Fic: Betty Knows Best
Title: Betty Knows Best
Author: JoJo
Genre: Slash B/D
Words: 2,123
Disclaimer: Not never been mine
Summary: La Betty prowls the corridors of CI5 and discovers all sorts of intriguing things ....
A/N: for International Women's Day (yay!) and for zana16 who requested a bit of Betty, a dash of Susan *g* and to whom I apologize for the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em reference
Michael the Architect is drinking Nescafe and staring out the window when Betty leaves at seven-thirty. His attache case and some drawings are laid out on her kitchen table.
“Sorry,” Betty says.
She’s shrugging on her mac and really hopes she hasn’t said sorry too many times.
“I’ll see myself out,” he acknowledges. “Busy week?”
“Who knows?”
“Well ... I’ll ring you, maybe Thursday.”
That’s big of you, she thinks.
“If you’re not working late,” he adds.
“I can’t tell, it’s only Monday - things happen.”
“They certainly seem to.” He smirks. “Secretarial support my arse.”
Betty fingers her bus pass and security card. “I type at 90 words per minute,” she says in her best prim. “I audio type even faster. I have a shorthand speed of 120. I am able to juggle multiple, simultaneous diary appointments while answering three phones and planning a new filing system for an entire department. I am utterly invaluable to my boss.”
He grins. “Yes. Like I said, secretarial support my arse.”
Michael’s handsome. Bit too pushy, though. And, despite a lot of front, wouldn’t know a security breach from a hole in the road. Betty smiles, leaves him to his Nescafe. They will last another month, she estimates.
Traffic’s running smooth through Camden. At Warren Street Betty dives into the tube, sits on the Northern Line reading her neighbour’s Express. Emerging at Charing Cross it’s drizzling. She buys coffee and a bun from Beppe’s at the top of Whitehall.
Reg, gloomy and a bit of a jobsworth, waves her through the airlock.
Her office is warm and quiet. Mr Cowley’s voice sounds through the panels of the cream door that connects them. It wouldn’t matter what time she arrived in the morning, she is sure she would always find him already here. He does sleep here often, she knows. Goes out and has meetings at gentlemen’s clubs and obscure, old-London pubs, then comes back, works and sleeps. His bungalow in the country seems a bit of a waste of time.
Betty abides by Chapter One of Senior Secretarial Duties, first edition. Make your boss a nice cup of tea and present it alongside his diary appointments neatly typed on a single, pristine sheet of foolscap with all necessary accompanying documentation attached in chronological order.
“Thank you, Betty,” he says, casting that familiar sour look over the diary appointments. “I may bump the Minister at ten. I’ll let you know. I need the extracts from the Riley case as soon as you get them. Could you order some more scotch? The meeting with the Embassy on Thursday ... will you be able to stay late to take minutes? And when 4.5 and 3.7 are in the building, light a fire under them.”
A smile warms Betty’s lips as she exits. Lighting fires is one part of her job that she really, really likes.
----
On the other side of the door she is in her domain. Radio Four is solemnly murmuring, a fax is feeding itself smoothly into a tray, busy lights flash on the telephone console.
It looks like any office Betty has ever worked in. The Olympia typewriter is as big and shiny as any. There’s as much stationery as anywhere else, letter-headed paper, fine-grain, snowy-white envelopes. Confidential pouches. Lots of those. Internal memo folders. Bics by the truckload, HB pencils, staple removers that she can never find fast enough to avoid ruination of her nails. Big metal filing cabinets banked across one wall. Typewriter ribbons in boxes. Her chair swivels smoothly.
Mr Cowley has taught her how to thumb back the hammer of a Browning Hi-Power revolver and fire it dead straight. Just in case.
Betty works the building from bottom to top.
They’re not down in Computers, the Armoury, the canteen or Archives. Betty wends her way along the first floor corridor. The steady clack of the typing pool sounds at the end. Some telephones blare rudely.
Susan’s in the Ladies on the second floor. Betty presumes that, like herself, she chooses this one because there’s a pleasant wash of natural light in there. It’s quiet, clean, not generally full of typists stampeding in and out. Not that Betty has a single thing against typists. Not one. She is a veteran of governmental typing pools herself.
“Hello!” Susan says brightly.
“You haven’t seen Bodie or Ray Doyle have you?”
The arms of Susan’s glasses click as she folds them, leans forward to look in the mirror.
“I’ve been out at ...”
“Yes, but this morning?” Betty’s brisk.
“Sorry, love. Have you tried the kitchen upstairs?” Susan hesitates. “Although you might not want to risk it. It is a bit of a disaster area.”
“I don’t mind.”
