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

that – in a bag – in the economy class.’
    â€˜In the case of a baby it is so much cheaper than freight. Only a week old. It weighs so little.’
    â€˜But it should be in a coffin, not an over-night bag.’
    â€˜My wife didn’t trust a foreign coffin. She said the materials they use are not durable. She’s rather a conventional woman.’
    â€˜Then it’s your baby?’ Under the circumstances she seemed almost prepared to sympathize.
    â€˜My wife’s baby,’ he corrected her.
    â€˜What’s the difference?’
    He said sadly, ‘There could well be a difference,’ and turned the page of Nice-Matin .
    â€˜Are you suggesting . . .?’ But he was deep in a column dealing with a Lions Club meeting in Antibes and the rather revolutionary suggestion made there by a member from Grasse. She read over again her letter from ‘cuddly Bertha’, but it failed to hold her attention. She kept on stealing a glance at the over-night bag.
    â€˜You don’t anticipate trouble with the customs?’ she asked him after a while.
    â€˜Of course I shall have to declare it,’ he said. ‘It was acquired abroad.’
    When they landed, exactly on time, he said to her with old-fashioned politeness, ‘I have enjoyed our flight.’ She looked for him with a certain morbid curiosity in the customs – Channel 10 – but then she saw him in Channel 12, for passengers carrying hand-baggage only. He was speaking, earnestly, to the officer who was poised, chalk in hand, over the over-night bag. Then she lost sight of him as her own inspector insisted on examining the contents of her cavernous bag, which yielded up a number of undeclared presents for Bertha.
    Henry Cooper was the first out of the arrivals door and he took a hired car. The charge for taxis rose every year when he went abroad and it was his one extravagance not to wait for the airport-bus. The sky was overcast and the temperature only a little above freezing, but the driver was in a mood of euphoria. He had a dashing comradely air – he told Henry Cooper that he had won fifty pounds on the pools. The heater was on full blast, and Henry Cooper opened the window, but an icy current of air from Scandinavia flowed round his shoulders. He closed the window again and said, ‘Would you mind turning off the heater?’ It was as hot in the car as in a New York hotel during a blizzard.
    â€˜It’s cold outside,’ the driver said.
    â€˜You see,’ Henry Cooper said, ‘I have a dead baby in my bag.’
    â€˜Dead baby?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Ah well,’ the driver said, ‘he won’t feel the heat, will he? It’s a he?’
    â€˜Yes. A he. I’m anxious he shouldn’t – deteriorate.’
    â€˜They keep a long time,’ the driver said. ‘You’d be surprised. Longer than old people. What did you have for lunch?’
    Henry Cooper was a little surprised. He had to cast his mind back. He said, ‘Carré d’agneau à la provençale .’
    â€˜Curry?’
    â€˜No, not curry, lamb chops with garlic and herbs. And then an apple-tart.’
    â€˜And you drank something I wouldn’t be surprised?’
    â€˜A half bottle of rosé. And a brandy.’
    â€˜There you are, you see.’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    â€˜With all that inside you, you wouldn’t keep so well.’
    Gillette Razors were half hidden in icy mist. The driver had forgotten or had refused to turn down the heat, but he remained silent for quite a while, perhaps brooding on the subject of life and death.
    â€˜How did the little perisher die?’ he asked at last.
    â€˜They die so easily,’ Henry Cooper answered.
    â€˜Many a true word’s spoken in jest,’ the driver said, a little absent-mindedly because he had swerved to avoid a car which braked too suddenly, and Henry Cooper