The Sleeping Partner (2 page)

Especially so in Lynn's case because she always had been a thought bohemian in her habits. Once when we were engaged she'd completely forgotten to meet me, and after waiting an hour I'd gone to her flat and found her curled in front of the fire, with her skirts above her knees, making toast. She was the sort of person who in spite of being very much on the mark in most ways usually missed trains or got there to catch the one that ran on Saturdays only.

So I didn't do anything more to find her all night. I got undressed and sat in bed smoking. There was a phone extension by the bed.

I don't know what time I went to sleep but I woke up in the dark and couldn't think what was the matter. Then I remembered and sat up and switched on the light, but the other bed was still empty. It was twenty past three and I kept the light on because by then I was wide awake and really worried.

I couldn't make out why Lynn had told Ray French she might be away this weekend; so far as I knew we'd planned nothing.

For some reason I began to think of that evening in February when Ray had first called on us here. It was the week I had had the row with Harwell over delay in completing contracts, and I remember driving up to the house in a fairly preoccupied frame of mind. As my tyres made a slithery sound on the gravel Lynn came out to meet me. She was wearing a new green frock with a close-fitting skirt that made you think of the silky sheaths of tulips.

‘Darling, has Ray left his car in a silly place? It's not worth moving it now because he's going in a minute.'

She kissed me and her brown eyes went over me in the observing way they had. Ray had just got up from the piano and was picking up his cheroot from the ashtray. He was thirty-five, well turned out, with a sleek handsome face that always looked to me a trifle unused, unlived-in – it was sophisticated, but un-modern in shape and bone structure; at odds with itself, and conscious of the paradox.

‘Hello, Mike. I've come to see your mansion at last. It's very grand but I miss the liveried footmen.'

I'd said: ‘All we can offer you is a liverish char and she goes home at two-thirty. Lynn, have we enough dinner for three?'

‘There are a few cinders in the oven, but he says he won't stay. Self-preservation, no doubt.'

‘Not won't, can't.' He ran a hand carefully over his smooth fair hair. ‘ I'm sorry, darling, and I'm sure your meal will be bliss. But ask me another time, please. How's the new factory?'

‘Very new.' I took the drink Lynn offered me, and smiled at her.

‘And hush-hush?'

‘Less so than the old to look at. This is all concrete floors and metal windows and strip lighting. I rather miss the cobwebby stairs.'

‘How many people have you got there now?'

‘About eighty at present. There's room for a hundred and fifty if we could find them.' And employ them? I suddenly thought.

He whistled on three notes. ‘Big business. And can't you find them?'

‘Not yet. Letherton's a way out. Also there's a general shortage. Electricians don't grow in a day.'

‘D'you go down and ravish them with your presence, Lynn?'

‘I used to while it was being built, but not much now.'

I glanced at her quickly, and then spoke to Ray. ‘This year it's been taking too much of my time. But I've no intention of letting it get permanently in the way of a happy married life.'

Ray looked at Lynn and laughed his infectious over-spilling laugh. ‘No, I wouldn't either, if I were you.'

When he'd gone there wasn't much conversation for a bit. Then I said: ‘I wish you could get more company of his sort. It's what you need here.'

Her hair looked like pale floss silk as she put the gramophone records away. ‘He won't come often. It's too far out.'

I said: ‘I wonder why he hasn't made the grade as a pianist. He seems first rate to me. It must be galling to have to take a job with a music publisher when you know you're that good.'

‘He was five years in the war,' she said. ‘That didn't help.'

‘To me he always looks less like a musician than any musician decently should.'

‘That's your old-fashioned notions, Mike.'

I said: ‘In one way I envy him. He's artistic, in the centre of things, able to gossip about matters that interest you … By the way, it's still true what I said tonight.'

‘What's true?'

‘That I'm not going to let things run on as they are.

But you've got to be patient for a bit longer, darling, perhaps longer than I thought a month or so ago. Don't imagine I love work all that much. I like enjoying myself. And I like enjoying myself with you. It's only a question of time.'

