The Husband's Story (30 page)

At first, Stan had been rather impressed. Distinctly grateful, too, if it all meant that the bills were going to be smaller. Then – and it came like a bomb-blast – he suddenly realized that it might mean that They – the dreaded, ever-watchful They – were on to him, and that this was one of those classic income-standard v. living-standard comparisons that MI6 were always conducting.

Then an even more intense alarm came over him. Alone and unattended, the prowler had been left free to pry into the secrets of his darkroom, switching on his enlarger; playing with the red lamp over the developing dish; opening up boxes and drawers too, he wouldn't wonder.

In consequence, Stan panicked. Forgetting everything that Mr Karlin had told him, he made a complete ass of himself. Overnight, he became conspicuous.

It all began with the complaint that he telephoned during the coffee-break on the Tuesday morning. Making private calls within office hours was not easy. The Civil Service is very strict about the use of office telephones, and Stan was compelled to go along as far as the two kiosks in the corridor outside the staff canteen.

That was when he discovered that Beryl had been entirely right in her opinion of nationalized industries. They were not only intolerable, they were also impregnable. Trying to telephone to one of them was as forlorn as dialling Vatican City and asking to be put through to the Pope. The girl on the switchboard at the other end was calm and evasive. She transferred him to extensions that did not answer, and then passed him on to internal numbers that disclaimed all interest. Through her he made the rounds of Accounts, Engineering, Applications, Emergencies and, inadvertently, a display showroom somewhere out in Balham. By then, the office break was over and Stan had run out of small change.

That was why he put his complaint in writing. It was a good strong letter, full of words like ‘privacy' and ‘intrusion' and, as soon as it was posted, he regretted having written it. But by then it was too late. There was nothing to do but wait for an answer. And, when the answer came it made him go clammy all over from sheer fright and started up another of his trembling fits.

That was because one of the top men from the Electricity Board rang him up at his own desk in Frobisher House in the middle of a normal working morning. And, in a flash, Stan realized that it meant they knew everything about him – his name, his address, the secret nature of his employment, the tension of his life, his guilty anxiety. When he heard who was calling him he nearly dropped the receiver because, naturally, he had been careful not to write on official note-paper. Instead he had written on the thick, faintly mauve stationery that Beryl always used; the one with the name of the telephone exchange in Gothic lettering set sideways up in the top left-hand corner. And, of course, that was the number that the Electricity trouble-shooter had rung up.

Beryl had, in point of fact, been rather pleased to speak to him. That was because, week in and week out, so few people ever rang her up at all. And, after the ordinary preliminary courtesies she had been more than delighted to say, using the old elocution accent that came back to her so easily at such moments: ‘Way not tray may husband at his
erfice? It's the Edmeralty, you know. Aim sure he'd be heppy to speak to you. That is unless he's in cernference, of course. Thenk you so much. Good-bay.'

The fact that the man from the Electricity was so suave and conciliatory did not make it any better. Rather worse, in fact, because he didn't sound to Stan like a nationalized employee at all. The voice was altogether too smooth and too ingratiating. More like the voice of someone with a public-school background who, after Sandhurst, had gone into Intelligence.

Momentarily, it gave Stan a pleasant sense of inner keenness and intelligence to think that he should have been able to recognize the whole thing for the ruse that it undoubtedly was. He even asked the caller his name so that he would be able to ring back and see if the switchboard at the Electricity had ever heard of him.

But by then he was trembling so much that he could not even write it down. He sat back limply in his chair and heard the unknown voice explaining that it was really just as well that their representative had been so thorough because the fault was there all right, actually inside the Board's own meter; it was the customer's interest that they were protecting, the voice had gone on, and they had made a note to keep a special check on Number Sixteen Kendal Terrace in future.

There was quite a bit more of it all in the same vein and, on the surface, all pat and reassuring in a slick Public Relations kind of way. Stan, however, was not listening. Things with him had gone past the clammy, trembling stage. And it was always the same. First, the shakes and then his tummy. At any moment, he would simply have to hang up and make a dash for it. Quite a dash it was, too, from the Lower Basement where he was working, up one flight of stairs, and then all the way down the corridor from the Hammersmith end practically as far as Putney.

