The Husband's Story (9 page)

It was Mr Winters who was smiling now. And it was then that Beryl noticed what a nasty, toothy smile it was. Like some old crocodile grinning at you, she thought. Just for his own cruel kind of pleasure, he was taking it out on her, and enjoying himself.

But secretly she was pitying him. Even though he didn't know it, he'd
got it coming to him all right. As soon as Stan's promotion was through and the overdraft was paid off, she was going to close her account and move across the road to Barclay's.

Barclay's was bang opposite. Mr Winters wouldn't be smiling quite so much when he saw her drawing up across the road in the sort of car that the wife of the Head of the Department would be driving.

It was on Sundays, especially, that Stan wished that he had a dog.

He'd brought up the matter any number of times, suggesting something big and muscular like an Alsatian or a Boxer to protect Beryl when she was alone in the house, or something small and affectionate, such as a Peke or a Cairn for Marleen's sake. But Beryl had been adamant. Dogs, in her view, were destroyers, vandals who went round chewing things, scratching on door panels, leaving patches on fitted carpets. That was why, on Sunday mornings, after he and Marleen had brought down Beryl's breakfast-tray and put everything away again, Stan had to set out alone.

Alone, that is, except for his camera. At week-ends, his camera was part of him. Indeed, some of his best studies –
Deserted Platform, Winter, Coming back from Church
, and
The Paper Seller
– had been obtained simply by mooching around Crocketts Green with his eyes open.

More than once, towards the end of the month when funds were low, he would sling his second-hand Pentax over his shoulder knowing perfectly well that there was no film in it. And that is something that only a fellow-photographer, one of the priesthood, could understand. Because it's the feel of the instrument that counts. Once you know that the skill is yours, there's nearly as much pleasure in framing-up and focusing as there is in actually taking anything. It keeps the eye in. And it's cheaper.

In earlier days Beryl hadn't minded in the least if Stan took Marleen out alone for little Sunday morning outings. Had rather encouraged it, in fact, so that she could have a few minutes to herself just to catch up with things. Even so, it had been only on condition that he didn't let go of her hand, not even for a single second. Marleen, however, was too big for that sort of thing now; hand-in-hand stuff at her age would simply look silly. And Marleen herself had lost all interest. Going as far as the Memorial Pond in one direction, or out past the allotments and the recreation ground in the other, somehow no longer held the charm that she had experienced so keenly when she was five. She
preferred nowadays to stay at home, and read. Or lie on her bed, and think. Or finish her homework. Or help Beryl. Anything, in fact, rather than look at ducks or beans growing.

Not that Stan really minded. Photography is a solitary and full-time business. You can't concentrate, can't detach the mind sufficiently, if you've got to keep a conversation going. And, above all, you can't stand still as often, or for as long, as you want to if the other person asks what it is that you're looking at. Enjoyable though they had been for both of them, the years from four to eight in Marleen's life had been about the least productive in Stan's.

And there was another reason why Stan did not mind. That was because, on his way back, he used to call in at the Bull and Garter. Not secretly, either. Nothing furtive about it. ‘Daddy's little drinkie' was how Beryl always referred to it; and she liked herself every time she said it. It showed that she wasn't the self-centred sort of person some people might take her for. Nor jealous. She didn't mind in the least if Stan was out enjoying himself while she was indoors working. Indeed, she felt that it was right for a man to have his own circle of friends: there was something so… so manly about it. A lot of marriages in her view would be a good deal better for it if only wives allowed their husbands to have a bit of a spree sometimes. And twelve-thirty to about ten-to-one on Sunday mornings was the time that she had allocated to Stan for his.

Beryl herself had never been inside the Bull and Garter. Stan, more than once, had suggested it. But Beryl had declined; and been firm about it, too. She was glad for his sake, she said, that it was nice enough for him to want to take her there, but just imagine what one of the teachers from Marleen's school would think if she were passing at the time and happened to see her coming out, and on a Sunday of all days.

