May We Borrow Your Husband? Read Online Free

Travis.’ She jumped a little as she turned and dropped her handkerchief, and when I picked it up I found it soaked with tears – it was like holding a small drowned animal in my hand. I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ meaning that I was sorry to have startled her, but she took it in quite another sense. She said, ‘Oh, I’m being silly, that’s all. It’s just a mood. Everybody has moods, don’t they?’
    â€˜Where’s Peter?’
    â€˜He’s in the museum with Stephen and Tony looking at the Picassos. I don’t understand them a bit.’
    â€˜That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people don’t.’
    â€˜But Peter doesn’t understand them either. I know he doesn’t. He’s just pretending to be interested.’
    â€˜Oh well . . .’
    â€˜And it’s not that either. I pretended for a time too, to please Stephen. But he’s pretending just to get away from me.’
    â€˜You are imagining things.’
    Punctually at five o’clock the phare lit up, but it was still too light to see the beam.
    I said, ‘The museum will be closing now.’
    â€˜Walk back with me to the hotel.’
    â€˜Wouldn’t you like to wait for Peter?’
    â€˜I don’t smell, do I?’ she asked miserably.
    â€˜Well, there’s a trace of Arpège. I’ve always liked Arpège.’
    â€˜How terribly experienced you sound.’
    â€˜Not really. It’s just that my first wife used to buy Arpège.’
    We began walking back, and the mistral bit our ears and gave her an excuse when the time came for the reddened eyes.
    She said, ‘I think Antibes so sad and grey.’
    â€˜I thought you enjoyed it here.’
    â€˜Oh, for a day or two.’
    â€˜Why not go home?’
    â€˜It would look odd, wouldn’t it, returning early from a honeymoon?’
    â€˜Or go on to Rome – or somewhere. You can get a plane to most places from Nice.’
    â€˜It wouldn’t make any difference,’ she said. ‘It’s not the place that’s wrong, it’s me.’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    â€˜He’s not happy with me. It’s as simple as that.’
    She stopped opposite one of the little rock houses by the ramparts. Washing hung down over the street below and there was a cold-looking canary in a cage.
    â€˜You said yourself . . . a mood . . .’
    â€˜It’s not his fault,’ she said. ‘It’s me. I expect it seems very stupid to you, but I never slept with anyone before I married.’ She gulped miserably at the canary.
    â€˜And Peter?’
    â€˜He’s terribly sensitive,’ she said, and added quickly, ‘That’s a good quality. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he hadn’t been.’
    â€˜If I were you, I’d take him home – as quickly as possible.’ I couldn’t help the words sounding sinister, but she hardly heard them. She was listening to the voices that came nearer down the ramparts – to Stephen’s gay laugh. ‘They’re very sweet,’ she said. ‘I’m glad he’s found friends.’
    How could I say that they were seducing Peter before her eyes? And in any case wasn’t her mistake already irretrievable? Those were two of the questions which haunted the hours, dreary for a solitary man, of the middle afternoon when work is finished and the exhilaration of the wine at lunch, and the time for the first drink has not yet come and the winter heating is at its feeblest. Had she no idea of the nature of the young man she had married? Had he taken her on as a blind or as a last desperate throw for normality? I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. There was a sort of innocence about the boy which seemed to justify her love, and I preferred to think that he was not yet fully formed, that he had married honestly and it was only now that he found himself