The Husband's Story (17 page)

And, what was more important, Beryl wouldn't be looking down on him much longer. In the meantime, he knew that it was his position in the Civil Service that she minded about. She had taken that last turndown personally. And not simply because of the money. It was status as well as money that counted. No woman who knows instinctively that she is cut out to be a Number One likes to be reminded that she is married to a husband who is essentially a Number Two.

And now, thanks to Mr Karlin, he could see a way of putting things right. He would choose his moment carefully, pick a good time when he hadn't recently done anything to annoy her, and then quite casually tell her that he had been up-graded. True or false, it would be just the sort of tonic that he felt she needed.

What's more, with all his photographic artwork out of the way for the time being, he reckoned that it shouldn't prove too difficult to find the proper opportunity. Nowadays, as soon as he had seen to the washing-up and emptied the trash-can into the dustbin, he came through to the lounge to join Beryl. Ever since their big row, they didn't have very much to talk about together. And two-and-a-half hours' silence in closed surroundings can seem like a long time. That is where television comes as such a blessing. With a television set on, two people can sit side by side for a whole evening, not speaking and hardly aware of each other. Many couples prefer it that way, and many marriages have been saved because of it.

As it happened, however, Beryl would hardly have been aware of him anyway. She had Cliff on her mind. What she couldn't make out was why he had been so sweet to her at lunch and then had dropped her so completely. After the way in which she had confided in him, she
would have expected the next move to come from him.

Mr Karlin's hundred pounds came in useful in another way, too: it was a shield against events within the department.

Mr Parker, having bided his time, was really getting into his stride at last. There were big changes afoot. Already, in place of the old In-and-Out Book that Stan had kept for years, there was now a Daily Register. Everything that came out of Filing had a little card attached to it. The card bore the signature of the clerk who had asked for it as well as the signature of the clerk who had handed it out. Both these details were entered into the Register before the Requisition Slip was honoured. There was a space on the back of the card for the messenger to sign. Then the card and the Requisition Slip, which already had the signature of the clerk-on-duty on it, were clipped together and filed separately. How else, Mr Parker asked, could you ever hope to keep track of anything? If Moscow had implanted its own agent right there in Central Records, Mr Miller's easy-going, old-fashioned methods would never have revealed it.

Mr Parker was very hot on Security. Being Security-conscious was, with him, a religious condition. The last time he had assembled the staff for one of his informal pep-talks he had put it to them straight from the shoulder. ‘By all means, love your neighbour,' he had told them. ‘But that doesn't mean that you have to trust him. In fact, in your job never trust anybody. Just follow the rules. And, if it isn't in the book come and ask me. That's what I'm here for.'

Off-the-cuff sermons like that came naturally to Mr Parker. They were best, he had discovered, if you kept both hands thrust deep into the trouser-pockets and perched yourself up against the edge of the desk. The other method was to turn a chair round back to the audience, and then sit down as if you were riding it. Either way worked. All that mattered was producing the right gather-round-I'm-one-of-you kind of atmosphere.

What Stan was not prepared for was the scale of Mr Parker's revolution; or, indeed, his ruthlessness. And somehow Mr Parker made it all that much worse by being so friendly about it, so understanding. It was after office hours, when the whole department had gone quiet, that Mr Parker liked best for his person-to-person chats, his pow-wows. That way there was the seal of privilege and confidentiality about them.

At five twenty-five, Mr Parker sauntered over.

‘You in any particular hurry to get off?' he asked.

‘Nothing special,' Stan told him.

It wasn't true. As a matter of fact, he'd promised Beryl that he would have a look at the electric tin-opener when he got home. For some extraordinary reason, instead of attacking metal surfaces like a shark, the instrument had suddenly become docile. When given a tin to hold, it merely purred at it. Stan was clever with his hands and reckoned that half an hour with a screwdriver ought to get it back to its savage and aggressive state again. But he was a conscientious Civil Servant. If his superior wanted him, he knew where duty lay.

‘Then what about my room?' Mr Parker asked. ‘Easier in there.'

