The Husband's Story (2 page)

But Crocketts Green was like that. No proper protection for the passengers in bad weather; not even a covered footbridge over to the Elmers Road side. And it was important to Stanley Pitts that his parcels shouldn't get ruined. They were presents. He wanted them still to have the original boutique-and-salesgirl gloss about them when he reached home.

Even on fine nights, it was a brisk ten minutes' walk; ten minutes exactly, that is, if he turned off at the Launderette and cut across the service area by the Post Office – longer, of course, if he carried straight on past the Bank and down Westmorland Crescent. Over the years he had got into the habit of timing it; keeping himself up to scratch as it were. This evening, all bundled-up and with his hat pulled down over his forehead, it might take him as much as twelve to twelve-and-a-half; even thirteen, possibly, if the downpour persisted.

As he turned into Kendal Terrace, he already felt himself at home. There was something so wonderfully welcoming about the little row of villas, all precisely the same and all so startlingly different. For whereas the woodwork at No. 10 was painted a light heliotrope, No. 12 was olive green, and No. 14 had favoured rich chocolate. It was the same, too, with the front doors. Going down the street, you came on plain black; green; green with the panels picked out in cream; royal blue; even canary yellow, flat-surfaced and modern-looking, with aluminium-finish knocker and letter box. At No. 16, where Stanley Pitts lived, it was different again: shining white paintwork and the only front door in Kendal Terrace with a glass panel and a Spanish-type ironwork grille on the inside.

But there was more to distinguish No. 16 than the front door. Stanley Pitts's house had concealed lighting for the bell-push. As soon
as night came, the device shone out in the darkness like an illuminated fruit-gum. There were also the gnomes. There were three of them stationed there in the front garden, all dressed in red and all heavily bearded. The one with the longest beard – he was a replacement, actually – held a fishing-rod dangling over the miniature, heart-shaped pond; the second in seniority was seated, legs crossed, on top of a heavily speckled toadstool; and the youngster of the party, by the look of him, lounged flat-out, with his chin supported on his hands, simply looking on.

At one time there had been another quite outstanding feature, too, up beside the flowerbed next to the house – an eighteen-inch, fibre-glass windmill, all in imitation weather-boarding, with scarlet sails that would have turned merrily if any passing gust could have got down low enough to reach them. But the mill was there no longer. It had simply disappeared; vanished overnight from the surrounding elfin landscape. And not by magic, either. The general view of Kendal Terrace was that it must have been the holiday-relief milkman who had pinched it, along with the rock plants from No. 17, on his early delivery round one August Sunday morning.

That was why the gnomes were now all firmly cemented in.

Tonight, however, Stanley Pitts hardly gave them a thought. Nor did he have to; even in that dampness they could idle their time away in perfect safety. The piece of copper tubing let in two inches below the brim of the pool saw to that. Before he had fitted it, anything might have happened. After one sudden summer cloudburst, he had known the angler up to his armpits in flood-water, the toadstool entirely marooned and nothing showing of the little lazy one except the tassel on the top of his cap. As it was, Stanley Pitts could hear the reassuring gurgle of the drainage-system as he stood there in the shelter of the porch, and knew that everything would be all right.

Soaked through, Stanley Pitts uttered a sigh of sheer contentment as he felt the key in the Yale lock begin to turn beneath his fingers. Remembering the presents that he had bought, he must have been one of the happiest men in London.

‘That you, Stan?'

Because it was coming from the far end of the little hallway where the kitchenette-cum-diner was, and because the electric mixer was electrically mixing something, the voice sounded a trifle muffled and
indistinct. And, at the moment, it carried just the faintest note of tension, of anxiety even. To an eavesdropper, it could have sounded as though, after a whole day's waiting for him to come home, his wife had suddenly suspected that it might be someone else.

But Stanley Pitts knew every intonation in that voice. And he had learnt to make allowance for it. There was nothing to it, really. It was simply that she was the highly-strung, keyed-up kind. Things affected her more than they did other people.

