The Husband's Story (26 page)

That was why she was so surprised when Stan suggested that he should go out and buy something. And more than surprised; annoyed. She felt herself in need of telling Stan what, for a woman, it felt like not to be able even to invite a couple of friends in for a quiet drink. And, now that Stan had volunteered, she was left with a hungry, deprived feeling.

It was worse still when Stan returned. He hadn't just bought something: he had laid down the beginnings of a cellar. One by one he set out the exhibits on the table in the alcove. There was a bottle of medium sherry, half-a-bottle of Gordon's gin, half-a-bottle of Johnnie Walker, a heavily-stoppered bottle of soda water and half a dozen small bottles of Bitter Lemon.

‘Everyone's drinking them nowadays,' he said, lifting the last of the Bitter Lemons out of the shopping-bag. ‘Either with gin, or plain just as they are. They're quite the thing.'

For a moment Beryl became a mother again.

‘Well, for goodness' sake, keep them out of Marleen's way,' she said. ‘You know what happens to Marleen if she has anything fizzy. We don't want that sort of thing tonight, do we?'

Then Beryl remembered that it was really as a wife and not as a
mother that she should be talking to him.

‘I don't suppose you thought of buying anything to eat like, did you? Not some nuts or cheese straws or something?'

And once more Stan upset her. Slowly, as though deliberately being irritating, he reached into the pocket of his sports coat and brought out a flat cardboard box. ‘Cocktail Savouries' it said on the lid. And there was a picture in colour of a whole happy family, grandparents, toddlers and all, busily munching away at them. ‘Real cheese' the label said; and when he was buying it, Stan had found himself wondering what imitation cheese would taste like.

‘These do?' he asked.

His voice sounded flat and casual. His mind wasn't even on the cheese biscuits at all. He was, in fact, still thinking how clever he had been to buy all that drink without drawing attention to himself. Bearing in mind what Mr Karlin had said, Stan had been careful to go from shop to shop, picking up the sherry at the International Stores, the half-bottle of Gordon's at the Red Lion off-licence, and the Johnnie Walker at the Victoria Wine shop: that way nobody could possibly think that they had suddenly come into a fortune round at No. 16 Kendal Terrace.

And paying for it all had been so easy. He'd merely had to extract four one-pound notes from the last wad that Mr Karlin had given him. He was glad now that he hadn't paid that lot into the bank along with the first advance; there was a pleasantly independent and privileged feeling about having ready cash always on the premises. Even so, he was careful. He didn't intend that the money should simply be frittered away. When he got back home from his round of shopping, he put the change – all eleven-and-sixpence of it – back into the envelope with the bank-notes.

Because it was to be kept easy and informal, Beryl decided that she would wear her other housecoat, the Mandarin one made of Chinese silk. It had come all the way from Hong Kong, but it somehow didn't
feel
like silk. More like nylon, really. It sent shudders right through you if you ran your nail along it the wrong way. All the same, she was fond of it. And, when she had it on, she made a point of sitting back in her chair with her wrists raised slightly upwards so that the big, floppy sleeves would gradually go sliding back all the way down to her elbows. No matter how miserable she might be about other things, she could always console herself by remembering that, thank God, her arms were
still the shape they were when she had been a girl.

Together with her heel-less sandals with the embroidered fronts, the whole effect ought, she reckoned, to be about right for casual, Saturday-night entertaining. And she told Stan to go upstairs and change out of that awful old sports coat of his. Even so, the evening did not turn out to be quite the success for which she had been hoping. Of course, it was lovely having Cliff in the house again, and it had been sweet of him to want to come. But to bring a girl like that with him! It only went to show how desperate he must be, how frustrated for the real thing.

For a start, Beryl thought that it was nothing short of ridiculous of Cliff's friend to wear that sort of a costume for a day at the seaside. Even the chiffon scarf would have been too much. And for any girl with a really olive complexion – not just brunette like Beryl's but positively oily – the light make-up was simply wrong. It made her look common. The moment she saw her, Beryl knew that she wasn't going to like her. And she was only glad that, while she was getting ready, she had decided against the two wide, gold-looking bangles that she usually wore. Cliff's friend had on a pair exactly like them.

