And Graham Marshall, the Head of Personnel’s customary companion, would nod agreement while he made his plans for what would happen after George had gone. The system would be modernised. Though he knew nothing of their technicalities, Graham recognised the power that computers could bestow. And it was a power he intended to harness when he was in a position to do so.
Because there was little doubt by the end of the ’Seventies in the Department, or elsewhere in the company, that Graham Marshall was poised to take over George Brewer’s job (and the five-thousand-pound increase in salary it entailed), when the incumbent reached retirement age in 1982.
That prospect paid for the years of nodding and curbing his true opinions, for the long and, since George’s wife had died, increasingly difficult business of getting away from his boss in the evenings. It would all have been worthwhile when Graham was appointed Head of Personnel.
Since George had not reached this eminence until the age of fifty-three, and Graham would be only forty-two when he achieved it, there seemed little doubt that he was destined for even higher reaches of management.
On the strength of these expectations, early in 1980, Graham and Merrily Marshall took out a thirty-thousand-pound endowment mortgage on a much grander, though rather dilapidated, house in Boileau Avenue, Barnes. It would mean a couple of years of economy, but when he got the new job, things would ease considerably.
There was no doubt that Graham Marshall would continue to be, in his parents’ oft-repeated words, ‘a success’.
CHAPTER TWO
It was after the move into the Boileau Avenue house that things began to change. Whether the change was for good or for bad was not at first clear — certainly there was no sense of things ‘going wrong’, but events of the ensuing six months produced a marked difference in Graham’s attitude to his life and circumstances.
First, there was money. He had, needless to say, done his sums carefully and knew that the house was a good long-term investment. But the property market was sluggish. There seemed to be no immediate sign that prices would rise, as they had done so gratifyingly over the previous decade.
And the outgoings on the new house were considerable. The Marshalls had dispensed with a private pre-purchase survey. Graham, in unconscious echo of his father’s manner, had announced that, since the building society was prepared to lend so much money on the property, there couldn’t be much wrong with it. This economy was rewarded by a sudden bill for woodworm treatment, which ate up what was left of their savings after the expenses of the move.
Graham and Merrily had prepared theoretically for certain retrenchments after they moved, but they found their reality unpalatable. Ten years of living above their income had nourished habits of extravagance which they found hard to break. The spectre of worrying about money, which had loomed over Graham’s childhood but been exorcised in his early twenties by success at Crasoco, threatened to rise again.
Their altered circumstances were reflected in that year’s holiday. Instead of the customary fortnight in Cyprus, they decided to economise by renting a cottage in South Wales. Appalling weather ensured that the holiday was a disaster and necessitated long drives to find diversions for the children, which made the whole exercise almost as expensive as going abroad.
The children did not enjoy it and were not of an age to disguise their disappointment. Graham found he spent much of the holiday shouting at them. They had lost the charm which smallness had imparted, and their physical development presaged worse problems ahead. Henry already had the downy lip, swelling nose and moody secrets of adolescence. Emma, though only eleven, had lost her spontaneity of affection and replaced it with a kind of mannered coquettishness, which augured badly for the future.
Also, they were getting expensive. Both went to private schools and, apart from the inevitable cost of replacing the clothes they outgrew with such rapidity, they were getting to the age of costly entertainments. Graham found himself sounding more and more like his father as he grudgingly paid out for school trips or cinema seats or the hire of tennis courts. They seemed incapable of doing anything that didn’t cost money.
And, as they grew more expensive, so he seemed to get less out of them. They were just two young people who happened to be growing up in his house, and at his expense. When he looked at them objectively he realised they held no interest for him whatever.
The habit of objectivity, or even remoteness, increasingly coloured his view of his wife, too. Having not thought about her much for some years, he now found he was looking at her as an outsider might.
And what did the outsider see? A thin, materialistic, rather silly woman of nearly forty.
The waiflike beauty which had been crowned with flowers at their wedding had hardened into angularity. Childbearing had deflated the breasts and spread the hips. And the waiflike charm which went with the appearance had degenerated into empty mannerism.
There was no split in the marriage. They were faithful to each other, and still made love at least once a week, murmuring apposite endearments as they did so. But love-making had become routine for both of them, almost a chore, better than stacking the dishwasher, but less exciting than having a gin and tonic.
As he had with his children, Graham now looked increasingly at his wife with detachment. He realised, with only the mildest of shocks, that she meant nothing to him.
And she did bring with her positive disadvantages, mostly in the form of her mother. Initially, Graham had got on well with Lilian Hinchcliffe. He enjoyed the reflection of her fame as an actress, and the studied bohemianism of her lifestyle contrasted favourably with his own parents’ mouselike reticence. Visits to Lilian’s cottage near Abingdon ensured varied — sometimes eminent — company, plentiful alcohol and occasional cannabis. Her extravagant personality and his limited connection, through her, with the unconventional world of show business gave him an extra dimension to his colleagues. He could still hold attention in the Crasoco canteen with accounts of her outrageousness, of her much-vaunted affairs, of the fifteen-year marriage to Charmian and Merrily’s playwright father (long vanished into alcoholism and death), and, more significantly, of the supposed early liaison with the internationally known and fabulously wealthy film actor, William Essex. All these details gave Graham’s mother-in-law very positive advantages.
But Lilian changed as she grew older. Her youthful looks, skilfully maintained into her sixties, suddenly gave way, and cosmetic attempts to repair them made her grotesque. Round the same period, acting work seemed to dry up, and her longterm live-in lover, a costume designer, suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. The extravagance of her character, so charming in company, curdled, with loneliness, into resentment and contrivance. She made increasing emotional demands on her two daughters, particularly Merrily. Charmian, having broken off an unsatisfactory marriage, lived a career girl existence on the fringes of journalism. Lilian blamed her for not producing a nice set of grandchildren like Merrily, who, as a result, had the dubious privilege of being the favoured daughter.
The climax of Lilian’s emotional demands came in September 1980, with a suicide attempt. It was hopelessly inept. She left a blackmailing note and she tried to kill herself by swallowing paint stripper, of all things, though the small amount she took exposed the true nature of the gesture.
As a cry for help, however, it worked; it was agreed that she was too isolated out in Abingdon, and she was moved into a flat in Barnes to be nearer her daughters (or, more strictly, her younger daughter, since Charmian lived in Islington).