The Husband's Story (15 page)

It was only Stan that he was worried about. He'd have liked to be there to make things easier at the time of the hand-over. He was pretty well set in his ways, was Stan: that was what made him so dependable. But how he would feel about modern management methods, fresh classifications, even possibly an entire reallocation of work duties, Mr Miller was not so sure.

Waiting for his successor to arrive did not make for happiness. Stan liked sitting at Mr Miller's desk and having everyone come up to him; and it was nice to have a cupboard all of his own. But now, just when he'd got used to it all, it was going to be taken away again. They were an insensitive lot up there in Establishment: the way they behaved, human feelings didn't come into it.

The manner of Mr Parker's introduction was another example. It was mid-morning when it all happened. Stan was tilted back in his chair drinking his eleven o'clock cup of tea. That was one more of the privileges that he was enjoying: everyone else had to drink out of crinkly plastic things with fold-away handles, but Mr Miller had his own cup and saucer. And it made all the difference. The tea even tasted like tea. That was why Stan was taking his time and sipping it.

Then, without warning, the door was thrust open and Stan saw the Deputy Controller standing there. And not only the Deputy Controller. There was a tall young man behind him. A six-footer, Stan reckoned; and a very well-dressed six-footer at that. He was wearing a light grey suit with a striped, expensive-looking tie.

Because he was leaning so far back in his chair, Stan came down with a bit of a bump as they entered. The cup was still more than half full and
the tea splashed up at him. As soon as he had shaken hands he had to get out his handkerchief and start mopping up. The blotter now had large brown patches like a skin disease all over it.

‘We didn't mean to disturb you,' the Deputy Controller was saying. ‘Simply that Mr Parker wanted a little chat with you before he takes over. Everything's been arranged. Mr Parker is with us from now on.' The Deputy Controller smiled his smooth, office smile and glanced down at his watch. ‘Well, I've got to be leaving you. You know where to find me if you want anything, Mr Parker. You'll put him fully in the picture, won't you, Mr Pitts?'

Stan stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. It now had tea stains all over it like the blotter, and he felt sure that Beryl would have something to say about it. What's more he could feel that Mr Parker was watching him; observing everything about him, drawing his own conclusions. Stan tidied up the desk and pushed the swivel chair back into position. But, when he began to move away, Mr Parker stopped him.

‘No, no. You go on sitting where you were,' he said. ‘I'll stand. I've been sitting around upstairs.'

He drew himself up to his full height as he said it. And it was obvious that Mr Parker possessed charm. While he stood there he was scattering a little of it over Stan like confetti.

‘I've been hearing all about you,' he said. ‘Doesn't sound to me as though you need any help in this department. Can't imagine why they brought me round here.'

‘I think you'll find Mr Miller left everything in order,' Stan told him.

But Mr Parker would have none of it.

‘That isn't what they were telling me upstairs,' he replied. ‘They say you're the one who's been running the show. After all, Mr Miller hasn't been here lately, has he? They know that all right.'

It was clever, too, this use of ‘they'. It indicated, without stressing it, that there were levels in the Civil Service in which Mr Parker moved and Stan didn't. They were the levels at which confidences were exchanged, and big decisions arrived at.

‘By the way,' Mr Parker went on, ‘What's been done about paying you?'

Stan was puzzled for a moment.

‘I've been paid the same as usual,' he said.

Mr Parker shook his head and brought out a little memo pad. It
was rather a handsome little memo pad, with a pigskin back and bright gilt corners.

‘That's not good enough,' he said. ‘Acting Head. Extra responsibilities and all that. I'll mention it to them. Look better coming from me. Can't promise anything, of course. But we'll see what we can do.'

Then, almost as though he were rebuking Stan for detaining them both, he broke off quite suddenly.

‘Well, we mustn't just stand round talking all day,' he said. ‘I want you to introduce me to people. First names as well, please. Pet names, too, if they've got them.'

They had reached the door by now, and Mr Parker was regarding it somewhat critically. It was a perfectly ordinary door, plain, painted deal beneath and half-glazed in the upper part. Even a bit better than ordinary, because Mr Miller had asked to have a door-spring fitted so that it wouldn't get left open.

