Kiss Kiss (9 page)

      
Rummins paused to consider this new and rather alarming
prospect.
      
“How can a thing like that possibly go in a car?” Claud went
on relentlessly. “A parson never has a big car anyway. You
ever seen a parson with a big car, Mr Rummins?”
      
“Can’t say I have.”
      
“Exactly! And now listen to me. I’ve got an idea. He told
us, didn’t he, that it was only the legs he was wanting. Right?
So all we’ve got to do is to cut ’em off quick right here on the
spot before he comes back, then it’ll be sure to go in the car.
All we’re doing is saving him the trouble of cutting them off
himself when he gets home. How about it, Mr Rummins?”
Claud’s flat bovine face glimmered with a mawkish pride.
      
“It’s not such a bad idea at that,” Rummins said, looking at
the commode. “In fact it’s a bloody good idea. Come on then,
we’ll have to hurry. You and Bert carry it out into the yard.
I’ll get the saw. Take the drawers out first.”
      
Within a couple of minutes, Claud and Bert had carried the
commode outside and had laid it upside down in the yard
amidst the chicken droppings and cow dung and mud. In the
distance, halfway across the field, they could see a small black
figure striding along the path towards the road. They paused
to watch. There was something rather comical about the way
in which this figure was conducting itself. Every now and
again it would break into a trot, then it did a kind of hop skip
and jump, and once it seemed as though the sound of a
cheerful song came rippling faintly to them from across the
meadow.
      
“I reckon he’s balmy,” Claud said, and Bert grinned darkly,
rolling his misty eye slowly round in its socket.
      
Rummins came waddling over from the shed, squat and
froglike, carrying a long saw. Claud took the saw away from
him and went to work.
      
“Cut ’em close,” Rummins said. “Don’t forget
he’s going to use ’em on another table.”
      
The mahogany was hard and very dry, and as Claud
worked, a fine red dust sprayed out from the edge of the saw
and fell softly to the ground. One by one, the legs came off,
and when they were all severed, Bert stooped down and
arranged them carefully in a row.
      
Claud stepped back to survey the results of his labour.
There was a longish pause.
      
“Just let me ask you one question, Mr Rummins,” he said
slowly. “Even now, could
you
put that enormous thing into
the back of a car?”
      
“Not unless it was a van.”
      
“Correct!” Claud cried. “And parsons don’t have vans, you
know. All they’ve got usually is piddling little Morris Eights
or Austin Sevens.”
      
“The legs is all he wants,” Rummins said. “If the rest of it
won’t go in, then he can leave it. He can’t complain. He’s got
the legs.”
      
“Now you know better’n that, Mr Rummins,” Claud said
patiently. “You know damn well he’s going to start knocking
the price if he don’t get every single bit of this into the car.
A parson’s just as cunning as the rest of ’em when it comes to
money, don’t you make any mistake about that. Especially this
old boy. So why don’t we give him his firewood now and be
done with it. Where d’you keep the axe?”
      
“I reckon that’s fair enough,” Rummins said. “Bert, go fetch
the axe.”
      
Bert went into the shed and fetched a tall woodcutter’s axe
and gave it to Claud. Claud spat on the palms of his hands and
rubbed them together. Then, with a long-armed high-swinging
action, he began fiercely attacking the legless carcase of the
commode.
      
It was hard work, and it took several minutes before he had
the whole thing more or less smashed to pieces.
      
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, straightening up, wiping his
brow. “That was a bloody good carpenter put this job together
and I don’t care what the parson says.”
      
“We’re just in time!” Rummins called out. “Here he comes!”

America is the land of opportunities 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:
      
Mr and Mrs Bixby lived in a smallish apartment somewhere
in New York City. Mr 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. Mr 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,” Mr 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.
      
As it turned out, however, the aunt was little more than a
convenient alibi for Mrs Bixby. The dirty dog, in the shape of
a gentleman known as the Colonel, was lurking slyly in the
background, and our heroine spent the greater part of her
Baltimore time in this scoundrel’s company. The Colonel was
exceedingly wealthy. He lived in a charming house on the
outskirts of the town. No wife or family encumbered him,
only a few discreet and loyal servants, and in Mrs Bixby’s
absence he consoled himself by riding his horses and hunting
the fox.
      