“How’s Mr Cowley today?” Susan is casual and Betty smiles pleasantly.
She likes Susan, and Sally. Julie, 6.7. They’re all lovely. They speak to her like she’s an equal. Never look down on her status. Remember her birthday and drag her to the Roebuck for multiple rum and blacks. But she always has to be careful.
The Gals, as Bodie calls them on a good day, can be tricky as a box of tricks. Sometimes they presume that Betty’s female solidarity will outweigh her innate sense of loyalty. Betty knows she is Mr Cowley’s last, and best, line of defence. Complete confidentiality is the fundamental tenet of their relationship. Everything she knows of Cowley remains sacrosanct, and she wonders sometimes if it could even be tortured out of her. Not even sisterhood, which Betty places high above Michael or any other boyfriend that ever was, trumps that. Susan and the Girlies, as Bodie calls them on a bad day, don’t always remember.
“I was just wondering what kind of mood he’s in. I was going to ask for Wednesday afternoon off.” She makes one of those faces. “Don’t tell him, but I’ve got an interview at the F.O.”
Don’t tell him.
The third floor kitchen is truly a disaster area. There’s sugar and tea leaves all over the work surfaces, the sink is full of dirty mugs. Someone has evidently used the tea towels to polish their shoes, there’s water on the lino floor and it’s smells like there are overflowing ash-trays in every corner. There are overflowing ash-trays in every corner.
Anson and McCabe sit in the midst of it all, oblivious.
“Oooh Bettee,” McCabe says as soon as she appears. He has never said her name in any other voice than Frank Spencer. She didn’t even laugh the first time.
They’re sitting at the table with tea and Jammie Dodgers.
“4.5? 3.7?” she asks.
Anson points to the kettle. There are two mugs next to it containing damp tea-bags.
“They were here,” he says, mystified as to why they might have abandoned their PG-Tips. He and McCabe are almost obnoxiously relaxed.
However, Betty knows that operatives lounging around in the kitchen is nearly always a pre-cursor to some urgent call that will toss their lives into the balance.
“They in trouble?” McCabe angles hopefully.
Don’t tell them.
“Thanks,” is all she says, lets the door bang shut.
Bodie and Doyle don’t want to be found, Betty decides. She continues her methodical search.
They’re not in the locker-room.
On the top floor the meeting rooms are quiet and empty. She really hadn’t expected to find them there anyhow. She feels a slight prickle of unease at being up here alone.
It’s then that Betty sees the rear end of Ray Doyle sashaying down the corridor.
Patched jeans, shirtsleeves undone, folded back one turn, forearms on display. Does he know, she wonders. Does he actually know, or is he entirely unaware? As he disappears around the corner, she hears a snatch of deep voice. She’ll have to hurry before he gets to the stairwell. Doyle will be down those wretched things faster than Starsky in that episode where he’s racing the lift.
The heavy firedoors are swinging as she rounds the corner. She catches the handle, pulls hard.
Ray Doyle hasn’t yet gone hurtling down the stairs. He’s at the top, standing by the window. Facing the wall.
Doyle’s kissing someone.
It’s not the first time Betty has come upon a secret clinch in the corridors of HQ. Phillips hasn’t been able to look her in the eye since the Christmas drinks last year.
Doyle’s hips are undulating gently, rocking against whoever is pinned to the wall. He has a manila folder cradled in the crook of one arm. The other arm is braced against the glossy beige paint-job. Betty’s eyes are drawn to the hands that suddenly slide into view, tucking themselves into the denim pockets that hug that rear end so very snugly. And the dark shoes pointing towards her.
There’s the sound of wet lips breaking their suction, pulling apart.
And a pair of eyes she knows well suddenly blink at her.
“Bets,” says Bodie.
Betty doesn’t regret that night with Bodie, not even now.
Doyle has just let loose a great sigh of regret and rumbling desire and Bodie catches his lips again with his for a brief second although he doesn’t take his eyes off her. Then he repeats, “Betty,” and Doyle suddenly seems to wake up.
“Betty,” he says. Bodie nods at him and Doyle turns round. Bodie’s hands slide out of the pockets.
“I’m supposed to be lighting a fire under you,” she says calmly. “Looks like I got here too late.”
“Betty,” Ray Doyle says again.
He moves a pace away from Bodie, who grabs the manila folder off him and dangles it in front of him while he looks very serious and his eyes dance like crazy.
“Mr Cowley is looking for you. I wouldn’t say he’s in the best of moods.”
“Looking for us,” 4.5 repeats. He tugs his lower lip with a forefinger.
Bodie slaps at Doyle’s chest with the folder.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” he says, “he’s a bit backward.”
