May We Borrow Your Husband? Read Online Free PDF Page A

is there’s no room in the Sprite for more than three, but Peter was saying the other day that you wanted some time to have a hair-do, so we thought . . .’
    I had the impression that he was talking far too much to be convincing, but there wasn’t any need for him to worry: she saw nothing at all. ‘I think it’s a marvellous idea,’ she said. ‘You know, he needs a little holiday from me. He’s had hardly a moment to himself since I came up the aisle.’ She was magnificently sensible, and perhaps even relieved. Poor girl. She needed a little holiday, too.
    â€˜It’s going to be excruciatingly uncomfortable. He’ll have to sit on Tony’s knee.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose he’ll mind that.’
    â€˜And, of course, we can’t guarantee the quality of food en route.’
    For the first time I saw Stephen as a stupid man. Was there a shade of hope in that?
    In the long run, of the two, notwithstanding his brutality, Tony had the better brain. Before Stephen had time to speak once more, Tony raised his eyes from the croissant and said decisively, ‘That’s fine. All’s settled, and we’ll deliver him back in one piece by dinner-time.’
    He looked challengingly across at me. ‘Of course, we hate to leave you alone for lunch, but I am sure William will look after you.’
    â€˜William?’ she asked, and I hated the way she looked at me as if I didn’t exist. ‘Oh, you mean Mr Harris?’
    I invited her to have lunch with me at Lou-Lou’s in the old port – I couldn’t very well do anything else – and at that moment the laggard Peter came out on to the terrace. She said quickly, ‘I don’t want to interrupt your work . . .’
    â€˜I don’t believe in starvation,’ I said. ‘It has to be interrupted for meals.’
    Peter had cut himself again shaving and had a large blob of cottonwool stuck on his chin: it reminded me of Stephen’s contusion. I had the impression, while he stood there waiting for someone to say something to him, that he knew all about the conversation; it had been carefully rehearsed by all three, the parts allotted, the unconcerned manner practised well beforehand, even the bit about the food. . . . Now somebody had missed a cue, so I spoke.
    â€˜I’ve asked your wife to lunch at Lou-Lou’s,’ I said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
    I would have been amused by the expression of quick relief on all three faces if I had found it possible to be amused by anything at all in the situation.
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    â€˜And you didn’t marry again after she left?’
    â€˜By that time I was getting too old to marry.’
    â€˜Picasso does it.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m not quite as old as Picasso.’
    The silly conversation went on against a background of fishing-nets draped over a wallpaper with a design of wine-bottles – interior decoration again. Sometimes I longed for a room which had simply grown that way like the lines on a human face. The fish soup steamed away between us, smelling of garlic. We were the only guests there. Perhaps it was the solitude, perhaps it was the directness of her question, perhaps it was only the effect of the rosé , but quite suddenly I had the comforting sense that we were intimate friends. ‘There’s always work,’ I said, ‘and wine and a good cheese.’
    â€˜I couldn’t be that philosophical if I lost Peter.’
    â€˜That’s not likely to happen, is it?’
    â€˜I think I’d die,’ she said, ‘like someone in Christina Rossetti.’
    â€˜I thought nobody of your generation read her.’
    If I had been twenty years older, perhaps, I could have explained that nothing is quite as bad as that, that at the end of what is called ‘the sexual life’ the only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment,