Midnight Sun

ELEVEN

The night before her interview at Ballyhoo Unlimited, Ellen leafed through her portfolio and was impressed by hardly anything. She had already preferred her illustrations for Ben's books, but now she saw that it wasn't just a matter of her having developed her skills: nearly all the work in the portfolio was dated. Admittedly some of the assignments – a teenage fashion store, a chain of discos which had been meant to light up the winters of half a dozen Norfolk towns but which had winked out before Johnny was born – would inevitably have dated, but why should she expect the agency to take that into consideration? She quite liked the work she'd done on the campaign to advertise the houseboat holiday firm, but that wouldn't be enough. She pulled out all the material which seemed stale to her, gazed wistfully at her depleted portfolio, and came to a decision. "I'm going to show them Broads Best."

Ben glanced up from copying changes of address from last year's Christmas cards. "I should hope so. It's your work."

"It isn't quite that simple."

"Then it should be, and if anyone can make it so, you can. And if you ever bump into Sid Peacock you can tell him from me to insert himself up himself and twist."

"I can't imagine ever seeing him again," Ellen said on her way to the back room. Beside the desk in front of the large window which in daytime gave the room all the light it could hold, one shelf of the deep bookcase contained a few copies of each of the two Sterling books, Ben's battered electric typewriter, pots of Ellen's brushes bunched like withered blossoms waiting for the spring to return their colour to them. A pile of folders of her work occupied the bottom shelf. She extracted the Broads Best folder and took it to the desk, where she rested her elbows on either side of it without opening it. She was suddenly afraid that it would prove to be less inspired than she remembered it to be.

It hadn't seemed inspired only to her, judging by Sid Peacock's behaviour. He was the head of what he liked to call his department of Noble Publicity – an office in which he'd worked with Ellen and an older man called Nathan, who was gay and who openly loathed him. Sid, who was three years older than Ellen, had borne his wide tanned face and Oxford accent like presents he was offering the world, and smelled of aftershaves with savage names. Whenever the agency bosses had assigned him a campaign he would call a brainstorming session, draining Ellen and Nathan of their ideas and usually preferring his own. Three years of this and no promotion had begun to frustrate Ellen, but there had been no other opening for her in Norwich. Then the agency had acquired the Broads account and she had lost her innocence.

Broads was the oldest brewery in Norfolk, and its directors had wanted to give it a new image. Everyone at the agency had been delighted to have the account – at least, until Broads had turned down all the proposed campaigns. The directors didn't like spacemen drinking their ale in free fall, they didn't care for anything involving computers, they especially disliked the idea of associating their product with pop stars or film stars, either current or nostalgically revived. After several rejections Sid had stormed into the office. "It's like talking to mummies. Why the hell did they bother coming to us if they think they know more than we do about what's up to date?" And Ellen had begun to wonder if the agency was missing the point – if they couldn't make the future of the brewery by delving into its past. She'd thought she remembered something she'd once heard about the ale, and over the weekend she had tracked it down in a history of Norfolk.

Something you may not know about Broads Best, she'd scribbled on her pad, and then Ten things you may not know… On Monday Sid hadn't seemed particularly impressed but told her to come back to him if she managed to develop the idea. On her way home on Friday she'd seen a jigsaw in a toyshop window and had realised how the campaign could work, and she'd been so eager to show him that she'd arranged to meet him in the office on Saturday morning. She'd let him hug her to express his enthusiasm for her idea, but when he'd tried to give her breasts a clammy squeeze she'd poked him in the stomach. "Let me see your work when it's finished," he'd said like a spinsterish schoolmaster, flinching out of reach.

Her growing anger at her memories of him made her open the folder on the desk. Her designs still looked as impressive to her as they must have looked to Sid. This man once said it was England's proudest ale was the first thing people might not have known about Broads Best, printed above a tenth of the picture which the other nine slogans gradually assembled, her portrait of Henry VIII with a tankard in his hand. But when she'd taken it to Sid he'd grimaced at it. "I used to think it would be clever to advertise tartar control with a toothbrush getting rid of Genghis Khan. Too clever by half," he'd said, and she had felt so disappointed and vulnerable that she didn't wonder why he told her, as if he was doing an undeserved favour, that he would show her idea to their boss.

She ought to have realised what Sid was up to. Nathan would undoubtedly have warned her, but he'd been on holiday in Marrakesh that week. A few days later, when the junior partner had congratulated her on helping Sid visualise his idea for the Broads Best campaign, she had been too stunned to argue, and by the time her rage had been clamouring to be articulated it would have seemed too like an afterthought, a lie. Besides, she had seen enough of the partners to be pretty sure that they would have regarded the Saturday incident as negligible and would probably have dismissed her accusation as an attempt at revenge. Worst of all, Sid's self-righteous look had made it clear that he would have treated her more fairly if she had given in to him.

She'd let herself believe that the whole sordid incident had become irrelevant once Sid Peacock had moved to an agency in London and she had become pregnant with Margaret, but now she saw that she ought to have laid claim to her work for later use. Perhaps she still could, she thought as she took the folder to show Ben. "Would you hire me?"

