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'Doctor,' she said. 'I do believe I'm suddenly getting to feel the most enormous affection for him. Does that sound queer?'

  'I think it's quite understandable.'

  'He looks so helpless and silent lying there under the water in his little basin.'

  'Yes, I know.'

  'He's like a baby, that's what he's like. He's exactly like a little baby.'

  Landy stood still behind her, watching.

  'There,' she said softly, peering into the basin. 'From now on Mary's going to look after you all by herself and you've nothing to worry about in the world. When can I have him back home. Doctor?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'I said when can I have him back - back in my own house?'

  'You're joking,' Landy said.

  She turned her head slowly round and looked directly at him. 'Why should I joke?' she asked. Her face was bright, her eyes round and bright as two diamonds.

  'He couldn't possibly be moved.'

  'I don't see why not.'

  'This is an experiment, Mrs Pearl.'

  'It's my husband, Dr Landy.'

  A funny little nervous half-smile appeared on Landy's mouth. 'Well ... he said.

  'It is my husband, you know.' There was no anger in her voice. She spoke quietly, as though merely reminding him of a simple fact.

  'That's rather a tricky point,' Landy said, wetting his lips. 'You're a widow now, Mrs Pearl. I think you must resign yourself to that fact.'

  She turned away suddenly from the table and crossed over to the window. 'I mean it,' she said, fishing in her bag for a cigarette. 'I want him back.'

  Landy watched her as she put the cigarette between her lips and lit it. Unless he were very much mistaken, there was something a bit odd about this woman, he thought. She seemed almost pleased to have her husband over there in the basin.

  He tried to imagine what his own feelings would be if it were his wife's brain lying there and her eye staring up at him out of that capsule.

  He wouldn't like it.

  'Shall we go back to my room now?' he said.

  She was standing by the window, apparently quite calm and relaxed, puffing her cigarette.

  'Yes, all right.'

  On her way past the table she stopped and leaned over the basin once more. 'Mary's leaving now, sweetheart,' she said. 'And don't you worry about a single thing, you understand? We're going to get you right back home where we can look after you properly just as soon as we possibly can. And listen, dear ...' At this point she paused and carried the cigarette to her lips, intending to take a puff.

  Instantly the eye flashed.

  She was looking straight into it at the time, and right in the centre of it she saw a tiny but brilliant flash of light, and the pupil contracted into a minute black pinpoint of absolute fury.

  At first she didn't move. She stood bending over the basin, holding the cigarette up to her mouth, watching the eye.

  Then very slowly, deliberately, she put the cigarette between her lips and took a long suck. She inhaled deeply, and she held the smoke inside her lungs for three or four seconds; then suddenly, whoosh, out it came through her nostrils in two thin jets which struck the water in the basin and billowed out over the surface in a thick blue cloud, enveloping the eye.

  Landy was over by the door, with his back to her, waiting. 'Come on, Mrs Pearl,' he called.

  'Don't look so cross, William,' she said softly. 'It isn't any good looking cross.'

  Landy turned his head to see what she was doing.

  'Not any more it isn't,' she whispered. 'Because from now on, my pet, you're going to do just exactly what Mary tells you. Do you understand that?'

  'Mrs Pearl,' Landy said, moving towards her.

  'So don't be a naughty boy again, will you, my precious,' she said, taking another pull at the cigarette. 'Naughty boys are liable to get punished most severely nowadays, you ought to know that.'

  Landy was beside her now, and he took her by the arm and began drawing her firmly but gently away from the table.

  'Goodbye, darling,' she called. 'I'll be back soon.'

  'That's enough, Mrs Pearl.'

  'Isn't he sweet?' she cried, looking up at Landy with big bright eyes. 'Isn't he darling? I just can't wait to get him home.'

  Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat

  [1959]

  America is the land of opportunity for women. Already they own about eighty-five per cent of the wealth of the nation. Soon they will have it all. Divorce has become a lucrative process, simple to arrange and easy to forget; and ambitious females can repeat it as often as they please and parlay their winnings to astronomical figures. The husband's death also brings satisfactory rewards and some ladies prefer to rely upon this method. They know that the waiting period will not be unduly protracted, for overwork and hypertension are bound to get the poor devil before long, and he will die at his desk with a bottle of benzedrines in one hand and a packet of tranquillizers in the other.

  Succeeding generations of youthful American males are not deterred in the slightest by this terrifying pattern of divorce and death. The higher the divorce rate climbs, the more eager they become. Young men marry like mice, almost before they have reached the age of puberty, and a large proportion of them have at least two ex-wives on the payroll by the time they are thirty-six years old. To support these ladies in the manner to which they are accustomed, the men must work like slaves, which is of course precisely what they are. But now at last, as they approach their premature middle age, a sense of disillusionment and fear begins to creep slowly into their hearts, and in the evenings they take to huddling together in little groups, in clubs and bars, drinking their whiskies and swallowing their pills, and trying to comfort one another with stories.

  The basic theme of these stories never varies. There are always three main characters - the husband, the wife, and the dirty dog. The husband is a decent clean-living man, working hard at his job. The wife is cunning, deceitful, and lecherous, and she is invariably up to some sort of jiggery-pokery with the dirty dog. The husband is too good a man even to suspect her. Things look black for the husband. Will the poor man ever find out? Must he be a cuckold for the rest of his life? Yes, he must. But wait! Suddenly, by a brilliant manoeuvre, the husband completely turns the tables on his monstrous spouse. The woman is flabbergasted, stupefied, humiliated, defeated. The audience of men around the bar smiles quietly to itself and takes a little comfort from the fantasy.

  There are many of these stories going around, these wonderful wishful-thinking dreamworld inventions of the unhappy male, but most of them are too fatuous to be worth repeating, and far too fruity to be put down on paper. There is one, however, that seems to be superior to the rest, particularly as it has the merit of being true. It is extremely popular with twice-or thrice-bitten males in search of solace, and if you are one of them, and if you haven't heard it before, you may enjoy the way it comes out. The story is called 'Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat', and it goes something like this:

  Dr and Mrs Bixby lived in a smallish apartment somewhere in New York City. Dr Bixby was a dentist who made an average income. Mrs Bixby was a big vigorous woman with a wet mouth. Once a month, always on Friday afternoons, Mrs Bixby would board the train at Pennsylvania Station and travel to Baltimore to visit her old aunt. She would spend the night with the aunt and return to New York on the following day in time to cook supper for her husband. Dr Bixby accepted this arrangement good-naturedly. He knew that Aunt Maude lived in Baltimore, and that his wife was very fond of the old lady, and certainly it would be unreasonable to deny either of them the pleasure of a monthly meeting.

  'Just so long as you don't ever expect me to accompany you,' Dr Bixby had said in the beginning.

  'Of course not, darling,' Mrs Bixby had answered. 'After all, she is not your aunt. She's mine.'

  So far so good.

  At it turned out, however, the aunt was little more than a convenient alibi for Mrs Bixby. The dirty dog, in the shape of a gen