‘Coming, Beryl,' he told her.

The glass bead curtain over the alcove parted, and Beryl herself stood there. Silhouetted against the background of built-in, Viceroy-range domestic units, and with the tubular light fittings, all bright chromium, shining down on her, she looked beautiful. Friday was the day for her regular hair appointment. And there she was, with it all piled up and gleaming, raven-black and perfect, above the long white nylon overall that she was wearing.

He started to come forward so that he could kiss her, but she stopped him.

‘Oh, my goodness,' she said breathlessly, ‘you're all soaking. Is it raining or something? You stay just where you are until you've got those things off. You're dripping over everything, you are.'

Obediently, he stepped back onto the doormat. Beryl was quite right, of course. With the side pockets of his raincoat crammed full, the rainwater was trickling down in little channels on either side. He was standing in a puddle already.

In the state he was in, Beryl told him, he had better take his shoes off on the mat while he stood there. Then he could go straight up to the bathroom and hang his raincoat on the hook behind the shower curtain. What's more, he'd better put his trousers straight into the press while they were still damp so as to get the creases out, she added; otherwise they'd look like nothing on earth when he came to wear them again.

It was all said in a rush as though it were a single sentence that she was uttering. And halfway through the electric mixer, which was automatic, abruptly turned itself off. That was why towards the end she seemed to be speaking so much louder; almost as though she were scolding him.

When he did reach the bathroom, however, he couldn't open the door because little Marleen was still in there. Not that the door itself would have been locked: Beryl was against locked doors in bathrooms
because of the dangers of fainting fits and sudden collapses and drownings. But she was also against her husband going in when Marleen had nothing on.

‘I mean, it's got to stop sometime,' she had only last week explained to him. ‘It can't go on like forever, can it? Our Marleen's getting to be quite a madam, remember. We don't want her to think that things like that don't matter, do we?'

Naturally, he was grateful to Beryl for having pulled him up in time. Because, left to himself, it would never have occurred to him. For as long as he could remember, he had enjoyed the moments he'd had sitting there on the cork-tipped bathroom stool, reading her favourite chapters from
Black Beauty
, or the latest Enid Blyton, or whatever it was that she'd happened to be keen on at that time.

When he did at last get into the bathroom and put the trousers into the press he noticed that the turn-ups had begun to fray. They were not yet ragged, but already wispy. And this was disturbing because it was his best office suit that he was wearing; the one in which he would be facing the interview board. He wanted to be well turned out for that.

Though they don't actually say so, dress is one of the things they notice in the Civil Service: more than once he'd seen quite promising careers go sour because of a fountain pen clipped on the outside pocket or a pullover where a waistcoat should have been.

It was with a feeling of real relief, of putting the whole of his working life behind him, that he changed into his sports jacket and his Burton's cavalry-twill. The cavalry-twill was anything but new; nearly four years old, in fact. But fresh from the cleaners it might have come out of Savile Row only yesterday. It made him feel a different man.

Gathering up his parcels, he went downstairs to celebrate. After her bath, Marleen looked pink and fresh and pretty. She undeniably was a pretty child. And this was strange considering that she mostly took after Stan's side of the family, and not after Beryl's. Blue eyes, peaches-and-cream complexion, and fair hair: that had all come from him. But the good bone structure, the high cheek line and the tantalizingly deep eye-sockets had been her mother's gift.

And it was Beryl, of course, not Stan, who had taught her how to make the most of herself. No make-up, naturally; no lipstick or eyeshadow. Not yet. Just a pat or two on the forehead with a powder-puff to get rid of the schoolgirl shine, and the little ringlets of pale gold hair
pulled forward to make a frame for the small, eager face. Also, done that way it helped to cover up the ears. The ears were rather large and outstanding; another of the legacies from Stan's side.

