The Husband's Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

large enough. She put the scarf over her head, turning sideways as she did so, Carmen fashion, and then loosely brought the two ends together beneath her chin. Even if she had knotted them it would have made no difference. It was such a huge headscarf that she knew that she could wear it any way she liked without upsetting her hair-do.
    Because she was so happy, she spun round, took another look at herself in the mirror and went across to give Cliff a kiss. It was just a fleeting kiss, the sort of kiss that any wife could give to any man infront of any husband.
    Then, seeing how disconsolate, how out of it Stan was looking, she crossed over to kiss him, too.
    It was late now; really late. Getting on towards midnight. Cliff had gone off with a tremendous
vrmmp-vrmmp
in his new Jaguar, and Kendal Terrace was quietly settling down for the night. Stan double-locked the front door and put the safety-chain in position.
    It may have been simply because it was bedtime. Or because of the little kiss that she had given him. Or simply because of the Cognac that he had been drinking. Or possibly because of all of them together. Whatever it was, Stan went through into the bedroom feeling suddenly young again.
    Beryl was seated on the low stool in front of her dressing-table. It was all part of the same suite, that stool; ivory-white, with lyre-shaped, curving legs. The dressing-table was nearly all mirror, except for a pair of small ivory-white drawers on either side. The bedside tables, with their matching lamps, were ivory-white, too. And so was the waist-high, bow-fronted cabinet that had photographs of Marleen, right back to the time when she had been a tiny toddler, arranged on the glass top.
    Not that it was a cold-looking room. Beryl’s natural eye for interior decoration had seen to that. The fitted carpet, the curtains, the shades on the matching lamps and the bedspread were all old rose: they glowed. And tonight there was another splash of colour as well. Across the end of the bed she had draped the white scarf that Cliff had given her. The scarf was really white, white as marble, with the great scarlet peony blazing in the centre.
    Stan approached her gently, lovingly. It wasn’t exactly the moment to speak to her because she was cold-creaming her face. She was all shiny and sticky-looking, and he waited patiently until she had cleaned herself up with the last of the face tissues.
    Even then it wasn’t easy because she immediately poured something out of a little bottle into the palm of her hand and began patting it into her cheeks with short, vicious slaps, as though she were intent on hurting herself. Her hair, too, made it difficult for him to speak to her. Naturally, she didn’t want to risk getting face cream onto it the very day it had been done. That was why she was wearing the biggest of her bath caps. It was of flowered muslin, practically balloon size. Stan hadto edge right round it before he could even see her.
    He put his hands on her shoulders. As he did so, he felt a little tremor, almost a shudder, go through her. She folded her own hands in her lap and sat there motionless, saying nothing.
    â€˜I do love you,’ he said.
    His hands were passing beyond her shoulders by now. In a moment, they would be sliding down inside her nightdress. But again there was that tremor, that shudder; and it really was a shudder this time. She quickly brought up her pale, sticky hands to force his large dry ones away.
    â€˜Not tonight,’ she said. ‘I just don’t feel like it. Besides, I’ve got a headache. I feel terrible.’
    â€˜I don’t,’ he told her. ‘I feel pretty good.’
    He gave a little laugh as he said it; a short, silly sort of a laugh. It was not like his usual laugh at all.
    All that Beryl did was to shrug her shoulders. She had already begun to pour some more of the stuff in the bottle out into her open palm.
    â€˜Well, perhaps it agrees with you,’ she