The Husband's Story (4 page)

‘I've just been telling Cliff about your prize,' she added. ‘He's ever so pleased like, aren't you, Cliff?'

‘Ever so,' Cliff assured her. ‘Congratulations, old boy. We'll be hearing about you one day. You'll be famous. You'll hit the headlines.'

He had unzipped the bag while he was talking and had brought out a bottle of four-star Cognac.

‘Try this instead,' he said. ‘And don't thank me. Thank the Customs. Duty free, and no questions asked. Daylight robbery, I call it.'

His hand was on Stan's arm again.

‘Glasses, please,' he added. ‘Ladies present, remember. Ladies present. No swigs.'

That was another of the things that Beryl liked about Cliff. He made everything seem so carefree and cheerful. Even right back in the old days, that were so far away now, things had always gone with such a swing when Cliff was anywhere around. But now, least of all, was the time to remember. Living in the past was fatal, as she had often reminded herself.

She tugged the belt of her housecoat in tighter.

‘Well, I'm sure I don't know what we're all doing out here like,' she
said brightly, bringing out her quick hostess smile again. ‘Why don't we go through to the lounge? That's what it's there for, isn't it?'

Beryl led the way, with Cliff following after her carrying the bottle of Cognac. Stan had to stay behind to collect the glasses. This took a moment or two because they were on the top shelf of the special glass-and-china unit. He was quite sure that it would be the best ones that Beryl would be wanting, and he had just got them all set out nicely on the matching tray that went with the set when he heard Cliff calling to him from the lounge.

‘Bring the bag along, too, would you, old chap,' he said. ‘I've got something else in it.'

That was the authentic Cliff all right: as long as he'd known him, Cliff always had got something else. Samples, mostly; or discontinued lines, or broken ranges, or Army surplus, or rejects, or seconds, or miscellaneous bankrupt stock. That was Cliff's great strength, his versatility. If Cliff could buy it, Cliff could sell it. Wireless sets, watches, lingerie sets, garden hammocks, tape recorders, costume jewellery, indoor fish-tanks, binoculars – they were all one to him. And that was only half the story. Package tours, second-hand cars, insurance, the employment agency business, home loans: he had tried them all.

There had been ups and downs, naturally; but distinctly more of the ups. And he was clearly on an ascending curve at the moment. He was, in fact, becoming quite big in the discount trade. And, so far as he was concerned, it was all strictly cash; no credit, and scarcely any bookkeeping.

It is not all that easy to get through a bead curtain when you are carrying an air bag and three crystal-cut glasses balanced on a shiny tray. Stan took his time, and did it the sensible way: backwards. It may have looked silly, but it worked.

When he reached the lounge, Cliff was in the Swedish swivel chair with the black leather cushions that wheezed as you sat down on them, and Beryl was sitting sideways, half on and half off the couch, her knees together and her hands folded demurely in her lap.

Cliff held up the brandy bottle as Stan came in.

‘Forward, St Bernard,' he said. ‘Mountain rescue team approaching.'

Beryl glanced up for a moment, almost as if she had expected that there could be something wrong.

‘You've forgotten the coasters,' she told Stan. ‘The flower ones. And
better bring a mat like for the bottle.'

Then she turned back to Cliff.

‘Just fancy,' she went on. ‘I can't believe it. Really, I can't. Three hours ago you were in Paris, and here you are now…'

But Cliff wasn't listening.

‘Give us another kiss,' he asked.

Beryl shook her head. She had already heard the click made by the spring-catch on the door as Stan closed the mat cupboard, and she wasn't moving.

‘You stay where you are,' she said. ‘Sit still and behave yourself.'

Brandy, Stan reflected,
is
a good after-dinner drink. Not just centrally-heating and agreeable. There's a secret of some kind inside it; something of the feel of a fine sunset, or a loving hand left resting lightly in your own. Stan had allowed Cliff to fill his glass again up to the criss-cross pattern on the side, even though Beryl had only just begun to sip hers, pecking at it warily, like a bird.

After his day at the office, Stan suddenly found himself feeling better. Much better. He had even forgotten about the Appointments Board. This was the way life ought to be, he kept telling himself; the way he would have liked it to go on being forever. With the knife-edge crease of his newly cleaned cavalry-twill showing over his crossed legs, Stanley Pitts was beaming.

