The Human Factor Read Free Page B

bookcase.
    â€˜Finished it?’
    â€˜No, I doubt whether I ever shall now. Life’s a bit too short.’
    â€˜But I thought you always liked long books.’
    â€˜Perhaps I’ll have a go at War and Peace before it’s too late.’
    â€˜We haven’t got it.’
    â€˜I’m going to buy a copy tomorrow.’
    She had carefully measured out a quadruple whisky by English pub standards, and now she brought it to him and closed the glass in his hand, as though it were a message no one else must read. Indeed, the degree of his drinking was known only to them: he usually drank nothing stronger than beer when he was with a colleague or even with a stranger in a bar. Any touch of alcoholism might always be regarded in his profession with suspicion. Only Davis had the indifference to knock the drinks back with a fine abandon, not caring who saw him, but then he had the audacity which comes from a sense of complete innocence. Castle had lost both audacity and innocence for ever in South Africa while he was waiting for the blow to fall.
    â€˜You don’t mind, do you,’ Sarah asked, ‘if it’s a cold meal tonight? I was busy with Sam all evening.’
    â€˜Of course not.’
    He put his arm round her. The depth of their love was as secret as the quadruple measure of whisky. To speak of it to others would invite danger. Love was a total risk. Literature had always so proclaimed it. Tristan, Anna Karenina, even the lust of Lovelace – he had glanced at the last volume of Clarissa . ‘I like my wife’ was the most he had ever said even to Davis.
    â€˜I wonder what I would do without you,’ Castle said.
    â€˜Much the same as you are doing now. Two doubles before dinner at eight.’
    â€˜When I arrived and you weren’t here with the whisky, I was scared.’
    â€˜Scared of what?’
    â€˜Of being left alone. Poor Davis,’ he added, ‘going home to nothing.’
    â€˜Perhaps he has a lot more fun.’
    â€˜This is my fun,’ he said. ‘A sense of security.’
    â€˜Is life outside as dangerous as all that?’ She sipped from his glass and touched his mouth with lips which were wet with J. & B. He always bought J. & B. because of its colour – a large whisky and soda looked no stronger than a weak one of another brand.
    The telephone rang from the table by the sofa. He lifted the receiver and said ‘Hello,’ but no one replied. ‘Hello.’ He silently counted four, then put the receiver down when he heard the connection break.
    â€˜Nobody?’
    â€˜I expect it was a wrong number.’
    â€˜It’s happened three times this month. Always when you are late at the office. You don’t think it could be a burglar checking up to see if we are at home?’
    â€˜There’s nothing worth a burglary here.’
    â€˜One reads such horrible stories, darling – men with stockings over their faces. I hate the time after sunset before you come home.’
    â€˜That’s why I bought you Buller. Where is Buller?’
    â€˜He’s in the garden eating grass. Something has upset him. Anyway, you know what he’s like with strangers. He fawns on them.’
    â€˜He might object to a stocking mask all the same.’
    â€˜He would think it was put on to please him. You remember at Christmas . . . with the paper hats . . .’
    â€˜I’d always thought before we got him that boxers were fierce dogs.’
    â€˜They are – with cats.’
    The door creaked and Castle turned quickly: the square black muzzle of Buller pushed the door fully open, and then he launched his body like a sack of potatoes at Castle’s flies. Castle fended him off. ‘Down, Buller, down.’ A long ribbon of spittle descended Castle’s trouser leg. He said, ‘If that’s fawning, any burglar would run a mile.’ Buller began to bark spasmodically and