Read Online May We Borrow Your Husband? by Graham Greene - Free Book Online Page A

OVER-NIGHT BAG
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    T HE little man who came to the information desk in Nice airport when they demanded ‘Henry Cooper, passenger on BEA flight 105 for London’ looked like a shadow cast by the brilliant glitter of the sun. He wore a grey town-suit and black shoes; he had a grey skin which carefully matched his suit, and since it was impossible for him to change his skin, it was possible that he had no other suit.
    â€˜Are you Mr Cooper?’
    â€˜Yes,’ He carried a BOAC over-night bag and he laid it tenderly on the ledge of the information desk as though it contained something precious and fragile like an electric razor.
    â€˜There is a telegram for you.’
    He opened it and read the message twice over. ‘Bon voyage. Much missed. You will be welcome home, dear boy. Mother.’ He tore the telegram once across and left it on the desk, from which the girl in the blue uniform, after a discreet interval, picked the pieces and with natural curiosity joined them together. Then she looked for the little grey man among the passengers who were now lining up at the tourist gate to join the Trident. He was among the last, carrying his blue BOAC bag.
    Near the front of the plane Henry Cooper found a window-seat and placed the bag on the central seat beside him. A large woman in pale blue trousers too tight for the size of her buttocks took the third seat. She squeezed a very large handbag in beside the other on the central seat, and she laid a large fur coat on top of both. Henry Cooper said, ‘May I put it on the rack, please?’
    She looked at him with contempt. ‘Put what?’
    â€˜Your coat.’
    â€˜If you want to. Why?’
    â€˜It’s a very heavy coat. It’s squashing my over-night bag.’
    He was so small he could stand nearly upright under the rack. When he sat down he fastened the seat-belt over the two bags before he fastened his own. The woman watched him with suspicion. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do that before,’ she said.
    â€˜I don’t want it shaken about,’ he said. ‘There are storms over London.’
    â€˜You haven’t got an animal in there, have you?’
    â€˜Not exactly.’
    â€˜It’s cruel to carry an animal shut up like that,’ she said, as though she disbelieved him.
    As the Trident began its run he laid his hand on the bag as if he were reassuring something within. The woman watched the bag narrowly. If she saw the least movement of life she had made up her mind to call the stewardess. Even if it were only a tortoise. . . . A tortoise needed air, of so she supposed, in spite of hibernation. When they were safely airborne he relaxed and began to read a Nice-Matin – he spent a good deal of time on each story as though his French were not very good. The woman struggled angrily to get her big cavernous bag from under the seat-belt. She muttered ‘Ridiculous’ twice for his benefit. Then she made up, put on thick horn-rimmed glasses and began to re-read a letter which began ‘My darling Tiny’ and ended ‘Your own cuddly Bertha’. After a while she grew tired of the weight on her knees and dropped it on to the BOAC over-night bag.
    The little man leapt in distress. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please.’ He lifted her bag and pushed it quite rudely into a corner of the seat. ‘I don’t want it squashed,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of respect.’
    â€˜What have you got in your precious bag?’ she asked him angrily.
    â€˜A dead baby,’ he said. ‘I thought I had told you.’
    â€˜On the left of the aircraft,’ the pilot announced through the loud-speaker, you will see Montélimar. We shall be passing Paris in –’
    â€˜You are not serious,’ she said.
    â€˜It’s just one of those things,’ he replied in a tone that carried conviction.
    â€˜But you can’t take dead babies – like