May We Borrow Your Husband & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life by Graham Greene
‘Why, Beauty,’ I exclaimed. He gave his clubman grunt again and waited. Was he cautious because he found that I knew his name or did he recognize in my clothes and my smell that I belonged to the same class as the woman in the toque, that I was one who would disapprove of his nocturnal ramble? Suddenly he cocked an ear in the direction of the house on the ramparts; it was possible that he had heard a woman’s voice calling. Certainly he looked dubiously up at me as though he wanted to see whether I had heard it too, and perhaps because I made no move he considered he was safe. He began to undulate down the pavement with a purpose, like the feather boa in the cabaret act which floats around seeking a top-hat. I followed at a discreet distance.
Was it memory or a keen sense of smell which affected him? Of all the dustbins in the mean street there was only one which had lost its cover – indescribable tendrils drooped over the top. Beauty – he ignored me as completely now as he would have ignored an inferior dog – stood on his hind legs with two delicately feathered paws holding the edge of the bin. He turned his head and looked at me, without expression, two pools of ink in which a soothsayer perhaps could have read an infinite series of predictions. He gave a scramble like an athlete raising himself on a parallel bar, and he was within the dustbin, and the feathered forepaws – I am sure I have read somewhere that the feathering is very important in a contest of Pekinese – were rooting and delving among the old vegetables, the empty cartons, the squashy fragments in the bin. He became excited and his nose went down like a pig after truffles. Then his back paws got into play, discarding the rubbish behind – old fruit-skins fell on the pavement and rotten figs, fish-heads . . . At last he had what he had come for – a long tube of intestine belonging to God knows what animal; he tossed it in the air, so that it curled round the milk-white throat. Then he abandoned the dustbin, and he galumphed down the street like a harlequin, trailing behind him the intestine which might have been a string of sausages.
I must admit I was wholly on his side. Surely anything was better than the embrace of a flat breast.
Round a turning he found a dark corner obviously more suited than all the others to gnawing an intestine because it contained a great splash of ordure. He tested the ordure first, like the clubman he was, with his nostrils, and then he rolled lavishly back on it, paws in the air, rubbing the café-au-lait fur in the dark shampoo, the intestines trailing from his mouth, while the satin eyes gazed imperturbably up at the great black Midi sky.
Curiosity took me back home, after all, by way of the ramparts, and there over the balcony the woman leant, trying, I suppose, to detect her dog in the shadows of the street below. ‘Beauty!’ I heard her call wearily, ‘Beauty!’ And then with growing impatience, ‘Beauty! Come home! You’ve done your wee-wee, Beauty. Where are you, Beauty, Beauty?’ Such small things ruin our sense of compassion, for surely, if it had not been for that hideous orange toque, I would have felt some pity for the old sterile thing, perched up there, calling for lost Beauty.
CHAGRIN IN THREE PARTS
* * *
IT was February in Antibes. Gusts of rain blew along the ramparts, and the emaciated statues on the terrace of the Château Grimaldi dripped with wet, and there was a sound absent during the flat blue days of summer, the continual rustle below the ramparts of the small surf. All along the Côte the summer restaurants were closed, but lights shone in Flix au Port and one Peugeot of the latest model stood in the parking-rank. The bare masts of the abandoned yachts stuck up like tooth-picks and the last plane in the winter-service dropped, in a flicker of green, red and yellow lights, like Christmas-tree baubles, towards the airport of Nice. This was the Antibes I always enjoyed; and I was disappointed to find I was not alone in the restaurant as I was most nights of the week.
Crossing the road I saw a very powerful lady dressed in black who stared out at me from one of the window-tables, as though she were willing me not to enter, and when I came in and took my place before the other window, she regarded me with too evident distaste. My raincoat was shabby and my shoes were muddy and in any case I was a man. Momentarily, while she took me in, from balding top to shabby toe, she interrupted her conversation with the patronne who addressed her as Madame Dejoie.
