The Husband's Story (41 page)

It was little Marleen who managed to restore the balance. Seeing Mrs Ebbutt in tears, she began to cry, too. And she could cry louder. She howled. She let herself go. She flung herself about. She buried her face in the sofa cushions. She hit things.

After a while, Beryl could stand it no longer. Putting Mrs Ebbutt down in the nearest comfortable chair, she went across and slapped Marleen. Then, remembering her mother-image, she drew back and smiled across at Mrs Ebbutt.

‘Poor little mite,' she said. ‘She's missing her Daddy, that's what it is. She's all torn apart like inside her. Only she can show her feelings, and I mustn't.'

In her heart Beryl knew that it was the shopkeepers who would be the worst. Before going along to the High Street, she had to brace herself. Not that she could have taken exception to anything that was actually said; it was the unspoken bit, the sideways glances, that she minded. And the most painful moment of all had come in the Wide World Supermarket when she had been least expecting it. The Wide World was one of those shops that she knew by heart. She and Marleen – and Stan, too, on Saturday mornings – had been going there for years. She had just paid the bill and stuffed the carton of ice cream into the carrier-bag along with the wholewheat biscuits and the Ty-Phoo tea, when she felt a hand come down upon her own. It was the female cashier's hand; and it was a brown hand. Beryl turned and found herself looking down into a pair of dark Indian eyes, already half brimming over with tears. There was nothing but human pity and affection shining out of them.

The hand was meant well: Beryl knew that. All the same, it was upsetting. It upset her so much, in fact, that she realized then and there that she would never be able to go into the Wide World again. And that would be a real loss, a proper set-back, because the Wide World was one of the few shops that she really knew by heart. She could have gone round the shelves with her eyes shut, picking up the chosen dainties one by one, not faltering at the invisible dividing lines where the tinned fruits turned suddenly into household cleaners, or the frozen foods became cocktail wafers and salted almonds.

It was different, of course, with Monsieur Louis (late of the Ritz).
Somehow she had never thought of him as keeping a shop. He was more of a professional man really; someone with gentle, understanding hands. She didn't in the least mind if he tried to be consoling to her. As he put the pale, lilac-coloured gown around her and tied the little draw-strings at the back, she could feel herself settling down in the chair as though she belonged there.

Watching him in the mirror, she could see how quick and deft he was. And appreciative, too. He ran his hand across her hair as though polishing it, breaking off to give it little pats, letting strands of it trickle through his fingers for the sheer pleasure of feeling it in such perfect condition. There was one habit he had that had always fascinated her. As he removed the pins he would hold them, two or three in his hand together, and then place them between his lips while he went on unpinning. With anyone else, it would have disgusted her. She would have refused to allow him to use the same pins when he came to put her hair up again. But Monsieur Louis was so nice that somehow it didn't seem to matter.

In the ordinary way, time spent in the hairdresser's had always seemed to Beryl to be among the most restful moments in the whole working week. She would close her eyes and dream; quite often she would really doze. Not today, however. Suddenly, in the midst of this warm, safe world of comfort and attention, it all came back to her. She could see the expression on Stan's face as he shook his head at her from the dock; she re-lived the awfulness of the journey back with just the two of them. She remembered Cliff. And, as she remembered, she wept. Not openly, not so that anyone could hear; just little muffled sobs, spasms that she could not suppress. Monsieur Louis pretended not to notice. With all his old skill he simply went on piling her hair up again, working on the white streak as though it were a piece of ornamental inlay work.

But it had only been pretence. As Beryl was leaving he thrust a little packet into her hand; and, considering what it was, hardly such a little one, either. It was a bottle of scent – real scent, not toilet water – and there was a small, sticky patch on the top where he had scraped off the price label with his fingernail before giving it to her.

For some reason, just thinking about it made her want to start weeping again.