"You bet I would, and so would anyone with any sense."

"Yes, but you're married to me."

"Anyone with any sense would be," he said, and made a face at having contradicted himself. "As soon as my aunt's home and can sit with the children we'll go out for dinner. We'll have plenty to celebrate."

In the morning Ellen walked the children to school, Johnny racing ahead to each intersection and glancing back for her to tell him he could cross, Margaret holding her hand and chattering about fashions, records, changing schools next year, a classmate who was rumoured to have been off school with her first period… The children were plenty to celebrate, Ellen thought, and so long as the family was happy, what else mattered? Sometimes she worried that they wouldn't grow up normally with a writer for a father and an artist for a mother, but they kept reminding her that it seemed unlikely. At the school gates they each gave her a fleeting kiss and ran off to join their friends, and she walked home to prepare dinner before heading for the interview.

Ben had left her the Volkswagen with a note on the driver's seat: IF YOU'RE HALF AS PROUD OF YOURSELF AS I AM OF YOU YOU'LL SLAY THEM.

She smiled at that and drove into Norwich, and had time to stroll from the car park through the pedestrianised streets to arrive at the long new building of yellowish stone near the cathedral less than five minutes before she was due there.

A lift which smelled scented and which hummed to itself on one note eased her up to the third floor. Past an accountant's office where women were typing what headphones told them and another door which looked as if whatever name its pane once displayed had been frosted over, she found the reception area of Ballyhoo Unlimited beyond glass doors as wide as the room. Fat blue settees dwarfed by posters almost big enough for billboards faced each other across a floor padded with blue carpet. The two men waiting on the settees glanced at Ellen and then resumed their nonchalant expressions as the receptionist behind the desk between them greeted her, raising her face as if her eyes and her cherry-red smile were fixed. "Mrs Sterling? You're first in," she said.

Ellen smiled apologetically at the men as she sat down. Her companion on the settee, a man who was approaching middle age and who wore a spotted bow tie and a tweed jacket slightly too large for him, was staring at his stubby fingers as if they might somehow count against him. The other man, who couldn't have been more than thirty, was gripping his portfolio with his bony knees and folded hands as though he was either praying or restraining himself. Ellen listened to the awkward silence and the sounds it amplified, the creak of the tweedy man's new shoes as he flexed his toes nervously, a faint heartbeat which was the younger man's left heel drumming on the carpet, the receptionist proclaiming "Ballyhoo Unlimited" to callers in exactly the tone of a game show hostess enthusing about a prize. Presumably that constant repetition was inaudible wherever Ellen would be working if she got the job. "That would be our Mr Rutter," the receptionist was saying now. "He's in London unexpectedly. Can our Mr Hipkiss help you? What was it concerning? I'm going to ask you to hold for a moment

…" Ellen was still waiting for her to do so when she resumed: "I'm afraid Mr Hipkiss is tied up just now. Shall I get him to ring you? I'm afraid Mr Fuge and Mr Peacock are in a meeting. I'll tell Mr Hipkiss you rang just as soon as he's free."

She switched off the call and ducked her head as if challenging her audience to prove that her blonde hair was dyed, and Ellen had to begin her question twice before the receptionist would look up. "Who did you say – who did you say were in a meeting?"

"The partners except for Mr Rutter. They'll be ready for you any moment now," the receptionist said with a briskness that suggested faint reproof.

"Mr Fuge and Mr…"

"Peacock. He used to work locally, then he went away until Mr Rutter tempted him back. Why, do you know him?"

Ellen was taking a deep breath when the switchboard buzzed and addressed the receptionist in a small sharp voice. "They want you now," the receptionist said. "I'll take you in."

Ellen stood up. She could walk straight out of the building and leave Sid Peacock wondering – but she wouldn't let him off that easily; she wanted to see how he would conduct himself. She followed the receptionist down an inner corridor, past a large office where several men in shirt-sleeves were working at drawing-boards, to a conference room.

Two men were seated midway along the extensive heavy table which took up much of the room. One of them, a ruddy man whose waistcoat buttons appeared to be in danger of snapping their threads, came to meet Ellen. "Mrs Sterling," he said in a voice thick as a cigar. "Sorry we kept you waiting. I'm Gordon Fuge, and this is Sidney Peacock."

So he was Sidney now, Ellen thought, growing tense as Peacock put aside the papers he was scanning and extended a hand to her. His wide face looked worn, his tan was turning purplish with veins. When she gave his hand a single hard shake he peered at her as if confused by her brusqueness and then let his gaze drift over her breasts. "Pleased to meet you," he said.

For as long as it took her to sit down she thought he was pretending not to know her. He watched her sit as though that was included in the appraisal to which she was submitting herself. "Well, Mrs Sterling, can you sell yourself to us?"

Ellen stared at him until he glanced away, at the papers in front of him. She was enjoying his apparent discomfiture when he said "Don't be afraid to repeat whatever you said in your letter. I haven't had a chance to read it. I'm sitting in for Max Rutter at short notice."