That is, if he could make it.

Two months later and two hundred pounds the richer – Mr Karlin was always painstakingly punctual with his payments – Stan had all but forgotten about the man from the Electricity.

Admittedly they had been exceptionally busy months. For a start, Mr Karlin had begun putting on the pressure. He now wanted two photographic sessions a week from Stan instead of only one. And, come to that, he appeared to be under some kind of pressure himself. Instead, nowadays, of arranging their meetings in hotel bedrooms, he had taken to suggesting open-air encounters in places like Queen Mary's Rose Garden in Regent's Park or the Embankment terrace outside the Festival Hall.

On one occasion, there had even been a quite startlingly ingenious variant. It had all been fixed up on the platform of Cannon Street Underground station. A young man of average height, with medium-brown hair and wearing perfectly ordinary clothes – in short, entirely nondescript – had come up close beside Stan and had said out of the corner of his mouth: ‘Your friend would like to see you tonight if you can manage it. He asked me to give you this.' And as he was speaking, he was passing over, sliding as it were, an envelope into Stan's hand. ‘It's the six-thirty performance. Not the late one, remember.'

Just then the train had come in, and Stan had instinctively battled his way onto it. But by then, there was no further sign of the young man. Mr Karlin's friends, Stan remembered, had a habit of emerging, unannounced, on railway platforms and then suddenly disappearing again. Either the young man had been left behind by accident, or had simply turned on his heel and walked away. Probably the latter, Stan thought; and he didn't like that kind of thing. In particular, he didn't like being perfectly easily singled out in a crowd by someone he didn't know, and wouldn't recognize if he should happen ever to run into him again.

The envelope had contained a single ticket, for Seat 6, Row ‘N', at the Leicester Square Odeon; and, all day, Stan was conscious of the ticket sitting there in his pocket. When six-thirty came, he was punctual and on duty. And sure enough, within ten minutes of the start, there was
Mr Karlin sitting down beside him. He didn't, however, even say a word as he handed Stan his wages; just quietly passed the packet across under cover of the evening paper that he was carrying. And, even though it was, Stan thought, quite a good film, an epic, that they were showing, Mr Karlin had quietly stepped out in the interval and not bothered to come back again. Stan himself had sat on right to the very end because he had been rather enjoying the photography.

What was more, with his mind comparatively at rest, Stan was taking up his own artistic photography again. Had driven himself to it, in fact, because he knew that any change in behaviour pattern was exactly the kind of thing that MI6 would be on the look-out for. And, like the true professional that he was, he found top form almost immediately. On the very first week-end he took two potential prizewinners. The first, entitled
Sun and Shade
– subsequently re-named
Sunlight and Shadow
because he found that he had another
Sun and Shade
already in his collection – was a classically formal study of the poplar avenue in the local Corporation cemetery; the other, simply called
Wheels
, was a daring knee-height shot taken in the Station car park. And it had a genuine International Salon quality to it. Even while it was still in the developing dish he could see distinct reproduction possibilities coming up at him.

All in all, they were turning out to be a couple of tranquil, rather happy months for Stan.

That was because, with Mr Karlin's money coming in so regularly, he had felt able to allow himself to become more indulgent towards the family. Only in small ways, of course. Nothing ostentatious, or expensive-looking: nothing that would betray his private and new-found prosperity. Just simple little things, like an eight-inch toy model of a horse in real leather that Marleen had suddenly set her heart on; and a Ronson table lighter, Regency style, to stand along with the electric clock and the room thermometer on the walnut bureau in the lounge.

He had even, on impulse, gone so far as to buy himself a new ballpoint, a Paper Mate this time, to replace his old red one of unknown make which just lately had taken to springing back into its scabbard as soon as you pressed down on it to write anything.

As for Beryl, she confessed to feeling a different woman; and not only because of the Ronson table lighter. It was because of her dress plans for the Pineland Colony holiday. Some women, she knew,
didn't mind how they looked; their friends didn't expect anything of them. But, with her, it was different. She had a reputation for being a good-looker; and, as she kept reminding herself, she could hardly be expected to carry the whole show simply on the strength of an expensive hair-do.

And, with the staff dance only six weeks away, there was also the urgent question of what to wear for that. Stan being Stan had not given it a thought and, in the end, she was forced to raise the matter with him.

‘Not that I mind if you don't,' she said to him. ‘Nobody's going to look at me. Not any longer, they're not. It's only – if anybody does…' Here her voice went all flat and chokey, and Stan was able to catch only stray phrases: ‘… nearly four years old… just a mess… been taken in twice before… all this dieting… nothing left of me round here.' Then sobs had obliterated the rest.

The whole scene upset Stan considerably. And not least because it was so unnecessary. With Mr Karlin's money coming in the way it was, Beryl could have had a whole new wardrobe provided she didn't make herself conspicuous. All the same, she was a bit taken aback by the way in which he agreed so readily, and realized that he must have been promoted even higher in the Civil Service than she had supposed.

With the way ahead now clear, Beryl was certainly nothing if not thorough. She bought the month's new fashion magazines. She listened to talks in Woman's Hour. She toured the Model Gown departments. Selfridges, Bourne and Hollingsworth, C & A, Peter Robinson, Swan and Edgar – one by one they all got to know this handsome, rather imposing woman with the white hair-streak who could not make up her mind between pale oyster satin and deep crimson velvet; who tried everything on; who made enquiries about alterations; who went away, came back and went away again. And all to no purpose. Because in the end, she decided that she would get something made. It was, she knew, a gamble. But, if the big stores for some reason weren't up to it, she saw that there was nothing else that she could do. And it was Madame Desmonde that she chose. Beryl had been to her before; had, indeed, known her ever since she had been plain, anxious Mrs Desmond over in the Council flats furtively trying to make a little, undisclosed money on the side because of that poor, sick husband of hers.

Mr Desmond, however, was dead by now and his widow had blossomed. She had premises just off the High Street, with a sewing
room and a cubicle with mirrors and her own cardboard delivery boxes. In short, Madame Desmonde had class. But even she was a bit overwhelmed when she found out what it was that Beryl wanted. It wasn't anything simple or straightforward out of a pattern book; not even an advertisement torn from the pages of
Vogue
or
Harper's.
It was an artist's illustration to an article in one of the Sunday supplements: ‘Edwardian Elegance re-captures Mayfair' was what the piece was called, and it showed a lady of very much Beryl's proportions against an opulent background of white waistcoats, chandeliers and potted palms. What unnerved Madame Desmonde, however, was the fact that the dress in the illustration had a bustle. Madame Desmonde had never tackled a bustle before.

But Beryl was determined. And insistent. It was the corsage that concerned her most. That was why her instructions were so detailed, so explicit.

‘I mean I'm not so big up there as that lady, am I?' she asked, pointing with her forefinger at the top half of the illustration in Madame Desmonde's hand. ‘Full, but not big like. So the dress wouldn't have to be so low as in the picture, would it? Not with me the way I am.' She paused. ‘But I don't want that sort of all-covered-up feeling. After all, I'm the one who'll be wearing it. You've got to show something these days, haven't you? And if it's Edwardian what's it matter? I mean it's what they were like, isn't it?'

It all came out a lot more expensive than she had intended. But, she kept reminding herself, if you divided the price by three because by the time of the dance it would be four years since she'd had a new one, even Stan would have to agree it was remarkably reasonable. There were still, of course, the bits and pieces. As it was, her shoes were wrong. Her stockings were wrong. Her evening bag was wrong. Her gloves were wrong. And until now she had never even so much as thought of owning a sticking-up sort of hair ornament like the one that the lady in the illustration was wearing.