But apparently with Mr Parker it was different. He pulled the door wide, and surveyed the open office in front of him. Then he turned towards Stan.

‘You might arrange with Works to get this door taken off, would you?' he asked. ‘I like to know what's going on.'

Mr Parker had been there for a full week now.

And it wasn't only the smart pigskin memo pad that he used, either. Mr Parker was way out ahead of the rest of the Civil Service. He had his own personal tape-recorder. Japanese and duty-free, it gave an air of brisk efficiency to the whole department.

But, for the most part, it was staff relations that Mr Parker was working on. He made regular tours round the place just to talk to people. He'd remembered all the names and rather deliberately made use of them. It was to the older secretaries that he was particularly attentive. With the juniors he knew that he didn't have to worry. After the elderly and limping Mr Miller, it was strangely exciting having a boss who came into the office carrying a couple of squash racquets and a canvas sports-case. Two of the juniors were, in fact, already in love with him. They were the same two who had wished Stan good luck when he went along to the Appointments Board. They had really wanted Stan to get the job. But, now that they'd seen the real thing, it was different. Nice as Stan was, they could see that he wouldn't really have been up to it.

Back at his own desk Stan had become part of the general office again; and, to his surprise, he rather liked it. What he did not like was that, with the inner door off its hinges, he was right in Mr Parker's line of vision. He couldn't even enjoy his eleven o'clock cup of tea properly because of the thought that Mr Parker might be watching. It gave him an uncomfortable, prickly sort of feeling.

And this was a pity because in Mr Miller's day Stan had always looked on the tea-break as being by way of an unwinder. It meant that for those few odd minutes he could relax and think about other things. Photography mostly. Some of the best titles for his competition pieces had come to him during tea-break. But it was not about competitions that he was thinking now. It was about the professional and commercial side. He had made his own selection of his best work as Mr Karlin had asked him, and he felt pleased with himself. Even rather impressed. There was more good stuff just lying about in his workroom than he had realized. Mr Karlin was going to have a surprise coming to him.

It would have come to him already, in fact, if Stan had been able to go out and buy all the printing paper and mounts that he needed. But good quality paper for art work has always been expensive. And so have mounts. High-grade card with a china finish can be nothing less than prohibitive. Stan had managed to save up for the art paper by cutting out canteen lunches, and making do with a sandwich. But the mounts were a different matter altogether. He'd been forced to use old ones, prising off the original prints with a razor blade and then smartening up the dirty edges in the guillotine. It was the stationery side that had been taking up the time.

He glanced up at the Ministry clock on the wall, and re-set his watch by it. In another hour-and-forty-minutes he'd be on his way home. With luck, he reckoned, this evening he'd be able to finish the pasting-up and re-mounting. After that it would just be a matter of putting them into the press overnight to flatten them.

Re-setting his watch, however, hadn't done any good. The thing had stopped altogether. It was an old watch, and Stan knew the kind of tricks it got up to. He took it off his wrist, gave it a series of little shakes and pressed it hard up against his ear. Then, when he could hear nothing, he got out his penknife and eased the back off. He was peering down into the works, blowing on them, when Mr Parker spoke to him.

‘Having trouble?' he asked.

Mr Parker's voice came from right over his shoulder, and Stan
wondered how long he had been standing there. The uncomfortable prickly feeling returned. It broke over him in a hot wave like nettle-rash.

Returning to Kendal Terrace in the evening had become more like old times. Beryl appeared to have forgiven him and they were on speaking terms again. Not particularly friendly speaking terms; no endearments. But still, it was better than one long militant silence. And Beryl seemed in herself to have become more tranquil and contented. It was almost as though, for the time being at least, she had given up worrying about Mr Winters.

In any case, he kept telling himself, it wasn't going to be long before things got better. When Mr Karlin saw the selection – and it was only a selection – of the prints that Stan had prepared for him he'd know that he was on to something. Then they'd both be able to forget all about Mr Winters and his two-pounds-a-week repayment plan.

