The Husband's Story (10 page)

It was nearly lunchtime before Mr Miller got back, and Stan hadn't been any too happy about the delay. But Mr Miller seemed far from despondent. He called Stan into his office straight away, and told him so.

‘Well, you're on the short list,' he said. ‘Just three of you. That's what they've got it down to.'

‘Short list.'

Stan heard himself repeating the words.

‘So you mean they haven't decided anything yet?'

Mr Miller took off his spectacles and wiped them. It had been a tiring morning, and he had come away with a headache. Eye-strain, he put it down to.

‘Not yet, they haven't. That'll be next week some time. They'll want to see the three of you again. Just to make sure, that is.'

He had put his spectacles back on. But it was no use: his headache
was as bad as ever, and the edges of the blotter looked all blurred and wavy.

‘Nothing to worry about,' he added. ‘It's just that it all takes time.' Childless himself, Mr Miller felt strangely paternal at this moment. He had known Stan for a long time; had brought him up, practically. It pleased Mr Miller to think that, after his retirement, the department would go on along the lines that he had so carefully laid down; would, so to speak, remain something of a family affair.

‘Well, he wouldn't have said it like if he didn't mean it, would he?' Beryl asked. ‘Not that bit about not having much to worry about.'

At that moment, she was really rather proud of him. It was pleasing to think that out of all those hundreds of thousands of other civil servants there were, besides her Stan, only two others who were regarded, even remotely, as worthy of being considered for the post.

‘And I've got a piece of news for you,' she told him, after she had made him repeat Mr Miller's words about not worrying. ‘They want our Marleen to go in for the dance contest. The junior one like. It's national, you know. The under-twelves, that's what her teacher said Marleen ought to try for.'

She went over to the mantelpiece and took down a printed leaflet.

‘It's all there,' she explained. ‘The dates and the prizes and everything.'

The lettering was in gold, and the cover showed a dark, Italianate-type princeling, in white tie and tails, two-stepping with his English rosebud partner. The couple were framed in one of those filigree-lace designs that come up every year on Valentines; and, inside, were set out the names of dance band leaders of whom Stan had heard, and judges of whom he hadn't. Page three had a picture of a little girl rather like Marleen holding up the sort of cup that is displayed at Wembley. And on the back was the entrance form that had to be posted to an address in Blackpool. The registration fee for juniors was one pound.

‘D'you mean Marleen's got to go all the way up to Blackpool?' he asked.

‘Only if she's short-listed like her Daddy,' Beryl replied. ‘And she will be. Her teacher says she holds herself so well like.' Beryl straightened her own back as she said it, and gave a little loosening wriggle with her shoulders. ‘The elimination round's in Croydon. At the big hall.
Marleen's Southern Counties, you see. They go on all over the country. It's national, like I said.'

Stan turned the leaflet over and found himself looking down again at the princeling and the rosebud.

‘What's it all going to cost?' he asked.

Beryl had expected the question. It was exactly the kind of thing Stan would say. And she had the answer all ready.

‘A pound, like it says,' she told him. ‘That's all it is. Don't tell me we can't spare a pound for our Marleen. It's her career, you know. She's got to make a start some time, hasn't she?'

‘I mean all the travelling and things.'

But that didn't bother Beryl either.

‘Well, we don't know she'll have to, do we? She may change her mind, or something. It's quite an ordeal out there in front of all those judges. She's only a baby, remember. I wouldn't blame her if she got stage fright at the last moment, not at her age I wouldn't.'

It was Marleen's ball dress that she was thinking about while she was speaking. White satin it had to be. And she wanted the skirt to be as full as possible; full, and pleated. What she had in mind was the sort of skirt that would stand out like a lampshade if you swirled round in it. Rather high, almost Empire, was how she saw the waist; plain line in front, and gathered in at the back with a sash. Beryl liked sashes because you can make such beautiful bows out of them, and the bow that she was going to make for Marleen would be something special. She'd noticed for some time that, though Marleen's tummy was as flat as a board, her little behind did tend to stick out rather. With a bow like that there wouldn't be a judge in the place who could tell where her little Marleen left off and where the bow began.