Not, by any means, that Beryl kept thinking only of herself. On the
contrary, she knew only too well what an ordeal it must be for Marleen to have to go back to Crocketts Green High on that first day of term. That was why she insisted on walking down all the way to the school gates herself even though Marleen protested that she could perfectly well go alone. But Beryl was not deceived. She knew how much like her Marleen really was, how never for a moment would she admit how much she dreaded meeting all her school friends again. And outside the school, Beryl bent down impulsively and kissed her. It was something that she had not done since Marleen had gone up from the Junior School and had, quite abruptly one day – even rather rudely, she recalled – asked if she would stop doing it.

It was now the eleven o'clock interval. In the large, asphalt-surfaced playground the girls were all standing round, straws and milk-bottles in their hands; and it was around Marleen that they were standing. Her colour was high as though she had been running, and she was talking rather fast, even though she was careful to keep her voice low in case there were mistresses around.

‘… and then the other lot of policemen, the plain-clothes ones, came back again,' she was saying, ‘and they slashed everything open, the couch, the cushions, the mattresses, everything. There wasn't a carpet left in the place when they'd finished. Naturally, Mummy was hysterical. I didn't know what she was going to do with herself. It was only lucky for her that I was around. I went up to the medicine chest in the bathroom and threw away everything that had “Poison” written on it. I even hid the aspirins because it was a full bottle, you see.'

She broke off because she could see the day monitor coming out into the playground ready to ring the bell; it was only a matter of seconds before everyone would have gone inside again.

‘Next day Mummy thanked me,' she concluded simply.

Stan's new lawyer, a Mr Marbuck picked at random from the Legal Aid List, promised to be a real winner. Indeed, it was hard to believe that he could be a member of the same profession as that frightened little muddler down on the Isle of Wight. Mr Marbuck was small, shrill-voiced and Napoleonic. Whatever he did was done briskly and rudely, other people being brushed aside on the way. It was to the police in particular that he showed himself at his rudest, his most aggressive, making it plain from the outset that he wasn't going to believe a word that any of them might say. From the very moment he heard the charges, his nostrils curled. Even without going into the case he could detect the old, familiar smell of trumped-up evidence, fraudulent witnesses, confessions obtained under duress.

It was Stan's signed confession that brought the two of them into conflict; that, and Stan's natural obstinacy.

There, in the upright-chair discomfort of the private interview room, with the lid of a tin box on the plain deal table for an ashtray, Stan sat facing him.

‘It's very good of you,' he was saying. ‘Very good indeed to go to so much trouble. I'm very grateful. I am really. But there's no point in going on about it. Because it all happened just like I said. I did take those photographs, and I did get paid for them. So, while I can't thank you enough…'

Suddenly Mr Marbuck could bear it no longer. He stumped out his half-smoked cigarette in the tin lid, and got up.

‘But the plea,' he said. ‘The plea. We agreed all that yesterday. It's going to be Not Guilty. Those confessions were forced out of you, remember. You'd have said anything, you were so frightened…'

But, even if he were disappointed in his client, Mr Marbuck thought very highly of Beryl. She was a woman after his own heart. Her recent experiences had led her, too, to be distrustful of policemen; and every day her circle of dislikes was widening. Her additional hates already included court ushers, magistrates' clerks, magistrates themselves, warders and prison governors.

‘Well, it must be some sort of vendetta or something, or they wouldn't all be against him, not all at once like, would they?' she had asked, her large dark eyes fixed firmly upon him. ‘Not if everything was fair, I mean. Not really fair.'

Mr Marbuck had agreed with her; and, encouraged, Beryl had continued.

‘Because he couldn't have done the sort of thing like they said he did, could he? Not him, he couldn't. Not Stan.'

‘But the confessions,' Mr Marbuck had impressed upon her. ‘We must clear up the matter of the confessions.'

It was because of those confessions that Beryl was now sitting in the prison waiting-room; and there is something strangely lifeless and dispiriting about all waiting-rooms. They are rooms not made to be lived in. A pair of slippers beside a chair or a plate of sandwiches upon the table would be unthinkable. And, of all waiting-rooms, prison waiting-rooms are the worst. They are designed to discourage visitors rather than pander to them. The decor alone is enough to achieve this purpose. Pale oatmeal-coloured walls descend to a spinach-coloured dado; and, where the oatmeal stops and the spinach takes over, there is a thick khaki stripe to separate the courses.