To show how informal it all was, Mr Parker ignored the chair with Mr Miller's cushion still in it. Instead, he took one of the two hardbacks on the visitor's side of the desk. It seemed a good moment for his horseman-astride position, and it left Stan looking rather prim and reserved as he sat upright facing him.

‘Make yourself comfortable,' Mr Parker invited him. ‘Have a cigarette if you want one.'

Of course, Stan wanted a cigarette. He'd wanted one for years. But smoking was something that Beryl had asked him to give up when Marleen was born. At moments like this, Stan found himself missing it more than ever.

‘I've been having a good look at the O and M side,' Mr Parker began.

‘O and M?' Stan asked.

It sounded like another department. Operations and Something-or-other. Stan wondered what sort of work it did.

‘Organization and Method,' Mr Parker told him. ‘The way the wheels go round. Or don't, as the case may be.'

‘Oh, that.'

‘In this department,' Mr Parker went on, ‘clerks have been folding up papers and filing them away in pigeon-holes ever since Nelson's day.'

‘I suppose they have,' Stan agreed with him.

It was an agreeable thought: there was the authentic smell of history and romance about the whole idea. He liked Mr Parker for bringing in the Trafalgar touch.

Mr Parker turned his clear blue eyes upon him.

‘Well, it's not going on like that much longer,' Mr Parker informed him. ‘It's all right here in the outer office. I can keep an eye on what goes on. Down there is where the trouble starts.' He swung round in
the saddle and pointed towards the safety-door behind him. ‘That's our factory. That's where our product comes from.'

‘I know,' Stan answered. ‘I did my first twelve years in there.'

‘That's why I want you to go back,' Mr Parker told him.

‘Go back!' he repeated.

Mr Parker couldn't know what he was saying. Or, if he did know, he was simply trying to humiliate him. Everyone in the department would know what a move like that meant. It was returning him to the ranks. And worse than that. It was putting him away out of sight where Establishment and Personnel could forget all about him; once inside those steel safety-doors, it was the end.

Mr Parker's eyes were still fixed on him.

‘That's what I said,' he replied. ‘I need you there.'

Stan remained very calm about it. He was still only trying to explain.

‘Mr Miller always said…' he began.

But Mr Parker stopped him.

‘Mr Miller isn't here any longer, is he?' he pointed out. ‘What Mr Miller used to say doesn't matter any longer. We're going to do things my way now. The modern way. The efficient way.' Mr Parker pushed the chair away, slid his feet out of the stirrups, and straightened himself.

Stan knew that, at any moment, he would feel the horseman's hand come down onto his shoulder, and it came.

‘It's all a matter of team-work,' Mr Parker reminded him. ‘Everyone in the team has to do something he doesn't like sometimes.'

Nothing had worked out in the least as Stan had intended.

Even though he had plenty of time on his hands at the moment, the right opportunity for telling Beryl never presented itself. Either Beryl felt a bit tired and went up early to bed, or Marleen found herself unable to sleep and came downstairs to join them. Just when he was getting round to the bit about his surprise re-grading, something always prevented it.

In the end, he gave up. And, because it did not seem safe to leave a sum of money like that hanging about, he waited for Saturday morning to come round again and then went round to pay it into the bank.

He'd meant it to be just a simple, over-the-counter transaction. But Mr Winters immediately spotted him. Mr Winters prided himself on his good personal relationship with his customers. He felt like a father towards all of them.

‘Coming in to see me, Mr Pitts?' he asked.

Stan shook his head.

‘Just paying some money in,' he told him.

Mr Winters liked to see cheques being paid in. It showed that his customers in Crocketts Green were doing nicely. And he was particularly pleased that, this time, it should be Stan who was at the right end of things.

‘Let me attend to it,' he offered.

He took the bundle of notes from Stan's hand and started to walk over to the counter. Then, when he saw that they were all fivers, he stopped.

‘Oh, but I think you
do
want to see me, Mr Pitts,' he said. ‘Or, at least, I shall want to see you. You've got about a hundred pounds here.'

