The Husband's Story (25 page)

‘You been trying to ring 003 0004?' the young man asked.

His voice was as flat and colourless as his appearance. It was a voice that would have gone unremembered in any company.

‘Suppose I was,' Stan said.

He was being cautious, not giving anything away.

‘No good,' the young man told him. ‘It's not working.'

‘How do you know?'

‘They've moved. They're not on the phone yet. That's why Mr Karlin sent me.'

Stan paused. It made him feel uncomfortable to think that he was being watched and followed about and waited for.

‘Well?'

‘Said you were to go to the World-Clifton. Cromwell Road. Tonight. Six o'clock. Suite number 303. Booked in the name of Harper.'

All round them, the eight-thirty immigration rush was in full spate. Another train had come in and, from Platform 3, a fresh tributary was joining up, surging into the stream of people already pouring across the concourse ready to cascade down into the Underground.

Stan joined them, with the young man somewhere close behind him.
There was never any time to spare in getting to Frobisher House in the mornings, and Stan had wasted too much of it already, shut up in that telephone kiosk. He wanted to get on with things.

‘Tell Mr Karlin I'II be there,' he said.

He had turned his head as he said it, looking over his shoulder for the young man. But the young man wasn't there any longer. He had been caught up somehow, swept away in one of the side eddies. There was no sign of him; not even a row of bubbles.

The World-Clifton in the Cromwell Road was like every other World-Clifton the whole world over. A World-Clifton patron setting out on his global tour could choose any of the great national capitals and be sure of feeling at home there: same wallpaper in the bedroom, same menu in the roof-top restaurant, same sanitized lavatory seat beside the same porcelain-finish bath-tub. If the brotherhood of man were ever to become a reality on earth, the World-Clifton courtesy card with advance booking facilities could claim a major part of the credit.

This particular one, the West London World-Clifton, was something that Stan had seen often enough. It stretched up and up into the sky like a whole postal district torn out of the map and arbitrarily stood on end. Along the top, where the streets came to an end, the flags of all nations were kept flying.

It was five to six when Stan got there. The foyer of the hotel was crowded, and exciting. Wherever you looked, there were people arriving, leaving, making reservations, paying their bills, meeting other people. Stan could tell at a glance that the World-Clifton was a whole cut above the New Mexico. In a different class altogether, in fact. It was all glossy and expensive-looking like life lived inside a travel brochure. And, secretly, Stan was rather proud of himself for having contrived to be in the midst of it. Just looking at the display of Continental and trans-Atlantic newspapers spread out there on the bookstall made him feel pleasantly superior and cosmopolitan. It was the sort of bookstall that Crocketts Green simply wouldn't have known existed.

The lift, with its Muzak and its feather-touch controls, was both swift and silent. Stan felt that he would have liked a long non-stop run in it. But it was no use. Suite 303 was only in the foothills. The lift door had opened again before he'd even had time to check his appearance in the side mirrors.

If it had been one of the lifts over in Frobisher House he'd have had
comfortable time to take out his pocket comb, run it through his hair, clean it off on his handkerchief and put it away again before the steel cage had finally got him there.

The corridor, too, was better than the one in the New Mexico. Outside the lift there was a Louis Quinze sort of table with a vase of real flowers on it. By the time Stan had reached the door of No. 303 he was more pleased than ever to find himself visiting someone in that class of hotel.

But, for once, Mr Karlin did not seem pleased to see him. This time he wasn't smiling.

‘You ran it pretty fine, didn't you?' he asked.

This surprised Stan. He looked down at his watch. It was the large watch that Mr Karlin had given him.

‘It's only just six. Six o'clock exactly, like you said.'

‘I didn't mean tonight,' Mr Karlin told him. ‘I meant all this week.'

‘Could put it like that,' Stan agreed with him. ‘You said you wouldn't do anything till Saturday.'

Mr Karlin's smile returned for a moment, and then disappeared again.

‘Well, I haven't, have I?' he said.

There was a pause; rather a long pause. Then it was Stan who spoke first.

‘What exactly do you want me to do?' he asked.

