THE QUESTION

Well, we can all dream, can't we? And this is the meeting....

Oliver stared, though he might have gawped. It would have only been natural, gawping before such an image of perfection.

He really believed he had never seen such a ravishingly beautiful sight in his entire life. She stood there, her smile bright like smiles ought to be, her eyes that bright blue he knew he’d seen before but couldn’t remember where and that white cotton dress, tantalizingly short for sunning by the coast and thin enough to flutter invitingly with the hiss of every breath of air that touched it. And the flesh of the girl … woman … it was bronzed and perfect and contrasted perfectly with the white of her cotton dress.

But who was she? Where had he seen her before?

He searched back through the archives of his mind, and frowned.

“You don’t remember me do you, Oliver?” she teased.

He didn’t. That was the very devil if it. If he’d seen her before he would almost certainly have remembered her because, well, she was the sort of person no man could forget meeting. It’s not always the case that physical beauty and sheer attraction go together, but in her they did.

“At work,” she said, “At Hunt’s.”

Then he remembered, like a bolt from the blue. He remembered exactly where he’d seen those eyes before, blue, magical, wonderful.

They’d been set in the face of the rather mousey young woman who’d spent most of her days, he seemed to remember, pushing a tea-trolley through the offices and onto the factory floor. He’d noticed her in an oblique sort of way because of the eyes, so very blue, so unlike any eyes he’d ever seen before. But she hadn’t been so radiantly beautiful. Surely she hadn’t. For starters, there had been the overall...

Hadn’t there?

What was her name? Why couldn’t he remember her name? He seemed to remember that Mr Hunt had called her Miss … Miss Smith? Miss Jones? Something forgettable. It must have been something forgettable or he’d have remembered it. You don’t forget the names of ravishing creatures like this one in her white cotton dress and flaunting her beautiful long bronzed legs.

“You have forgotten me, haven’t you?” she laughed, “and to think I used to think you were all right, sitting at your desk, working like the devil with piles of paper all around you, a right tasty hunk, I thought….”

She walked the dozen or so steps between them and stood next to him. Was she a little too close? The hem of her skirt brushed against his jeans and her eyes taunted him, but in the nicest possible way.

I’ve never been anything like a hunk...

“You did?” he stammered. Why was he stammering? He didn’t normally stammer, did he? Hunks don’t stammer… But a trick of the summer breeze had made that dress flutter against her gorgeous long legs and that had made him stammer. It must have been that. It wasn’t normal for him. Not stammering.

“I don’t suppose you had much of a chance to notice me, in that overall I had to wear when I pushed the trolley around...” she laughed. “I’m Teresa. Teresa Hunt...”

“What a lovely name...” he said foolishly automatically. “I love the name Teresa… Hunt? You said Hunt? Are you related to…?”

“Mr Hunt? The boss? Didn’t you know?”

Know what?

“Know what?” he asked, still stammering.

“He’s my dad,” she laughed, “but you were a naughty boy, weren’t you? He really doesn’t like you very much!”

Bugger me, he thought, bugger me … I’ve spoilt any chances I ever had with the angel of my dreams before we ever met, and all because of that crow of a mother of mine…

“I can explain!” he gasped, “I can really explain!”

“What were you doing? Daddy thought you were spying for the opposition, trying to fettle out paper-mill secrets and sell them to the highest bidder...”

“I wasn’t!”

“I prefer to think you were going to rob the safe and vanish with the profits!” she said, but her eyes mocked him.

“I wasn’t doing that either!”

“Then why were you lurking in the smelly toilet? And I remember the men’s toilet was smelly! I had to clean it and I didn’t like doing it so I was a bit lazy with the disinfectant!”

The boss’s daughter being cleaner? That’s not likely, is it? Why would a boss expect his own daughter to do the dirtiest jobs when he could have given her a typewriter and told her to type something?

“That’s a mucky job for a pretty girl,” he said. “I was waiting so I could look around for evidence … oh, it’s such a long story and none of it makes any sense...”

“Do you think I am pretty?” she interrupted.

“Of course you are!”

“Why of course?”

“You’ve got mirrors at the Hunt residence, I suppose?”

“Lots of them!”

“Then look in them. You … you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever known!”

“You didn’t think that back at the factory!”

“You looked different then.”

“You mean I wasn’t wearing a sexy dress?”

Why did you have to use the word sexy? Because you are sexy, so sexy that I’m in danger of losing control…

“You wore an overall,” he said, trying to sound gruff, and failing.

“It was daddy. He said I should start at the bottom and learn the business from the bottom up. He said that I would take over from him when he’s ready to retire, keep the business in the family with me in charge … pity I don’t want to.”

“You don’t?”

“Look at me? Do you see a girl who wants to be locked in a dreary factory office for the rest of her life?”

He shook his head. “No. No I don’t,” he admitted.

“Oliver, will you do something for me?” she asked, “even if it sounds … not quite right?”

“Of course,” he said without thinking. Or if he did think it was along the lines of there’s nothing she could ask me to do that could possibly be wrong…

“We’ve got a holiday cottage not far from where we’re standing,” she said, smiling a smile it was impossible to argue with, “and I want you to come along with me to it and ask my father something...”

“Ask him … what? Remember, he hates me!”

“Daddy never hated anyone! But I want you to ask him in your specially best voice...”

“But ask him what?” he asked, frowning.

“If you can marry me, of course!” she said, and the breeze chose that moment to make that dress flutter and his heart thump extra hard in his chest.

© Peter Rogerson 17.01.17