Power Games

‘You’re seconding me to work with Bram Soames? But what about my work here?’ Taylor asked sharply, her forehead pleating in a frown as she confronted Sir Anthony across his desk, and fought to conceal from him the shock his announcement had given her.

‘You’ve said yourself that since we installed this new computer system you’ve got time on your hands,’ Sir Anthony reminded her.

‘To a point, but there are things…surely someone else…’ Someone else, anyone else, Taylor thought as she fought to control her panic. It had never occurred to her when her boss had asked her to spare him a few minutes, what he intended to say to her. The very thought of working closely with an unknown man filled her with anxiety. Her fear of anyone guessing what she was feeling was almost as strong as the anxiety itself.

‘There isn’t anyone else,’ Sir Anthony was saying now. ‘At least no one with your experience. I appreciate that what I’m asking falls outside your normal field of operation, but if Bram can produce a viable working program—’ He gave a small lift of his shoulders.

‘If he can produce a working program,’ Taylor countered. ‘It’s been tried before without any real success.’

‘Yes, I know that and so does Bram, but since he’s prepared to give up his time free of charge—’

‘Free of charge? There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’ Taylor commented cynically. ‘He must be expecting to get something out of it.’

‘Not Bram,’ Sir Anthony denied.

‘Why? What makes him so different?’ Taylor asked the question almost reluctantly, unwilling to be drawn into discussing a man she had already decided she didn’t want to like.

‘Well, Jay, for a start,’ he told her, explaining when he saw her frown.

‘Jay is his son. Bram had to take full responsibility for him when his mother was killed in a car accident. He was still at university at the time. Bram’s parents did offer to adopt the boy, but Bram wouldn’t hear of it. He said that Jay was his son. His responsibility. A lot of men would have let them go ahead, ducked out…. Bram’s tutors did their best to dissuade him. They were forecasting a brilliant future for him. He had a first-class brain. But he wouldn’t listen. Jay came first.’

‘And that makes him a candidate for sainthood?’ Taylor asked sharply. ‘Women…girls in their thousands make that kind of sacrifice every day of the week without getting any praise for it. Far from it.’

‘Maybe so,’ Sir Anthony allowed, ‘but it’s their choice to become mothers. Bram had no choice. No say in whether or not he became a father.’

‘Rubbish,’ Taylor retorted angrily. ‘He had every choice. Presumably his son’s mother didn’t tie him to the bed and force him to impregnate her.’

Taylor could tell from Sir Anthony’s expression that her sudden forthrightness had surprised him. It had surprised her as well. Any kind of discussion that touched upon sexual matters, even in the mildest way, was normally something she avoided like the plague, but her boss’s comments, his attitude, had angered her so much that she had felt impelled to speak out.

‘Bram was only fourteen when Jay was conceived,’ Sir Anthony told her quietly. ‘It isn’t a subject that he ever liked discussing….’

‘But he made sure, all the same, that everyone knew he wasn’t to blame,’ Taylor remarked bitterly.

She knew she was overreacting, but she just couldn’t withhold the words or control the emotions that lay behind them, even though she knew she would regret her outburst later.

‘It wasn’t actually Bram who told us,’ Sir Anthony answered her. ‘It was his father. He was very bitter about the way the girl’s family had treated Bram, and about the way he felt Bram’s life had been blighted by what happened. Bram has always put others’ needs before his own.’

Taylor realised that she was wasting her time continuing to protest about being seconded to work with Bram, little though she liked the idea.

Little though she liked it? Loathing was a closer description to what she was actually feeling. Loathing, fear, panic, anger, but most of all fear… Fear at the thought of working closely with a man she did not know. Fear at the thought of being subjected to his will, his domination, fear at the thought of having to be alone with him, fear at its most basic and damaging level, fear in its most humiliating and degrading form; fear of a woman for a man simply because he was a man.

But, of course, there was no way she could explain those feelings to Sir Anthony, no way she could explain them to anyone.

When she read articles in magazines about people who had contracted the HIV virus and were afraid of the consequences, of making their vulnerability public, Taylor knew exactly what they were suffering. She had suffered like that for twenty years, albeit on a different plane. She knew exactly what it felt like, the fear, the pain, the isolation, the feeling of being apart, different from the rest of the human race. She knew exactly what it was like to have to guard her every comment in case she unwittingly betrayed herself; to remove herself from any kind of physical or emotional contact with other people; to protect them from the consequences of any kind of intimacy with her at the same time as she protected herself.

The past, her past, was always with her, a constant reminder, and a constant warning….

‘Look, I can see you’re not keen on the idea of working with Bram,’ Sir Anthony acknowledged, ‘but—’

‘No. I’m not,’ Taylor agreed, interrupting him to snatch at the escape route he was unwittingly offering to her.

There was no point in trying to explain to him that it wasn’t just Bram Soames she didn’t want to work closely with, it was any and every man.