Mr Karlin put his hand on Stan's shoulder, and suggested that they should both sit down. But he would get Stan a drink first, he said. Whisky with water and no ice it was, wasn't it? Funny thing was, he added, that ever since he'd been mixing it like that for Stan he'd got to like it himself that way too.

When he came back he turned the question round again.

‘What are you prepared to do?' he asked. ‘That's what matters.'

Stan did not answer immediately. Nor did he start to drink his whisky and water. He was determined to remain entirely clear-headed this evening. When Mr Karlin handed him his glass, he put it down on the table beside him giving it a little extra push just so that it would be out of reach if he were absent-mindedly to reach out for it.

It was time now for the speech that he had been getting ready and polishing up all day.

‘Well, I've been thinking about what you and Mr Svenstrom said to me,' he began. ‘And it makes a lot of sense. There's a whole gold mine of
official secrets buried inside Central Filing. Only Admiralty, mind you. But it's all there.' He gave a little cough. ‘Too much, in fact. I'd have to know what you were looking for, wouldn't I, before 1 could do anything about getting it for you?'

For a moment, Stan thought that Mr Karlin's smile had died away. But, an instant later, there it was again, bland and embracing as ever. It was only the eyes that seemed to belong to a different face altogether.

‘That's where you're right again,' he said. ‘No point in coming up with stuff the agency's got already. Who wants to print stale news? It's the big break we're after. Kind of thing Reuter's and the PA don't provide. Technical information. Electronic – and mechanical. Sonar, range-finders, anti-submarine devices, radar, mine-laying, rockets, nuclear fuel. That sort of stuff. And no good without the details. Specifications, blue-prints, test-charts, everything.'

Stan took a long, deep breath.

‘I can get it for you,' he said.

Mr Karlin's eyes were still fixed on him.

‘How?' he asked.

‘I told you,' he replied. ‘It's all there. I'm in charge of it. No difficulty. Get you what you want any time.'

Mr Karlin was smiling again. He broke off for a moment and began reaching down into his pocket.

‘Ever seen one of these before?' he asked.

It was an oversize wrist-chronometer that he had placed on the table; a duplicate of the one that Stan was already wearing. Mr Karlin pushed it towards him.

‘Take a good look at it,' he said.

‘I don't have to,' he told him. ‘You gave me one. I've got it on now.'

He slid back his shirt-cuff so that Mr Karlin could see.

But Mr Karlin did not seem to be impressed. He pushed the watch that was lying there on the table nearer still.

‘Just to please me,' he said. ‘Could be a different model, you know.'

Stan picked the watch up and examined it carefully. Then he placed it on his wrist alongside the other one.

‘Same model,' he told him. ‘No differences.'

This amused Mr Karlin.

‘And I thought you were a bright one,' he observed. ‘One of the really bright ones.'

He leant across and took the watch away from Stan. Then he held it
up in front of him, dangling it there by the strap.

‘One of the bright ones and he doesn't know a watch from a camera,' Mr Karlin went on. He was pointing at the watch on Stan's wrist as he was speaking. ‘That watch tells the time,' he said. ‘This watch' – here he joggled up and down the one that he was holding – ‘takes pictures. Micro pictures. Get a lot of micro information into a watch that size.'

Stan reached out his hand. He wanted to take another look at the watch. But Mr Karlin only shook his head.

‘All in good time,' he said. ‘You'll be taking it home with you. And I want you to practise with it. Get used to it. Make it second nature. I don't want documents. I just want microfilm. And I want the best quality. You should find it easy. You're a photographer.'

By now Mr Karlin had strapped the watch onto his own wrist and was holding it face downwards over the evening newspaper.

‘Make sure the light's O.K. Keep the camera face square with the paper. Six-inch focus.' He was speaking rapidly, almost as if he had been reading from the instruction handbook. ‘Press the winder button and' – here Mr Karlin raised his tongue to his palate and brought it down again with the noise that children make when playing at horses – ‘you've got your picture. Fifty-eight in each cartridge.'

It seemed to Stan that Mr Karlin had finished. But Mr Karlin had something else to say.

‘And only one cartridge at a time,' he said. ‘No spares. Wouldn't look good if they found one of these on you.'

Stan nodded understandingly.

‘When d'you want me to start using it?' he asked.