Madame Dejoie continued her monologue in a tone of firm disapproval: it was unusual for Madame Volet to be late, but she hoped nothing had happened to her on the ramparts. In winter there were always Algerians about, she added with mysterious apprehension, as though she were talking of wolves, but nonetheless Madame Volet had refused Madame Dejoie’s offer to be fetched from her home. ‘I did not press her under the circumstances. Poor Madame Volet.’ Her hand clutched a huge pepper-mill like a bludgeon, and I pictured Madame Volet as a weak timid old lady, dressed too in black, afraid even of protection by so formidable a friend.
How wrong I was. Madame Volet blew suddenly in with a gust of rain through the side door beside my table, and she was young and extravagantly pretty, in her tight black pants, and with a long neck emerging from a wine-red polo-necked sweater. I was glad when she sat down side by side with Madame Dejoie, so that I need not lose the sight of her while I ate.
‘I am late,’ she said, ‘I know that I am late. So many little things have to be done when you are alone, and I am not yet accustomed to being alone,’ she added with a pretty little sob which reminded me of a cut-glass Victorian tear-bottle. She took off thick winter gloves with a wringing gesture which made me think of handkerchiefs wet with grief, and her hands looked suddenly small and useless and vulnerable.
‘Pauvre cocotte,’ said Madame Dejoie, ‘be quiet here with me and forget awhile. I have ordered a bouillabaisse with langouste.’
‘But I have no appetite, Emmy.’
‘It will come back. You’ll see. Now here is your porto and I have ordered a bottle of blanc de blancs.’
‘You will make me tout à fait saoule.’
‘We are going to eat and drink and for a little while we are both going to forget everything. I know exactly how you are feeling, for I too lost a beloved husband.’
‘By death,’ little Madame Volet said. ‘That makes a great difference. Death is quite bearable.’
‘It is more irrevocable.’
‘Nothing can be more irrevocable than my situation. Emmy, he loves the little bitch.’
‘All I know of her is that she has deplorable taste – or a deplorable hairdresser.’
‘But that was exactly what I told him.’
‘You were wrong. I should have told him, not you, for he might have believed me, and in any case my criticism would not have hurt his pride.’
‘I love him,’ Madame Volet said, ‘I cannot be prudent,’ and then she suddenly became aware of my presence. She whispered something to her companion, and I heard the reassurance, ‘Un anglais.’ I watched her as covertly as I could – like most of my fellow writers I have the spirit of a voyeur – and I wondered how stupid married men could be. I was temporarily free, and I very much wanted to console her, but I didn’t exist in her eyes, now she knew that I was English, nor in the eyes of Madame Dejoie. I was less than human – I was only a reject from the Common Market.
I ordered a small rouget and a half bottle of Pouilly and tried to be interested in the Trollope I had brought with me. But my attention strayed.
‘I adored my husband,’ Madame Dejoie was saying, and her hand again grasped the pepper-mill, but this time it looked less like a bludgeon.
‘I still do, Emmy. That is the worst of it. I know that if he came back . . .’
‘Mine can never come back,’ Madame Dejoie retorted, touching the corner of one eye with her handkerchief and then examining the smear of black left behind.
In a gloomy silence they both drained their portos. Then Madame Dejoie said with determination, ‘There is no turning back. You should accept that as I do. There remains for us only the problem of adaptation.’
‘After such a betrayal I could never look at another man,’ Madame Volet replied. At that
‘I would never suggest another man,’ Madame Dejoie said. ‘Never.’
‘What then?’
‘When my poor husband died from an infection of the bowels I thought myself quite inconsolable, but I said to myself, Courage, courage. You must learn to laugh again.’
‘To laugh,’ Madame Volet exclaimed. ‘To laugh at what?’ But before Madame Dejoie could reply, Monsieur Félix had arrived to perform his neat surgical operation upon the fish for the bouillabaisse. Madame Dejoie watched with real interest; Madame Volet, I thought, watched for politeness’ sake while she finished a glass of blanc de blancs.