Betty doesn’t smile at them. She wants to, desperately, but she doesn’t want to become a co-conspirator. So, she thinks, Bodie and Doyle are like that. They fancy the pants off each other. Despite the fact that she’s slept with Bodie, she’s more surprised about Ray Doyle. Good God. If the girls knew, they’d be devastated.
Don’t tell them.
“We’d better move our arses then,” Doyle says. “Anything else we need to know? Has the old goat got any nasty surprises for us?”
When on earth, Betty thinks, did they get the impression that she’s one of them? She knows exactly why Cowley needs the Riley extracts and exactly why he wants Bodie and Doyle.
Don’t tell them.
Backing out through the doors, she makes for the lift. She can hear two sets of steps tumbling down the stairwell, getting faster and faster. They’re having a race. Doyle will win, undoubtedly.
When she gets back to her domain, she taps lightly on the cream door. Mr Cowley looks up from some paperwork as she goes in, that distracted expression on his face that makes her fear for 4.5 and 3.7’s continued happiness. Not to mention their health.
“They’ll be here in two minutes.”
“Really. And where were they? Messing about somewhere?”
Don’t tell him.
“Just having a cup of tea, sir.”
A splutter of derision. Betty lays the Riley extracts down on his blotter, goes out quietly.
After a few minutes she hears a well-behaved knock on the door that leads from Cowley’s office to the corridor. Then muffled, respectful voices.
There is a very large pile of paper in her in-tray. She really ought to go through today’s broadsheets. Someone has brought her a stack of parliamentary committee reports from last month and dumped them on the floor by her desk. Her fingernails, neat and unthreatening, pearly pink and well-shaped, tap on the opened page of Mr Cowley’s big Dataday diary.
She is rather bored with juggling multiple, simultaneous diary appointments while answering three phones. She would be happy to consign the filing systems of every single department in the building to the bottom of the Thames. She doesn’t much care about Michael the Architect.
There was a rather well-paid job being advertised in the Creme de la Creme of The Times last week. Personal Assistant to a Chief Executive. A definite career progression. More money, more perks, more luxury.
But really, she wouldn’t dream of it.
Betty likes not telling anyone anything. She likes the whiff of danger that lurks amongst the tea-bags. She really, really likes being invaluable.
Most of all, she adores the feel of that revolver as it kicks.
-ends-
Author: JoJo
Genre: Slash B/D
Words: 2,123
Disclaimer: Not never been mine
Summary: La Betty prowls the corridors of CI5 and discovers all sorts of intriguing things ....
A/N: for International Women's Day (yay!) and for zana16 who requested a bit of Betty, a dash of Susan *g* and to whom I apologize for the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em reference
Michael the Architect is drinking Nescafe and staring out the window when Betty leaves at seven-thirty. His attache case and some drawings are laid out on her kitchen table.
“Sorry,” Betty says.
She’s shrugging on her mac and really hopes she hasn’t said sorry too many times.
“I’ll see myself out,” he acknowledges. “Busy week?”
“Who knows?”
“Well ... I’ll ring you, maybe Thursday.”
That’s big of you, she thinks.
“If you’re not working late,” he adds.
“I can’t tell, it’s only Monday - things happen.”
“They certainly seem to.” He smirks. “Secretarial support my arse.”
Betty fingers her bus pass and security card. “I type at 90 words per minute,” she says in her best prim. “I audio type even faster. I have a shorthand speed of 120. I am able to juggle multiple, simultaneous diary appointments while answering three phones and planning a new filing system for an entire department. I am utterly invaluable to my boss.”
He grins. “Yes. Like I said, secretarial support my arse.”
Michael’s handsome. Bit too pushy, though. And, despite a lot of front, wouldn’t know a security breach from a hole in the road. Betty smiles, leaves him to his Nescafe. They will last another month, she estimates.
Traffic’s running smooth through Camden. At Warren Street Betty dives into the tube, sits on the Northern Line reading her neighbour’s Express. Emerging at Charing Cross it’s drizzling. She buys coffee and a bun from Beppe’s at the top of Whitehall.
Reg, gloomy and a bit of a jobsworth, waves her through the airlock.
Her office is warm and quiet. Mr Cowley’s voice sounds through the panels of the cream door that connects them. It wouldn’t matter what time she arrived in the morning, she is sure she would always find him already here. He does sleep here often, she knows. Goes out and has meetings at gentlemen’s clubs and obscure, old-London pubs, then comes back, works and sleeps. His bungalow in the country seems a bit of a waste of time.
