I got a nudge on my arm and that jerked me back to reality. I glanced at Lynn and met her angry eyes. I made a little apologetic face and turned guiltily to the stage. The Queen was still there, and looking so upset I thought she’d caught me nodding too. Just in time the curtain came down and I breathed again properly and woke up, released from the dreadful hypnotism of the lights.
Lynn said: ‘For heaven’s sake, Mike!’
‘Terribly sorry.’ I touched her hand. ‘It was being so hot. I’ll be all right after a breather.’ I moved to get up.
‘You can’t go now!’ she whispered, furious. ‘ It’s only Scene One.’
‘All right. I’ll stick it out.’
She took her hand away. ‘Stick it out! You might be having a tooth drilled without an anaesthetic.’
‘With an anaesthetic, that’s the point. The break came just in time.’
The lights were lowered again. It was the Temple of Apollo this time but nothing apparently had moved on. I hadn’t often seen Lynn so furious. Of course she couldn’t be expected to understand the wear and tear that had been going on these last weeks.
Suddenly the stage blurred again. The Queen might be overwhelmed with grief but I was overwhelmed with something else. I could see three of everything, then one, then no outlines at all but just colours like somebody with acute astigmatism. I started nervously as Lynn kicked my foot, and the heavy programme slipped off my knee. One or two people along the row turned and stared. I was going to bend to pick up the programme but Lynn put a sharp hand to stop me. I sat back and stared again at that mesmeric stage. I tried to stretch my legs, which are long, and then I began to yawn. I knew I couldn’t put my hand up without distracting Lynn’s attention from the stage, and my jaw muscle quivered and shook with trying to suppress one yawn after another.
The curtain came down again at last. With a terrific sense of relief I was able to move and pick up the programme and I followed Lynn out. We began dinner in one of the Wallops. I was constantly disarmed by the look of her; her shiny, unruffled, almost flaxen head of which a hair never seemed out of place, her straight graceful back and fine-skinned shoulders.
Suddenly she said: ‘ I wonder if we shall ever make a go of it, Mike?’
‘A go? Of what?’
‘Our marriage.’
I said, startled: ‘We’ve been getting along for three years.’
‘Have we?’
I swallowed. ‘It was my impression. I’m sorry if it isn’t yours.’
She glanced across the room; her eyes stayed there too long. Her face looked very white.
After a minute, when she didn’t say anything more, I said: ‘This evening I’ve behaved like a moron. I know that and I’m terribly sorry about it. But I happened to be short of sleep, and the rush we had, and getting so hot—’
‘Oh, don’t go on, please,’ she said. ‘ Don’t go on.’
As she turned, her expression was hurt and angry and in a queer way rather frightened. The wine waiter brought the hock I’d ordered and I tasted it and nodded. I’d have nodded at anything short of vinegar.
I said: ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I was feeling well until I had to wait an hour in evening dress for you to come home when you’d promised to be back after lunch, and then had to cling to the car while you drove like a madman through the traffic, and then, having practically run into the theatre, being unable to keep my thoughts on the stage for a moment for fear you’d fall out of your seat. It can’t go on like this, Mike, really it can’t.’
I began to feel rather sick. ‘What do you suggest?’
She put her knife and fork down. ‘ I can’t eat this.’
‘Try. And drink something, for Pete’s sake. It may make things look more tolerable.’
She said: ‘I’ve been trying for quite a long time.’
I swallowed a half-glass of wine myself to try to stop the pulses that were beating in me.
‘Go on.’
‘There’s nothing more to say.’
‘Lynn …’
‘Please let’s drop it now. I feel so ill I can’t talk any more.’
‘Do you want to go home?’
‘You may as well finish your dinner.’
‘I don’t think my appetite’s much better than yours.’
‘Is everything to your liking, sir?’ The waiter had come up behind me, staring at our plates.
After a while we both began to peck at the food and finished the meal somehow. When the bill came I could see a slackening of tension. She said: ‘On second thoughts I’ll stick it out.’
‘Do you mean the opera or our marriage?’
She didn’t smile. Her face didn’t seem to have much expression in the wan light. Others were moving as we got up to go, and I said suddenly: ‘There’s Ray French.’
‘Is it? … Well, don’t bring him over here now!’
‘We can’t get out of it. He’s seen us.’
There seemed to be a bit of hesitation all round, but as we were all moving towards the same door there was really no escape. Ray had a girl with him of about twenty-one, with shy short-sighted smoky grey eyes, and a thick creamy sort of skin. She looked as if her clothes came from the Faubourg St-Honoré but that she hadn’t quite the knack of making the best of them.
‘My dear Lynn. And Mike. How’s he behaving, darling? Not fidgeting too much? I don’t think you know Miss du Came? Two infinitely dear friends of mine, Margot.’
He was in very good spirits. There was a sort of ease and sureness about him tonight as if he was in his true element, the music and the formality and the gracious set up being just right for that touch of the eighteenth century deep in his sophistication. Lynn put the best face on it, but I saw him once looking at her curiously. I tried to make conversation with Miss du Caine, and somehow it came out that she knew Joy Fraser. After a while we got away, and presently went back to hear the opera out.