As it happened, Stan was thinking about ball dresses, too. He had turned back to the picture of the other little girl who was rather like Marleen, and he was looking at the dress that she was wearing. It looked rather an expensive sort of dress to him.

‘But we'd have bought the dress by then, wouldn't we?'

Beryl pulled down the corners of her mouth.

‘I wasn't going to anyhow,' she said. ‘Not buy it like. When the time comes, I'll make it. There's hours of work in a ball dress. That's what you pay for. It's not the material, it's the time. Any dressmaker knows that.'

‘You couldn't make the shoes,' Stan reminded her.

Beryl found the remark irritating.

‘Well, she can't dance without shoes, can she?' she asked. ‘She's got to have shoes like. There's no point in me wearing myself out making that dress if she hasn't got the shoes to go with it, now is there?'

Silver for the shoes: it had come to Beryl in a flash as she stood there.

‘What'll shoes cost?' Stan persisted.

Beryl was inclined to brush the point aside.

‘It isn't the shoes that cost the money,' she told him. ‘Like I said, it's the dress. That is, if you just go out and buy one. But I'm making it, aren't I? We save all that to start with. And she won't need the shoes. Not yet. Not until she's got the dress, she won't. They wouldn't be any use to her. Not just the shoes. Not without the dress, they wouldn't.'

Stan folded the leaflet and put it back on the mantelpiece.

‘I still don't see why it's got to be this year,' he said. ‘Not now we're economizing.'

But Beryl had the answer to that, too.

‘Well, she can't go in for the under-twelves if she's over, I mean can she? It wouldn't be fair like. And they'd never allow it. Her teacher knows how old Marleen is because she told me. She'd never have mentioned it if she thought we weren't going to do anything about it, now would she?'

Stan did not reply immediately. He'd only just got in, and he was tired. He wasn't really thinking about dance contests at all. His mind was still full of short lists and second interviews. There was another whole week stretching ahead of him before he'd know anything.

‘Oh, all right. I suppose so,' he said. ‘But only the registration. Don't go ordering anything.'

Beryl was smiling again. She looked radiant.

‘I knew that's what you'd say. Now I've explained it, that is,' she replied. ‘I told Marleen it'd be all right. She's ever so excited. And she won't let us down. Not our Marleen. She's set her heart on it.' She paused. ‘Then I'll leave it all to you, then. You'll have to send off the cheque, though. Because I can't, can I? Not the way things are, I can't. Not till we've paid off Mr Winters, that is.'

The thought of the ball dress and of Stan's promotion had made her happy. Already she could hear the applause, the thunderous applause. And she could see it, too: everybody waving programmes and getting up onto their feet, and the judges all holding up their cards with ‘sixes'
on them, while out there on the great dance floor, oblivious of all the excitement, would be her Marleen in the centre of the spotlight, curtseying like a little white-and-silver angel.

Beryl was glad to think that by then the ugly metal brace would have been taken off her two front teeth.

Just at the moment things weren't going too well for Cliff. Personal-wise, that is. Businesswise, they could hardly have been better. It was his private life that lay shattered. And all because of the last-minute cancellation of charter flight No. 562 from Heathrow to Nairobi.

For the past year or so, everything had gone on pretty much as in other past years. Whenever one of his girl friends had moved on or got married or simply faded on him, there had always been another girl standing by, prepared, ready to step in and take her place. And sometimes there had been more than one. Ever since last summer, for instance, there had been two, Estelle and Zena.

Estelle, tall, ash-blonde and cautious, was a model by occupation. It was the wholesale side of the trade that she was in; evening gowns, mostly. M'Ladye Mayfayre the house was called. It was one of the smaller firms, just basement and ground floor, on a side turning off Great Portland Street, stuck down between the two giants, Gayrex International and Teenage Associates.

In M'Ladye's service, Estelle doubled up her modelling duties with those of receptionist-cum-telephone operator. That meant that any time up to mid-morning when things were slack, Cliff could be sure of getting hold of her. It was only in the afternoons when the buyers were around that it was difficult. Estelle was professionally engaged by them, doing her endless walkabout, up and down the strip of blue Wilton between the dress racks. That was when Cliff usually had to hang on a bit.

