Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl Page A

was doing.
      
“Not any more it isn’t,” she whispered. “Because from now
on, my pet, you’re going to do just exactly what Mary tells
you. Do you understand that?”
      
“Mrs Pearl,” Landy said, moving towards her.
      
“So don’t be a naughty boy again, will you, my precious,”
she said, taking another pull at the cigarette. “Naughty boys
are liable to get punished most severely nowadays, you ought
to know that.”
      
Landy was beside her now, and he took her by the arm
and began drawing her firmly but gently away from the table.
      
“Good-bye, darling,” she called. “I’ll be back soon.”
      
“That’s enough, Mrs Pearl.”
      
“Isn’t he sweet?” she cried, looking up at Landy with big
bright eyes. “Isn’t he heaven? I just can’t wait to get him home.”

The Way Up to Heaven
    All her life, Mrs Foster had had an almost pathological fear
of missing a train, a plane, a boat, or even a theatre curtain.
In other respects, she was not a particularly nervous woman,
but the mere thought of being late on occasions like these
would throw her into such a state of nerves that she would
begin to twitch. It was nothing much—just a tiny vellicating
muscle in the corner of the left eye, like a secret wink—but
the annoying thing was that it refused to disappear until an
hour or so after the train or plane or whatever it was had been
safely caught.
      
It was really extraordinary how in certain people a simple
apprehension about a thing like catching a train can grow
into a serious obsession. At least half an hour before it was
time to leave the house for the station, Mrs Foster would step
out of the elevator all ready to go, with hat and coat and
gloves, and then, being quite unable to sit down, she would
flutter and fidget about from room to room until her husband,
who must have been well aware of her state, finally emerged
from his privacy and suggested in a cool dry voice that
perhaps they had better get going now, had they not?
      
Mr Foster may possibly have had a right to be irritated by
this foolishness of his wife’s, but he could have had no excuse
for increasing her misery by keeping her waiting unnecessarily.
Mind you, it is by no means certain that this is what he did,

yet whenever they were to go somewhere, his timing was so
accurate—just a minute or two late, you understand—and his
manner so bland that it was hard to believe he wasn’t purposely
inflicting a nasty private little torture of his own on the
unhappy lady. And one thing he must have known—that she
would never dare to call out and tell him to hurry. He had
disciplined her too well for that. He must also have known
that if he was prepared to wait even beyond the last moment
of safety, he could drive her nearly into hysterics. On one or
two special occasions in the later years of their married life,
it seemed almost as though he had wanted to miss the train
simply in order to intensify the poor woman’s suffering.
      
Assuming (though one cannot be sure) that the husband was
guilty, what made his attitude doubly unreasonable was the
fact that, with the exception of this one small irrepressible
foible, Mrs Foster was and always had been a good and loving
wife. For over thirty years, she had served him loyally and
well. There was no doubt about this. Even she, a very modest
woman, was aware of it, and although she had for years
refused to let herself believe that Mr Foster would ever
consciously torment her, there had been times recently when
she had caught herself beginning to wonder.
      
Mr Eugene Foster, who was nearly seventy years old, lived
with his wife in a large six-storey house in New York City, on
East Sixty-second Street, and they had four servants. It was a
gloomy place, and few people came to visit them. But on this
particular morning in January, the house had come alive and
there was a great deal of