The Husband's Story (33 page)

Mercifully, however, there was plenty going on at home to take Stan's mind off such things. The travel agent's reservations for Pineland Colony, together with another copy of the illustrated brochure, were already in the drawer of Beryl's desk; and the holiday itself was now only ten days off.

In consequence, Beryl had been kept unusually busy; busier than most women would have been, she kept explaining, because it was so long since they'd had a real holiday that she hadn't got any of the proper things.

To begin with, there was the matching luggage. Matching luggage was something which she had always set her heart on, and she made it perfectly clear that she would rather die, she would really, than turn up at the Colony's stockade gates with her two pale blue suitcases with the soft tops, Marleen's hard fibre one and Stan's old leather thing with the faulty clasp and the strap round the middle of it.

Even here Stan did not deter her. Indeed, he actually encouraged Beryl to take up the special offer of a complete set – four pieces in all -of light-weight, Jetset Executive air baggage that she had seen advertised in the Tourism Supplement of one of the Sunday papers. He knew that it was unwise of him; knew that it would be drawing attention unnecessarily to the family. But he felt that somehow he deserved it. To be able to let Beryl spend money like that, to watch her almost childlike happiness at being given new things, was at least some com
pensation for his own sleepless nights. Just lately he had spent rather a lot of the darkness hours staring up at the ceiling, thinking things over; things like lightning Security checks, and about being kept for months on end under observation without knowing it, and about plain-clothes men calling at the house; and about Mr Karlin and how he had failed to keep his balance that time he hit the pavement somewhere over Roehampton way.

Inevitably, too, Stan was beginning to show signs of the strain that he was under. Never freshly-coloured, he now looked washed-out and pallid; and there were conspicuous dark circles beneath his eyes. What was more, he was losing weight. Over the past few months he had shrunk visibly. Even his old shirts, the ones with the collars that had been too tight, suddenly fitted him perfectly again. And, when he was sitting down with his jacket open, there was a quite noticeable gap between him and his trouser-band.

Beryl herself had observed it. She was glad for his sake that the holiday was coming so soon. Indeed, more than once, she had half wondered whether in suggesting it he hadn't perhaps been thinking as much about himself as about herself and little Marleen. Not that Stan was selfish, that was the one thing that you certainly couldn't call him; and there couldn't really be anything the matter with him or he would have gone to see a doctor. All the same it was strange somehow, remembering her own headaches over all those years, her faintnesses, that awful I-can't-go-on-any-longer feeling, that when he was the one who wasn't well he had been so quick in making sure that they all did something about it.

Even so, when the day came and they were all due to set off, it was Stan who proved to be the one who wasn't ready.

As for Beryl, everything had been planned with remorseless and military precision. An early bedtime wearing the nightie she had worn since Monday – and all that she would have to do on getting up would be to pop a few things – toothbrush, face flannel and so forth – into the new waterproof toilet bag that she had bought specially for the occasion, and they could be away. Even the slept-in nightie had been provided for; it would be going into the laundry-box to be left next door with the Ebbutts, and delivered while its owner was away relaxing somewhere beneath the island pines.

Nor had Marleen been forgotten. In particular, knowing how
delicate Marleen's little stomach was and how even the smallest things upset her, Beryl had armed herself with everything that the local chemist could think of. He had even suggested that she should take along a bottle or two of pure Malvern water, and had been rather surprised to find that it was only as far as the Isle of Wight that they were going.

Stan himself, however, had done precisely nothing. He had been too jumpy. After all, going round in perpetual fear of having a policeman's hand laid upon your shoulder doesn't exactly put you in the mood for buying short-sleeved sports shirts and fancy blazers. In consequence, Beryl was furious with him. If he expected her to feel comfortable, let alone enjoy herself, she told him, with him in his tweed jacket with the leather patches on the elbows and those terrible old trousers that he always wore with it, then it just showed how little he knew about her; or cared.