‘Well, mustn't forget what we came for, must we?'

Cliff had thrust himself up from the breathing Swedish upholstery, and was rubbing his hands together like an auctioneer about to open the proceedings in a saleroom.

‘Just you pass that air bag over, young man. Nothing in it for you, I'm afraid. Only for the girls.'

The first thing that Cliff pulled out was a big, transparent pochette of sugared almonds. Bigger than big, in fact. As he held it out in front of her, Beryl thought that it was the biggest pochette of sugared almonds that she had ever seen; a pound of them, at least; even, remembering how much sugared almonds weigh, possibly two pounds. And all tied-up round the top with an expensive-looking satin ribbon, finished off in a rosette with a gold label, bearing the maker's name,
Fleurette
, in the centre. Just like Cliff, Beryl was thinking: whatever he did was always on the grand scale.

‘For little Marleen,' Cliff said. ‘In case she wakes up in the night. Good for her teeth.'

At the sight of so many sugared almonds, Stan felt even happier still. He knew that Marleen liked sugared almonds, and he was pleased for her sake. But he felt quite sure that she would like the chunky, raw-hide satchel even better, and that pleased him too. What pleased him most of all, however, was thinking about Beryl. She needed little peaks of excitement in her life. It would mean a lot to her, having a private, unexpected birthday just when she had been sitting down to an ordinary Friday evening like every other one.

Cliff seemed to be happy, too. He winked across at Stan.

‘Would you believe it?' he asked, reaching down into the air bag. ‘Silly me, I've left it behind. No, must have been stolen. Lot of sticky fingers at the airport these days. Serve in Customs and grow rich, that's what I say.' He broke off suddenly. ‘There it is,' he announced. ‘Just where I hid it. Underneath the cocaine. Knew I'd put it somewhere safe.'

This time the parcel was flat and soft and yielding. There was no name of a shop on the outside; but there wouldn't be, Beryl reflected, because Cliff would have bought it through the trade, naturally. Cliff had trade connections everywhere.

And, when she opened the layers of plain paper inside, she could not restrain a little gasp. Just couldn't help gasping because it was so beautiful. It was a white silk headscarf with an enormous scarlet peony embroidered in the middle. The scarf was enormous, too; just the way it naturally would be if Cliff had chosen it. And pure silk; the sort of silk that sends tingles up your fingertips as soon as you touch it.

Beryl didn't waste a moment. The mirror over the mantelpiece was only an ordinary mirror, oval, picture-sized and with a magnolia-coloured glass frame to it. But it was quite large enough. She put the scarf over her head, turning sideways as she did so, Carmen fashion, and then loosely brought the two ends together beneath her chin. Even if she had knotted them it would have made no difference. It was such a huge headscarf that she knew that she could wear it any way she liked without upsetting her hair-do.

Because she was so happy, she spun round, took another look at herself in the mirror and went across to give Cliff a kiss. It was just a fleeting kiss, the sort of kiss that any wife could give to any man in
front of any husband.

Then, seeing how disconsolate, how out of it Stan was looking, she crossed over to kiss him, too.

It was late now; really late. Getting on towards midnight. Cliff had gone off with a tremendous
vrmmp-vrmmp
in his new Jaguar, and Kendal Terrace was quietly settling down for the night. Stan double-locked the front door and put the safety-chain in position.

It may have been simply because it was bedtime. Or because of the little kiss that she had given him. Or simply because of the Cognac that he had been drinking. Or possibly because of all of them together. Whatever it was, Stan went through into the bedroom feeling suddenly young again.

Beryl was seated on the low stool in front of her dressing-table. It was all part of the same suite, that stool; ivory-white, with lyre-shaped, curving legs. The dressing-table was nearly all mirror, except for a pair of small ivory-white drawers on either side. The bedside tables, with their matching lamps, were ivory-white, too. And so was the waist-high, bow-fronted cabinet that had photographs of Marleen, right back to the time when she had been a tiny toddler, arranged on the glass top.