The chairs, too, are unaccommodating. They are not built to be sunk into; with an HM Prison chair, it's at attention or nothing. No carpet on the floor, either. Just polished brown linoleum, crinkled in places where the floor boards run across. And the whole place entirely picture-less. Merely notices. Notices everywhere about not smoking, not carrying fire-arms, not swearing, not causing a disturbance, not committing a nuisance, not attempting to pass over money, alcohol or cigarettes. And all made more dismal, too, by the harsh glare of the bare electric light bulbs dangling down from the plain white-washed ceiling.

Nor was this one improved by the visitors who were using it. Beryl thought that she had never seen anything like them since the Magistrates' Court on the Isle of Wight. One glance would have been enough to tell her that they were drawn from the criminal classes. And she was not in the least surprised to find that such a high proportion were not British. Not proper British-British, that is; more Pakistani-British and West Indian-British like.

With both windows of the waiting-room shut fast, the atmosphere wasn't too pleasant, either; a bit too spicy for Beryl's taste, too curry-ish. Try as she would, she could not help wrinkling up her nose. As she did
so, she noticed that one of the Pakistani ladies was wrinkling up hers, too.

Only hers was a jewelled nose. There was a white stone mounted in the side and, every time she sniffed, the stone twinkled. What was more, the Pakistani lady kept turning her head from side to side clearly searching something out. And, when she came to Beryl, she stopped. It was evident that, if Beryl did not like the odour of chutney and chilli sauce, the Pakistani lady did not care for Monsieur Louis' presentation bottle of perfume.

Beryl remembered her manners and kept her dignity. She gave a final sniff and simply looked away.

Not that the Pakistani lady had been without some right on her side. It was an undeniably powerful perfume that Beryl had been given; at once both pungent and lingering. And penetrating in its own subtle fashion. It was the first thing that Stan noticed when Beryl entered the interview room. And to Beryl's intense annoyance, Stan himself began sniffing, too.

Looking back on it afterwards, Beryl recognized that this was what had made the whole visit so forlorn, so heart-breaking. But, at the time, she had been helpless; trapped, as it were, by her own loving kindness in being there at all.

‘Well, what's the matter with you?' she asked. ‘Don't you like the way I smell, or something?'

She was sorry to have to put the question to him point-blank like that in front of the prison officer who was sitting at the end of the little table, only a few feet away from them, pretending not to be listening.

But she could not restrain herself. It was the third time she'd been to see him inside that dreadful place and he simply didn't seem to realize what a strain it was for her; what an ordeal, what torment.

And Stan's next remark made her wish more than ever that she hadn't come this time.

‘Did Cliff give it to you?' he asked.

She did not attempt to answer him; could not have done so, in fact, because already she was having to choke back her tears. Nowadays, as she kept telling herself, the very name ‘Cliff' was a dagger directed straight towards her heart. Nor could she possibly explain; the shame of saying that he had walked out on her would have humiliated her more than she could bear.

There was a long pause, during which the prison officer looked up to see what was happening. Then she gave a loud, involuntary gulp.

‘You haven't even asked how little Marleen is,' she said, her voice faltering. ‘Not even enquired after your own daughter.'

‘Well, how is she? She's all right, isn't she?'

A note of sudden anxiety had entered into his voice. It was just what Beryl had intended.

‘With all the other girls knowing that her father's in prison?' she demanded. ‘What do you think?'

Stan shrugged his shoulders.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘There's nothing I can do about it. Not now there isn't.'

That was when Beryl lost her temper with him.

‘Oh, yes, there is,' she said, not even attempting to keep her voice down so that the warder would not hear her. ‘There's plenty. And don't you forget it.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like withdrawing those stupid confessions of yours. Like saying they were all lies.'