Somebody at the Door

by Raymond Postgate

  He waited some considerable time; the whole project was of a risky kind that made him uneasy. Indeed, when he did move, it had to be after all on a guess. The biggest single contract which came to the Committee was, naturally, for coal. Five years earlier this contract had been changed over, on the pretext of a very small saving, from a firm which had supplied the Council from the beginning to a relatively new coal merchant. Grayling knew of no evidence that there was anything wrong. He merely assumed from the character of his colleagues that there had been some dirty work. He therefore decided to say as little as possible, consistent with playing his hand at all. When the contract came up for a renewal, which all the rest of the Committee assumed to be automatic, he muttered over it, and then suddenly said aloud that he thought the question ought to be gone into thoroughly. He felt that the needs of the ratepayers required the figure to be examined by an independent authority, and perhaps some other tenders ought to be solicited. He suggested that the engineers be asked to report in detail on the quality of the fuel delivered; at that point the General Manager’s expression showed him he had found the weak point. He then looked at his watch, exclaimed at the time, begged his colleagues not to make any rash decision and left the committee-room at high speed.

  Two days before the next committee meeting an envelope arrived through the post, addressed to H. J. Grayling, Esq., and containing thirty-five one pound notes and nothing else. At the committee meeting when the subject came up, Grayling said nothing at all, and the contract was unanimously passed for acceptance by the full Council. At the Council meeting he said nothing also.

  A few nights later the Town Clerk took coffee and an evening’s bridge at his house. As he helped him on with his coat, Grayling said to him smoothly and in a low voice: “About that coal business. I hope your brother-in-law, the General Manager, is careful.” The Town Clerk blustered a little, said he didn’t know what Grayling meant, and then, as the Councillor remained coolly silent, was rash enough to say: “Well, you’re in it now as much as the rest of us.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Grayling.

  “Why, you got thirty-five pounds, didn’t you?” asked the Clerk.

  “I don’t understand you,” repeated the Councillor and stared him down.

  When the Committee sponsored a great “forward move” by which subscribers got gas cookers provided by the Corporation at a nominal rental in return for signing a special “all-in” contract, Grayling got the biggest “cut” of his career. He also allowed himself to go as near as he ever did to indicating a request. “Well,” he said, as the meeting rose, “I hope my gas will cost me less now.” The General Manager was wreathed in smiles. “I expect it will,” he said.

  Two days later two of the Corporation engineers called at his house. “I understand the Councillor’s complaining about his meter,” said the elder one to Renata.

  She showed no surprise; indeed, she felt none, for her husband rarely told her anything. She took them down to the cellar, where they disconnected the old meter and attached another which they had brought with them. It recorded consistently 40 per cent, of the amount that the old one had. Thereafter Grayling knew how the second habitual swindle was worked.

  Grayling reckoned that he saved £14 a year on that, and an average of £60 or £70 was delivered in pound notes. He never took anything else but pound notes, once he received a cheque, signed personally by one of the directors of the firm which supplied the gas cookers. He rang them up, and said to him: “This is Grayling speaking. That was a very foolish thing that you have done. You know what I mean,” and rang off. He received the sum in notes next day. But he did not return the cheque, nor did he destroy it. It was evidence.

  He knew his position was far from absolutely secure. But he frequently reviewed it to himself and decided that there was no evidence against him, while he himself had evidence against his colleagues.

  The gas meter? He had never asked for it to be changed, nor had it ever occurred to him to question his bills.

  The coal contract? He had suspected it, and the minutes would show that he had queried it. He had inspected the accounts (yes; he had made a point of going down to the office and looking at them, but had found nothing, as he knew he would), and they were in order, so he had not pursued the matter.

  The cheque? Precisely; an evidence of his incorruptibility. He would tell a fine story of his having rung up the director of the company, upbraided him and reduced him to humbleness. “I told him that I believed he meant no harm; that I knew such things did occur in circles in which I did not care to move; but that he must understand that Croxburn Councillors had nothing to do with such behaviour. I warned him I would keep the cheque by me, unused; and if ever I heard the least thing against his company—if the least breath of suspicion occurred— I would throw it down on the table in the Council Chamber and he could explain it if he could.”

  All that was necessary for him to do was to be sure to move first. If it ever looked as if the game was up, he must leap in with revelations. The episode of the Deputy Mayor would be in his favour and he would be almost sure to gain rather than lose in reputation.

  He was, indeed, in a position to put the squeeze on the General Manager, and through him on the Town Clerk. He did not, in fact, do so; he merely allowed himself the pleasure of occasional equivocal remarks at the end of the evenings of bridge which so bored his wife. His sole disquiet came from the Vicar; the man had made two disagreeable speeches on the Council and he wondered whether perhaps the Council staff had not been chattering.

