The Sleeping Partner (15 page)

Something in his voice. ‘I'm not sure. Why?'

‘Well, Read's having a bit of trouble. I think he's gone a step too far this time.'

‘What is it?' I asked irritably.

‘Apparently he's sacked somebody, one of the electricians, and there's a hoo-ha because he's a Communist.'

‘We checked up. I told Read to get rid of him. But I presume nobody's been fool enough to say why.'

‘Maybe Read's been incautious. Anyway, it's got out and some of the men are pretty het-up.'

I said: ‘ Put me on to Read.'

‘OK. I will. How's Lynn?'

I hesitated. Had he heard too? ‘ She was all right the last time I saw her. Fine.'

‘Give her my regards. Hold on. I'm putting you through now.'

It took a few seconds and then I heard Read's voice.

‘Hullo, Mr Granville. I suppose the sheep's been bleating his head off.'

‘Is it true?'

‘Afraid so. It may all blow over, but it's this damned principle of no victimisation. One or two of the fellows are looking ugly.'

‘How did it get out?'

‘It didn't so far as I know. McGowrie himself took it quite well. I had him in and told him and he said, “Is it because I'm a Communist?” and I looked surprised and said, “Not at all, it's just a reorganisation of the work.” Then he went off and I heard nothing until about an hour ago, when one or two hotheads—'

‘Who chiefly?'

‘Piper.'

‘Ah, I thought as much. And Burgin?'

‘No, he doesn't appear to be taking any active part, at any rate.'

I thought a minute.

‘Look, Read, take it easy. We don't want to fall down on delivery dates again – for R.R.E. this time. If we do we shall all be out of a job. Let the thing ride if you can, and for God's sake don't make an issue of it.'

‘Right. But McGowrie must go?'

‘Well, yes, there's no other way, is there. But most of the fellows are reasonable enough. They know as well as we do we can't have Commies on secret jobs. I wish Piper would fall in front of a lorry.'

‘Will you be in today?' The same old question.

‘I'm not sure. I'll try.'

Part of the afternoon I spent with Whitehouse again. Once the machinery had been put in motion, there was no real urgency from a legal point of view.

Feeling better because this at least was being taken care of, I came out and got in my car. It was half-past four. The fine weather of the last two weeks was breaking up, and heavy yellow clouds hung over the city. There was no air in Chancery Lane. Tonight being Thursday, there was an obvious date to be kept with Lynn at No. 9a Grosvenor Court Mews. Nothing must interfere with that.

One or two spots of rain fell on the bonnet, spilt stars drying at the edges. A 67 bus ground past, followed by a wake of taxis and private cars. I thought, if the electricians came out at this particular stage and the Harwell thing is shot down by Steel … In spite of high hopes my financial position was finely balanced, and I hadn't made things easier by not going after commercial contracts. I'd a very heavy mortgage on the new factory and had not yet sold the old premises. If everything was brought to a standstill now it would probably never re-start.

But it would take more than an hour to get to Letherton at this time of the day. By six everyone would be gone. Better to go straight to Hockbridge, pick up any letters, then go on to Letherton and call on Stella and John as I'd promised. She could tell me what was happening at the works. I realised that the need to see Stella, great as it had been all week, was each day an increasing one. Life wasn't going to be made any easier by that fact.

I drove down to Hockbridge.

Because of being served with the petition, I hadn't called on Mrs Lloyd on Tuesday, so I went in there first. Kent greeted me with even more than his usual extravagant affection, knocking over a stool to get at me and nearly putting me on my back.

Mrs Lloyd said she was going on quite well, but she'd be glad to know when Mis Granville was coming back because she didn't like being paid for nothing and she didn't have a key and the house would be getting dirty and neglected, and could I ask Mrs Granville about the groceries when I wrote; and the gardener was asking when he came on Tuesday, and Mr Lloyd was awfully fond of Kent but he said he was that much too big for a cottage.

