The Husband's Story (40 page)

‘Perhaps that's one of them,' she said.

Mr Cheevers thought of his position in Fleet Street, his reputation for top exclusives, his invincibleness.

‘Okay. Two thousand it is, then.'

Outside in the corridor there was the sound of voices. They were men's voices. Mr Cheevers listened intently, but he could make nothing of the conversation. Then he heard Beryl's social voice again.

‘But of course, if you hev a search warrant, do please come rait in,' she was saying. ‘You'll hev to excuse us, you know. We've only just got beck like. Aim afraid it's all a fraitful mess.'

Next morning the papers were full of it.

There was a picture of Stan that had first appeared years ago in the staff magazine when he had just won some competition or other: it made him look young and very innocent, with the whole sweet promise of life still stretching out before him. Then there was the two-shot of Beryl and Marleen, with the top button of Marleen's jacket tantalizingly undone. And finally, there was the close-up of Cliff. In some, the name Mr Clifford Hamson was given. In others, it appeared as Mr D. Fairbanks, Mr Douglas Fairbanks, or even as Mr Douglas Fairbanks, senior. One or two of the papers resorted to quotation marks. Not that it mattered. Because, considering the circumstances in which it had been taken, it was an excellent piece of portrait-work and, no matter what it was entitled, the likeness was plain and unmistakable.

The one thing that Beryl did not like was the inset picture of No. 16 Kendal Terrace. The photograph showed a bit of both Nos. 14 and 18, with the Pitts's house in the middle, ringed round in white; done that way it made it look small and unimpressive, with no hint of all the imaginative modernization that had gone on inside.

It gave Beryl a funny feeling, too, waking up in a strange hotel bedroom and seeing a picture of her own home on the front page of the morning newspaper that had come up on her breakfast tray. But Mr Cheevers had been quite right when he had recommended, even practically insisted, that they should – to use his own words – go to ground until the heat was off. Clare Hall Private Hotel out at Chartley Wood was the place that he had selected for them, and the accommodation had been reserved in the name of ‘Thompson'. Beryl did not feel too badly about it because, after all, the
Sunday Sun
was paying for everything.

And the move had certainly not come a moment too soon. By the time they had left Kendal Terrace there had been two police cars, a radio van, a mini cab, two newspaper pool cars and a television shooting-brake all parked outside. It was only because Mr Cheevers used his
influence with the police and had a few whispered words with them that they were able to get away at all. As it was, Beryl and Marleen were half blinded by a photographer's flashlight as they left the house. But with one of the police cars deliberately parked across the rather narrow thoroughfare behind them, pursuit was mercifully impossible.

Mr Cheevers was helpful in other ways, too. He rang up the hire car company to tell them that their Morris 1100 would have to be collected. And he seemed to be in almost hourly contact with the paper's stringer on the Isle of Wight. This was the young man from the local
Guardian
. Mr Cheevers was very pleased with him; and the young man was very anxious to go on pleasing Mr Cheevers. It was from the young man, via Mr Cheevers, that Beryl learnt that Stan was being brought back to London. Tomorrow probably, he said.

This piece of news made Beryl feel a whole lot better. She hadn't really wanted to go away and leave him all alone like that. It was simply that, once Cliff had walked out on them, there had been nothing else that she could do. Besides, if they wouldn't let her see Stan, she kept telling herself, what was the point of being there at all? Once Stan was back in London, Mr Cheevers assured her, she would be able to see him every day if she wanted to.

And, in the meantime, the Clare Hall Private Hotel was really very comfortable. Admittedly, in conversation with one of the permanent residents, Beryl learnt that the menu never varied, just went on repeating itself week after week, month after month, over and over again, throughout the whole year. But for Beryl it was of no importance. A week at the outside was all that was needed, it seemed, for public interest to die down. It would, of course, be revived, Mr Cheevers told her, when the trial came on. But, for the time being, there were bound to be other sensations, other tragedies, other scandals that would hit the headlines instead.

Mr Cheevers spoke with authority on such matters.

When the warder came in, Stan was seated on the end of his bunk staring blankly down at his feet. Shoulders hunched and head bent forward, he could not have looked more abject. All during the night, he had certainly been pretty low. Around two o'clock, with everyone else asleep, he had been so miserable, so despairing, that he had fixed his teeth in the back of his hand and bitten down hard simply to prevent himself from crying out. But not at this particular moment. Indeed,
as he heard the key turn in the lock he happened to have been thinking how surprising it was that there had never been a really good album of prison photographs. The long corridors, the pattern of light from the barred windows, the spectacle of the exercise yard on a wet morning – they would, he felt instinctively, make a complete art-collection in themselves.

He was a little surprised, too, when the warder told him that he was to go along to see the Governor, and wondered if something had gone wrong somewhere. Not that it could be because of anything that he had done; he felt quite sure of that. He hadn't given anyone the least little bit of trouble from the moment he had set foot inside the place. He had even finished the piled-up plates of prison food, with their great helpings of mashed potatoes, feeling that it might look rude, even rebellious, to thrust the whole unappetizing mass away from him.

It came as another surprise when the Governor told him that he was being sent up to London. There was nothing in the least dramatic in the way the Governor put it: just a plain statement. The interview was, in fact, entirely impersonal. If Stan had been a crated-up consignment and the Governor's office the Despatch Department, the whole routine could not have been more standardized.

It was only at the end that Stan held things up a bit. That was when he started to explain about the hire car and how Beryl didn't drive. But the Governor cut him short: Stan's solicitor, he told him, would attend to all that. Two minutes after entering the Governor's office, Stan was outside again.

And immediately the Despatch Department routine started up again. He was taken along to the Personal Effects room where the contents of his camera case – lenses, light-filters, flash bulbs and all – were spread out on the table in front of him. Another warder – a sitting-down one, this time – pushed a piece of paper towards him, and extended a large, fleshy finger.

‘That's where you sign,' he said. ‘They're all there. You can count ‘em if you want to.'

Stan signed.

‘And your hat,' the warder reminded him.

It was the floppy, white linen hat that came down rather low over his ears.

Stan signed for that, too.

The visit to the prison doctor was even briefer. The doctor took one look at him.

‘Any symptoms?' he asked.

Stan shook his head.

The doctor, however, did not even seem to have noticed. He was already busy writing. When he had added his signature, he tore the page out of his Medical Pass book and looked up.

‘That's all,' he said.

Streamlined as the procedure all was, the note of humanity had not been entirely suppressed. Before they left the Administration Block, the warder halted and turned to Stan.

‘Want to use the toilet?' he asked.

And in the Reception Hall, with the barred door to the Prison on one side and the solid wooden door to the outside world on the other, it was still the same. A stout, friendly-looking man in a brown, chalk-stripe suit was standing there. He nodded reassuringly.

‘I'm taking you up,' he announced.

Stan did not know quite how to reply.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘It's very… very kind of you.'

For a moment, he even thought of adding that he hoped that it wouldn't be out of his way. But he decided that it would be wiser not to do so; the man in the chalk-stripe suit might think that he was trying to take the mickey out of him, beginning to get fresh.

The man in the brown suit came forward.

‘Better have these on,' he said.

He pulled up the sleeve of Stan's yellow and magenta sports jacket as he was speaking and Stan felt something cold go round his wrist. It was the first time he had ever been in handcuffs.

‘Well, let's get moving,' the man said. ‘You keep up close to me and no one will notice.'

And, as though to remind Stan that he was there, he gave Stan's wrist a little tug.

The very thought of being outside in the open air with life going on all round him had come like the promise of a birthday treat. But somehow it wasn't working out right. For a start, it just didn't happen to be true that if he and the man in the brown suit kept close together, other people wouldn't notice about the handcuffs. If he and his companion had been Siamese twins they could not have kept closer: even
so, all the way over in the saloon of the British Railways ferry a young couple had sat staring at them. Or, not so much at them as at their two wrists joined together. Every so often, the girl would bend over to her friend and whisper something. Head to head they would mutter together. Then, with a little giggle, they would separate again and go on staring.

