The Claytons were eating a cooked breakfast. Joan Clayton punctiliously cooked a good breakfast for them every morning, winter and summer, one area of endeavour in which she could feel in control.
Paul Clayton was an electronics engineer, with his own prospering, expanding business. He was just turned forty, a tall, handsome man with a rangy figure, chiselled features, thick dark hair, grey eyes. His look was intent, unsmiling, the look of a man with a quick temper, who didn’t suffer fools gladly. Beside his plate lay his usual pile of newspapers. As he dealt with his breakfast he glanced rapidly over the financial pages of each paper in turn, here and there marking something with his pen.
Opposite him, anticipating every need of her husband and two children, Joan Clayton sat drinking her coffee with a tense, frowning air, watching in simmering silence Paul’s brisk manœuvres with the newspapers.
The children ate their breakfast as always, without fuss or complaint. Ten-year-old twins, boy and girl, they carried on their customary running mealtime conversation with each other in subdued undertones. Well-disciplined and well-behaved, they knew better than to try any larking about in front of their father.
Clayton drained his cup and pushed it forward without so much as a glance at his wife. She at once refilled the cup and pushed it back to him, watchful that not a drop spilled into the saucer.
She was a plain woman, the same age as her husband to within a few weeks. She looked every year of her age and more, with her despondent, anxious air. Carefully dressed and groomed, but without any natural feel for clothes, the end result was invariably the same: dowdiness.
She had known Paul all her life. They had grown up next door to each other in a working-class street of small, rented, terrace houses in Wychford. They had attended the same schools, sat in the same class. Paul was the son of a factory hand with little money to spare, Joan the daughter of a building labourer content to drink his pint of beer in the pub at the end of his day’s work, invest his weekly few shillings in the football pools, an occasional flutter on a horse or dog.
By nature Paul was a clever, hard-working, ambitious lad with an interest in science, always experimenting in the garden shed. Joan was neither clever nor ambitious and she had no interest in any form of science. She was a plain, hefty child, asking no more than to run errands for Paul, clear up his many and varied messes, her greatest pleasure to be permitted to help in an actual experiment.
When Paul was ten years old his father died. There was now even less money to spare. It became very clear to him that his path in life was to work still harder, help his mother as much as possible, make his way in the world as best he could. He left school at the earliest opportunity, got a job in his father’s old workplace, went to night school, studied hard, but still spent many hours in the garden shed experimenting. Over the next few years he had several bright ideas which he passed on to his firm, receiving modest lump sums by way of token recognition.
As soon as Joan left school she went to work as a kitchen-hand in a working men’s café nearby. She still thought the sun rose and set with Paul Clayton, she was still ready to fetch and carry, lend a hand, in the evenings and at weekends. They never courted or dated in any conventional sense but neither of them ever had any other dates. Paul had no interest in any kind of social activity. He was interested only in getting on. His mother died when he was twenty but his goals and ambitions were undiminished. He remained in the same house, on his own now; he continued to live the same kind of life.
The years slipped by. Then, one evening in his garden shed, Paul had an exceptionally bright idea. He knew at once he was on to a winner. This one he didn’t pass on to his firm, this one he hung on to. He was by now twenty-eight; if he was ever going to amount to anything he must make a start soon. Joan knew what was in the wind. She took it for granted he would pass the idea on as before, but he told her no; this one he was going to develop himself.
He called on more than one bank manager, he approached other conventional sources of capital, but without success. The world was sunk in recession, it was no time for a young man from the back streets to be welcomed through the portals of finance houses, no one wanted to know.
And then one winter Saturday some months later, Joan’s father won a substantial sum on the football pools he had unsuccessfully patronized for decades. His immediate reaction was that he would give up work and enjoy himself, but Joan thought otherwise. She said not a word about the win to Paul but sat talking long and earnestly, first to her mother and then to her father; she talked more in the next few days than she had ever talked in her life.
At the end of this sustained onslaught her father caved in. He put on a clean shirt and went next door. He was a simple, direct man, anxious for his daughter’s welfare and future happiness; he put his proposition to Paul simply and directly: if Paul would marry Joan he could count on a good chunk of the winnings–at a fair rate of interest–to set up in business. It was by no means a fortune but he could at least make a modest start.
It took Paul thirty seconds to make up his mind. The wedding took place at a register office four weeks later. Joan moved into the little house next door and Paul began operations in a small rented unit on the local industrial estate.
Joan was overjoyed. She remained overjoyed for some years. After two years the twins were born and she was even happier and busier. Paul worked harder than ever, still going to evening classes, still studying, still spending hours in his shed, although she no longer joined him there but sat contentedly knitting or sewing in front of the living-room fire when the twins were in bed. She never felt herself neglected or lonely.
The business prospered. Paul moved into larger premises. The twins went to school. Paul decided that the time had come to leave the little house, move somewhere more suited to their improved position. Joan would have been happy to stay where they were but she fell in as always with whatever Paul decided. The new house was fitted out with every kind of labour-saving device; there was a good deal more leisure now for Joan, a good deal more money to spend.
She had nursed hopes that Paul might at long last begin to relax, they might branch out into a more social life together. But Paul brushed aside all such tentative suggestions. He looked on social life with contempt as the shallow activity of vain people without enough to do or to think about. ‘Find some outside interests,’ he told her. ‘Spend some money on yourself. Take things easy, enjoy yourself.’
She did her best. She joined the Parent-Teacher Association, took part in church activities, went to classes in cookery and flower-arranging. She made an effort to do something about her appearance, bought new clothes in the latest fashions at prices she could scarcely credit. But they never felt right on her. She settled in the end for upmarket versions of the plain, functional, serviceable garments she had always worn.
And still there remained a wilderness of leisure she didn’t know how to fill. Paul didn’t appear to notice as she began a slow slide into depression, punctuated by unnerving, seemingly random attacks of panic.
Now, on this November morning, she glanced about and saw that the children had finished breakfast. She sent them upstairs as usual to wash their hands and faces, brush their teeth, make themselves ready for school. It was always she who drove them to school; Paul’s works lay in the opposite direction.
She sat watching her husband with tense concentration. He looked at his watch, drained his cup and pushed back his chair. At once she nerved herself, launching precipitately into speech.
‘Will you be coming with me to the musical evening next week?’
He paused, surprised.
‘In the church hall,’ she added rapidly. ‘Tuesday, half past seven, it’s for Third World charities. I mentioned it to you last week. You promised to think about it and let me know.’
‘I’m afraid I forgot all about it,’ he told her amiably.
She twisted her hands together. ‘It’s a good programme, in a very good cause.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His tone