Tales of the Unexpected Read online

  ‘I am sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I am so terribly sorry that this should happen.’ She spoke almost perfect English.

  ‘It is too bad,’ she went on. ‘I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.’ She looked sorry and deeply concerned.

  The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.

  ‘He is a menace,’ the woman said. ‘Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from different people, and he has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That’s why I brought him up here.’

  ‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man from the bed.

  ‘I suppose he bet you a car,’ the woman said.

  ‘Yes,’ the boy answered. ‘A Cadillac.’

  ‘He has no car. It’s mine. And that makes it worse,’ she said, ‘that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.’ She seemed an awfully nice woman.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘then here’s the key of your car.’ I put it on the table.

  ‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man.

  ‘He hasn’t anything left to bet with,’ the woman said. ‘He hasn’t a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.’ She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.

  I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.

  My Lady Love, My Dove

  It has been my habit for many years to take a nap after lunch. I settle myself in a chair in the living-room with a cushion behind my head and my feet up on a small square leather stool, and I read until I drop off.

  On this Friday afternoon, I was in my chair and feeling as comfortable as ever with a book in my hands – an old favourite, Doubleday and Westwood’s The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera – when my wife, who has never been a silent lady, began to talk to me from the sofa opposite. ‘These two people,’ she said, ‘what time are they coming?’

  I made no answer, so she repeated the question, louder this time.

  I told her politely that I didn’t know.

  ‘I don’t think I like them very much,’ she said. ‘Especially him.’

  ‘No dear, all right.’

  ‘Arthur. I said I don’t think I like them very much.’

  I lowered my book and looked across at her lying with her feet up on the sofa, flipping over the pages of some fashion magazine. ‘We’ve only met them once,’ I said.

  ‘A dreadful man, really. Never stopped telling jokes, or stories, or something.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage them very well, dear.’

  ‘And she’s pretty frightful, too. When do you think they’ll arrive?’

  Somewhere around six o’clock, I guessed.

  ‘But don’t you think they’re awful?’ she asked, pointing at me with her finger.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘They’re too awful, they really are.’

  ‘We can hardly put them off now, Pamela.’

  ‘They’re absolutely the end,’ she said.

  ‘Then why did you ask them?’ The question slipped out before I could stop myself and I regretted it at once, for it is a rule with me never to provoke my wife if I can help it. There was a pause, and I watched her face, waiting for the answer – the big white face that to me was something so strange and fascinating there were occasions when I could hardly bring myself to look away from it. In the evenings sometimes – working on her embroidery, or painting those small intricate flower pictures – the face would tighten and glimmer with a subtle inward strength that was beautiful beyond words, and I would sit and stare at it minute after minute while pretending to read. Even now, at this moment, with that compressed acid look, the frowning forehead, the petulant curl of the nose, I had to admit that there was a majestic quality about this woman, something splendid, almost stately; and so tall she was, far taller than I – although today, in her fifty-first year, I think one would have to call her big rather than tall.

  ‘You know very well why I asked them,’ she answered sharply. ‘For bridge, that’s all. They play an absolutely first-class game, and for a decent stake.’ She glanced up and saw me watching her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s about the way you feel too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, of course, I…’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Arthur.’

  ‘The only time I met them I must say they did seem quite nice.’

  ‘So is the butcher.’

  ‘Now Pamela, dear – please. We don’t want any of that.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said, slapping down the magazine on her lap, ‘you saw the sort of people they were as well as I did. A pair of stupid climbers who think they can go anywhere just because they play good bridge.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right dear, but what I don’t honestly understand is why –’

  ‘I keep telling you – so that for once we can get a decent game. I’m sick and tired of playing with rabbits. But I really can’t see why I should have these awful people in the house.’

  ‘Of course not, my dear, but isn’t it a little late now –’

  ‘Arthur?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why for God’s sake do you always argue with me. You know you disliked them as much as I did.’

  ‘I really don’t think you need worry, Pamela. After all, they seemed quite a nice well-mannered young couple.’

  ‘Arthur, don’t be pompous.’ She was looking at me hard with those wide grey eyes of hers, and to avoid them – they sometimes made me quite uncomfortable – I got up and walked over to the french windows that led into the garden.

  The big sloping lawn out in front of the house was newly mown, striped with pale and dark ribbons of green. On the far side, the two laburnums were in full flower at last, the long golden chains making a blaze of colour against the darker trees beyond. The roses were out too, and the scarlet begonias, and in the long herbacious border all my lovely hybrid lupins, columbine, delphinium, sweet-william, and the huge, pale, scented iris. One of the gardeners was coming up the drive from his lunch. I could see the roof of his cottage through the trees and beyond it to one side, the place where the drive went out through the iron gates on the Canterbury road.

  My wife’s house. Her garden. How beautiful it all was! How peaceful! Now, if only Pamela would try to be a little less solicitous of my welfare, less prone to coax me into doing things for my own good rather than for my own pleasure, then everything would be heaven. Mind you, I don’t want to give the impression that I do not love her – I worship the very air she breathes – or that I can’t manage her, or that I am not the captain of my ship. All I am trying to say is that she can be a trifle irritating at times, the way she carries on. For example, those little mannerisms of hers – I do wish she would drop them all, especially the way she has of pointing a finger at me to emphasize a phrase. You must remember that I am a man who is built rather small, and a gesture like this, when used to excess by a person like my wife, is apt to intimidate. I sometimes find it difficult to convince myself that she is not an overbearing woman.

  ‘Arthur!’ she called. ‘Come here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve just had a most marvellous idea. Come here.’

  I turned and went over to where she was lying on the sofa.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘do you want to have some fun?’

  ‘What sort of fun?’

  ‘With the Snapes?’

  ‘Who are the Snapes?’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Wake up. Henry and Sally Snape. Our week-end guests.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Now listen. I was lying here thinking how awful they r