It was certainly the only pub in Crocketts Green that Stan would have considered going into himself. That was because it was still recognizably a part of old Crocketts Green, a reminder of what the place must have been like when it was still a village. It had atmosphere. There were two others, the Station Arms (severe, run-down and melancholy) and the Kon-Tiki (smart, chromium and musical). Saloon prices were the same in all three; same proprietary brands, same measures. But everything else was different. The regulars went to the Station Arms and to the Kon-Tiki for the drinking – large pink gins in the Arms and vodka-and-pineapple-juice in the Kon-Tiki. Round at the Bull and Garter it was
the company that counted. An altogether better class of customer, too, even though it was mostly only keg and draught that was drunk there.

One of the things that Stan liked best about the Bull was the old, familiar smell of the place. It was a mixture of floor polish and freshly-cooked sausages and beer frothing out into thick glass tankards and tobacco smoke. A thick, blue haze like Channel mist always hung over the whole bar by closing-time. Because of the low ceiling it was noisy, too. Even with only a handful of customers, it sounded as though there were quite a good party going on.

It had already begun to fill up by the time Stan got there: they were two deep all along the counter. Stan knew every one of them by sight. He would, in fact, have been surprised if any of them hadn't been there. But he made his way past them as though they were strangers. They didn't belong to him at all.

His group, just the four of them, did their drinking over by the palm in the corner. They were four friends, four bosom friends, who saw each other regularly once a week, wouldn't for the world have missed the reunion, and didn't give each other so much as a thought on the other six days.

Come to that, they didn't even know very much about each other, either. One of them was something to do with insurance. Another, the blue blazer and bow-tie member, was vaguely in sales. And the third was mixed up with the rental business. All three knew that Stan was a civil servant. They even made jokes about it. But beyond that, outside the Bull, their lives were their own private and individual mysteries.

And today, as he raised his tankard and said ‘Cheers', Stan wasn't for the moment interested in any of them. That was because right across the bar, on the other side where only casuals went, he thought that he saw somebody he knew. It was nothing definite. Only a glimpse. And it took him a second or two to remember. Then it all came back, and he was certain.

The man who had just put his glass down on the counter opposite was the nice Mr Karlin, the representative of the international photo-press agency, the one who had said that he would be getting in touch with him. Stan was all ready to go over and ask him why he hadn't. But the bar was full by now. Stan couldn't squeeze his way past. And, in any case, Mr Karlin was just leaving. His smooth, pink, friendly face was turned away by now, but his raincoat had his own personal stamp upon it. It was the same raincoat that he had been wearing at Frobisher
House on the day of the photographic exhibition. There weren't too many of them about, not Continental-style raincoats with shoulder-flaps and a deep V-shaped seam running halfway down the back.

Stan was sorrier than ever that he hadn't been able to catch up with him. Because right from the start there had been something about Mr Karlin that he had liked. There was genuine warmth there, an outgoing quality that, even at first acquaintance, made you feel as though you had known him for years.

Very few people were gifted that way, and Stan was anxious to keep up the friendship.

You can't work in a Service department without facing up to the fact that security, like the weather, is something that you have to learn to live with. Not that it should come as anything of a shock. Because unless you have been checked, counter-checked and then re-processed you couldn't be in a Service department at all.

Even so, like everything else in life, security has its ups and downs. There can be weeks on end, months sometimes, when you would think that the entire MI6 side had been disbanded. No warning notices, no reminders, no personal visits. Nothing. Then somebody gets himself arrested in Chatham or Dartmouth or somewhere; and, overnight, the whole place is swarming.

It was the Gareloch affair that had done it this time. Down in Frobisher House, four hundred miles away, it all sounded far off, improbable and rather silly. But not to MI6 it didn't. Apparently, they had come on a young stores clerk, Grade 3, who had been passing on details of the daily delivery sheets. Endless lists of tinned foods, condensed milk, coffee essence, toilet rolls, medical supplies, tooth brushes, all for the Polaris crews. On the face of it, nothing very exciting there. But MI6 knew better. At this very moment, they did not doubt, there was an Eastern Commissar, with a computer on one side of him and an abacus on the other, working out detailed plans in case anyone on his side of the Iron Curtain might want to build a Polaris of his own. Or, at least, so MI6 pretended. Otherwise there could have been no possible excuse for a spot security check on Central Records at nine-thirty on a Monday morning of all times.