Mr Cheevers had been quite right. It was only one week later. But already an air crash, a local Government corruption case, and a particularly daring bank raid had thrust Stanley Pitts back into oblivion. There had been no mention of him in the papers for the last three days, and Beryl prepared for her return to Kendal Terrace.

What's more, she was determined to do the thing in style. She wore her new blue two-piece with a turquoise scarf and a pair of over-large gilt earrings with which she had been intending to surprise them all at Pinelands. It was only her hair that was the trouble. It certainly needed to have something done to it. But with hair like hers she could not afford to take chances; and out at a place like Chartley Wood she didn't know whose hands she was likely to get into. In consequence, she played safe and wore a turban. With the turquoise scarf and the two bright discs of the earrings, the whole effect was really quite striking. Even openly defiant.

Not that she was expecting to run into any kind of trouble with the neighbours. She was glad now that she knew so few of them. There was, of course, the exception like nice Mrs Ebbutt from next door. It was wonderful having her: she was always so calm and sensible. And so reliable. Practically a second mother to little Marleen, in fact; ready to put herself out at a moment's notice, even though she hadn't got a single labour-saving device in the whole house: just the original stone sink in the scullery and an upright, black gas stove and that appalling bath-tub upstairs standing there on four squat legs like a hippopotamus.

As the car turned into Kendal Terrace, Beryl felt a sudden pang. Everything was so familiar, so ordinary, so normal. It looked the kind of street in which nothing unusual could ever happen. And so it was, except for the fact that, nowadays, the householder from No. 16 wouldn't be leaving to catch the 8.10 in the morning, and that there would be no mustard-coloured Mustang parked outside on summer evenings. But after a bit even that, Beryl supposed, would stop being unusual and become just another part of the overall ordinariness.

She was glad now that she had made Marleen wear her white linen
dress with the plain leather belt. It looked so restrained, so suitable. And she was now more glad than ever that she had bought that set of matching luggage for the Isle of Wight. Seeing them being lifted one after another out of the boot by the uniformed chauffeur would in itself have been sufficient to disappoint any spectator on the look-out for signs of panic, distress or even hesitation.

Once inside the front gate, however, all was not quite the same. Not only had one of the gnomes – the one sitting on the heavily-speckled toadstool – had half his head chipped off, but one of his companions – the fishing one – was entirely missing. There was nothing there except for the dent that Stan had made in the cement for the little chap to stand in; the dent to show where through wet and shine, summer and winter alike, he had once dangled his plastic rod with the nylon line and the bright red metal float.

The state of the doormat came as something of a shock, too. It looked as though everyone in England had been writing. As well as the electricity bill and the telephone account there were anonymous postcards conveying veiled mysterious threats; letters from Civil Rights movements, circulars from money-lenders and second-mortgage firms; expressions of sympathy from the vicar and the bank manager; and a request for a sitting from a firm that called themselves Court photographers.

Beryl was still sorting through the correspondence when there was a ring at the bell. It was the calm, sensible, reliable Mrs Ebbutt; but calm, sensible and reliable no longer. At the sight of Beryl, she threw herself upon her.

‘Oh, you poor dear,' she said, all in a rush, with the words tumbling over each other as they came out. ‘How terrible for you. I haven't slept a wink since it happened. I've just lain there thinking about you all the time. And I've prayed. How I've prayed. Prayed that it must all be some terrible, hideous mistake. It
is
all a mistake, isn't it? Tell me there's no truth in all the awful things they've been saying. Tell me.'

And, overcome by emotion, she clutched at Beryl for support.

Beryl could not feel other than flattered that Mrs Ebbutt should care so much. It showed what a dear she was. On the other hand, Beryl found herself somehow resenting it. After all, it was her ordeal, her own private tragedy, not Mrs Ebbutt's, and it seemed that Mrs Ebbutt was getting more out of it than she was. The bit about not having been able to sleep was what particularly annoyed her. Because out at the
private hotel at Chartley Wood Beryl had, as it happened, been sleeping exceptionally well.