Betty abides by Chapter One of Senior Secretarial Duties, first edition. Make your boss a nice cup of tea and present it alongside his diary appointments neatly typed on a single, pristine sheet of foolscap with all necessary accompanying documentation attached in chronological order.
“Thank you, Betty,” he says, casting that familiar sour look over the diary appointments. “I may bump the Minister at ten. I’ll let you know. I need the extracts from the Riley case as soon as you get them. Could you order some more scotch? The meeting with the Embassy on Thursday ... will you be able to stay late to take minutes? And when 4.5 and 3.7 are in the building, light a fire under them.”
A smile warms Betty’s lips as she exits. Lighting fires is one part of her job that she really, really likes.
----
On the other side of the door she is in her domain. Radio Four is solemnly murmuring, a fax is feeding itself smoothly into a tray, busy lights flash on the telephone console.
It looks like any office Betty has ever worked in. The Olympia typewriter is as big and shiny as any. There’s as much stationery as anywhere else, letter-headed paper, fine-grain, snowy-white envelopes. Confidential pouches. Lots of those. Internal memo folders. Bics by the truckload, HB pencils, staple removers that she can never find fast enough to avoid ruination of her nails. Big metal filing cabinets banked across one wall. Typewriter ribbons in boxes. Her chair swivels smoothly.
Mr Cowley has taught her how to thumb back the hammer of a Browning Hi-Power revolver and fire it dead straight. Just in case.
Betty works the building from bottom to top.
They’re not down in Computers, the Armoury, the canteen or Archives. Betty wends her way along the first floor corridor. The steady clack of the typing pool sounds at the end. Some telephones blare rudely.
Susan’s in the Ladies on the second floor. Betty presumes that, like herself, she chooses this one because there’s a pleasant wash of natural light in there. It’s quiet, clean, not generally full of typists stampeding in and out. Not that Betty has a single thing against typists. Not one. She is a veteran of governmental typing pools herself.
“Hello!” Susan says brightly.
“You haven’t seen Bodie or Ray Doyle have you?”
The arms of Susan’s glasses click as she folds them, leans forward to look in the mirror.
“I’ve been out at ...”
“Yes, but this morning?” Betty’s brisk.
“Sorry, love. Have you tried the kitchen upstairs?” Susan hesitates. “Although you might not want to risk it. It is a bit of a disaster area.”
“I don’t mind.”
“How’s Mr Cowley today?” Susan is casual and Betty smiles pleasantly.
She likes Susan, and Sally. Julie, 6.7. They’re all lovely. They speak to her like she’s an equal. Never look down on her status. Remember her birthday and drag her to the Roebuck for multiple rum and blacks. But she always has to be careful.
The Gals, as Bodie calls them on a good day, can be tricky as a box of tricks. Sometimes they presume that Betty’s female solidarity will outweigh her innate sense of loyalty. Betty knows she is Mr Cowley’s last, and best, line of defence. Complete confidentiality is the fundamental tenet of their relationship. Everything she knows of Cowley remains sacrosanct, and she wonders sometimes if it could even be tortured out of her. Not even sisterhood, which Betty places high above Michael or any other boyfriend that ever was, trumps that. Susan and the Girlies, as Bodie calls them on a bad day, don’t always remember.
“I was just wondering what kind of mood he’s in. I was going to ask for Wednesday afternoon off.” She makes one of those faces. “Don’t tell him, but I’ve got an interview at the F.O.”
Don’t tell him.
The third floor kitchen is truly a disaster area. There’s sugar and tea leaves all over the work surfaces, the sink is full of dirty mugs. Someone has evidently used the tea towels to polish their shoes, there’s water on the lino floor and it’s smells like there are overflowing ash-trays in every corner. There are overflowing ash-trays in every corner.
Anson and McCabe sit in the midst of it all, oblivious.
“Oooh Bettee,” McCabe says as soon as she appears. He has never said her name in any other voice than Frank Spencer. She didn’t even laugh the first time.
They’re sitting at the table with tea and Jammie Dodgers.
“4.5? 3.7?” she asks.
Anson points to the kettle. There are two mugs next to it containing damp tea-bags.
“They were here,” he says, mystified as to why they might have abandoned their PG-Tips. He and McCabe are almost obnoxiously relaxed.
However, Betty knows that operatives lounging around in the kitchen is nearly always a pre-cursor to some urgent call that will toss their lives into the balance.
“They in trouble?” McCabe angles hopefully.
Don’t tell them.
“Thanks,” is all she says, lets the door bang shut.
Bodie and Doyle don’t want to be found, Betty decides. She continues her methodical search.
They’re not in the locker-room.
On the top floor the meeting rooms are quiet and empty. She really hadn’t expected to find them there anyhow. She feels a slight prickle of unease at being up here alone.
