The Husband's Story (5 page)

It was really quite remarkable. The whole thing fitted so perfectly that it might have been drawn up specifically with him in mind. More than once he had wondered how on earth they could have expected to fill the post if, by sheer good fortune, he himself should not have happened to be around.

Even so, he wasn't leaving anything to chance. Ever since the advertisement had appeared, he had given his present job all he had. And more than
his
job, really: the Senior Records Officer's job as well. The Senior Records Officer was coming up to retirement age. That was why the post was falling vacant, and it was only natural that he should have slowed down a bit and been prepared to leave more and more of the work to his assistant. After all, Stan had been trained by him. The
Senior Records Officer knew perfectly well that even if he dropped dead tomorrow, the reputation of the Department would continue untarnished so long as his pupil was still around.

‘
£
1,850–
£
2,250': that bit might have been printed in red, it stood out so vividly. They were very reasonable people, too, the Civil Service; that is, once you got to know them properly. They always took age and experience into account. What they were after was a real winner, and the more suitable the candidate, the further up the financial ladder they started him. By the time of his thirty-sixth birthday, Stan should be a two-thousand-a-year man. Even
£
2,100, possibly. And then it wouldn't matter if Beryl still wanted to have the small back garden paved all over and made into a patio, complete with teak furniture and a place for the plug-in electric barbecue.

Even though the last grains of sugar had long since dissolved, Stan was still vacantly stirring away at his coffee, thinking about the whole bright future and his own peculiar good fortune.

But back in Kendal Terrace, things were by no means so good.

The day had started off badly, from breakfast onwards in fact, with Marleen splashing the milk for her cornflakes all over the front of her new school uniform; and then, on the way to school, when she and Beryl had got as far as the corner of Derwent Gardens, having to go right back to the house again because she had forgotten her dancing-shoes.

What made it all so hard was that other mothers did not have to put up with it. Most children of Marleen's age went to school on their own. But not Marleen. Beryl knew that it was silly of her, but she couldn't help it. Eight forty-five in the morning, broad daylight, too, wasn't a particularly dangerous sort of time. Not like evenings. But, all the same, there were some very strange people about, and Beryl would have been ready to stand outside the school gates all day if necessary just to make sure that nobody nasty got a chance of going up to her Marleen.

There was another thing that made it so much harder for Beryl. That was because she always made a point of dressing properly before she went out anywhere. Half the mothers at Marleen's school just wore anything in the mornings, not even troubling about a hat mostly. Beryl herself always wore gloves and, on mornings like this, carried an umbrella. It was one of the new short, chubby ones.

On the way back from school, Beryl did her shopping. Not that there
was much of it; not on a Tuesday. Just soap flakes, sponge wafers for Marleen's tea, a new rubber nozzle for the tap in the sink, and a tube of toothpaste. But it still had to be done, and she liked to be through with it early. That was why she always popped the nylon-mesh shopping bag into her proper patent leather handbag before setting out.

It was still not yet nine-thirty when she got back to Kendal Terrace and to the life of which husbands know nothing. They just slam the front door, these men and, with the morning paper under their arm, go off to the station imagining that the breakfast table clears itself and does the washing-up, that beds are re-made without touching them, and that whole rooms give themselves a thorough going-over with the Hoover when there is nobody around.

On good mornings, it gave her a rather pleasant feeling of superiority, a consciousness of her own efficiency, that she could make it
seem
like that. She always went straight upstairs to change the moment she got in, hanging her shopping dress up in the wardrobe ready to wear again when she had taken her afternoon rest. Then, dressed in almost anything – an old jumper and skirt, usually – and with her stockings rolled down so that they wouldn't ladder when she had to kneel, she got down to it. Really got down. Vim, Mansion Polish, Windolene, Brillo soap pads, the daily sprinkle of Harpic in the lavatory pan – she used them all.

