The Sleeping Partner

  We went on to the gate.

  I said: ‘ I must see you soon.’

  ‘I shall come tomorrow as usual. But I shall have to leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We can’t go on after Sunday.’

  Desperately I said: ‘He’ll want to know why.’

  ‘I’ll tell him I’m tired, want a break. And – he’ll need more attention as time goes on.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything at all to be done for him?’

  ‘The doctors say not.’

  I said: ‘Stella, when things happen as they happened on Sunday, you don’t add it up at the time. But obviously that … I want very much to know …’

  I dried up, not able to go on.

  ‘If I love him?’ she said recklessly. ‘Yes, I love him. It doesn’t make Sunday any more admirable, does it?’

  ‘Hell. I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  She shook her head. ‘There’s something I feel I’ve got to say – even if you don’t much like it, Mike.’ She looked at me.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Ever since Sunday I’ve been thinking, trying to see it from a distance, as if it had happened to somebody else. And in a way it seems to me – how can I put it? … What happened happened more easily because I have been in love with John … If you’ve been happy with love you have less defence against it. You can pretend to yourself only for so long …’

  There was a long silence.

  I said: ‘ Tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Stella, you’ve tried to tell me how Sunday looks to you. It isn’t even necessary to tell you how it looks to me. The things I said to you then – if you remember them …’

  ‘I remember them.’

  ‘The things I said to you then I’m very much more sure of now than ever. I’d double the stakes. And double them again.’

  In the sunlight her narrowed eyes had unusual lights and depths even for them. She smiled at me, not happily but with a glance of heightened sensibility that made my pulses thump. Then she turned away without saving what I hoped she might say but knew at heart she could not.

  From there I went back to the works. When I got in I took out the Who’s Who. My eyes skimmed over the entry when I found it. ‘Curtis, John Nigel, MA, Sc.D., b. 1910. Educated Shrewsbury and Balliol. FRS, 1947. Member Advisory Council Scientific Research, 1949. CB, 1952; m. 1st Rebecca Downing, 1935; 2nd Stella Vivien Norris, 1952. Publications: Mesons in Modern Physics; Uses of Radioactive Sodium in Plastic Surgery. Address …’ While I was reading this Read came in and said the two men Burgin and Piper had asked to see me again.

  It wasn’t a good time.

  Burgin was a man in his mid-twenties, ugly and tall, with concave spectacles. Piper was older, square-shouldered, dark. I said: ‘Mr Read tells me you’d both like to become inspectors. Do you have any qualifications?’

  Piper said: ‘We’ve worked for five years with REC. I was a general fitter and my mate did assemblies. Before that I was with Merlin Radio and Burgin was in the RAF in a repair shop. There isn’t much we don’t know about our jobs, neither of us.’

  I said: ‘ Of course you’re both skilled men, I know that. But to be an inspector you have to be able to check and understand circuitry – and you have to have a certain amount of theoretical knowledge. If you could get your certificate I should be only too pleased to put you on today. As you can see, the shortage is holding us up.’

  Burgin said: ‘What do you do to get this certificate?’

  I glanced at Read who was standing by the hygienic Crittal window with no expression at all on his cheerful tough little mug. He didn’t speak, so I went on: ‘There’s a man called Heaton in the shop – I don’t know if you’ve met him yet — he’s studying two nights a week.

  It’s not really difficult – six or seven months at one of the night schools in Letherton or Chelmsford. As soon as he gets through he’s sure of a job here. Why don’t you do the same? It means an extra four pounds a week.’

  Piper said: ‘ Two nights a week for six months is a lot of time. You’d make a lot if you worked that much overtime.’

  ‘Are the night schools free?’ Burgin asked.

  ‘No. There’s a charge, but it’s not a large one.’

  ‘And who’d pay that?’ said Piper.

  ‘You would. Who else?’

  He said: ‘ Well, it’s to the advantage of the firm, isn’t it? They need the inspectors.’

