May We Borrow Your Husband? Read Online Free Page B

he?’
    â€˜I doubt it – knowing our friend Colin Winstanley. But it’s still a moot point. He hasn’t given himself away yet.’
    â€˜We are planning to put it to the test one day soon,’ Stephen said.
    â€˜A drive in the country,’ Tony said. ‘The strain’s telling on him, you can see that. He’s even afraid to take a siesta for fear of unwanted attentions.’
    â€˜Haven’t you any mercy?’ It was an absurd old-fashioned word to use to those two sophisticates. I felt more than ever square. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that you may ruin her life – for the sake of your little game?’
    â€˜We can depend on you, William,’ Tony said, ‘to give her creature comforts.’
    Stephen said, ‘It’s no game. You should realize we are saving him. Think of the life that he would lead – with all those soft contours lapping him around.’ He added, ‘Women always remind me of a damp salad – you know, those faded bits of greenery positively swimming . . .’
    â€˜Every man to his taste,’ Tony said. ‘But Peter’s not cut out for that sort of life. He’s very sensitive,’ he said, using the girl’s own words. There wasn’t any more I could think of to say.
    5
    You will notice that I play a very unheroic part in this comedy. I could have gone direct, I suppose, to the girl and given her a little lecture on the facts of life, beginning gently with the régime of an English public school – he had worn a scarf of old-boy colours, until Tony had said to him one day at breakfast that he thought the puce stripe was an error of judgement. Or perhaps I could have protested to the boy himself, but, if Stephen had spoken the truth and he was under a severe nervous strain, my intervention would hardly have helped to ease it. There was no move I could make. I had just to sit there and watch while they made the moves carefully and adroitly towards the climax.
    It came three days later at breakfast when, as usual, she was sitting alone with them, while her husband was upstairs with his lotions. They had never been more charming or more entertaining. As I arrived at my table they were giving her a really funny description of a house in Kensington that they had decorated for a dowager duchess who was passionately interested in the Napoleonic wars. There was an ashtray, I remember, made out of a horse’s hoof, guaranteed – so the dealer said – by Apsley House to have belonged to a grey ridden by Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo; there was an umbrella stand made out of a shell-case found on the field of Austerlitz; a fire-escape made of a scaling ladder from Badajoz. She had lost half that sense of strain listening to them. She had forgotten her rolls and coffee; Stephen had her complete attention. I wanted to say to her, ‘You little owl.’ I wouldn’t have been insulting her – she had got rather large eyes.
    And then Stephen produced the master-plan. I could tell it was coming by the way his hands stiffened on his coffee-cup, by the way Tony lowered his eyes and appeared to be praying over his croissant . ‘We were wondering, Poopy – may we borrow your husband?’ I have never heard words spoken with more elaborate casualness.
    She laughed. She hadn’t noticed a thing. ‘Borrow my husband?’
    â€˜There’s a little village in the mountains behind Monte Carlo – Peille it’s called – and I’ve heard rumours of a devastatingly lovely old bureau there – not for sale, of course, but Tony and I, we have our winning ways.’
    â€˜I’ve noticed that,’ she said, ‘myself.’
    Stephen for an instant was disconcerted, but she meant nothing by it, except perhaps a compliment.
    â€˜We were thinking of having lunch at Peille and passing the whole day on the road so as to take a look at the scenery. The only trouble