May We Borrow Your Husband? by Graham Greene Page B

Volet, I thought, watched for politeness’ sake while she finished a glass of blanc de blancs .
    When the operation was over Madame Dejoie filled the glasses and said, ‘I was lucky enough to have une amie who taught me not to mourn for the past.’ She raised her glass and cocking a finger as I had seen men do, she added, ‘ Pas de mollesse .’
    â€˜ Pas de mollesse ,’ Madame Volet repeated with a wan enchanting smile.
    I felt decidedly ashamed of myself – a cold literary observer of human anguish. I was afraid of catching poor Madame Volet’s eyes (what kind of a man was capable of betraying her for a woman who took the wrong sort of rinse?) and I tried to occupy myself with sad Mr Crawley’s courtship as he stumped up the muddy lane in his big clergyman’s boots. In any case the two of them had dropped their voices; a gentle smell of garlic came to me from the bouillabaisse , the bottle of blanc de blancs was nearly finished, and, in spite of Madame Volet’s protestation, Madame Dejoie had called for another. ‘There are no half bottles,’ she said. ‘We can always leave something for the gods.’ Again their voices sank to an intimate murmur as Mr Crawley’s suit was accepted (though how he was to support an inevitably large family would not appear until the succeeding volume). I was startled out of my forced concentration by a laugh: a musical laugh: it was Madame Volet’s.
    â€˜ Cochon ,’ she exclaimed. Madame Dejoie regarded her over her glass (the new bottle had already been broached) under beetling brows. ‘I am telling you the truth,’ she said. ‘He would crow like a cock.’
    â€˜But what a joke to play!’
    â€˜It began as a joke, but he was really proud of himself. Après seulement deux coups  . . .’
    â€˜Jamais trois?’ Madame Volet asked and she giggled and splashed a little of her wine down her polo-necked collar.
    â€˜Jamais.’
    â€˜Je suis saoule.’
    â€˜Moi aussi, cocotte.’
    Madame Volet said, ‘To crow like a cock – at least it was a fantaisie. My husband has no fantaisies . He is strictly classical.’
    â€˜Pas de vices.’
    â€˜And yet you miss him?’
    â€˜He worked hard,’ Madame Volet said and giggled. ‘To think that at the end he must have been working hard for both of us.’
    â€˜You found it a little boring?’
    â€˜It was a habit – how one misses a habit. I wake now at five in the morning.’
    â€˜At five?’
    â€˜It was the hour of his greatest activity.’
    â€˜My husband was a very small man,’ Madame Dejoie said. ‘Not in height of course. He was two metres high.’
    â€˜Oh, Paul is big enough – but always the same.’
    â€˜Why do you continue to love that man?’ Madame Dejoie sighed and put her large hand on Madame Volet’s knee. She wore a signet-ring which perhaps had belonged to her late husband. Madame Volet sighed too and I thought melancholy was returning to the table, but then she hiccuped and both of them laughed.
    â€˜Tu es vraiment saoule, cocotte.’
    â€˜Do I truly miss Paul, or is it only that I miss his habits?’ She suddenly met my eye and blushed right down into the wine-coloured wine-stained polo-necked collar.
    Madame Dejoie repeated reassuringly, ‘Un anglais – ou un américain.’ She hardly bothered to lower her voice at all. ‘Do you know how limited my experience was when my husband died? I loved him when he crowed like a cock. I was glad he was so pleased. I only wanted him to be pleased. I adored him, and yet in those days – j’ai peut-être joui trois fois par semaine. I did not expect more. It seemed to me a natural limit.’
    â€˜In my case it was three times a day,’ Madame Volet said and giggled again. ‘Mais toujours d’une façon classique.’ She put her hands over her