When the operation was over Madame Dejoie filled the glasses and said, ‘I was lucky enough to have une amie who taught me not to mourn for the past.’ She raised her glass and cocking a finger as I had seen men do, she added, ‘Pas de mollesse.’
‘Pas de mollesse,’ Madame Volet repeated with a wan enchanting smile.
I felt decidedly ashamed of myself – a cold literary observer of human anguish. I was afraid of catching poor Madame Volet’s eyes (what kind of a man was capable of betraying her for a woman who took the wrong sort of rinse?) and I tried to occupy myself with sad Mr Crawley’s courtship as he stumped up the muddy lane in his big clergyman’s boots. In any case the two of them had dropped their voices; a gentle smell of garlic came to me from the bouillabaisse, the bottle of blanc de blancs was nearly finished, and, in spite of Madame Volet’s protestation, Madame Dejoie had called for another. ‘There are no half bottles,’ she said. ‘We can always leave something for the gods.’ Again their voices sank to an intimate murmur as Mr Crawley’s suit was accepted (though how he was to support an inevitably large family would not appear until the succeeding volume). I was startled out of my forced concentration by a laugh: a musical laugh: it was Madame Volet’s.
‘Cochon,’ she exclaimed. Madame Dejoie regarded her over her glass (the new bottle had already been broached) under beetling brows. ‘I am telling you the truth,’ she said. ‘He would crow like a cock.’
‘But what a joke to play!’
‘It began as a joke, but he was really proud of himself. Après seulement deux coups . . .’
‘Jamais trois?’ Madame Volet asked and she giggled and splashed a little of her wine down her polo-necked collar.
‘Jamais.’
‘Je suis saoule.’
‘Moi aussi, cocotte.’
Madame Volet said, ‘To crow like a cock – at least it was a fantaisie. My husband has no fantaisies. He is strictly classical.’
‘Pas de vices.’
‘And yet you miss him?’
‘He worked hard,’ Madame Volet said and giggled. ‘To think that at the end he must have been working hard for both of us.’
‘You found it a little boring?’
‘It was a habit – how one misses a habit. I wake now at five in the morning.’
‘At five?’
‘It was the hour of his greatest activity.’
‘My husband was a very small man,’ Madame Dejoie said. ‘Not in height of course. He was two metres high.’
‘Oh, Paul is big enough – but always the same.’
‘Why do you continue to love that man?’ Madame Dejoie sighed and put her large hand on Madame Volet’s knee. She wore a signet-ring which perhaps had belonged to her late husband. Madame Volet sighed too and I thought melancholy was returning to the table, but then she hiccuped and both of them laughed.
‘Tu es vraiment saoule, cocotte.’
‘Do I truly miss Paul, or is it only that I miss his habits?’ She suddenly met my eye and blushed right down into the wine-coloured wine-stained polo-necked collar.
Madame Dejoie repeated reassuringly, ‘Un anglais – ou un américain.’ She hardly bothered to lower her voice at all. ‘Do you know how limited my experience was when my husband died? I loved him when he crowed like a cock. I was glad he was so pleased. I only wanted him to be pleased. I adored him, and yet in those days – j’ai peut-être joui trois fois par semaine. I did not expect more. It seemed to me a natural limit.’
‘In my case it was three times a day,’ Madame Volet said and giggled again. ‘Mais toujours d’une façon classique.’ She put her hands over her face and gave a little sob. Madame Dejoie put an arm round her shoulders. There was a long silence while the remains of the bouillabaisse were cleared away.
2
‘Men are curious animals,’ Madame Dejoie said at last. The coffee had come and they divided one marc between them, in turn dipping lumps of sugar which they inserted into one another’s mouths. ‘Animals too lack imagination. A dog has no fantaisie.’
‘How bored I have been sometimes,’ Madame Volet said. He would talk politics continually and turn on the news at eight in the morning. At eight! What do I care for politics? But if I asked his advice about anything important he showed no interest at all. With you I can talk about anything, about the whole world.’