Unexpectedly and infuriatingly, she couldn't help feeling offended. How dare he forget her after the trouble he'd caused her? He deserved the shock he was going to suffer when he recognised the work in her portfolio. "Where would you like me to start?" she said with a sweetness she could almost taste.

"Give us some idea of your experience."

Both he and his colleague were gazing expectantly at her portfolio. She was about to pass it across the table and sit back to watch Sid Peacock's face when Fuge said "What brought you into this game?"

"Advertising? At art college they were always telling us it was the place to aim for. And it paid decent money, which came in handy when I got married."

"That's what I like to hear."

Ellen counted three slowly and silently. "What do you like to hear, Mr Peacock?"

"A designer who doesn't try to impress us with how much of an artist she is."

"Oh, I'm only sublime when I'm working on a book."

"Mrs Sterling illustrates her husband's books," Fuge explained.

"Should I have heard of him?"

"That depends on the kind of company he'd find himself in," Ellen said.

"They're children's books, Sidney."

"Won't mean anything to me, then. It was my wife who wanted kids, so she gets to deal with anything connected with the little treasures. If you and your lord and master produce books instead of children, Mrs Sterling, I reckon you've the right idea."

"We've produced both."

"So let's see what you've got to offer us," Peacock said.

Ellen handed him the portfolio. She didn't feel as detached as she expected; she was uncomfortably aware of her heartbeat and of her suddenly dry mouth. Peacock turned over the first sheets, making a sound in his throat as if he was clearing the way for a comment he then decided not to utter, and she remembered how he would do that when he was milking her and Nathan of ideas. She started, heart thumping, when Fuge said "Your letter didn't mention where you've worked."

"No -" Ellen swallowed so as to be able to speak up. "Noble Publicity."

"You were there for a while, weren't you, Sidney?"

"I learned the basics there, yes." Peacock frowned at Ellen and continued leafing through her work. "When were you there, Mrs Sterling?"

Ellen paused enough to let him turn over two more sheets. "When you were."

He didn't look up. He had just uncovered the first of the Broads Best sheets, and she saw the studiedly neutral expression drain from his face. His partner glanced at the picture to see why Peacock was lingering over it, and gave a surprised laugh. "Why, weren't you involved in that campaign, Sidney? Don't tell me you never met the artist. What are the two of you up to, eh? What's our Sidney been promising you, Mrs Sterling?"

"I'm sure Mr Peacock knows I expect nothing from him," Ellen said, feeling her cheeks redden, gazing at Peacock to force him to look at her.

But he only spoke to her. "This is embarrassing. I'm sorry I didn't know you at first, Mrs Sterling. A lot of lunches have flowed under the bridge in what must it be, nearly eleven years?" To his partner he murmured "I'll bet if all the folk you've worked with in your life walked in here right now there'd be a few you couldn't put a name to."

"Just the same, I think I'd be insulted if I were Mrs Sterling."

Peacock met her gaze then. If he dared to say he was sure she wasn't, Ellen thought, she wouldn't be responsible for her reply. "If I may say so, Mrs Sterling, I think having children has turned you into quite a handsome lady. I hope you'll accept that as my excuse for not recognising you to begin with."

"It's thoughtful of you to say so."

"And I hope you'll agree with me that we can both be proud of the Broads Best campaign."

Ever hopeful, aren't you, Sidney? Not as crude asyou used to be, or at least not in front of witnesses. I don't mean to exclude you from the conversation, Mr Fuge. Let me explain… But now that the moment had come, taking her revenge seemed petty and demeaning, not worth the risk of regretting it later. All she said was "I won't argue with you."

"Take a look at these, Gordon," he said, and passed his colleague the portfolio. "So have you been keeping your hand in since you left Noble's, Mrs Sterling?"

He was going through the motions of interviewing her, she thought, in case his colleague suspected that something was wrong. She responded automatically, wanting only to be finished with the pretence and outside in the open air. "Thank you for your time, Mrs Sterling," he said as Fuge closed the portfolio and folded his hands over his stomach as if he'd just enjoyed a meal. Peacock slid the portfolio across to her and stood up when she did. As Fuge heaved himself to his feet and told her it had been a pleasure, Peacock met her eyes, not quite expressionlessly. "We still have to interview the other candidates," he said.

Ellen was out of the building before his implication caught up with her. Throughout the interview she had been assuming she had already lost the job, but his expression at the end had said that he knew he owed her a favour. Given the context, it could only mean that he intended to hire her. Her instinct was to march straight back and tell him what he could do with the job, but then where would she go? Could she bear to work with him again even if she was certain he would keep his hands off her? She made her way through the crowds, which felt both oppressive and distant, to the car. Until she had the chance to discuss the situation with Ben, the best she could offer herself was a good strong cup of tea.

By the time she was halfway home she was savouring how the first sip would taste. She came off the ring road and steered the car into her street, and the taste grew sour in her mouth. There was a police car outside the house, and a uniformed officer was ringing the bell.

She parked awkwardly behind the police vehicle and ran up her path, her pulse accelerating. "What's the matter? Can I help you?"

The policeman turned, his face so carefully unemotional that she missed a breath. "Is this where Mr Benjamin Sterling lives?" he said.