Her voice, too, annoyed Beryl. And the things that she said. She kept explaining that she'd no idea that Cliff had ever known Beryl so well, that he had never told her. Rubbing it in, Beryl thought it was. And she could not help noticing that, while she was talking, she kept glancing from one to the other, from her to Cliff, from Cliff to Stan and then back to Cliff again. She made it perfectly plain that in her mind there was something entirely incomprehensible about the whole arrangement.

Even the celluloid bird, endlessly swinging backwards and forwards on the mantelshelf, did nothing to add to the fun. If only Cliff had known, he said, he could have brought one along with him. Come to think of it, he could have brought a whole caseful: he had been distributing them for years. Cliff's girl-friend looked at him admiringly as he said it.

Considering the amount of drink that Stan had bought they got through very little of it. Cliff's girl didn't drink at all, she said, adding confidingly that Cliff didn't like girls who did. Beryl had a single glass of sherry. Cliff asked for his usual whisky-and-soda. And Stan, rather to Beryl's surprise, drank whisky-and-water.

It was only little Marleen who really availed herself. The Bitter Lemon, straight from the refrigerator, was ranged on the dresser ready to be carried through to the lounge. Feeling sure that it had been got in
specially for her, she drank first one bottle of it and then another. In consequence, she had to leave the party quite suddenly. And, because Beryl had to go upstairs and stay with her for rather a long time, Stan found himself alone with the two of them.

Naturally, he did his best to keep things going. For Beryl's sake as much as for his own he wanted to show what a jolly, swinging sort of life went on in Kendal Terrace. But his heart wasn't really in it. He was thinking of other things; of the wad of one-pound notes and the small change stuffed behind the packets of matt-surface printing paper in the bottom drawer of his cabinet; and of being able to double his salary practically whenever he felt like it; and of the big bogus wrist-watch concealed in an old developer tin.

But most of all he was thinking about his plan. That wonderful watertight plan of his that he was going to put into operation tomorrow. At lunchtime, to be exact. From one o'clock till two o'clock Stan was in sole charge of Central Filing.

In sole charge, and alone there.

Considering that he hadn't been able to use an exposure meter and that, even standing at a proper photographic bench, fixed-focus work always presents its own difficulties, the samples he produced were surprisingly good. Mr Karlin himself said so.

When he came to give that as his opinion, the two of them were sitting side by side on the couch in Mr Karlin's hotel suite. This time it was in Bloomsbury. The hotel itself was a small private one of the old-fashioned sort. It bore its name – the Bellcham – on a polished brass plate beside the bell-push; and, inside, a floral arrangement of artificial roses bloomed all the year round on a mahogany side-table. Not that Mr Karlin minded whether the hotel was in the top class or not. He was there only for one night, he said; Mr Karlin, it seemed, rarely occupied the same hotel bed for two nights running.

He leant forward as he was speaking and then passed the watchmaker's lens over to Stan. The tiny strip of micro-film lay on the pad set across his knees.

‘They'll print up fine,' he said. ‘They're real working drawings.'

Stan did not reply immediately. He was busy peering down through the lens. And it was exactly as Mr Karlin had said. ‘INDUCTION NOZZLE RE-ENTRANT VALVE DETAIL', reference number ‘B117/43/B2' and the overall identification ‘ABG/3005/Y/474' stood out as clearly as if
they had been newspaper headlines.

Stan could not help admiring the miniature camera that had taken these shots. There was no maker's name on it anywhere. Not even any hint of the country of origin. But it couldn't be German or American, Stan decided. All craftsmen leave their national signature plainly inscribed upon such work. There was no trace of Leipzig or Rochester, NJ on this one. The camera was Japanese, possibly. Or Czech. Or Russian. Russian most likely. Somewhere from behind the Iron Curtain anyhow.

But it wasn't only the camera that Stan was admiring. He was admiring himself; admiring himself for having thought up his plan. His beautiful, ingenious, irresistible plan; the master-plan that was going to fool Mr Karlin while making his informant rich; the plan that was calculated to confuse and deceive the enemy, expensively leading him further and still further astray.