But Stan wasn't really listening. He was looking at his watch. It was the first of the watches, the simple chronometer, that Mr Karlin had given him. The other one, the camera-watch, was wrapped up in an old duster and stowed away in the drawer in his developer cabinet. And it had been with a welcome feeling of relief that he had made the change-over. It was something to be looking forward to a whole fortnight without any of those secret photographic sessions at lunchtime, those cassettes of microfilm temporarily hidden away in his darkroom, those furtive encounters when they could be handed over. Stan felt himself beginning to relax already.

It was, indeed, this apparent lack of any sense of urgency that upset Beryl. Her two cases were packed and waiting; so, too, was Marleen's. All that they needed was to be locked and brought downstairs. Even Stan's, she imagined, would at least by now be ready.

Finally, she could bear it no longer.

‘Well, if we're catching the mid-day ferry, hadn't you better phone up for a taxi or something?' she asked. ‘You're not expecting us to walk like, are you?'

Secretly, Stan was rather pleased: it was all working out exactly as he had intended. Standing by for him at the U-Drive branch in Station Approach was a nearly new 1100. And he had attended to the formalities on the previous evening; all that he had to do this morning was to walk round, get in and drive it back.

Marleen, however, could not have been expected to know this. All
keyed-up as she was after an over-excited, tossing-about kind of night, she suddenly saw the whole holiday at risk. They would never even get to the Isle of Wight at all, she feared. The other girls would think that she had simply been boasting about the promised luxury chalet within a stockaded enclosure, and she would become a laughing-stock. Unable to bear the strain any longer, she thrust her bowl of half-eaten Weetabix from her, and burst into tears.

What made it all so much worse was it took Stan rather longer than he had planned to collect the car. That was because he was taking no risks. Indeed, he made a special point of driving round for a bit – out as far as Edgerley roundabout in one direction and then back through Keston and Ilworth – just to get the feel of the thing. Not that he need have bothered; the little Morris was running beautifully.

And, as it happened, it proved to be another mistake of his to spring his little surprise on them quite so jauntily. They were not in the mood for it. When he threw open the front door and called out ‘Any more for the Skylark?', Beryl told Marleen not to answer. She would deal with him outside by herself, she said.

Fortunately, however, the morning was a fine one. And it was still quite early; not yet nine o'clock, in fact. The feel of summer was in the air; and, though it was as yet no more than pleasantly warm, it promised to be really hot later on; probably baking by the time they were over on the other side of the Solent, Stan kept assuring them.

In England, going away by car is always a pretty serious affair. The grim, slit-eyed faces of the drivers, and the sagging, often unconscious bodies of their passengers are proof enough of that. There is something of universal panic, of sudden flight, of enforced expulsion about it all. The notion that it could all be voluntary seems somehow improbable.

The police have certainly got the measure of it. On foot, in cars, on motorcycles, in helicopters, they assume command of this annual retreat. Recce parties are sent out, and fresh trails marked across unmapped terrain and then sign-posted so that the vanguard may get away before fresh waves of refugees bear down upon them from the rear. Local control posts are established and emergency First Aid Stations set up. Even then, without the help of mobile radio this whole vast movement of peoples would become a rout, a stampede, a shambles.

And, though it was still only early June, the Portsmouth Road, when
Stan got there, was already full of other holiday-makers, all in small cars, all with children, all with just a little more luggage than the boot would take, some with roof-racks, even one or two with trailers; and all flat-out for the seaside and salvation.

Meanwhile, it had become more than ever apparent that Stan's plan of keeping the hire car a secret had not been a good one. At least, not nearly as good as he had hoped. For a start, Beryl resented it. Her opening remark after they left Kendal Terrace had begun with the words, ‘I think you might have…', and miles later, right on in a different county in fact, she was still starting up the conversation with phrases like ‘Why couldn't you have…?' and ‘What was the idea of…?'

What was more, it seemed to Beryl that Stan had somehow deliberately contrived to spoil things for her. There was nothing that she would have enjoyed more than letting it be known locally that they were setting off by car.

