The Husband's Story (24 page)

The whole episode was as clear to him as if it had already happened, and he were merely recollecting it – his usual cheery greeting to the other regulars, the quick glance at the headlines while the paper was still folded up bookstall-fashion, the over-the-shoulder check to see if the train was coming. Then, just as it was drawing level – hand up to forehead, a little gasp as though he were in pain, limp at the knees, weight of the body well forward – and so down on to the line. He had
frequently remarked on the speed at which the train came into the station, and was in no doubt that the end would be quite painless.

Simply because there were a few personal details, like the gas bill and the television licence, that he wanted to check up on he decided to give himself just one more day to get ready. Eight-ten on Friday morning was to be the time.

In consequence, the whole of the Thursday was marred by the recurrent thought that everything that he did was being done for the last time – after eight-ten, of course, that is. As he woke to a pleasant and sunny morning, he saw the remainder of his life spread out in front of him. It was as unremarkable as it was brief: two more visits to the bathroom, two more breakfasts, two more good-byes on the doorstep, two more walks to the station, two more morning papers, two more arrivals of the train. But only one departure with him there in his favourite seat in the corner of the compartment. After that, of course, only one more of everything else, until the same time on Friday when there would be no more of anything.

He managed his cup of morning coffee, but he couldn't face up to the staff canteen at lunchtime. It would have been too poignant. Too many old friends and too many unsaid good-byes. Instead, when one o'clock came round he walked out of Frobisher House and allowed himself a half-pint of bitter and a ham sandwich in the saloon bar of the Lord Ramsay. In the ordinary way he enjoyed going round to the Lord Ramsay. It was one of the few public houses he knew where, if you wanted a ham sandwich, it wasn't made until you asked for it. And then, when you did, the thin, razor-sharp knife would be drawn through the thickest, tenderest, pinkest part of the joint, the fat would be cut off like frilling; just the right amount of mustard would be smeared across the meat; and it would be crusts-on or crusts-off according to how you wanted it.

But today he was not interested. It had been a mistake even to think about ham sandwiches, and he left his half-eaten. There was too much on his mind. He was, in fact, composing his farewell letter to Beryl. It did not in the least matter that he knew that, because of the insurance company, he could never send it. There was still the relief that came from saying, even though it was only to himself, all those things that, deep in his heart, he knew that he should have said long ago.

The letter, he reckoned, ought to go more or less along these lines.
First, he would apologize for having all through their marriage kept her so short of housekeeping money, simply because he had never really earned enough to do any better. And the same went for theatres, foreign travel, jewellery and a small car. He would apologize also for the fact that his photography had taken up so much of his time, both outdoors and in the darkroom, when he should have been playing the part of the family man, first alongside Beryl, and then when Marleen came, alongside the two of them. But it wouldn't be just one long string of apologies, the letter. He would say thank-you to Beryl for having always looked so beautiful and so distinguished, and tell her how proud it had made him merely to be seen about with her. He would admit, quite openly, that he had always known perfectly well that he had never really been up to her class socially. Or physically, for that matter. He might even add that was why, with him out of the way, Beryl should marry Cliff. And, last of all, he would ask her to keep the unopened album of photographs, and give it to Marleen as a twenty-first birthday present when she would be old enough to appreciate it properly.

A glance at the oversize chronometer that Mr Karlin had given him showed that it was two o'clock already. Frobisher House was all of half a mile away, and he hoped that if he set off immediately he might just be able to get back to his desk before Mr Parker had noticed that he was missing.

And then the thought came to him that it didn't matter any more. If Contracts (Filing) was never going to see him again after he had left the office at five-thirty that evening, a few minutes either way couldn't make very much difference.

It wasn't even that the work he was engaged in was very urgent. There was really nothing to it. It amounted simply to clearing out the old files of projects long since cancelled to make way for files of new projects, all fresh-looking and promising, half of which like their predecessors in due course would be cancelled too.