But, almost invariably, it was worth it. The buyers, particularly those from the north of England, were a pretty zestful lot. They came down from Leeds and Bradford, like Vikings with the glint of conquest in their eyes. And, once past the ticket barrier at Euston, they demanded invaders' privileges. Estelle knew the whole process by heart: the suggestion of a quiet dinner, the mention of a night club afterwards, the hanky-panky in the taxi, the abrupt and unasked-for stop at some hotel that she had never heard of, the display of five-pound notes as the driver was paid off, the heavy breathing. It was
dane-geld
on a modern
cash-and-carry basis, and Estelle had always felt that she was worth something better than that. That was why she was so glad of Cliff. It helped to cut propositions short without offence when she could say: ‘Pardon me, I'm wanted on the phone. It's my fiancé.'

Not that Estelle was formally engaged to Cliff. Nothing like that. Nor could she be. Because Cliff was still married, and Estelle's own divorce had not come through yet. There was just an understanding; an arrangement. And Estelle herself did not want to rush things. She could not afford at her age – coming up twenty-nine next birthday – to have life go sour on her a second time: it suited her to play it cool. She liked Cliff; liked him very much; could see herself going crazy over him. But that was all. The trouble was that she didn't trust him, not out of her sight for a single moment, she didn't.

Cliff, naturally enough, had never mentioned Zena to Estelle. Zena was simply another number in Cliff's private phone list, written in below those that had already been crossed off. She appeared on the very next line to Estelle because Cliff had met her at the same party. But that was as close as the two girls had ever got. There was, in any case, nothing that they had in common. Zena was small, dark and intense. Also, intermittent. Her air-hostess duties made her so. Phoning Zena was well-nigh impossible, because she spent so much time in places like Jakarta and Caracas. It was a matter of ringing up and leaving messages. But she was a good caller-back. And usually after these long trips she was lonely.

Some of the most agreeable interludes in Cliff's life had been shared with Zena. Difficult to arrange, confirmed at short notice from airport call-boxes, the reunion always had its own special, poignant quality, a fleetingness that somehow brought out the best in Cliff. Towards Zena, he was never other than gentle, tender and considerate. And this was just as well because as well as always feeling lonely on arrival, she nearly always felt frayed. By the time she had handed in her flight-sheets and checked out at the air charter office, she was all in little pieces and jaggedy.

It was not, in fact, until after her second drink that she ever really came to life again. Then, with her shoes off and her legs tucked up under her on Cliff's couch, the evening would begin. That was when Cliff always moved over and squeezed in beside her.

This evening, however, Zena was absent, already booked up to be amid the stars, air-bound for Nairobi. Next Thursday was to be her
night, and she was going to confirm the time when she reached the terminal. In the meantime, it was Estelle, with her legs tucked under her, who was sitting there. Estelle's legs were longer than Zena's. This meant that with Estelle he always had to squeeze in from the other side.

The evening had been a relaxed and pleasant one – dinner at a Chinese restaurant, two of the best seats in the cinema for a Hollywood musical, an ice-cream for Estelle in the interval, and then back to Cliff's place for a drink. Off the Edgware Road was where Cliff lived.

It was a new block, smart and expensive. The front door was of glass with a large circular steel handle, and there was an illuminated fountain playing in the tiny courtyard. The front hall, mostly marble and mirror, certainly lived up to the fountain. So did the lifts. It was only as you got out at one of the upper floors that you felt that the architect had somehow exhausted himself down below. The corridors were long, plain and rather narrow. A child could have designed them. Just so many doors, so many bell-pushes, so many strips of concealed lighting.

But it was quiet; even snug in a modern, chromium-and-black-leather kind of way. And the evening was proceeding as placidly as it had begun. Estelle somewhat half-heartedly said something about having to get back to Ealing, and Cliff equally half-heartedly offered to bring the Jaguar round again. But Estelle stopped him. It wouldn't be fair, she said, not after he'd been drinking.