I was fairly sure by now that Mrs Lloyd had a good idea what was going on, even if she hadn't known from the start. Not much escaped
her
eyes. I told her I'd make arrangements about Kent if my wife wasn't back in another week, and in the meantime she wasn't to worry about the house.

I took Kent up to the house with me, as he looked as if he needed exercise, and he bounded ahead in an ungainly gallop, his white tail dipping madly. He would have to be sold or given away. I felt upset at the thought of parting with him, but I certainly had no intention of going on living here alone. The Old Bull at Letherton would have to be my home for the next few months.

The sky was still heavy but a more general grey than in central London, and the house was dark when I went in. There was a splay of letters, and I took them into the living-room to read them. There are few places more depressing than a house that‘s not being lived in, and I opened the french windows and stood on the top step looking out over the garden.

Nothing in Lynn's writing. A surtax demand I hadn't expected, an account rendered for some provisions, the electricity bill, a postcard for Lynn from some people in the South of France, a letter for Lynn which after a moment's hesitation I opened and found to be from the secretary of the local British Legion.

That was the lot. She was evidently going to play out this farce to the bitter end.

There was a flicker of lightning over the trees, and I waited for the rumble of thunder. It came at last, so distant that if I hadn't been expecting it I might not have noticed it at all. I wondered what had happened to Kent and then heard him in the hall.

The garden was getting in a mess. Smith had been ill; and then two days a week was not really enough at this time of year. The grass was long and going brown in patches. A downpour would do it all the good in the world.

There was another flicker of lightning, even more unimpressive than the first, but the thunder was nearer. Remembering that Kent was inclined to be frightened by storms I went to find him.

He wasn't in the hall but in the short dark passage to the kitchen. Here a door led down to the cellar, and he was scratching at that. I wondered if he was trying to get away from the storm, so I opened the door and he immediately scuttled in.

I went into the kitchen and wondered why kitchens always come to look neglected quicker than any other room in a house. The water in the sink usually accumulates enough to smell sour, and there's always grease on the stove or stale crumbs somewhere. I was going into the larder, but heard Kent barking excitedly, the way he did when he was enjoying himself, so I went back to the cellar steps.

There was only one main cellar really, a square room we used for junk, with two smaller places leading off, one for wine and one for coal. I switched on the light and went down.

Everything down here, at least all the rubbish in this middle cellar, would be a legacy for the new owners. There wasn't a thing of value – an old bedstead, some packing-cases, a table with a broken leg, spare rolls of wallpaper, some buckets and cleaning things. The bedstead
we'd
inherited. Kent was in the coal cellar, scratching at the anthracite, ears cocked and tail wagging in brief interested bursts. We hadn't paid for the anthracite yet. We'd be getting an account rendered for that.

Unfortunately, the only fight was the one in the main cellar, and it was shadowy and dark where he was scratching at the great pile. The small stuff was constantly rattling as he brought it rolling down. I saw he'd got something greyish white almost under his paws, but it seemed to be part of a longer thing becoming outlined as the coal rolled away.

I said sharply: ‘Come away, Kent; come away! What the hell are you doing?'

At the tone of my voice he stopped, head on one side, staring at me with his idiotic white face, then he yelped excitedly and went back to his scrabbling. Suddenly I kicked at him, and the tone of his yelping changed as he jumped away. The thing he had unearthed appeared to be a human hand and arm.

Still uncertain, I went a step closer. It was the right shape but the wrong colour and was part of a dummy or something being a sort of red-brown in colour under the fine film of coal dust. I bent and caught hold of it to lift it out. The skin crinkled and pulled away under my fingers, and one enamelled red finger-nail came away in my grasp.

I started back with a gulp that choked me. Doing so I thrust away a pile of anthracite with my boots and all the surface began to move. Like a black tide it rattled down, partly covering the hand and arm but revealing further up the face and head. It was almost unrecognisable, the skin copper-coloured like the arm, but with greenish blotches, the eyes black and sunk deep into the head, a stain of wet blood at the corner of the pinched and shrunken mouth. The flaxen hair stained and contaminated by coal, appeared to be coming out. But I had no difficulty in recognising that, nor the single turquoise earring in a darkly mottled ear.

