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PUNCTUALITY JANE

“You look ill,” her mother had said. “You want to get out more - get yourself some fun girl, whilst you still can.”
            Jane had been foolish enough to drop some shopping off on the way to the office and found her mother in a foul mood from her bad back and quick to find some pain relief through criticising Jane. As usual the theme was ‘her daughter the ice-maiden’ and ‘didn’t she need a man and want to have babies, like other girls?’ Girls…? Jane was now thirty seven. Jane tried to brush her irritation aside as she turned into the wide drive. She checked the clock on the dash-board, good, it was exactly 7.55 a.m.
             Jane was always punctual and she expected the same from her staff, so even though she was upset, she took comfort from the fact that she would arrive at her usual time of 8.00 a.m. precisely. She also enjoyed the sound of her BMW’s wheels on the gravel. It wasn’t her drive, but it led to her own private parking place, and when she climbed the steps to the fine country house where her team was based, she felt, if not pride of ownership, a pride that in her career she had made it to the top.
            She climbed the stone steps and pushed open one of the big doors, wished a good morning to Tony the caretaker in reception, who would have only just unlocked everything before she arrived, and then pushed her way through the door marked ‘Jane Winslow, Head of Finance’.
            Entering her office also pleased her. It was palatial with a fine view of the grounds. It had a big desk, clear of papers except for her morning’s in-tray, a state of the art computer and her two phones. In a bay, with another big window, was a conference table and in front of her desk there were comfy chairs and a coffee table. Even though it was council property the carpet was plush and some of the furniture was Georgian, all part of the estate left to the council as a bequest. The décor was also appropriate, brocade curtains and heavy embossed wallpaper – although an electronic office clock set on the wall, in easy sight of her desk, rather spoilt the overall effect. There were no photographs or knick knacks on the desk.
            A colleague had laughed when they had moved her section here. “Keeping you lot as far away from the rest of us as possible,” he had said. Jane had indeed felt she was being exiled, until she saw the house and her office. This wasn’t banishment, this was heaven. Her own empire, and she ran it with the crisp efficiency she was renowned for.
           
By 8.30 when the rest of her team arrived she had already organised her in- tray, checked her diary, and dealt with all the urgent and important items. By nine o’clock, when Mary brought her cup of tea, she had cleared all the correspondence and was well into a budget review in preparation for her first meeting.
            Apart from her punctuality Jane also prided herself on her concentration. She could focus, if need be, for three or four hours at a time, not letting anything distract her until she had grasped the issues or solved the problem. She could just turn off - separate herself from the outside world so there was only the papers in front of her or the figures on the screen of her computer.
            There, she was finished. As she scribbled a final note to herself she surfaced, caught the aroma of newly turned earth and blossom that wafted in through the window, looked up and out into the sunshine, then froze with her pen held to her lips. Could it really be him? No, it wasn’t possible!
            She put on her glasses and went to the window and standing behind the curtain so she couldn’t be seen, looked out across the lawn. It was him. Obviously he was much bigger - in fact he was tall and well muscled. He was rigorously digging a flower bed and when he moved the wheelbarrow and raised his head she caught a glimpse of big, rather sad, brown eyes that she remembered and a handsome face, tanned from working outside. It was definitely Michael.
            They had been childhood sweethearts in the country village where they had been brought up - well they had held hands on the way home from school, pretended to me married and played ‘house’ together in the woods. Once they had even kissed. He had always been her schoolyard champion, until that is she went off to Grammar School. After that they had hardly ever spoken and his family had eventually moved away. Now he was here, working in the garden.
            She went back to her desk, forced herself to concentrate on another set of figures, and, as usual, was soon close to a solution, but she found herself somehow distracted for the rest of the day. She kept remembering things from the past as she worked, childhood memories, little things, good and bad. Then, when she should really have been listening to the Head of Leisure Services, the smell of  cut grass, carried into their dull meeting by the gentle breeze, took her attention and she found herself watching Tony the caretaker walk over and talk to Michael where he was mowing the lawn.
            After she left work Jane she nearly had an accident as she drove back to her flat, only just avoiding driving into the back of the car in front. That evening, uncharacteristically, she curled up in her chair and staring mindlessly at a television screen that she wasn’t really watching drank several glasses of wine before going to bed.

            The next morning she was late for work. She had slept badly and her dreams were strange. She had been naked, her hair down and she was walking through a park, where there were no people but birds and animals everywhere, watching her from the bushes or coming up to her. Then she had been at her desk, still naked, and she was grappling with a budget sheet and no matter what she did the figures all went wrong, changing by themselves. The deficit on the screen just got bigger, the figures climbing higher and higher spinning like the tumblers of a slot machine and her mother had been shouting at her - then she had woken up hot and flustered to find that she had overslept.        
            This morning the tyres on the gravel and her parking space did not manage to cheer her up and instead of hurrying through with her usual curt good morning, today she stopped in reception.
            “Tony, who was the gardener you were talking to yesterday? Somehow he seems familiar to me?”
            “Oh that’s Michael Greenstead, Miss Winslow. He’s a good lad, lives out my way with his Dad, we play together in the pub darts team. His wife was from the village too, but she ran off on him. You’ve probably seen him at one of the other buildings, he works all over for the council.”      
            When she sat down at her desk for some reason she now felt a little better, but she was well behind schedule and so she made herself concentrate and focus on the words in the auditor’s report. There had clearly been a serious breakdown in procedure here, not down to her department, but she still expected the meeting later that morning to be rather uncomfortable to say the least. She was determined to stay focused on her work today, so she cancelled her nine o’clock tea - perhaps punishing herself a little for being late for work.
            She only looked up at the clock when she knew it was about time for her to head off for the Town Hall. What she saw was such a shock to her that she actually called out, although the only sound she could make was a sort of distressed mewing noise. She looked at her watch then grabbed the phone.
             “Mary, have the clocks gone forward today?” She knew it was a stupid idea but she had lost half an hour, an entire half hour. “OK, so what do you make the time?”
            She put the phone down slowly, pale with shock. The meeting would have started by now. How did this happen? She went and stood beneath the grey plastic clock, looked away and then looked back again, willing it to be nine thirty instead of ten thirty. She walked to the antique clock on the marble mantelpiece, it wasn’t too reliable, but its ornate hands and the Roman numerals also told her that it was just after ten.
            Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the big gilt mirror over the fireplace. Her lipstick was smudged and her hair had come loose. Then suddenly she realised she could feel the carpet beneath her feet and that she had no shoes on. She forced her eyes down. Her feet and stockings were plastered in mud. She just stood there, staring at them, mesmerised.
            Gradually she became aware that someone was watching her and she turned and looked out of the window. Across the lawn, standing under a big cedar tree, was Michael. He smiled and gave her a hesitant wave. He looked puzzled and touched his face. Across the expanse of deep brown earth that he had been digging Jane could see a line of deep footprints in the damp soil, footprints that led right up to him.