That was why Stan didn't allow things to slacken off. Immediately he had helped Beryl with the washing-up he went back to his workroom again. And he was very nearly through. He'd divided up his photographs into categories as Mr Karlin had suggested. There were now five neat little piles of them, all in folders and all labelled. When Mr Karlin came to undo the parcel he'd find ‘Four Seasons'; ‘London, Old and New'; ‘Child Studies'; ‘Character Pieces'; and ‘Animal Kingdom'. ‘Animal Kingdom' made up quite an impressive album all on its own. In addition to his already famous
Swans
there were
Donkey-time on Hampstead Heath, Blackbird on Nest, Poodle Parade, Kensington Gardens, Jo, the Zoo Gorilla
, and
Mother Love. Mother Love
was a singularly tender little piece, showing the Ebbutt cat with her five kittens all in a wicker basket dumped in the middle of the back lawn on a fine Sunday morning in September.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when Stan brought down the blade of the guillotine for the last time. The little slither of cardboard spiralled onto the floor and the old mount, brought up to date and refurbished, was all ready to receive
Picnic Party
in the ‘Child Studies' section. Except for the mopping-up, Stan's work was finished.

And, because he was tired, he wasn't really looking where he was going when he came downstairs. He nearly bumped into Beryl as she was leaving the bathroom. Her face was all pink and shiny with conditioning cream. She was wearing her flowery bed-cap and, seen through
the printed muslin, the two white side-streaks that she had made M. Louis put in showed up like scars.

Beryl paused halfway across the passage. From her expression it was evident that he was not yet entirely forgiven.

‘You still live here?' she asked. ‘I'd forgotten. Really I had. I thought I'd been alone all the evening. Only I can't have, can I? Not with you around the place, I can't. And please don't think of putting yourself out on my account. Please don't, I say. I'm used to it. I'm only glad one of us is happy.'

Her door closed behind her, and Stan went along to his dressing-room. On the way, he peeped in to see Marleen. She was asleep, with her arm curled round the big Teddy-bear that she always took to bed with her. The composition was perfect. So, too, were the colours; pale, but contrasting. All pastel shades, in fact. Marleen's hair was almost pure flaxen and Teddy's was distinctly reddish even for a bear. If it hadn't been that Beryl might object, he'd have liked to take a flash of the two of them as they lay there. Just head-and-shoulders and a bit of pillow.

Beauty and the Beast
, he reflected, would make a nice caption. Either that, or play safe and call it
Land of Nod.

Ask anyone who travels by Southern Region and you'll hear the same story. A month or two at the most of smooth running – scheduled timetable stuff – and then trouble again. If it isn't the signals, it's the points. And if they're both all right, there's an engine breakdown. Or a derailment. What's more, it doesn't have to be your breakdown or your derailment. Southern Region is like the blood circulation system, all veins and arteries. Thousands of miles of them. It may be somebody else's thrombosis in a different county altogether that makes your particular limb go dead and useless.

It was like that this morning. When the eight ten got in to Crocketts Green it was already eight seventeen. And, when it pulled out again, the station clock showed eight twenty-five. Even if they'd had a clear run ahead of them they could never have made it up. But it wasn't a clear run. This time it was one of Southern Region's real monumental hold-ups. When Stan reached Cannon Street it was already nine twenty.

Mr Miller had always been very understanding about that kind of thing. He was a rail-traveller himself; he knew. And naturally Stan expected Mr Parker to see it Mr Miller's way.

He sat down straight away at his desk, and was surprised therefore when Mr Parker came out and spoke to him.

‘Do you mind coming into my office?' he asked, without even a ‘Good morning' to start things going.

Stan followed him. The two juniors looked up as he went past, and he heard one of them give a little giggle and whisper something to the girl next to her.

Mr Parker folded his arms, and sat down in Mr Miller's chair. It was a comfortable chair. Mr Miller's cushion was still in it. The chair on Stan's side of the desk was an ordinary office hardback. Even so he didn't ask Stan to take it.