  I said politely: ‘We need inspectors but not that badly.’

  A smile moved across Piper’s face. He looked like a man who has just seen the catch in the three-card trick.

  ‘Well, if that’s the way it is, I reckon we’d best be going. Come on, Jack.’

  But it was the wrong day for me. I said: ‘Just a minute.’

  Burgin, who had been about to follow Piper to the door, hesitated and Piper stopped.

  I said gently: ‘People like you make me want to fetch up. You think I’m the boss, and so I am. You may think I’m doing very well for myself, and so I am. But it happens to be a fact that before I started in this business I was poorer than you – quite a bit poorer. And I’m not talking of back in Victoria’s time. I’m talking of seventeen and fourteen and even ten years ago. When I was in my teens and trying to mug up this sort of work I needed books – and not books out of a library but books to live with. So I did without my lunch every day so I could buy them. I went on doing that and things like it for several years. I’m not a very admirable person – far from it – and I don’t ask you to copy me; but what success I’ve got I haven’t had handed to me on a plate. I’ve had to make sacrifices for it – and I still am making them. If you’re both so gutless that you expect the welfare state to pay for your night school, then I give you up and I hope the state will too.’

  Piper said: We came here to ask a civil question. Perhaps it’s too much to expect a civil answer, eh?’

  Burgin put his hand on Piper’s arm. ‘Cut it out, Joe. This won’t get us nowhere. Come on.’

  Piper hesitated. I was tempted to say more but just held my tongue. He said: ‘Well, thanks for nothing, mister.’

  They went out. I leaned back and carefully lit a cigarette. Read detached himself from the radiator on which he’d been leaning and looked at the marks on his hands.

  ‘Nice work, if I may say so, Mr Granville. Turves like that.’

  ‘I was a damned fool and lost my temper.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if you did it more often.’

  But it seemed to me that I’d only been putting into my dislike of them something of my dislike of myself.

  At Greencroft there was still no letter from Lynn. I wondered what I should have felt if there’d been word from her that she was coming home tomorrow.

  The house was cold in spite of the weather. I opened one or two windows and switched off the electric water-heater, which had been left on all the time. On a larder shelf some tomatoes had gone bad, and in the bread-bin were three half-loaves green with mould. I threw them out.

  Back in the drawing-room everything seemed dusty to the touch. I opened the gramophone and saw there were some records still on the turn-table, but I hadn’t the interest to run them through. I tried the TV set and stared for a few minutes at a dull play about Florence Nightingale. I wasn’t staying here tonight, but I felt I ought to see Mrs Lloyd to see how Kent was going on. Then it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if at any time during the weekend Lynn had been for her key.

  I opened the front door and looked under the plant pot. The key was still there. After a minute I realised that somebody was standing in the drive.

  It was a middle-aged loose-jointed man in a shiny blue suit and a trilby hat with a warped brim. He had a long horse face and he walked as if he was afraid of waking someone.

  ‘Mr Granville?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Michael Henry Granville?’

  I said I couldn’t deny it.

  ‘Then, sir,
it’s my duty to serve you with this petition.’ He put a paper into my hand. ‘Good evening to you, sir.’

  He went off down the drive with his dormitory walk. I looked at the long envelope in my hand, and then stared after him until he disappeared. I opened the thing.

  It was a petition filed by my wife. She claimed a divorce on the ground of my misconduct with Mrs Stella Vivien Curtis, of Raglan Cottage, Letherton, Essex.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE GIRL took the pencil out of her mouth and put it in her red-gold hair.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  The offices looked as if they had survived the Great Fire, but she wasn’t of the same vintage.

  I put the paper on the counter. ‘This petition has been served on me by your firm. I’d like an interview with whichever of your principals was concerned in issuing it.’ I looked at the glass door. ‘Mr Webber – or Mr Sterne – or …’

  She smiled slightly and re-stabbed with the pencil. ‘They’re both dead, sir. But I think it would be … Excuse me.’ She went back into the cavern and whispered with a spectacled girl. ‘Yes, sir, it would be Mr Shelley. Do you want to see him?’