I kept myself busy all that first day Lynn left me, but I don’t think I got through much work. When I arrived home, which was fairly late, I was surprised to find Mrs Lloyd still there. She said: ‘Well, I didn’t rightly know, Mr Granville, with you going off this morning so sudden. I’ve been home, but I came back just to get a few things going for your dinner. And then there was Kent. I thought I ought to bring something up from the village.’
I fended off Kent’s hysterical greeting. Perhaps I had underestimated Mrs Lloyd in supposing that she hadn’t already smelt a scandal. I said: ‘ If it were not for Kent I’d go away this weekend. There isn’t really much point in staying here and it would save your looking after me.’
‘Well, you know I always like doing that, Mr Granville But if you’ve the mind to go away, perhaps Mr Lloyd and I could take Kent, like we did that weekend you went to – Paris.’
‘I should be very grateful indeed.’
When she’d gone I wandered through the house followed by Kent, shamelessly trespassing where he’d never been allowed before. Working at Letherton hadn’t been so bad; but here I felt absolutely lost and desolate. Why hadn’t she been prepared to face me out? Might she not at least have told me where she was going to stay? Leaving her address at the bank was exactly in line with her posting the letter to say she was going, instead of leaving it in the house. It was all like a dose carefully made up for me; anxiety first, broken sleep; then the letter, the shock; then a weekend to cool off, to lose my anger and to become amenable. Monday or Tuesday she might see me.
Perhaps on certain conditions she’d agree to come back. My heart leapt at the thought. I was still in love with her, and she knew it. She knew that if it came to the point I’d throw up even the factory to make her happy.
In the night I woke again, the way I’d done the night before, but this time it was with the unpleasant feeling that somebody was downstairs.
Chapter Five
I SAT up sharply in bed and listened. It wasn’t so much that I could hear anything now as that I felt sure my ears h
ad heard something before I was awake. A moon in its third quarter had come up behind the trees, and some light fell through the undrawn curtains. Lynn’s bed was bare and formal looking. The counterpane mottled with broken shadow. No sound from Kent, who of course slept in the outhouse. But if there had been someone about …
I began to sit back. No doubt my nerves had been playing tricks. Lynn had complained sometimes that we were too far from the next habitation in case of trouble, but there hadn’t been any burglaries in the district while we were here.
Something moved in the room below.
I threw the bedclothes back and swung out of bed, feeling for my slippers. At the door I took my dressing-gown, then looked for something to use, caught up a coat-hanger. Pretty silly to think of, but just then it seemed better than bare hands. I got to the top of the stairs. The noise had come from the drawing-room.
I went down and half-way stopped, trying to make sense of it. There was no light, but I could see by the narrow grey rectangle that the front door was partly open. You could tell too by the fresh air coming up. I told myself that perhaps I’d not shut it properly and that the wind had blown it open. But there was no wind.
Step by step now, eyes a little more used to the dark. The bottom step creaked, and I carefully missed it. Over to the front door. I pulled it wider and looked out. No one. As I turned to go back into the house I saw the glint of a key in the Yale lock. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I pulled it out, stared; it made a slight rattle. Only one person beside myself had a key.
Back in the hall I moved quietly towards the door of the drawing-room. As I got near it, away from the night air, something else came. All the time I’d known her, Lynn had used a particular perfume, made by Jacques Fath; you couldn’t mistake it. I was sure then.
‘Lynn!’ I burst into the drawing-room.
It was darker here, the windows away from the moon. As I groped for the switch the french windows swung back. Bright light flickered on from a half-dozen small lamps. Papers on the floor.
I ran to the window. ‘Lynn!’
A shadow moved across the lawn and was gone into the trees.
‘Lynn!’ I said again. ‘Come back! I want to talk to you!’ I went down the two steps, nearly losing a slipper. Wet grass flicked my ankles as I ran across it.
Much darker in the trees. The little fool, coming back in the middle of the night. ‘Lynn!’ I shouted. ‘Wait!’
It was quite a small wood behind the house, and there were too many brambles. Perhaps I should have gone straight for the road, because when I heard a car start I was too far away. By the time I got to the hedge there was only a red tail-light, like a cigarette-end, dying in the distance.
I found I was still carrying the coat-hanger, and I chucked it down in anger and disappointment. I went back to the house. Coming to it from the lawn the lighted empty room was like a stage set, proportioned, planned, but unlived-in, and for some reason at this moment faintly sinister. I felt that if I waited here I should see some play begin and that the puppets might be grotesque and evil.
Kent was barking now, the silly fool, half an hour late. What had she come back for, and why at night? She obviously intended to be in the house no time and to slip out by the front door again. Her scent was still strong in the room and I found that a small pocket phial of it had been knocked over in the desk among the papers, the bills and the circulars scattered there. I couldn’t remember what she kept in the desk, except a few household accounts. Most of her stuff was upstairs.