‘Up to you,' Mr Karlin told him. ‘Depends on when you want to get paid. Cash on results from now on. No pictures, no payments.'

Stan was smiling back at Mr Karlin.

‘You'll get your pictures all right.'

It gave Stan a pleasant sense of superiority to be able to talk to Mr Karlin in that way. That morning he'd still been frightened of him. Now it was almost a sense of pity that he felt.

He put out his hand to take the watch.

‘Could I have another look at it, please?' he asked. ‘I don't see how it works. Not with a lens that size. Not at six-inch focus, I mean.'

It was while Stan was re-examining it, that Mr Karlin took the opportunity to give him some good advice. He had become very
friendly again, warm and considerate as Stan had first remembered him.

‘And if you take a tip from me,' he said, ‘you'll open a separate bank account. It's nobody's business but yours where the money comes from. But don't go spending it. Not all at once, I mean. It's the neighbours, you know. They notice things. They talk. Just play it quietly and you're onto a small fortune.'

As he said it, Mr Karlin began buttoning up his coat as though getting ready to go. Then he broke off for a moment.

‘And remember which one of the watches you're wearing,' he said. ‘Put the other one away. Out of sight somewhere. You don't want everyone to know that you're a man with two wrist-watches.'

Even though Beryl hadn't liked Stan's late return on the Friday evening, the rest of the week-end turned out to be an unusually pleasant one.

There were two reasons for this. First, Marleen's teacher had given her a ‘Good' for reading as well as for dancing; and, secondly, Beryl had decided to change her make-up. Brunette as she was, she had gone straight over from crushed loganberry to bright, shrieking geranium. And not just lipstick, either: her finger-nails were now pink and brilliant, too. And her powder was three shades lighter. But not her eye-shadow. By comparison, that looked darker still. Beryl had good eyes: they were naturally deepset. And, with the dark eye-shadow contrasting with the pale cheeks and with the two deep wings of ebony hair that framed her face, they appeared cavernous.

It was only perhaps that the contrast was too great. It gave her an astonished, rather startled expression; and she realized right from the start that she would have to be careful about what she wore. The Mexican housecoat was on its last legs anyhow. But, in the meantime, the effect of the bronze Sun-God buttons and the bright geranium of the make-up was certainly striking enough. Beryl herself was distinctly pleased with it.

It may have been because of the relaxed almost idyllic domestic atmosphere that Stan went out and bought the idiotic, drinking-bird novelty; and it was certainly impulse-buying of the most irresponsible kind. Every morning on his way to the station he had seen the ridiculous creature, with its overlong beak and its huge cluster of brightly-coloured tail feathers, standing in the window of Hodgett's, the newsagents. Scientifically automated, the bird would lean forward to take a sip from a wine-glass; then, having drunk its fill, it would fling its head back, steady itself, and return to a dignified upright position – only to be assailed a moment later by the same fierce, ungovernable thirst that made it drive its beak deep into the wine-glass again.

The price of three-and-sixpence seemed reasonable enough for what promised to be practically non-stop entertainment. Stan felt that it was exactly the sort of sum that he could afford to spend without alerting
the neighbours; and, because for once he was in a carefree, playful mood, he set the bird up on the mantelshelf in the lounge, wine-glass within beak-reach, without saying anything about it to Beryl.

It was not until around five-thirty that the phone rang, and Beryl went through to answer it. Secretly, she was in dread of that phone. Too often it roused hopes, and then it dashed them. By now she had even taken to answering it in her Aim-aifraid-yew-muest-hev-ai-roeing-nember kind of voice. But tonight it was all right. It was Cliff. He was driving up from the coast, he said, and he had a friend with him. Could they please both drop in. Only for drinks, he explained. Not to go to any trouble.

Lovely, lovely, Beryl had told him. Just what she and Stan needed was to see someone. And then, as she hung up, the misery of her kind of life came back to her. There wasn't anything in No. 16 to offer anyone. If she and Stan had been card-carrying Rechabites, the house could not have been drier. She was very close to tears as she remembered the humiliation that she would feel when she had to admit to Cliff that there was nothing stronger than Nescafé that she could offer to him or to his friend.