That evening was the nearest I got to telling her about this particular crisis with Harwell that had arisen in our affairs. I thought to save her worry, but after that I found each day's silence led to the next. Technically she was a partner in the firm with a small holding of stock from which she got enough to keep herself handsomely in spending money. It had seemed a better idea when we were married than giving her a dress allowance. Later she had seemed to lose interest and to take our prosperity for granted.

I must have dozed off unexpectedly because I woke to hear someone knocking. The light was still on but it was daylight. My watch said twenty to seven and the other bed was still empty.

I got out quickly, shuffling my feet into slippers and dragging on a dressing-gown. The knocking was from the back door and I went to the landing window which looked out over the back. I don't know why I should have expected Lynn, if she turned up at that hour, to go round to the back, but one's waking expectations aren't always in the right groove. There was an umbrella there and when the window opened the umbrella moved and it was Mrs Lloyd.

‘Good morning, Mr Granville. Overslept a little bit?'

‘No, surely, you're early.'

‘It's twenty-five to eight.'

I looked at my watch and then looked at it again. It had stopped. ‘Wait a minute, I'll let you in.'

I went down into the silent hall and was about to slop through into the kitchen when I saw the post had come. There were a couple of bills and a letter. The letter was from Lynn.

I
RIPPED
open the envelope and stared at what she had written.

My dear Mike,

I expect I should put this on my dressing-table or on the
mantelpiece downstairs, but somehow I shy away from the
hackneyed move even when I am doing the hackneyed thing.
I realise that by posting this in the box at the corner instead
of leaving it I may give you a slightly disturbed night – that's
if you happen to notice I'm not there when you get home.

Perhaps that's the last bitchy thing I'll need to say in this
letter. I hope so. But Mike, I'm leaving you. Does that surprise
you? And will you really mind?

Mike, I'm the wrong sort of wife for you. You must have
realised it. At least you've made it very clear. Oh, there have
been times, I know, but they don't happen any more for either
of us, so it's not a lot of good going on pretending. I won't
be around any longer to trouble your conscience or to cramp
your style.

I'm taking a flat in London for a few weeks while things
straighten themselves out. I'm not leaving the address because
I think you might try to see me, and I believe it would be
better if we didn't meet again. If you really want to say anything
in answer to this, write to the bank and they will forward it.

I've taken a few clothes, but if I want more I'll send for them.

With regret and – still some affection.

Lynn.

Someone was knocking. I folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. ‘ Michael Granville Esq.,' she had written, ‘Greencroft, Hockbridge, Beds.' I shoved the envelope into the pocket of my dressing-gown and went to let Mrs Lloyd in.

‘Good morning, Mr Granville. Nasty morning, isn't it.' She folded her umbrella and propped it by the door and insinuated herself past me. ‘You never can trust those bright evenings. But the weather forecast was wrong – all wrong.'

I said: ‘My – watch stopped. I forgot – to wind it.'

She glanced inquisitively at me through her thick spectacles and then at the mess I'd left in the kitchen from making the evening meal. ‘I expect it's keeping these late hours. I always go to bed as soon as telly finishes. Otherwise I shouldn't be up to see Mr Lloyd off. I'll make you a cup of tea right away.'

Mrs Lloyd was always a shade too sweet for me. I said bluntly: ‘Mrs Granville's not here.'

‘No, Mr Granville, so she told me. You'll be quite the bachelor for a few days, I suppose.'

I looked at her but her glasses had glinted away. ‘You knew?'

‘Mrs Granville told me just before I left yesterday. She walked down to the corner with me to post two letters. I said I'd post them, but she said she wanted to do it herself. I expect we shall manage, shan't we?'

‘Yes,' I said, wondering whom the second letter was to. ‘I expect we shall manage.'

‘I'll get everything for your supper so you'll just have to switch on. I'll lay it for you ready and then you can leave everything for me to clear tomorrow. I hope her mother will be better soon.'