  §

  Marital disharmony began in the first week of the Graylings’ life together. The Councillor had had good reasons to expect that everything would be as he wished it. He had the strong position. Renata was a stranger; he would supervise all her friendships. One by one she would be introduced to his friends and their wives—all considerably older than her and unquestionably good influences. She would learn which acquaintances deserved dinner invitations, and which (such as the Vicar, for example) should be kept at a short distance and invited only to tea. When the first of the two children on whom he had decided was on the way, she could have some daily assistance in the house; till then domestic duties would keep her busy during the day. If she had time to spare and needed entertainment she could join the Ladies’ Bridge Circle: she did not, it was true, play bridge, but she could learn. For the first month he would inspect all the household bills and check over each item. By that time sufficient data would be accumulated to fix a figure of a proper weekly expenditure: this he would thenceforward pay over to his wife without further question. Should she need any extra money, she would explain why, and he would either give or withhold it.

  This was his idea: it was broken in seven days. The first of his “bridge evenings” was attended by the Town Clerk, and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Alderman Robbins, and the next-door neighbour and his wife. Renata refused to play bridge. She even declined to be instructed, saying flatly she was not interested; so there was only one four. She talked about literature, of all things, to the enforced sitters-out; she chose for the subject of her discourse James Joyce’s Ulysses. She had not read it, though she managed to sound as if she had: neither had her chief antagonist, Mrs. Robbins. Mrs. Robbins had acquired the general idea that the book was an obscene work, the equivalent of Suzy, Petite Dactylo (if she had known of that work); and in any case she disliked being instructed by a wife so noticeably younger and prettier than herself. The ensuing argument was sufficiently loud and ill-tempered to disturb Grayling at the card table and make him lose half a crown. Later in the evening he had his first quarrel with Renata. He told her it was important that he should not quarrel with the Robbinses, and that she was never to mention “that filthy book” again. She told him he was an ignoramus, that his friends were fools, and that she would do as she pleased. If they had been brought up differently he would have beaten her, or she would have thrown the ornaments at him: as it was, they merely nursed t
heir anger.

  As a consequence, she refused to submit the second week’s bills to him. She merely said what the total was and declined to discuss the details. He paid; but the next week would not pay. She said nothing, but opened accounts at the chief tradesmen’s shops: they were glad enough to do so, as it made them sure of her custom. At the end of a month she handed the tradesmen’s books to him; the weekly entries were merely, “To Goods.” He asked for the individual bills; she refused to show them.

  “Then I won’t pay,” he said.

  “As you please,” she answered. “I can’t pay them. I shall give the shops your city address and tell them to present the bills to you there.”

  He jumped up in anger and alarm. “You’re not to do that—I forbid it!” he shouted.

  She made no answer; and that evening he gave her the money to pay the books. She didn’t show him the books again: she merely told him each week of the total (which varied very little), and he supplied the money. She asked him for a pound a week for herself, in addition. He refused, and she replied: “You ought to have sense enough to realize I shall only take it.”

  There was another long wrangle, at the end of which he allowed her 12s. 6d.

  As for having children, she saw to it that that did not happen; but she complained of continual minor illnesses which fed him with false hopes. The illnesses were almost wholly, but not quite wholly, imaginary; her diseases were really only slight anemia and great discontent. She completely charmed, however, old Dr. Hopkins: he assured the Councillor with absolute sincerity that it was imperative that she should have help in the house. Grayling himself, however, chose the maid: he picked on Mrs. Buttlin, whom he had met in connection with his church work. She regarded him as “the master” and her employer; she distrusted her mistress, and suspected her morals long before there was any justification. When, in 1941, she stood in front of the Vicar and said: “A whore. That’s what I said,” she satisfied a longing of some years’ growth. The full round word gave her as much pleasure as a ripe orange.

  The second week of her marriage, Renata, flushed and perverse because of the time of the month, chose to pick a quarrel with her neighbour’s wife. She told her that religion was nonsense and that she, Renata, would never go near the Church. “My husband,” she added, “is a churchwarden, but that is a matter of business.”

  She cried, for once, a little when Grayling reproached her afterwards, but she would not withdraw. It was for only a minute, too, that his reproaches were effective. He almost immediately changed over to the terms in which he really thought. He told her to cease trying her superior airs on him and his friends, as she was cheap, and ought to be grateful to him for picking her out of an intolerable existence. She froze at once; but he did not perceive it, for he saw nothing offensive in what he said. It was a mere statement of fact. All his life at the office the firm had, openly or by implication, made a similar statement of fact to him. He had never resented it.

  He had little hesitation in forbidding her friends the house. He came home one afternoon to find Mrs. Callaghan, wife of a man who had once run as a Labour candidate for the Council. He behaved so icily that she soon rose to go, and he saw her to the door. As he opened it, he said, in an equable voice:

  “Please do not come here again.”

  “What did you say?” Mrs. Callaghan asked incredulously.

  “Please do not come here again,” he repeated. “I think your opinions are likely to have a bad influence on my wife. You would not be welcome.”

  She flushed and answered: “I shall do whatever Mrs. Grayling wishes.”

  He did not seem affected. “If necessary,” he remarked, “I shall write to your husband.”

  He went back into the house. “I have told that woman not to come back,” he informed Renata. “She is a bad influence, and you are not to drink in this house.”