‘It's a hundred exactly.'

‘Mr Pitts's file,' Mr Winters called over his shoulder. ‘Mr Stanley Pitts.'

He pushed open the frosted-glass door of his office, and stood back for Stan to pass. Mr Winters was rubbing his hands.

‘I take it you want to pay it into your wife's account,' he said. ‘Then
we shall be able to stop those monthly deductions. This'll more than clear things up.'

Stan stared at him.

‘Not by itself, it won't.'

Mr Winters beamed back.

‘Perhaps Mrs Pitts forgot to tell you,' he said. ‘She's probably keeping it as a surprise for you. Your wife paid in a cheque for a hundred pounds last month.'

The file had come by now, and Mr Winters bent over it.

‘As I thought,' he went on. ‘A hundred pounds last month, and now this hundred today. No withdrawals, because we agreed to stop them. Your wife is ninety-three pounds in credit, Mr Pitts.'

He picked up the monthly deduction form that Stan had signed, and wrote ‘Cancelled' across it.

‘That's better, isn't it, Mr Pitts?' he asked. ‘No deductions, and no interest on the overdraft. Mrs Pitts
will
be pleased.'

Stan tackled Beryl the same evening. It seemed a good moment. Marleen had developed another of her colds, and was up in bed with a supper-tray across her knees. Beryl herself couldn't have been better. She'd had the two white streaks in her hair brightened up again, and she was wearing the Mexican housecoat with the Sun-God buttons. Stan thought that he'd never seen her looking more beautiful. Beryl was rather pleased with herself, too. She had taken longer at her dressing-table than usual. It had crossed her mind more than once during the day that, because it was the week-end, Cliff might possibly drop in.

Stan braced himself.

‘I went to the bank today,' he told her.

‘Did you, now?'

Beryl did not even look up as she answered. She was reading a story in an American magazine,
20th Century Romances.
And really it was quite extraordinary; almost spooky. Because in the story there was this deeply sensitive, unhappy woman married to an inadequate, well-meaning sort of husband. And, in the background, there was Ed, the successful baseball coach. Ed had just taken her to one of the World Series matches, and now they were driving back recklessly through the night in his new Tornado.

‘And I saw Mr Winters,' Stan continued.

Beryl only just heard him.

‘I wonder you dared,' she said, and went on reading.

Her mind was divided right down the middle. One half was on standby ready to attend to Stan's silly interruptions, and the other half, the absorbed half, was there in the new Tornado with the successful baseball coach. Their team had won, and Ed was celebrating. He kept reaching for his hip-flask, and Beryl was pleading with him. Just ahead lay the State Highway intersection. Ed's foot was hard down as the Caution and Slow Down notices flashed past them.

‘He says you paid a cheque in.'

Beryl was still reading.

Joe Moskovitch was in the left lane, travelling fast. The day's schedule had been cruel, heartless. He had already driven three hundred kilometers since breakfast. It would be another hour before he could switch off the diesel, and take Mandy's fresh young body in his arms again. Behind him, the sixty-two-foot-long liquid oxygen container, cushioned on its twelve giant wheels, loomed sinister like a warhead rocket. The warmth of the cab made Joe feel sleepy. He knew the road, recognized the eating-joints and the car-lots. For a moment, Joe closed his eyes. (Continued on p. 77.
)

The two parts of Beryl's mind came together.

‘He says I did what?'

‘Paid a cheque in.'

‘Well, suppose I did.'

She did not care for the tone of Stan's voice. It sounded rude and accusing, and she certainly wasn't going to have him talk to her like that.

‘Where did you get it?'

This time there could be no doubt about it. He
was
accusing her.

‘That's my business.'

She put
20th Century Romances
, still open, face downwards in her lap, and turned towards him.

‘And don't look at me that way,' she told him. ‘I don't like it.'

Usually when she spoke to Stan in that way he knew, at once, that he had gone too far. It stopped him immediately. But this evening it was different.

‘I want to know,' he said.

‘Then you'll just have to go on wanting, won't you?'