‘Yes,' I said. So Lynn had covered up. Mrs Lloyd with her intense nose for scandal hadn't smelt this one out yet. She soon would. Presently I found I'd gone upstairs and was shaving. I cut myself on the chin, and couldn't find my own toothpaste and had to use Lynn's.

I wondered then, and tried to think it out, where the first crack had really shown, where the first wrong move was made. Had I made a bloomer in ever building a new factory with a government priority and encouragement in a satellite town, and uprooting Lynn from our tiny flat in London and expecting her to take new roots in the country? Should I have stayed where I was, cramped and rat-ridden in EC? But could overwork and neglect ever
really
break a marriage that hadn't got dry rot already in its foundations? Perhaps the smart boys were right and the seeds of this sort of crack-up were sown twenty or thirty years ago among the frustrations and fixations of childhood.

I went to the works as usual. Sometimes when you've had a partial knock-out something goes on functioning even when the higher levels are closed.

I remember getting into the car and carefully noting that the petrol was low. And I remember as I turned in the drive I thought, I wonder if those laurels will get rooted out after all. I stopped at the garage at the corner and got ten gallons and then was going to drive off without paying. The man there grinned and said: ‘Shall I book it, Mr Granville? Any time … Your credit's good, you know.'

My credit was good. Different from ten years ago when I'd started with a capital of £100. It had all come so quickly, perhaps too quickly. And perhaps my credit wasn't as good as it had been twelve months ago in places where it mattered. Maybe success had to be slow to be solid and enduring; even success in marriage and in love.

It was a twenty-five-minute drive to Letherton. The firm of Granville and Company was still very much a one-man affair, and in my brighter moments I sometimes speculated how long it would go on if I took ill or was knocked down by a taxi.

There was really nobody at all able or willing to take authority even for a short time, and this had been the chief cause of the mess up in February, when the details of the move into the new factory had completely swamped me, and the production had had to be left to Read and Dawson, who for some inexplicable reason hated each other's guts and got in each other's way at every opportunity. Harwell had reacted violently — unreasonably to my view – to two late deliveries; and no doubt I'd been tactless too. Anyway it had finished our association, and the outcome had been that the factory's production was truncated and being forced into commercial channels that I wasn't interested in.

As usual this morning there was a pile of letters on my desk and I'd dictated a couple of replies when Frank Dawson came in. I'd forgotten about his telephone call last night and I didn't feel very much more patient now than I'd done then. I half expected him to pitch straight in about being cut off so sharply, but instead he said: ‘I brought you this, Mike. It should rejoice your soul. Exhibit D; the fourth in two weeks.'

It was a bit of work done by a new hand and ruined by having had a 5/16 screw used in place of a quarter inch. Bill Read, the works manager, was trying to improve production by switching some of the workers about, and this, Frank maintained, was the outcome. I pacified him as best I could, half concerned and half no longer caring; and presently, getting precious little response from me, he dried up and stood pushing back his black hair and staring out at my car waiting patiently at the front door in the rain.

I said: ‘Anything else, Frank?'

‘Yes. When you've time. I've made a final selection from the IDA drawings, but I want your approval before I go ahead. There are one or two I'm not sure about.'

I sighed. Like most of my other attempts to shift decisions on to other people, this one didn't look as if it was going to be a great success. ‘Where are the plans? All right I'll come and look in a few minutes. I must do a bit of phoning first. Is Mrs Curtis in the laboratory?'

‘Yes. Do you want to see her?'

‘No … I'll see her when I come out to you.'

He hesitated at the door, thin-featured, bright-eyed, moody. ‘There's one other thing. I've a basket of strawberries for Lynn. Home grown. They're particularly good this year.'

‘Oh, thanks,' I said awkwardly. ‘I – you have them with you?'

‘Yes. I'll shove them in the back of your car.'

‘Thank you, Frank. That's very nice of you. You must – look in and see us sometime.'