Not that it was a cold-looking room. Beryl's natural eye for interior decoration had seen to that. The fitted carpet, the curtains, the shades on the matching lamps and the bedspread were all old rose: they glowed. And tonight there was another splash of colour as well. Across the end of the bed she had draped the white scarf that Cliff had given her. The scarf was really white, white as marble, with the great scarlet peony blazing in the centre.

Stan approached her gently, lovingly. It wasn't exactly the moment to speak to her because she was cold-creaming her face. She was all shiny and sticky-looking, and he waited patiently until she had cleaned herself up with the last of the face tissues.

Even then it wasn't easy because she immediately poured something out of a little bottle into the palm of her hand and began patting it into her cheeks with short, vicious slaps, as though she were intent on hurting herself. Her hair, too, made it difficult for him to speak to her. Naturally, she didn't want to risk getting face cream onto it the very day it had been done. That was why she was wearing the biggest of her bath caps. It was of flowered muslin, practically balloon size. Stan had
to edge right round it before he could even see her.

He put his hands on her shoulders. As he did so, he felt a little tremor, almost a shudder, go through her. She folded her own hands in her lap and sat there motionless, saying nothing.

‘I do love you,' he said.

His hands were passing beyond her shoulders by now. In a moment, they would be sliding down inside her nightdress. But again there was that tremor, that shudder; and it really was a shudder this time. She quickly brought up her pale, sticky hands to force his large dry ones away.

‘Not tonight,' she said. ‘I just don't feel like it. Besides, I've got a headache. I feel terrible.'

‘I don't,' he told her. ‘I feel pretty good.'

He gave a little laugh as he said it; a short, silly sort of a laugh. It was not like his usual laugh at all.

All that Beryl did was to shrug her shoulders. She had already begun to pour some more of the stuff in the bottle out into her open palm.

‘Well, perhaps it agrees with you,' she said. ‘Brandy, I mean. It just upsets me. It does some people. I shall never get to sleep. Not tonight I won't, I know that. I can feel it like.'

She was staring hard at herself in the mirror, searching for a fresh place to begin slapping.

‘Why don't you sleep in the dressing-room?' she asked at last. ‘You won't get a wink in here. I shall have my light on all night.'

The word ‘dressing-room' was entirely Beryl's invention. It was simply the spare room really. But calling it the ‘dressing-room' made the whole house seem so much larger and nicer, somehow.

Stan did not reply. Instead, he went over to his side of the bed and lifted up the pillow to get his striped pyjamas. He put them under his arm and walked over to the door.

On the way, Beryl stopped him.

‘You do understand, don't you,' she began. ‘It isn't that…'

‘All right. I understand.'

‘Well, good night, then. Sleep well.'

‘Good night.'

The door was already half-closed behind him when he heard Beryl call.

‘Sta-an.'

It was the break in the middle that made him stop so suddenly. That
was just the way she always said his name whenever she was really fond of him.

He turned, and stood there waiting. Beryl's big, dark eyes were looking at him out of the mirror.

‘Which branch was it you got it at?' she asked. ‘The little black-and-white one, I mean.'

February is usually the most miserable of months, with Winter still grizzling away in the background and Spring far off and improbable.

But not this February. At least, not for Stanley Pitts. He felt relieved that it had come. That was because it was the month for the Selection Board. Ever since the date had been announced, way back before Christmas, Stan had been looking forward to it as if it had been his own birthday. Very nearly was, in fact. Next month he would be thirty-six. And thirty-five was exactly the right age to move up a Grade: quite senior enough to be able to show a record of good, practical experience-nearly nineteen years of it, in his case – and still sufficiently young for there to be a note of undetected promise, of brilliancy even, in the application.

In his mind, as he sat there in the staff canteen, stirring his mid-morning coffee, he kept going over the details of the advertisement. He knew the whole text by heart already, and he could see it as though it were all printed out in front of him:
Senior Records Officer (Contracts)
it ran:
Salary £ι,850-£2,250. Candidates will be expected to have first-hand experience of modern filing systems and procedures, and be familiar with the requirements of other Service Departments. London based (Hammersmith). Application form P/11/372 from Chief Personnel Officer, ext. 347. Closing date, January 15th, 1965.