I had found Lynn at last.

I
WAS
on the kitchen floor. I didn't know how long I'd been lying there. I remembered vaguely crawling on all fours nightmarish out of the dark pit, endless steps, with fright and sickness clutching at my bowels. The floor of the kitchen was stone, and my head lay just off the matting; the cold stone must have gradually brought me round.

On hands and knees again, I tried to vomit several times, then got to the sink and was really sick. I turned on the cold tap and shoved my trembling hands under it and splashed the water over my head and neck. After a bit the awful throbbing in my throat seemed to quieten, the blood to go out of my eyes. I straightened up and lurched sweatily out of the kitchen, past the hole from Hell, across the hall, reached the drawing-room. The trench windows were still open, and another flicker of lightning moved behind the trees.

I got as far as the desk where the drink was kept and took out brandy, couldn't see a glass, gulped three or four times at the bottle. The spirit went down hotly, was met first by another violent urge to be sick, but I flopped in a chair, fought it and fought it.

I lay there for a long time meeting the horror that kept getting at me. I was now just one step away from complete break up, but I couldn't get any further.

It was a queer light in the room, not dark but not anything else, a false twilight because of the thunderclouds. There was still really a couple of hours of day left, but I couldn't shake free from the idea that the light was fading. I knew I couldn't be alone there in the dark. I kept rubbing my fingers up and down on the settee to get the feel of her off them.

Then I saw the telephone at my elbow. I lifted it off. We weren't on a dialling system and I could hear the thing buzzing at the other end. They were a long time; just too long. The exchange girl said: ‘Number, please,' but abruptly I put the phone back.

Because I had remembered Kent.

I took another gulp of brandy, gathering my strength. Then I got up and lurched back into the hall. It was darker here and less far from the cellar.

‘Kent!' I shouted.

I thought my voice echoed as if the house was empty of furniture, as if it was empty of everything except my wife and the smell of her. I licked my lips and shouted again. Then he answered in a queer excited half-whine, half-bark from the cellar.

I got myself somehow to go step by step to the door. The light was still on but I couldn't see him down there. For a minute I just hadn't the guts to shout again because I thought if I did perhaps Lynn would get up, shaking the coal dust off her.

I went down a step. ‘Kent!'

He barked but didn't appear. A few bits of anthracite rattled.

Then I lost my head and my temper. ‘Kent, you damned bloody fool!' I screamed ‘Come out!' I listened to my voice as if it was someone else's and marvelled that it should be so hysterical. I cursed at him and swore. Then I turned to go. I must get help of some sort. To hell with the dog. I must get the police. That first impulse had been the right one.

But they might be ages coming. I couldn't
leave
him down there, with
her,
pulling at the coal and making his idiot whining. Besides I didn't know what he might be
doing.
I went down two more steps. From here I could just see the edge of the coal. I
couldn't
go any further, not if my soul depended on it. I whispered ‘Kent!' and suddenly he came, his tail wagging and his tongue lolling, grinning at me as if proud of his find, and then turned to go back to it. I fell down four more steps, grabbed at his collar, missed, clutched his haunches; my sweaty fingers slipped, I caught his tail, hauled him back, got at last a grip on his collar, trying not to look, trying not to see into the coal cellar; I turned and hauled him choking to the top of the steps. He was a heavy dog but I lifted him as if he was nothing. But I'd seen it again, out of the corner of my eye. I flung him slithering into the kitchen and slammed shut the cellar door and lay back against it, sweat running down me like rain. Then before he could come out I slammed the kitchen door also and knew he was safe.

As I stood there taking deep breaths, trying to steady up, the telephone in the drawing-room rang.

I got across to it, took another gulp of brandy, picked it up.

‘Hullo.'

‘Mr Granville?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh, this is Frank Dawson. A bit of luck catching you, Mike. I thought I'd try the number to see if you were there.'

‘Yes.' Tell
him?
Ask
him
to get help?