  ‘I do.’

  She went to the phone and came back with a doubtful expression on her young face.

  ‘What name is it, please?’

  ‘Granville.’

  ‘Yes – er – Mr Shelley’s engaged. Would you wait?’

  I waited. It felt about an hour before I was shown in.

  Mr Shelley didn’t look like a poet. He was a fat man with eyes almost closed and huge pouches under them like ladies’ handbags.

  ‘Mr Granville? How d’you do. You wished to see me?’

  I handed him the petition. ‘You are acting for my wife in this?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘And on her authority?’

  ‘Naturally. On her affidavit.’

  ‘So she approves of this very strange document?’

  He opened his eyes sufficiently to look at his fingernails. ‘Frankly, Mr Granville, I’m not really in order in seeing you at all. But I thought as you had called perhaps there was some specific point … Obviously I can’t discuss the nature of the evidence with you. You should go to your own solicitor.’

  ‘Would you tell me one thing?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘How long have you been having me watched?’

  He put on a pair of library spectacles and turned the petition round as if it had been in a fever hospital. ‘The first evidence is on May the 26th.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked you.’

  ‘It’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘I suppose this petition can still be withdrawn?’

  ‘Er – yes. It can be withdrawn at the instance of your wife.’

  ‘So the best thing is to go and see her?’

  His chair creaked as he shifted his weight. ‘The courts are naturally always glad to encourage reconciliation.’

  ‘Where can I find her at present?’

  ‘It’s on the petition.’

  ‘That’s only an accommodation address.’

  ‘I think you can get in touch with her there.’

  I stared at him for a minute. He pushed himself slowly out of the chair and walked ponderously across the room with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets.

  ‘If I may advise you on one thing, I should certainly go and consult a solicitor first. Put all the facts before him and then do what he suggests.’

  ‘How long have I before I must reply to this thing?’

  ‘You have eight days to “enter an appearance” as it’s called. You file an answer denying the charge – that’s if you wish to deny it. Then in three or four months the case will come into court.’

  ‘Are you my wife’s usual solicitor? Have you ever acted for her before?’

  He didn’t like that. ‘We’ve not acted for her before. Many women don’t have occasion to use a solicitor until something like this crops up in their lives.’

  Grosvenor Court Mews was not quite where I’d pictured it, but I found it after a couple of false starts. It was one of those quiet backwaters that you find in Mayfair: a rectangle of cobbled and paved yard in which someone always seems to be washing down a Rolls-Royce, two or three tiny houses made up out of old servants’ quarters and painted in overbright yellows and blues, a few garages and flats over.

  No. 9a was one of the flats over. I went up the stairs and rang the bell. No answer. From what Ray had said I had hardly expected it. Yet she might have come back.

  I lifted a gnome’s head on the door and let it fall. There was no outside handle to the door but I pressed it just in case. It was locked. At a branch in the stairs just below was a door marked 9, so I went down and put a finger on that bell.

  A dog yapped sharply, and after a bit there were footsteps and the door was opened by a small elderly spectacled woman with grey shingled hair and a black velvet headband. She was carrying a toy dog so overgrown with hair that it seemed to have no face at all.

  I said: ‘I beg your pardon. Does Mrs Granville live here?’

  ‘No, she lives at 9a, at the top of the stairs, but she’s not at home.’ The voice wasn’t a bit friendly.

  ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

  The woman shook her head emphatically. ‘ No idea at all. She’s changed her habits these last weeks. Pepe, darling, don’t go sleep. Just when Mother’s cooked something ’licious for you.’

  I stared at the dog. Now it had stopped yapping you could practically only tell which was the front end by the tip of red tongue that occasionally came out and licked what your sense of decency presumed to be its nose.