It’s then that Betty sees the rear end of Ray Doyle sashaying down the corridor.
Patched jeans, shirtsleeves undone, folded back one turn, forearms on display. Does he know, she wonders. Does he actually know, or is he entirely unaware? As he disappears around the corner, she hears a snatch of deep voice. She’ll have to hurry before he gets to the stairwell. Doyle will be down those wretched things faster than Starsky in that episode where he’s racing the lift.
The heavy firedoors are swinging as she rounds the corner. She catches the handle, pulls hard.
Ray Doyle hasn’t yet gone hurtling down the stairs. He’s at the top, standing by the window. Facing the wall.
Doyle’s kissing someone.
It’s not the first time Betty has come upon a secret clinch in the corridors of HQ. Phillips hasn’t been able to look her in the eye since the Christmas drinks last year.
Doyle’s hips are undulating gently, rocking against whoever is pinned to the wall. He has a manila folder cradled in the crook of one arm. The other arm is braced against the glossy beige paint-job. Betty’s eyes are drawn to the hands that suddenly slide into view, tucking themselves into the denim pockets that hug that rear end so very snugly. And the dark shoes pointing towards her.
There’s the sound of wet lips breaking their suction, pulling apart.
And a pair of eyes she knows well suddenly blink at her.
“Bets,” says Bodie.
Betty doesn’t regret that night with Bodie, not even now.
Doyle has just let loose a great sigh of regret and rumbling desire and Bodie catches his lips again with his for a brief second although he doesn’t take his eyes off her. Then he repeats, “Betty,” and Doyle suddenly seems to wake up.
“Betty,” he says. Bodie nods at him and Doyle turns round. Bodie’s hands slide out of the pockets.
“I’m supposed to be lighting a fire under you,” she says calmly. “Looks like I got here too late.”
“Betty,” Ray Doyle says again.
He moves a pace away from Bodie, who grabs the manila folder off him and dangles it in front of him while he looks very serious and his eyes dance like crazy.
“Mr Cowley is looking for you. I wouldn’t say he’s in the best of moods.”
“Looking for us,” 4.5 repeats. He tugs his lower lip with a forefinger.
Bodie slaps at Doyle’s chest with the folder.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” he says, “he’s a bit backward.”
Betty doesn’t smile at them. She wants to, desperately, but she doesn’t want to become a co-conspirator. So, she thinks, Bodie and Doyle are like that. They fancy the pants off each other. Despite the fact that she’s slept with Bodie, she’s more surprised about Ray Doyle. Good God. If the girls knew, they’d be devastated.
Don’t tell them.
“We’d better move our arses then,” Doyle says. “Anything else we need to know? Has the old goat got any nasty surprises for us?”
When on earth, Betty thinks, did they get the impression that she’s one of them? She knows exactly why Cowley needs the Riley extracts and exactly why he wants Bodie and Doyle.
Don’t tell them.
Backing out through the doors, she makes for the lift. She can hear two sets of steps tumbling down the stairwell, getting faster and faster. They’re having a race. Doyle will win, undoubtedly.
When she gets back to her domain, she taps lightly on the cream door. Mr Cowley looks up from some paperwork as she goes in, that distracted expression on his face that makes her fear for 4.5 and 3.7’s continued happiness. Not to mention their health.
“They’ll be here in two minutes.”
“Really. And where were they? Messing about somewhere?”
Don’t tell him.
“Just having a cup of tea, sir.”
A splutter of derision. Betty lays the Riley extracts down on his blotter, goes out quietly.
After a few minutes she hears a well-behaved knock on the door that leads from Cowley’s office to the corridor. Then muffled, respectful voices.
There is a very large pile of paper in her in-tray. She really ought to go through today’s broadsheets. Someone has brought her a stack of parliamentary committee reports from last month and dumped them on the floor by her desk. Her fingernails, neat and unthreatening, pearly pink and well-shaped, tap on the opened page of Mr Cowley’s big Dataday diary.
She is rather bored with juggling multiple, simultaneous diary appointments while answering three phones. She would be happy to consign the filing systems of every single department in the building to the bottom of the Thames. She doesn’t much care about Michael the Architect.
There was a rather well-paid job being advertised in the Creme de la Creme of The Times last week. Personal Assistant to a Chief Executive. A definite career progression. More money, more perks, more luxury.
But really, she wouldn’t dream of it.
Betty likes not telling anyone anything. She likes the whiff of danger that lurks amongst the tea-bags. She really, really likes being invaluable.
Most of all, she adores the feel of that revolver as it kicks.
-ends-