It was all right for Stan because he was always one of the early arrivals. The eight-ten from Crocketts Green gave him a good ten minutes to himself before the department was officially open. And this morning he needed those ten minutes. Exactly on the half-hour, Mr Miller was due upstairs in Room seven-three-seven for the interviews with the last batch of applicants. In the meantime, there were the three sets of keys to hand over.

Records and Classified each had its own bunch. But Top Secret was a
different matter altogether. It even had a key to itself, and the bunch was kept in a leather box in Mr Miller's own private safe. There was no key to that one: Mr Miller's safe had a combination lock.

At nine-twenty-eight, Mr Miller, with his buff-coloured folder under his arm, went out saying that it shouldn't take long to polish this lot off. And thirty seconds later, Security walked in.

Stan was still the only person there. He had just folded up his
Daily Express
and put it away in the drawer in case he felt like a second read at lunchtime. The day-ledger was open on the desk in front of him, and his ball-point was lying beside it at the ready. In the whole of Frobisher House there could not have been a more perfect little cameo of Civil Service punctuality and efficiency.

Even so, the men from MI6 were not pleased. They were a dour, rather unprepossessing pair, a Commander Hackett and a Mr Clegg. Commander Hackett played the part of the wise one. Head thrust forward, he asked all the questions and, every time he received an answer, he raised his eyebrows slightly and glanced knowingly across at Mr Clegg. The Commander had asked so many questions in his time that he now had two deep furrows running right across his forehead.

After they had identified themselves and had got Stan to produce his own pass, Commander Hackett began enquiring about the keys. Was Stan an authorized person? Had he signed for them? How could he be sure that none of them was missing? Had they been handed over in the presence of a third party? Didn't he know that it was a breach of security for a single person, unattended, to have access to Top Secret documents? Up and down went the eyebrows every time, and every time Mr Clegg nodded thoughtfully.

The rest of the staff had arrived by now, and Commander Hackett and Mr Clegg went round examining their passes. The fact that they had all shown them at the front door as they came in was apparently without significance. For all the Commander knew, they might have swapped them in the lift coming up, or carelessly left them lying about on the ledge in the lavatory when they had gone to wash their hands, even tossed them out of open windows into the outstretched hands of enemy agents waiting down below.

Then, when he could find nothing wrong with the passes, Commander Hackett suggested that they should go into Mr Miller's office. And, once inside, he asked Stan to close the door. There were only two chairs for visitors. That meant that Stan had to sit in the swivel
chair at Mr Miller's desk. It was the first time that he had ever done so. Remembering what was going on at this moment in Room seven-three-seven, the omen seemed a distinctly good one.

And by now Commander Hackett had evidently revised his opinion of Stan. He began to treat him as an equal. Tucking his thumbs up into the armholes of his waistcoat and thrusting his legs straight out in front of him, he invited Stan to be indiscreet. Were there any irregularities that had come to his notice? Had any member of staff ever done or said anything that had raised a doubt in Stan's mind? How many of them did he know socially? Were there any money difficulties he knew about? Did he ever hear political views expressed? Could he suggest any way in which the running of the department might be tightened up a bit?

The eyebrows were no longer working so hard, and it was only occasionally that he and Mr Clegg exchanged glances. The words ‘tightened up', however, brought him fully back to life again. Tightening up was the whole guiding principle of Commander Hackett's life. He used the phrase as a mechanic might have used it, even giving a twisting, spanner-like movement of his hand as he said the words.

It was getting on for ten o'clock by now. The queue of messengers at the counter had grown longer and, outside in the general office, the telephones were ringing. Commander Hackett and Mr Clegg looked at their watches and announced that they would look in again when Mr Miller had returned. Stan went back to his own desk over in the corner.