  There was a pathetic and deplorable half-bottle of Australian wine which Mrs. Callaghan had brought and out of which they had each had a glass. He poured the contents down the sink and put the bottle aside for the dustman.

  §

  A border warfare of this kind must in the end close in a compromise (or a slaughter). Before 1939, Mr. and Mrs. Grayling had achieved the compromise: a method of living satisfactory to neither; agreed, if not agreeable. He paid her weekly a fixed amount for household expenses. Since prices, on the whole, fell from 1931 onwards, this was convenient to her; she could, and did, annex the margin for herself. He did not question her accounts, nor expect from her affection or anything but a civil friendliness. She on her side ran his house, provided food for him, and at not too frequent intervals entertained his friends. She was aloof in her conversation and attitude, but avoided shocking the guests; he, in return, made no effort to discover whether she invited Mrs. Callaghan or other undesirables while he was at the office. They disliked each other decorously: the ménage might have gone on for years on the same basis, as many others have done.

  Externally, both of them seemed to have learned calm: whether it was feigned, in order not to give the other an advantage, or real, they both seemed satisfied with a life of limited courtesy and limited hostility. Underneath there was a strain: it perhaps was as well that this strain was relaxed shortly before the outbreak of war.

  The Munich Agreement in 1938 was supposed to bring “peace in our time”; but even the Chamberlain Government doubted that. What it immediately brought was the institution of a national Air Raid Precautions Service, and this was not an unmixed evil for the Grayling family. It enabled Mrs. Grayling to enrol for A.R.P. work; it ended an idleness which was eating out her heart without her knowledge. Her husband’s authority had, despite her resistance, limited her acquaintance. When she enrolled she was suddenly thrown into the company of men and women whom he would never have wished her to meet. Croxburn was a snobbish suburb, and the enrolment of the A.R.P. staff was a compulsory churning up of social strata which would have preferred to remain separate. Theoretically, Renata Grayling approved this, though for no better reason than that it annoyed her husband. She had, in fact, some difficulty in adjusting herself to the sardonic and robust conversation of the ex-charladies and workmen’s wives whom she met, but she made the effort, and was rewarded by the verdict that she was “superior” but “not uppish.”

  Perhaps equally important in making life easier for her was the uniform that she received. Dark blue trousers and dark blue tunic, not unlike an army officer’s tunic, were hard on some of her plumper colleagues, but for the slim and not too young were a gift from heaven, so long as they remembered not to wear shoes with high heels. Renata knew, as she walked about confidently and with a strictly limited make-up, that she looked at once delightful and efficient. Trim, slender, charming: those were the adjectives which she cynically decided a Woman’s Page Editor could honestly apply to her. They were the adjectives which a colleague had already used. Hugh Rolandson, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, had joined the A.R.P. because the club-foot with which he had been born prevented him taking more active work. He had not been in the service a fortnight before he knew he was in love with Mrs. Grayling.

  He was a young man—born in 1910—innocent and ardent, not rich, with a handsome fair face, and singularly bright blue eyes. She was older than he was, unhappy, and sorely in need of affection. She made some effort at resistance. She reminded herself that he was the sole support of his mother, that he was wholly dependent upon a not-well-paid job in the gift of a narrow-minded employer, that baby-snatching was ignoble. But she had been used to taking responsibility on herself. She did so once again, and in the spring of 1939 went with him to Paris for a long week-end, Friday to Tuesday, by the Folkestone-Boulogne route, on specially cheap tickets provided by the Southern Railway.

  §

  It was not very surprising to anyone but himself that Hugh Rolandson fell so helplessly in love. He was twenty-nine when he first saw Renata, but he was young for his age. And he was in addition unusually inexperienced.
His only relative was his mother, to whom he was devoted. He lived with her in a small house in Croxburn in which he had been born, and which, with a very small income, was all his father had left her. She was not precisely an invalid, but she was in indifferent health, and he had very rarely left her for as much as a night. As soon as he had left college he had gone to work for the old-established publishing house of Brown and Summers, and he still was working with them. He was underpaid, but loyal; and until he met Renata his thoughts were almost wholly concentrated on deserving his employers’ approbation.

  Brown & Summers Ltd. was a publishing firm of a kind that was very common fifty years ago, but is rarer now. It was a family business, run paternally and economically. After eight years’ service Hugh was still only getting a basic wage of £4 a week, but he received frequently extra payments according to a carefully calculated system laid down by Sir Herbert Brown-Cotton (in those days only Mr. Herbert) in 1910, when he became senior partner. It was not an unjust scheme; its only considerable fault was that Sir Herbert failed to realize how much the value of money had decreased since 1910. Hugh was paid his original salary of £4, and to this was added a low rate of extra remuneration for anything that he wrote which was used in any of the various magazines which the house published. Editorial work, cutting, proof-reading, and corresponding with authors he was supposed to do as part of the job for which he was paid his original fee. Should anything that he wrote be regarded as worthy of book publication, for that he would be given a contract identical with the contracts offered to outside authors, which might mean quite an appreciable extra sum. He had never yet achieved that honour. Ideas that he produced for other authors to use were the firm’s property.