A couple of hours later when she had pulled her fingers ever so carefully out of the rubber gloves that she always wore when she was working, she was exhausted. Utterly exhausted. But it was better that way, she told herself. Even if she felt breathless sometimes – faint too at times – it meant that she would be free by lunchtime. She could relax. Become a human being again. Enjoy the very things that she had been cleaning, and scrubbing away at, and rubbing down and polishing; enjoy them, that is, until twenty-to-four when she had to go round to Kendal High to pick up Marleen.

Lunch itself was nothing really. Just two Slimmits, and an apple. Then a cup of plain Nescafé. With a figure like hers, Beryl had to be perpetually careful, on the alert the whole time in case the red line on the bathroom scales even threatened to go above the nine-six mark.

The afternoon rest had, for years now, become the most important thing in Beryl's life. It was so entirely her own. And she deliberately kept it so. Even if anyone came to the door selling something, she
remained where she was, ignoring the bell, pretending that she was out. A proper little burglar's paradise the house was, she often told herself. But it was quite safe really. She always went round checking that the ground-floor windows were properly fastened and put the safety-chain on the front door into position before she went upstairs.

Then, lying stretched out on her bed, with only the eiderdown over her and with the Venetian blinds half-closed to shut out the houses opposite, she could begin her own separate existence. Sometimes she read a few pages of a library book. Sometimes she nibbled guiltily at a Mars Bar which, in the shop, she had told them that she was buying for Marleen. And, even then, as she kept reminding herself, it wasn't that she was being self-indulgent, not just giving herself a furtive, schoolgirl treat. She knew that there was more to it than the sweetness. It was the actual sugar energy that she needed. Nearly always these days, she was battling against a strange wilting-away sort of feeling. Sheer fatigue, she supposed it was; just wilting away and wondering how, and for how long, she could still keep going.

Quite often, she couldn't bear it any longer, and had to give way to tears; simply rolling over and sobbing, all alone, onto the pink pillowcase. Those were the occasions when, after school, Marleen used to notice how made-up her mother's eyes were, almost as if she were going out to a dance, or something.

And today it was remembering the peony on the white headscarf that set her off. There had been a time, so far off now it seemed, when Cliff would have gone on giving her presents like that every day if she had let him. He had been so mad about her. And she had been mad about him, too. It was only her parents, for some reason, who had been against it. They kept warning her that Cliff wasn't the sort of young man to be relied on. And, in the end, he had made his brief, disastrous marriage to a common waitressy kind of girl, while Beryl – on the rebound, she supposed it must have been – had married Stan. Her parents were both dead by now. She had lost them, just as she had lost Cliff. All she had was Stan and Marleen now. Just that, and nothing else. She herself didn't matter any longer. She had realized that for years.

At the thought of Stan, she suddenly sat up. She had stopped feeling sad and miserable by now. She was angry. He'd made so little of himself, had Stan. That's what she couldn't stand. And with all the advantage she'd given him, too. It was her house really they were living
in: Stan could never have afforded even Kendal Terrace if it hadn't been for the money that poor Daddy had left her.

That's why she was keeping her fingers crossed about the new appointment. More than once, she had thought of going along herself to see the Personnel Officer. Not to cause trouble; not to give him a piece of her mind. Nothing vulgar or unladylike like that. Just so that he could see the sort of person that Stan was married to. So that he should realize how ridiculous it was for a woman like Beryl to be married to a bottom-Grade clerk, or for a bottom-Grade clerk like Stan to try to keep up socially with a woman like Beryl. It was, she reckoned, something that the Personnel Officer owed to the Lords of the Admiralty to get his sense of values right.

The onyx alarm clock on the bedside table – Beryl always set the hand for three-thirty just in case she should happen to drop off – gave a little warning click that meant that it was about to start ringing. She pushed the button down on top, and went over to the dressing-table to re-do her face.

At least, for once, she didn't have to rush. On Tuesdays, because of dancing, Marleen didn't come out until nearly quarter past.