It had taken almost two years before she had finally conquered her anxiety enough to feel comfortable working with Sir Anthony, before her brain and her emotions finally caught up with what her instincts were telling her—that her boss was the happily married man he purported to be and that his kindness towards the female members of his staff sprang from a genuine, slightly old-fashioned avuncular and protective attitude towards the female sex as a whole, rather than from some hidden, ulterior motive. However, to feel comfortable working with Sir Anthony was one thing. Bram Soames was something—someone—altogether different.

‘If it’s any consolation to you, I suspect that Bram is as reluctant to work with you as you are with him,’ Sir Anthony told her.

‘You suspect?’ Taylor questioned him sharply, stifling the unexpected stab of feminine chagrin his comment gave her. Why should she feel annoyed because Bram Soames didn’t want to work with her? For years she had trained herself not to be in any way responsive to men, to treat them as though they simply did not exist. It was easier that way…safer…for her, for them.

‘Bram is rather better at concealing his feelings than you are,’ Sir Anthony answered her dryly.

‘Try looking at the fact that I want you to work alongside him as a compliment rather than a punishment,’ he coaxed. ‘Because that is what it is. I know how you feel about your work, Taylor. After all, I’ve tried hard enough in the past to prise you away from your precious archives and to get you to play a far more active role on the public relations side of things. You’ve got the brain for it and the expertise and you’ve got a very special gift for being able to put your point across—when you choose to use it.

‘Now that we’ve put in that new computer system and you’ve got spare time on your hands…’

Taylor could feel the panic starting to explode inside her. Public relations work, anything that brought her into the public eye in any way at all, terrified her. At least, if she was working with Bram Soames her contact would be limited to him and conducted in circumstances over which she would have some control.

‘No one knows the history of the society as well as you do,’ Sir Anthony was saying persuasively, ‘which is why I want you to work alongside Bram. This project is too important to allow personal feelings to prejudice it. I appreciate that the two of you might not exactly become kindred spirits, but…’

‘But for the sake of the cause, I should be prepared to sacrifice myself,’ Taylor suggested wryly, her mouth twisting slightly.

‘Actually, that wasn’t what I was going to say,’ Sir Anthony rebuked her mildly. ‘I was simply going to point out that you’re not being very fair to Bram. He’s a very likeable chap, you know. Kind. Well-intentioned. Most women—’ he began and then stopped, as though he realised that he was treading on very dangerous ground.

‘Most women would what?’ Taylor demanded. ‘Most women would welcome the chance to work so closely with a handsome, rich, available, heterosexual man?’

How could she explain to her boss that those very attributes that in his eyes made Bram Soames so attractive to the majority of her sex, only served to increase her own fear and revulsion, because the one thing he had not mentioned in that brief catalogue, which as far as she was concerned was the most important, was the word power; no man could possess all the attributes Sir Anthony had just listed and not be conscious of the power they gave him. Power over her sex, power over her, and, as she had good cause to know, power could be abused.

‘So, it’s agreed then,’ she heard Sir Anthony say firmly. ‘I’ve suggested to Bram that I leave it to him to liaise with you. I know you’ll do your best to help him.’

He stood, leaving Taylor with no option but to follow suit and to allow him to shepherd her towards his office door.

Later on in the safety of her own office she could feel the shock starting to sink in. She ought to have taken a firmer stand, to have refused outright to work with Bram Soames. But how could she have done so? By giving up her job? She wasn’t financially independent enough to do that; jobs like hers weren’t easy to come by. And besides, she liked her job. She liked its solitude, its security and safety. She liked the reassurance of the routine she had established. The thought of leaving and trying to make a fresh start somewhere else filled her with even greater panic.

Damn Bram Soames! Damn him and his precious program! And yet, even as she cursed him mentally, Taylor acknowledged that she was being selfish and unfair. If he could succeed in writing such a program it would transform the lives of so many people.

Perhaps, if she could just focus on that fact and hold fast to it, it might help to make the unbearable somehow bearable, she decided sombrely.

Her office was situated at the top of the building, its narrow, barred window the only source of natural daylight. Some time ago it had been suggested that she move to a lower floor and a larger office with a much bigger window, but she had refused.

It was pointless trying to explain to other people that the narrowness of her existing office window, its thick, almost opaque glass and steel bars, were infinitely preferable to her than something larger, which someone might look or step through. Just thinking about such a possibility made her shudder. How could she ever give up her job here and go somewhere else? Here, in surroundings where she had worked for years, her small eccentricities—as others thought of them—were tolerated; in a different environment…a new environment…

She closed her eyes and then opened them abruptly as her telephone rang.

Some sixth sense warned her who the caller would be, but it was still a shock to hear Bram Soames’s unmistakable warm male voice on the other end of the line.

‘I hope I’m not pre-empting things by telephoning you so soon,’ she heard him saying after he had identified himself. ‘But Anthony did promise he would speak to you as soon as he could about the possibility of our working together, and I was wondering if he—’

‘Yes,’ Taylor interposed tersely. ‘Yes, he’s told me.’ The palm of the hand gripping the receiver was already damp with anxiety, the forefinger of her other hand curling nervously in and out of the plastic-covered coil linking the receiver to the base unit.