Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl Page B

bustling about. One maid was distributing
bundles of dust sheets to every room, while another
was draping them over the furniture. The butler was bringing
down suitcases and putting them in the hall. The cook kept
popping up from the kitchen to have a word with the butler,
and Mrs Foster herself, in an old-fashioned fur coat and with
a black hat on the top of her head, was flying from room to
room and pretending to supervise these operations. Actually,

she was thinking of nothing at all except that she was going to
miss her plane if her husband didn’t come out of his study soon
and get ready.
      
“What time is it, Walker?” she said to the butler as she passed
him.
      
“It’s ten minutes past nine, Madam.”
      
“And has the car come?”
      
“Yes, Madam, it’s waiting. I’m just going to put the luggage
in now.”
      
“It takes an hour to get to Idlewild,” she said. “My plane
leaves at eleven. I have to be there half an hour beforehand
for the formalities. I shall be late. I just know I’m going to be
late.”
      
“I think you have plenty of time, Madam,” the butler said
kindly. “I warned Mr Foster that you must leave at nine fifteen.
There’s still another five minutes.”
      
“Yes, Walker, I know, I know. But get the luggage in
quickly, will you please?”
      
She began walking up and down the hall, and whenever
the butler came by, she asked him the time. This, she kept
telling herself, was the one plane she must not miss. It had
taken months to persuade her husband to allow her to go. If
she missed it, he might easily decide that she should cancel the
whole thing. And the trouble was that he insisted on coming
to the airport to see her off.
      
“Dear God,” she said aloud, “I’m going to miss it. I know, I
know, I know I’m going to miss it.” The little muscle beside
the left eye was twitching madly now. The eyes themselves
were very close to tears.
      
“What time is it, Walker?”
      
“It’s eighteen minutes past, Madam.”
      
“Now I really will miss it!” she cried. “Oh, I wish he would
come!”
      
This was an important journey for Mrs Foster. She was
going all alone to Paris to visit her daughter, her only child,

who was married to a Frenchman. Mrs Foster didn’t care
much for the Frenchman, but she was fond of her daughter,
and, more than that, she had developed a great yearning to set
eyes on her three grandchildren. She knew them only from
the many photographs that she had received and that she kept
putting up all over the house. They were beautiful, these
children. She doted on them, and each time a new picture
arrived she would carry it away and sit with it for a long
time, staring at it lovingly and searching the small faces for
signs of that old satisfying blood likeness that meant so much.
And now, lately, she had come more and more to feel that
she did not really wish to live out her days in a place where
she could not be near these children, and have them visit her,
and take them for walks, and buy them presents, and watch
them grow. She knew, of course, that it was wrong and in a
way disloyal to have thoughts like these while her husband
was still alive. She knew also that although he was no longer
active in his many enterprises, he would never consent to
leave New York and live in Paris. It was a miracle that he had
ever agreed to let her fly over there alone for six weeks to
visit them. But, oh, how she wished she could live there
always, and be close to them!
      
“Walker, what time is it?”
      
“Twenty-two minutes past, Madam.”
      
As he spoke, a door opened and Mr Foster came into the
hall. He stood for a moment, looking intently at his wife, and
she looked back at him—at this diminutive but still quite
dapper old man with the huge bearded face that bore such an
astonishing resemblance to those old