  I said suddenly: ‘These last weeks? But surely Mrs Granville has only had this flat a very short time?’

  ‘Not by my way of reckoning. She’s had it since March Quarter Day, and she rents it from me.’

  I stared at her and she blinked back at me.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Muttering to the dog, she’d already turned away, and the door was closing.

  I said: ‘ Do you happen to remember when Mrs Granville was here last?’

  ‘Remember?’ The woman didn’t raise her head, and, staring at the grey hair, I suddenly saw a likeness between her and her dog. ‘No, I don’t remember. I’m in and out myself all day and I don’t keep watch on my tenants.’

  ‘No, of course not—’

  ‘She was upstairs last Thursday night, but she came in so late I didn’t see her. She’s always here Thursday to pay the rent. She a friend of yours?’

  I hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  It was the wrong answer. ‘ Well, then, you’ll know.’

  I said: ‘ Is it usually late on a Thursday when she comes in?’

  She closed the door another inch. ‘ Yes. Too late. That is since the time when she used to be here in the afternoons. I’ve got to go now. My kettle’s boiling.’

  ‘Thank you for helping,’ I said, ‘Mrs – er—’

  ‘Miss,’ she said. ‘Miss Lord.’ And shut the door.

  There was a phone box in the corner of the mews, and I rang Simon Heppelwhite for Hazel Boylon’s address. He gave it me and I went out to Swiss Cottage. Simon said Hazel was working for a film company, so it wasn’t likely I should find her in. But I thought there was a reasonable prospect of catching Lynn. As I climbed to the third floor of the Victorian house where the flat was, my heart was beating with more than the effort of climbing fifty-four stairs.

  There was no bell, and no one answered the knocker. Then after a second try I could hear someone moving in the flat.

  It was three weeks tomorrow. I wondered in what way she would have changed – whether sight of her would sweep away Stella and the thing of Sunday, whether—

  The door opened. It was Hazel Boylon, in a flowered green house-coat. Her hair was tied back in a horse’s tail with a piece of green lace, and there was lipstick on her teeth.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, and then: ‘
Oh, it’s Mike.’

  ‘How are you? Is Lynn here?’

  ‘Lynn? No, dear. Did you expect her to be?’

  I followed her in. It was a big high bed-sitting-room, done in ivory and peach, both rather faded. The bed wasn’t yet pushed up into the wall.

  ‘Sorry, dear. I was washing some nylons. Hence the shambles. There are cigarettes somewhere – oh, here. Can you find a landing strip – shift those magazines.’

  I shifted the magazines. ‘I hoped I might catch Lynn. I wasn’t dead sure whether she was still with you.’

  She was looking at her fingertips. ‘Washing plays hell with one’s varnish. What d’you mean, still with me?’

  ‘Well, she’s been staying here, hasn’t she? I understood so.’

  ‘No, dear. Not since that weekend in January. I haven’t seen much of Lynn for a long time. She’s had other fish to fry … No, thanks, I’ve got a lighter here – if the damn thing’ll work … You having squaw trouble, Mike?’

  ‘You knew of it?’

  ‘No, but when men come searching for their wives at midday with that needled look …’

  ‘A man said Lynn had phoned him from your flat. Perhaps I misunderstood him.’

  ‘You must have.’

  ‘You haven’t seen anything of her recently, then?’

  ‘Not a sight. Oh, use anything for an ash-tray. Actually I’ve been busy myself until two weeks ago. I’m stand-in for Jennifer Kaplan, you know; but she’s finished her picture, and when she rests I rest.’

  ‘It must be an interesting life.’

  ‘It’s all right. But there’s too much having the tip of your nose measured. Mike—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ I said: ‘What did you mean by saying Lynn had other fish to

  fry?’

  ‘It was just a saying. Don’t you really know where she’s gone?’

  I said: ‘ I haven’t an idea now.’

  From the end of the street I telephoned Ray French. There was no reply from his flat but I caught him at the music publishers.