The files of the Leviathan project were as good an example as any. In their buff cardboard covers they stretched, yard after yard of them, along the steel shelves in section D/127/A. That was the Top Secret section. And with good reason. If Leviathan had not been turned down by the Government, NATO would by now – or, at least, so the Opposition contended – have been in a position to impose its will on Moscow. The project had been the subject of one of the most vituper
ative debates of the century. The thousand million pounds that was involved was regarded, according to which side of the House was speaking, as an extremely modest price to pay for peace and security, or the spendthrift gamble of a bankrupt and panic-stricken administration.

Clearing out was, as it happened, work that Stan had always particularly disliked. It was tedious rather than exacting. Every cardboard folder had to be taken out, checked with the reference number in Central Registry and loaded onto the electric truck ready for transport down into the Morgue. The Morgue was what the lower vaults were called. If the folder appeared to be in really bad condition, the contents had to be taken out, examined for possible loss and then re-packed in an entirely new folder. More than once Stan had considered making a special application for transfer just so that he could escape the endless monotony. But not today. He kept remembering the lastness of it all and wished, instead, that the clearing out could go on for ever.

It was this awareness of the last time for everything that made the whole afternoon so painful. The sudden desire came over him to go round saying a cordial good-bye to people. He wanted to thank the tea-lady and give her a loving hug. He would have liked to make a small presentation – a bunch of violets, or a half-pound box of chocolates – to the girl who kept the In-and-Out Book. He wished that he could have found a plausible excuse for going along to PBX to tell the supervisor how grateful he was to her for all the calls that, over the years, she had put through to him. He even felt for once like wishing Mr Parker a friendly and polite good-night.

The actual moment of leaving the building was the worst. As he walked across the worn marble flooring of the entrance, past the security screen with the strip of woodwork across it that had never been painted quite the same colour as the base, he thought that he had never seen anything quite so beautiful. He knew that once outside, he would not dare to look back for fear of breaking down completely.

In short, Stanley Pitts and the British Admiralty were saying their last farewell.

The return home had the same sense of pain and finality about it. Even inserting the Yale key into the lock was in its way an ordeal: it carried too many memories of the snugness, the sweetness of life, as lived in number sixteen. For a moment, he found himself envying the three
gnomes gathered round the small concrete fish-pond: not one of their little concrete hearts was breaking.

When he got inside, it was really just as well that Marleen happened to be sulking about something and that Beryl, in consequence, was a bit short with both of them. It served to take the edge off the anguish.

The night that followed was an entirely sleepless one. And, therefore, seemingly endless. He did not even attempt to lie down. Instead, he simply changed into his pyjamas, cleaned his teeth at the exceptionally small handbasin that Beryl had installed for him, and propped himself up in bed. The bed itself was in the corner, and Stan found it surprisingly comfortable with the angle of the two walls to support him.

He thought of many strange things that night; things of the past that had been long since forgotten. He remembered the bunch of flowers – pink and white carnations – that he had taken round to the nursing-home the evening Marleen had been born. Then there came a clear picture of himself passing his Test for the Civil Service, and being congratulated on the neatness of his rather small handwriting. Next, he was standing in front of the desk in the Headmaster's room at the Crocketts Green County Secondary School to be told that he was going to be made a prefect next term. And, again, he was on a bus: it was a hot day, and he was sticky and excited and going to the Zoo; he could smell the strong, tobacco-y odour of his father beside him. Everything was all jumbled up and all going backwards. At this rate, by the time the eight-ten had drawn into the platform, he wouldn't even have been born.

In the small hours, he got up, tiptoed downstairs and made himself a cup of tea. In different surroundings, he began remembering different things. He began thinking about Helga and kept telling himself that she wasn't really bad like the rest of them but had somehow been trapped into it the way that he had been.

