May We Borrow Your Husband? (7 page)

‘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 moment she looked right through me. I felt invisible. I put my hand between the light and the wall to prove that I had a shadow, and the shadow looked like a beast with horns.

‘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
Félix. I was glad she was happy again. I was glad that she was in the kind reliable hands of Madame Dejoie. What a fool Paul had been, I reflected, feeling chagrin myself now for so many wasted opportunities.

THE OVER-NIGHT BAG

T
HE
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.'

He was so small he could stand nearly upright under the rack. When he sat down he fastened the seat-belt over the two bags before he fastened his own. The woman watched him with suspicion. ‘I've never seen anyone do that before,' she said.

‘I don't want it shaken about,' he said. ‘There are storms over London.'

‘You haven't got an animal in there, have you?'

‘Not exactly.'

‘It's cruel to carry an animal shut up like that,' she said, as though she disbelieved him.

As the Trident began its run he laid his hand on the bag as if he were reassuring something within. The woman watched the bag narrowly. If she saw the least movement of life she had made up her mind to call the stewardess. Even if it were only a tortoise. . . . A tortoise needed air, of so she supposed, in spite of hibernation. When they were safely airborne he relaxed and began to read a
Nice-Matin
– he spent a good deal of time on each story as though his French were not very good. The woman struggled angrily to get her big cavernous bag from under the seat-belt. She muttered ‘Ridiculous' twice for his benefit. Then she made up, put on thick horn-rimmed glasses and began to re-read a letter which began ‘My darling Tiny' and ended ‘Your own cuddly Bertha'. After a while she grew tired of the weight on her knees and dropped it on to the
BOAC
over-night bag.

The little man leapt in distress. ‘Please,' he said, ‘please.' He lifted her bag and pushed it quite rudely into a corner of the seat. ‘I don't want it squashed,' he said. ‘It's a matter of respect.'

‘What have you got in your precious bag?' she asked him angrily.

‘A dead baby,' he said. ‘I thought I had told you.'

‘On the left of the aircraft,' the pilot announced through the loud-speaker, you will see Montélimar. We shall be passing Paris in –'

‘You are not serious,' she said.

‘It's just one of those things,' he replied in a tone that carried conviction.

‘But you can't take dead babies – like that – in a bag – in the economy class.'

‘In the case of a baby it is so much cheaper than freight. Only a week old. It weighs so little.'

‘But it should be in a coffin, not an over-night bag.'

‘My wife didn't trust a foreign coffin. She said the materials they use are not durable. She's rather a conventional woman.'

‘Then it's
your
baby?' Under the circumstances she seemed almost prepared to sympathize.

‘My wife's baby,' he corrected her.

‘What's the difference?'

He said sadly, ‘There could well be a difference,' and turned the page of
Nice-Matin
.

‘Are you suggesting . . .?' But he was deep in a column dealing with a Lions Club meeting in Antibes and the rather revolutionary suggestion made there by a member from Grasse. She read over again her letter from ‘cuddly Bertha', but it failed to hold her attention. She kept on stealing a glance at the over-night bag.