‘I adored my husband,’ Madame Dejoie said, ‘yet it was only after his death I discovered my capacity for love. With Pauline. You never knew Pauline. She died five years ago. I loved her more than I ever loved Jacques, and yet I felt no despair when she died. I knew that it was not the end, for I knew by then my capacity.’
‘I have never loved a woman,’ Madame Volet said.
‘Chérie, then you do not know what love can mean. With a woman you do not have to be content with une façon classique three times a day.’
‘I love Paul, but he is so different from me in every way . . .’
‘Unlike Pauline, he is a man.’
‘Oh Emmy, you describe him so perfectly. How well you understand. A man!’
‘When you really think of it, how comic that little object is. Hardly enough to crow about, one would think.’
Madame Volet giggled and said, ‘Cochon.’
‘Perhaps smoked like an eel one might enjoy it.’
‘Stop it. Stop it.’ They rocked up and down with little gusts of laughter. They were drunk, of course, but in the most charming way.
3
How distant now seemed Trollope’s muddy lane, the heavy boots of Mr Crawley, his proud shy courtship. In time we travel a space as vast as any astronaut’s. When I looked up Madame Volet’s head rested on Madame Dejoie’s shoulder. ‘I feel so sleepy,’ she said.
‘Tonight you shall sleep, chérie.’
‘I am so little good to you. I know nothing.’
‘In love one learns quickly.’
‘But am I in love?’ Madame Volet asked, sitting up very straight and staring into Madame Dejoie’s sombre eyes.
‘If the answer were no, you wouldn’t ask the question.’
‘But I thought I could never love again.’
‘Not another man,’ Madame Dejoie said. ‘Chérie, you are almost asleep. Come.’
‘The bill?’ Madame Volet said as though perhaps she were trying to delay the moment of decision.
‘I will pay tomorrow. What a pretty coat this is – but not warm enough, chérie, in February. You need to be cared for.’
‘You have given me back my courage,’ Madame Volet said. ‘When I came in here I was si démoralisée . . .’
‘Soon – I promise – you will be able to laugh at the past . . .’
‘I have already laughed,’ Madame Volet said. ‘Did he really crow like a cock?’
‘Yes.’
‘I shall never be able to forget what you said about smoked eel. Never. If I saw one now. . . .’ She began to giggle again and Madame Dejoie steadied her a little on the way to the door.
I watched them cross the road to the car-park. Suddenly Madame Volet gave a little hop and skip and flung her arms around Madame Dejoie’s neck, and the wind, blowing through the archway of the port, carried the faint sound of her laughter to me where I sat alone chez
THE OVER-NIGHT BAG
* * *
THE little man who came to the information desk in Nice airport when they demanded ‘Henry Cooper, passenger on BEA flight 105 for London’ looked like a shadow cast by the brilliant glitter of the sun. He wore a grey town-suit and black shoes; he had a grey skin which carefully matched his suit, and since it was impossible for him to change his skin, it was possible that he had no other suit.
‘Are you Mr Cooper?’
‘Yes,’ He carried a BOAC over-night bag and he laid it tenderly on the ledge of the information desk as though it contained something precious and fragile like an electric razor.
‘There is a telegram for you.’
He opened it and read the message twice over. ‘Bon voyage. Much missed. You will be welcome home, dear boy. Mother.’ He tore the telegram once across and left it on the desk, from which the girl in the blue uniform, after a discreet interval, picked the pieces and with natural curiosity joined them together. Then she looked for the little grey man among the passengers who were now lining up at the tourist gate to join the Trident. He was among the last, carrying his blue BOAC bag.
Near the front of the plane Henry Cooper found a window-seat and placed the bag on the central seat beside him. A large woman in pale blue trousers too tight for the size of her buttocks took the third seat. She squeezed a very large handbag in beside the other on the central seat, and she laid a large fur coat on top of both. Henry Cooper said, ‘May I put it on the rack, please?’
She looked at him with contempt. ‘Put what?’
‘Your coat.’
‘If you want to. Why?’
‘It’s a very heavy coat. It’s squashing my over-night bag.’