She even knew how she would have explained it: ‘One of those small saloons, you know,' the words would have been. ‘Self-drive, of course. Actually, my husband finds driving rather relaxing like. But only for holidays, of course. He wouldn't dream of driving up every day just to go to the Admiralty. That's why we've never bothered to buy one.'

It was while she was silently rehearsing the speech to herself that a sound from the rear seat like a half-suppressed cough interrupted her thoughts. Beryl knew that cough, and ordered Stan to pull up immediately. From early infancy car travel had tended to upset Marleen. And Beryl was taking no risks.

‘Not in this car, you don't,' she told her. ‘You come with me.'

While Beryl and Marleen went along together to the split-pine toilet cabin which stood at the end of the lay-by, Stan pushed the driving seat back as far as it would go, took out one of the assorted toffees that he had bought specially for the journey and opened up his newspaper. He had been carrying it about with him, neatly folded in the side pocket of his jacket, ever since they had left home, and he was looking forward to it. He had already listened to the nine o'clock bulletin on the car radio. But that wasn't the same, somehow. He liked his news in black-and-white and, in the ordinary way, it was the read in the train going up in the morning that served to keep him abreast of things.

Not that there was very much in the paper when he did at last get down to it. Not much that was new, that is. It might have been yester
day's paper, or last week's, or last year's, or the paper of the year before that, simply with the names changed and the times and places altered. Otherwise, it was just the same: same murders, same divorces, same sports results, same scandals, same political uproars. And of these it was the last that, on the whole, promised to be the most interesting. On the last three nights in succession, the House had sat on until after breakfast time; and there was even talk of a Government defeat.

What particularly distressed him was the thought of the lady members. On this point he was at one with Beryl because neither of them believed that women should really be in Parliament at all. It was, he supposed, all right for men if they wanted to sit around, yawning and unshaven, into the small hours. But he could not bring himself to accept the idea of sleepy, dishevelled females. Beryl, throughout the whole of her married life, had always kept up a very high standard of appearance, and it was not nice to think that those chosen by the nation to direct our affairs were prepared to sink to a lower one.

His thoughts were interrupted by the return of Beryl and Marleen. Beryl looked all right to him but Marleen, he was forced to admit, still seemed pretty shaky. This appeared to be Beryl's view, too. Shut up with Marleen inside that split-pine County Council convenience she had become fiercely maternal and protective.

‘And don't drive so fast,' she told him as soon as she was seated beside him again. ‘You don't have to kill us all just to get us there.' She turned with difficulty because her seat belt was too tight. ‘You all right, darling?' she asked. ‘Not feeling sicky-wicky any more?'

Beryl had managed to wriggle round by now, and Stan heard the sound of a smart slap behind him. He knew at once what it was. It meant that Marleen had been sitting cross-legged again. For months now Beryl had been trying to break her of the habit. No nicely-brought up girl – if she had told her once she had told her so a hundred times – ever crossed her legs higher up than round the ankles. It was just one of those things, like not having the butter-dish on the table at tea-time, and remembering to say ‘Pardon?' instead of ‘What?' when you hadn't been listening.

Because of the delay and the enforced speed limit, in the end it was a later ferry that they had to take. And even then Stan doubted whether they would have got on it if Beryl hadn't insisted on the grounds that Marleen was an invalid. The Ferry Supervisor, however, was not easily
impressed. He came over himself to have a look inside the car. But he could have saved himself the trouble. Marleen was not an unintelligent child. She had been listening to the dispute throughout. By the time the Supervisor arrived she was lying flat out, one arm trailing listlessly on the floor, eyes shut, her breathing imperceptible.

Not wanting any trouble at his end, the Supervisor waved them forward immediately. With the landing-ramp of the ferry all ready, Stan's little Morris was first on.

The rest of the trip was perfect. With the sea breeze playing on her face, Marleen made a quick recovery. Gripping the ship's rail in sheer happiness as the mainland fell away astern and the hills and forests of the Island came in view, she finished up the toffees and said that she felt hungry. But Beryl was taking no risks. Nothing more until they got there, she said.