Cold now and fed up, I shut the french windows and bolted them, threw the things back in the desk, glanced round. So far as I could see she had taken nothing, disturbed nothing. Then as I was straightening up I saw something glistening by the leg of the settee. It was one of the turquoise earrings I had bought for her on our first anniversary. They were her favourites, and she used them only on special occasions. I wondered in what way this was a special occasion. It was earlier than I thought, a little after two. I wondered whose car she had borrowed, perhaps Hazel Boylon’s. Perhaps they had been to a nightclub together and had driven out here afterwards. Or perhaps Lynn had come out with some man alone.
I spent most of Saturday afternoon and evening working with Stella Curtis and a good part of Sunday at the works alone. Because we’d been leaving later than the others almost every night, I’d got into the habit of dropping her at her house on the way home, but on the Saturday evening when I slowed down she said:
‘I wonder if you’d care to come in for a few minutes to meet my husband? ‘Have you time?’
I knew by now that he was an invalid but no more. I always tried to keep the personal side separate from work; but it was hard to say no. And anyway when I got home tonight – and early for once …
It wasn’t a bad cottage and quite big, but the rooms were low, and as I bent to go in after her she said: ‘ John, this is Mr Granville. I asked him to come in for a minute or two.’
A tall bony man got up from sitting by a fire which made the room stuffy, I thought, and shook my hand. The first thing I noticed was that he was a lot older than his wife, then that his gaunt look wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been so papery and bloodless.
‘I’m glad you’ve called in, Mr Granville. I’ve been hoping to meet you for quite a while.’
‘It’s high time I did, to apologise for overworking your wife so much in the last two months.’
‘I think she’s enjoyed it on the whole. This week has been a little hard.’
I took the chair and the cigarette offered me; Stella stood by the window, nervously I thought, smoothing her skirt, eyes on the garden.
I said: ‘I don’t know if Stella has explained to you what we’ve been working on.’
He smiled slightly, with thin lips. ‘Something of it …’
‘The crisis this week,’ I said carefully, ‘ was that we got all the equipment lashed up and ready for preliminary testing, and found as soon as we switched on that the circuit was insensitive and the triggering completely unreliable. I – don’t know if that means much to you, but that’s the chief reason I had to leave your wife on your doorstep at well after midnight last Monday.’
‘And did you trace what was wrong?’
‘Eventually. The people who supplied the transformer had used the wrong core material.’
There was a short silence. Stella said: ‘I thought we might have gone on an hour or so longer tonight.’
‘It’s time we had a break. Overwork’s like standing on the head of a broom: sooner or later the handle is bound to come up and hit you. It hit me last week.’
They waited for me to explain. When I didn’t John Curtis said: ‘It happened to me once.’
‘Probably not with the same results.’
‘With unfortunate results anyway.’
‘Very unfortunate,’ said Stella.
‘I’m sorry. Stella told me you were not well. But I don’t quite know what—’
‘Oh, things will be better for me soon,’ he said rather brusquely. ‘It’s only a question of time.’
Again there was a short silence. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘perhaps you’d like to know that your wife has been absolutely splendid on this job. It was almost by chance that I asked her to do this with me instead of Dawson, my head man, and she’s been three times as good as he could possibly have been.’
Curtis glanced across at Stella. ‘She’s three times as good at most things. Looking after me among them.’
Stella raised her head and her glance met mine for a second. She had flushed slightly but her eyes were quite clear. Then she looked at her husband in the same way.
‘Very handsome of you both. You know, most of the time I only do what I’m told. But I really think this calls for a drink.’
One thing about running your own factory and being answerable to no one but yourself is that it increases your all-round sense of responsibility. When I arrived on the Monday morning the big new metal press I’d bought had just
arrived, and I went along at once to the rear gates where they were preparing to slide it off the lorry. I climbed over the side of the lorry and lent a hand to see that the thing was edged down the planks successfully. Even when we got the press safely to earth there was nearly an hour’s sweating and straining with crowbars before it was manoeuvred across the works to the place it was going to occupy.
After it was done I walked back to my office alone. I noticed that the experimental radar job we were building was coming along fairly well. A pity in a way that it would render out of date all the equipment we’d delivered this year and all the contracts we were due to complete over the next twelve months. But that was the way it was in this business.
The buzzer was going in my office as I got in, and Miss Allen spoke through to me. ‘ It’s that bank again. The manager wants to speak to you.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Put him through.’
‘Mr Granville? … This is Fellowes from the Pall Mall branch of the National Provincial Bank. We’ve just had a letter from your wife, Mr Granville. It came by the eleven o’clock post.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m afraid it’s – not very helpful to you, sir. She simply – er – thanks us for our letter of the seventeenth and restates her request that we should not disclose her present address to anyone. I’m very sorry.’
I thought for a minute. ‘Did you tell her who wanted to know?’
‘Of course. I assumed you wished us to do that.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘We will, of course, be glad to forward any letter …’
‘Thanks,’ I said again.
After I’d hung up Miss Allen came in with her pad. I said: ‘ Not just at the moment. I’d like you to get me another number. It’s – er – Purley 2108.’
While I waited I made stabs with the end of my pencil in the blotting paper. They were not angry stabs but perplexed and frustrated ones.
The Sleeping Partner Page 4