It was Beryl's only other quiet moment of the day. The evening meal was over. The plates and dishes were in the automatic washer. The television was on. And Marleen was safely tucked up at last, up in her little chintzy bedroom; tucked up, but not necessarily asleep, Beryl kept reminding herself. That was why she was keeping one ear open. Sometimes the little monkey switched the bedside lamp on again, and went on reading long after her mother had kissed her good-night and left the room in darkness. But Beryl was wise to her. Even above the television, she knew that she could still hear if there was the least tiny sound from Marleen's room. Leaning over to take another book from the shelf that Stan had fixed up for her would be quite enough to get Beryl beside her in a flash.

Because they were watching television, Beryl and Stan were both sitting half sideways in their chairs. It is like that in most homes -just one of the natural hazards of television – that there is nowhere really right to have the set. Except in the fireplace, that is. And this was out of the question in No. 16 because it was only last autumn that they'd had the new convection gas-fire fitted. As it was, all the furniture faced one way, confronting the gas-fire; and the television set, smart and
good-looking in its own way, was stuck right over in the corner.

Beryl turned towards him.

‘I don't suppose like you've heard anything, have you, Stan?' she asked. ‘About the job, I mean.'

She hadn't meant to ask him at all. The question had just slipped out, sudden and unintended. But then she hadn't really been watching. More just sitting there, thinking. Going over things in her mind; things like wondering how much longer they would have to put up with a black-and-white set when so many of Marleen's friends had already gone over to colour; and what it would cost to get Marleen properly fitted up with jodhpurs and ankle boots and a tweed jacket and one of those black, peaked caps that were so severe they looked almost saucy.

Turning towards him had made no difference. Stan hadn't really been watching either. Just thinking. Even his eyes had gone glazed. He might have been marooned on some desert island, he seemed so far off.

Even so, she wasn't going to be ignored, not treated as though she didn't even exist. So, naturally, she repeated the question. And this time she could tell that Stan had heard because he half raised his hand in a sort of waving-away gesture to shut her up, as though she were a child, or something.

That was why she shouted at him; shouted even louder than she had intended.

‘Well, if you don't care, I'm sure I don't,' she could hear herself saying, her voice rising all the time. ‘What do we want with the extra money? We don't need it, do we? We're rolling in it. We're rich. That's what we are – rich.'

She was sorry afterwards, of course. And surprised at herself. The outburst had been so entirely unexpected. But it showed how run down she was, how close to breaking-point. And naturally she did break down and cry; cried the way she did in the afternoons when she was all alone.

But perhaps it was just as well. She had noticed before that somehow she always seemed to feel better after a good cry. And Stan was so kind and loving, so understanding. He went over to the couch to put his arms round her. So confident, too.

‘Everything's going to be all right this time,' he told her. ‘It's… it's in the bag.' He paused for a moment remembering his past un-successes, and then resumed. ‘Nothing to it really. I've been recommended. I know that for a fact. Just a formality, advertising the job.

So that it doesn't look like favouritism, you know.'

Beryl squeezed his hand. Then she fumbled about in the pocket of her housecoat to find a handkerchief.

‘Don't take any notice of me,' she said. ‘I'm just being silly. I must be tired, that's all it is. It's only that I couldn't bear it if…'

She had broken off, and Stan could tell that she was listening to something. Upstairs, so she thought, she had heard the sound of a bedside lamp being clicked on. They waited in silence, both of them listening hard. Then Stan got up and returned to his own chair.

But it was only a false alarm, and Beryl resettled herself.

‘I mean,' she resumed, ‘that if anyone else got it like, I think I should kill myself. For your sake, I mean. Because if anyone ever deserved anything, you do. Working away all those years down in the basement with no proper fresh air or anything, and everyone else getting promoted all round you. It's simply more than I could take. It's only because I love you that I care so much.'

There is more to a terrace house than simply living in it.

For a start, you have neighbours. And naturally, you get to know them. You can't avoid it, in fact, particularly when the builder has planned it so that the front doors are set next to each other: two front doors with a front room on either side, then two more front doors and two more front rooms, and so on right down the street.