At the sight of him, Marleen rushed forward to give him her special Daddy-come-home-at-last kind of hug. It always pleased Beryl to see it happening: it showed what a united family they all were. That was why she encouraged it, often giving Marleen a little shove in the small of the back as she heard Stan's key go into the keyhole: encouraged it, that is, unless the hug went on too long, and got rough and silly. But, even then, she made a point of reminding herself that despite the tiny wrists and the golden ringlets, at heart Marleen was really just a high-spirited, old-fashioned tomboy.

‘I've got something for you here,' Stan said. ‘Something for both of you.'

‘Whatever is it?' Beryl asked, her voice rising a little as it always did when she was excited.

As she was speaking she came round from behind the ivory enamel louvre that cut off the cooking and washing-up part from the dining area. It was another from the Viceroy range, that louvre. Even in the catalogue Beryl had fallen in love with it; and, once in place, it was possible to step from the sink into society simply by slipping past it. She had already removed the white nylon overall, leaving it behind her in the chores section. Underneath, it was her red and gold housecoat, the one with the big Mexican-looking buttons, that she was wearing. They were Sun-God buttons and they glinted as she came towards him.

Even so, Marleen had got there first. She was already reaching out for the present that Stan had brought her. Beryl gave the back of Marleen's hand a little slap because the child was grabbing out so, just the way she'd always been told not to.

‘No snatching like,' she said sharply. ‘This isn't the monkey house.'

The wrapping-paper on Marleen's parcel had not yet quite dried off. As she tore it open, it made a sticky, sucking sound.

Stan turned towards Beryl.

‘And this is for you,' he told her. ‘I… I hope you like it.'

‘Oh, if you chose it like, I'm sure I shall. What a lovely surprise.'

She did not, however, open her parcel immediately. Not because she didn't want to, but just because she was watching Marleen; making quite sure that whatever she had been given was suitable.

Not that she need have bothered. It was one of those chunky, raw-leather
bags with a thick shoulder-strap; the sort that
rancheros
carry about with them. All the girls of Marleen's age had a bag just like it. Beryl had seen them in her copies of
Woman
and
Woman's Own
, and in
Vogue
and
Harper's Bazaar
at the hairdresser's. She was relieved, and even a trifle surprised, that Stan should have thought of it; because, in the ordinary way, she was the one who seemed to care about such things.

Then she turned to her own parcel. It was a big square envelope with a top flap that folded into itself to make a carrying handle. On the outside she could read the words
Chez Miss, branches in Kensington, Chelsea, Streatham, Victoria and Purley
all set out in fancy type on the striped paper.

Because of the rain, the handle part had become stuck together; it was so firm it might have been gummed. But she persisted, easing it up ever so gently so as not to tear it. She was funny about that: ever since childhood she had always made a point of saving things; keeping a little stand-by store of whatever it was for tomorrow.

There was a layer of tissue paper as well, and she re-folded that, too. Then she took out the silk scarf that had been inside and, holding it at arm's length in front of her, daintily shook it out of its creases. It was a pleasing, black-and-white design that Stan had chosen, printed all over one side with views of London – St Paul's, the Tower, Buckingham Palace, old shops in Holborn, the Houses of Parliament, Nelson's Column; the lot. The other side was covered with grey taffeta which meant that you could see that it was a good one, the assistant had said.

‘It's lovely. Really it is,' Beryl told him, her voice falling a little. ‘It's just what I…'

She went over to the wall mirror. But the scarf just didn't go with the housecoat; she had known that before she even looked. But she didn't want to hurt his feelings. And, when it just looked silly up against the brocaded collar of the housecoat, she tried it as a headscarf instead. But that was no use either. She didn't want to crush down her new hair-do; and, just letting the scarf rest there on top, the two ends hardly met beneath her chin. She took it off again just as carefully as she had put it on, folding it back into its original folds, relieved to think that she wouldn't have to go further than Streatham if, in the end, she should decide to change it.

It was then that she noticed the other parcel, the one that had not been opened. And immediately she brightened up again.

‘And whatever's that?' she asked.

Stan smiled. He'd been looking forward to this, thinking about it all the way down in the train; and he had no intention of being rushed. Slowly, he untwisted the screwed-up roll of brown paper.