May We Borrow Your Husband? by Graham Greene Page A

pretty, in her tight black pants, and with a long neck emerging from a wine-red polo-necked sweater. I was glad when she sat down side by side with Madame Dejoie, so that I need not lose the sight of her while I ate.
    â€˜I am late,’ she said, ‘I know that I am late. So many little things have to be done when you are alone, and I am not yet accustomed to being alone,’ she added with a pretty little sob which reminded me of a cut-glass Victorian tear-bottle. She took off thick winter gloves with a wringing gesture which made me think of handkerchiefs wet with grief, and her hands looked suddenly small and useless and vulnerable.
    â€˜Pauvre cocotte,’ said Madame Dejoie, ‘be quiet here with me and forget awhile. I have ordered a bouillabaisse with langouste .’
    â€˜But I have no appetite, Emmy.’
    â€˜It will come back. You’ll see. Now here is your porto and I have ordered a bottle of blanc de blancs .’
    â€˜You will make me tout à fait saoule .’
    â€˜We are going to eat and drink and for a little while we are both going to forget everything. I know exactly how you are feeling, for I too lost a beloved husband.’
    â€˜By death,’ little Madame Volet said. ‘That makes a great difference. Death is quite bearable.’
    â€˜It is more irrevocable.’
    â€˜Nothing can be more irrevocable than my situation. Emmy, he loves the little bitch.’
    â€˜All I know of her is that she has deplorable taste – or a deplorable hairdresser.’
    â€˜But that was exactly what I told him.’
    â€˜You were wrong. I should have told him, not you, for he might have believed me, and in any case my criticism would not have hurt his pride.’
    â€˜I love him,’ Madame Volet said, ‘I cannot be prudent,’ and then she suddenly became aware of my presence. She whispered something to her companion, and I heard the reassurance, ‘ Un anglais .’ I watched her as covertly as I could – like most of my fellow writers I have the spirit of a voyeur – and I wondered how stupid married men could be. I was temporarily free, and I very much wanted to console her, but I didn’t exist in her eyes, now she knew that I was English, nor in the eyes of Madame Dejoie. I was less than human – I was only a reject from the Common Market.
    I ordered a small rouget and a half bottle of Pouilly and tried to be interested in the Trollope I had brought with me. But my attention strayed.
    â€˜I adored my husband,’ Madame Dejoie was saying, and her hand again grasped the pepper-mill, but this time it looked less like a bludgeon.
    â€˜I still do, Emmy. That is the worst of it. I know that if he came back . . .’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜I would never suggest another man,’ Madame Dejoie said. ‘Never.’
    â€˜What then?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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