Because ‘ABG/3005/Y/474' was simply Central Filing's own identification number. No one outside the department, and even then no one without access to the Code Book, could have any idea of what it stood for. And that was the big joke that Stan had cooked up for them: ‘ABG/3005/Y/474' was the internal identification number for Leviathan. And Leviathan was the nuclear-powered underwater rocket station that had been scrapped. What Mr Karlin was paying for was a complete set of drawings, blue-prints and all, for something that, one by one, the NATO powers had all rejected; something that nowadays raised a laugh in Parliament or in the music hall whenever anyone referred to it.

The inside of Stan's mouth felt dry, and he had to run his tongue across his lips before speaking.

‘These are going to cost you something,' he said.

He was pleased with himself for putting it like that. The words were something that he had rehearsed to himself over and over again. Even single sentences like that were important to him. They were all part of the process of teaching himself to be a different kind of person.

And it was evident that Mr Karlin entirely approved. He was wearing his very broadest smile.

‘They're worth it,' he said.

‘A thousand pounds like?'

The smile faded and went out.

‘Have you ever found me mean about money?'

Stan shook his head.

‘Then why don't you just go on trusting me?' he asked.

He leant forward as he was speaking and gave Stan's arm a little squeeze.

‘And how would you like it? It's up to you, remember. Entirely up to you. Once a month? On delivery? Something in advance? Quarterly settlement? Lump sum on completion? You tell me. I'm easy.'

Stan did not reply immediately. He was stroking his chin with his forefinger.

‘End of the month,' he said at last. ‘Then you'll know what you're getting.'

‘As you please,' Mr Karlin told him. ‘But what am I to do about this?' He removed his wallet from his pocket and let a thick Manila envelope slide out of it. ‘Had to have it with me in case you said you'd like it that way. Why not take it now?'

Stan did not want to show weakness. But, on the other hand, he did not want to upset Mr Karlin.

‘O.K.,' he said. ‘I'll take it. Comes to the same thing, doesn't it? In the end, I mean.'

There was no time to waste, and Stan put his plan into operation straight away.

On the Monday morning Mr Parker, efficient as ever, returned refreshed and fit-looking after his week-end rest, and Stan tackled him as soon as he got there, hardly giving him time to prop his golf clubs up in the corner beside the hat-stand.

It was the condition of some of the files that was worrying him, Stan said. Ever since the time of the false alarm when the fire extinguishers in the ceiling had begun spraying, the state of some of the folders was really quite disgraceful. Stan wouldn't have minded so much, he explained, if it weren't for the ones that were due to be taken out of circulation and sent down to the Morgue. Then other eyes would be bound to see them and, naturally, people would begin wondering what things were really like in Central Filing.

Mr Parker saw the point at once; and, when Stan offered to undertake the renovation work in his own lunch hour, Mr Parker placed his hand on Stan's shoulder in the condescending way Stan didn't like, and told him that it wouldn't go unnoticed.

That was how it was that Stan was at work down there in the basement
with a savoury roll and a cup of coffee beside him while everyone else in the department was up in the canteen, amid the piled-up trays and the plastic sugar sifters, going through all three courses like competitors in an eating contest.

But only on Mondays, of course. Stan had been very particular about that. Anything more would look like overdoing it, he felt. And the one thing that Stan wanted was not to draw attention to himself. Nowadays, he even made a special point of agreeing with whatever other people said to him, just so that he should avoid becoming conspicuously caught up in an argument.

Overall, the work could not have been proceeding more smoothly. Now that he knew the fixed focus of the camera, it was all so ridiculously easy. First, remove the file and sign for it in the ‘Out' book. Then take it back to his desk hidden away behind the filing-cabinets in the corner, lay out the contents one by one on the blotting-pad and hold out his hand palm upwards with the watch pointing down. The beauty of the whole operation was that it was so simple and straightforward. If anyone, even anyone from Security, should come upon him they would merely assume that he was winding-up his watch or adjusting the wristband, or something of the sort.