All those thoughts were still in his mind as he shaved before going down to breakfast. As it happened, it turned out to be a poor sort of meal. Beryl and Marleen had failed to settle their difference, and the silences were awkward and prolonged. Even saying good-bye, this good-bye of all good-byes, wasn't quite as Stan would have wished it. Beryl asked him to be careful and mind her hair and, when he bent over for his kiss, Marleen complained that he tasted all soapy and toothpasty.

Slamming the front door behind him for the last time was bad enough. But the ten minutes' walk to the station was far worse. It took him past
so many old, familiar landmarks. But what was remarkable was that it seemed as though he had never properly noticed them before, that he was seeing them for the first time as they really were. And the thought that they would go on being there when he himself was gone made him feel sad, very sad indeed.

Indeed, as he bought his paper and made his way over the iron bridge onto the platform, there was little spirit left in him. He knew that what he was doing was inevitable. He had argued that out already, and he accepted that there was no other way. In consequence, he did not even mind. He had always tried to do what was best for Beryl and Marleen; and he knew now and for the last time that he was doing it.

His watch showed eight-nine, he knew exactly what he had to do: little gasp, hand up to forehead, knees limp, weight forward. And there, coming round the bend, just as he had foreseen it all, was the train bumping up and down as it went over the points.

Stan took a half-step nearer to the platform edge.

The train, as usual, pulled jerkily out of the station, gathering speed as it passed the little wooden, model-kit signal box. And, as usual, there was Stan in the first non-smoker compartment in the second coach.

He was sitting bolt upright, his knees close together and his arms folded, making a tightly-done-up parcel of himself. He had to sit like that because he was still trembling all over; trying to read the morning paper would have been impossible because he couldn't have held it still enough.

And he certainly didn't want anyone to notice the condition he was in. That, indeed, is the whole trouble with these regular commuter compartments. They are merely so many mobile versions of the old family fireside; same faces, same conversation and the same tendency to make comments if anything is the least bit out of place or unusual.

It was like that today. The man opposite – a solicitor's clerk who was giving up smoking and always popped a peppermint drop into his mouth as the train began to draw out of the platform – thrust his morning sweetmeat into the corner of his cheek and leant forward.

‘Yewerite?' he asked.

Stan avoided catching his eye.

‘Bitterver chill,' he told him.

The legal mind came into play, and the clerk nodded understandingly.

‘Gotta be careful. Doanwanner risk anything.'

These early morning conversations were like that, brief and perfunctory. People weren't really awake yet; hadn't got going properly. But illness is always irresistible: it strikes a chord in everyone. Soon the whole carriageful was talking about aspirin, electric blankets, hot lemon laced with whisky, warm underwear.

Not that Stan was listening. Nor was he shivering any longer. Instead, in a calm, detached sort of way he was sitting back congratulating himself.

And only just in time, too. At the thought of how close it had been, another tremor ran through him starting up in his shoulders, twisting down through his stomach and ending somewhere around his knees.
But that was the last of them. Because he knew that he could relax now, that he didn't have to be afraid of Mr Karlin or Mr Svenstrom any more.

And it had been in that last minute on the platform edge that his plan had come to him; his beautiful, infallible and fool-proof plan. As soon as the eight-ten reached Cannon Street, Stan went straight over to the nearest telephone kiosk.

But it is always easier to dial than it is to get the number that you are wanting. First, Stan found himself talking to a surprised housewife in Neasden. Then he got the engaged signal. Then no dialling tone at all. Then another wrong number, a fishmonger's this time. Then the engaged signal again. He had already spent fourpence and wasted over five minutes. There was clearly nothing for it but to try again later.

He was just letting himself out of the telephone box when a young man who had been hanging around outside came up to him. Stan had seen him standing there, doing nothing apparently. And not particularly noticeable, either. Simply one more human being, aged anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, hatless, featureless, inconspicuously dressed and pale-looking; the sort of person whose views are heard for the first time when national opinion polls are conducted.