll regret it severely if something happened to them,’ she kept on persistently. ‘I’ve had a fair amount of experience in such matters. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go through every set of deeds recording the contents. Then the originals can be stored at your solicitors and you’ll have all the details to hand. They’ll be safe and you’ll have no need to worry anymore. How about that?’

  Her argument was sufficient to influence him in her favour. He recognised that she was right. If there was a serious fire at the house and the documents were burned, he would face all kinds of problems if he ever wanted to reconstruct the cottages or houses, or sell them.

  ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘You can start on them tomorrow. Here’s the key to the cupboard.’

  He removed a key from his key ring which she took readily. He had no idea that she had a motive in mind and, from her point of view, it was only now that she could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  The following morning, after he had left to visit his bank manager, she opened the cupboard and removed the deeds, searching carefully through them for a particular one. When she found it, she took it to her bedroom to read it in private. After perusing the documents and nodding to herself, she hid the deeds under the mattress. She would never allow them to come into the possession of Gerald Waterford again. Then she went into the study and opened the drawers of the desk, searching through the papers there. Eventually, she had all the information she needed to accomplish her task. Leaving the house smartly to go into the town, she went into a shop which offered facsimile facilities.

  When he came home that evening, he looked at the deeds piled high on the table. He had hoped that she made some headway on copying details from them but he was surprised at her reaction.

  ‘I have a surprise for you tomorrow regarding deeds,’ she told him, with a tinge of a smile touching her lips.

  ‘What sort of surprise?’ he asked with interest.

  ‘It’s a surprise marked ‘Wait until tomorrow’.’ she went on.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ he said excitedly. The woman was all that he had ever hoped for even though they had not become intimately involved. His dull days were now brightened by her presence and he enjoyed coming home for a change. However, he was extremely surprised the next day because, as soon as he entered the lounge, she handed him a document which looked extremely legal.

  ‘Ah,’ he muttered taking it from her. ‘Is this the surprise you promised me.’

  ‘In a way,’ she told him point-blank. ‘It’s a summons. I’m suing you for possession of number thirty-two, Dolman Street. I want to obtain the property and all the rents collected from it since you bought it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded angrily, fearful at the prospect of a serious financial loss to his empire.

  ‘You lent my uncle ten thousand pounds at an interest rate of one hundred and five per cent. As you probably know, a deal of that nature is beyond the law. It’s far above the accepted usurers’ rate. When my uncle died, you claimed that he owed you the sum of thirty thousand pounds, which was almost twenty-five thousand pounds of interest you were not entitled to, and you seized the property in cancellation of the loan and all the interest. Now that was most deceitful and the solicitor who let you get away with it realises he was in error. I was his only heir and what you did peeves me greatly, Gerald. I want what’s mine! And if you don’t let me have it, we’ll have the matter settled by arbitration in court.’

  He was absolutely astonished by the claim. ‘You have no right,’ he gasped. ‘No right!’

  ‘But I have,’ she retaliated. ‘You cheated me out of my inheritance. It’s not as though you don’t have any money or property of your own to rely on. You have lots of it. So much that you’ll never ever use it. Giving up this one property will not harm you in any way.’

  ‘But he did owe me that money,’ he claimed vehemently.

  ‘No, Gerald,’ she told him calmly. ‘My uncle borrowed ten thousand pounds and you registered the document as a deed against his property which is identified in the deeds. He started to pay it back. However, you imposed a number of restrictions which made it impossible for him to do so. In the first place, you established increased payments after six months so that they almost doubled. In the second place, the agreement insisted that interest would double, treble and quadruple if the exact amount of the payments did not comply with the increases. When you declared the debt irrepayable before his death, the interest should have stopped at that point, albeit charging such a high amount of interest was illegal in the first place.’

  ‘You won’t win your battle in court,’ he boasted arrogantly.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she told him, ‘but I saw a number of papers in your study which identify that you have a number of such loans outstanding with other borrowers=. If I can prove that you’ve been acting illegally by charging such high interest rates, all those people to whom you granted loans will be up in arms. They won’t pay you another cent. You’ll lose a lot more than just one house. They’ll all take you to court.’

  He went pale at the comment and sat down heavily in a chair. ‘It was all a ruse,’ he managed to say eventually. ‘You knew what you were doing when you first came here, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes I did. I checked up on your background to find out that you’d nev
er married, that you’d never been with a woman so I felt pretty much on safe ground offering you my body. The important thing was to find the deeds to my uncle’s house and all the details of the loan. I didn’t have that information. I ask you honestly, Gerald, how can a loan of ten thousand pounds end up as thirty thousand after six years when payments were being made regularly to reduce it? You can’t get away with it.’

  ‘You’re a bitch!’ he spat angrily. ‘A real bitch!’

  ‘Now there’s no need to turn nasty,’ she told him calmly. ‘We’re still friends as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think you really mean to be evil. It’s just a facet of your nature and your desire to hoard money.’

  He stared at her in surprise. ‘Is this the way friends act towards each other?’ he spluttered.

  ‘I think I have an honest claim,’ she continued amiably. ‘One that the court will uphold.’

  He realised he was beaten and looked directly into her eyes. ‘If I let you have the amount the property’s worth plus the rent received, will you swear not to mention to anyone about the loans?’

  ‘You have my word as a solicitor,’ she replied.

  ‘A solicitor?’ he echoed. ‘But I thought you told me... ’

  ‘That was only a ploy,’ she cut in with a smile on her face. ‘I’m actually a qualified solicitor working in a firm in the City. Hopefully, if you let me have the equivalent value of the property at my uncle’s death, plus the rents which you received from it, I’ll be able to buy myself a partnership in the firm.’

  ‘About staying here... ’ he began but she silenced him with a wave of her hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I’ve booked a room at the local inn. I’ll be staying there from now on.’

  He shook his head. ‘I knew from the moment I saw you that you’d be trouble but I couldn’t help myself. You’re so pretty.’

  ‘So what’s it to be?’ she asked. ‘A friendly arrangement or the awful court procedure and details of the illegal interest on your loans reported in the local newspaper for all to see.’