Year after year, this pleasant alliance between Mrs Bixby
and the Colonel continued without a hitch. They met so
seldom—twelve times a year is not much when you come to
think of it—that there was little or no chance of their growing
bored with one another. On the contrary, the long wait
between meetings only made the heart grow fonder, and each
separate occasion became an exciting reunion.
      
“Tally-ho!” the Colonel would cry each time he met her at
the station in the big car. “My dear, I’d almost forgotten how
ravishing you looked. Let’s go to earth.”
      
Eight years went by.
      
It was just before Christmas, and Mrs Bixby was standing
on the station in Baltimore waiting for the train to take her
back to New York. This particular visit which had just ended
had been more than usually agreeable, and she was in a cheerful
mood. But then the Colonel’s company always did that to
her these days. The man had a way of making her feel that
she was altogether a rather remarkable woman, a person of
subtle and exotic talents, fascinating beyond measure; and what
a very different thing that was from the dentist husband at
home who never succeeded in making her feel that she was
anything but a sort of eternal patient, someone who dwelt in
the waiting-room, silent among the magazines, seldom if ever
nowadays to be called in to suffer the finicky precise ministrations
of those clean pink hands.
      
“The Colonel asked me to give you this,” a voice beside her
said. She turned and saw Wilkins, the Colonel’s groom, a small
wizened dwarf with grey skin, and he was pushing a large
flattish cardboard box into her arms.
      
“Good gracious me!” she cried, all of a flutter. “My heavens,
what an enormous box! What is it, Wilkins? Was there a
message? Did he send me a message?”
      
“No message,” the groom said, and he walked away.
      
As soon as she was on the train, Mrs Bixby carried the box
into the privacy of the Ladies’ Room and locked the door.
How exciting this was! A Christmas present from the Colonel.
She started to undo the string. “I’ll bet it’s a dress,” she said
aloud. “It might even be two dresses. Or it might be a whole
lot of beautiful underclothes. I won’t look. I’ll just feel around
and try to guess what it is. I’ll try to guess the colour as well,
and exactly what it looks like. Also how much it cost.”
      
She shut her eyes tight and slowly lifted off the lid. Then
she put one hand down into the box. There was some tissue
paper on top; she could feel it and hear it rustling. There was
also an envelope or a card of some sort. She ignored this and
began burrowing underneath the tissue paper, the fingers
reaching out delicately, like tendrils.
      
“My God,” she cried suddenly. “It can’t be true!”
      
She opened her eyes wide and stared at the coat. Then she
pounced on it and lifted it out of the box. Thick layers of fur
made a lovely noise against the tissue paper as they unfolded,
and when she held it up and saw it hanging to its full length,
it was so beautiful it took her breath away.
      
Never had she seen mink like this before. It was mink,
wasn’t it? Yes, of course it was. But what a glorious colour!
The fur was almost pure black. At first she thought it was
black; but when she held it closer to the window she saw
that there was a touch of blue in it as well, a deep rich blue,
like cobalt. Quickly she looked at the label. It said simply,
WILD LABRADOR MINK
. There was nothing else, no sign of
where it had been bought or anything. But that, she told
herself, was probably the Colonel’s doing. The wily old fox was
making darn sure he didn’t leave any tracks. Good for him.
But what in the world could it have cost? She hardly dared to
think. Four, five, six thousand dollars? Possibly more.
      
She just couldn’t take her eyes off it. Nor, for that matter,
could she wait to try it on. Quickly she slipped off her own
plain red coat. She was panting a little now, she couldn’t help
it, and her eyes were stretched very wide. But oh God, the
feel of that fur! And those huge wide sleeves with their thick
turned-up cuffs! Who was it had once told her that they
always used female skins for the arms and male skins for the
rest of the coat? Someone had told her that. Joan Rutfield,
probably; though how
Joan
would know anything about mink
she couldn’t imagine.
      
The great black coat seemed to slide onto her almost of its
own accord, like a second skin. Oh boy! It was the queerest
feeling! She glanced into the mirror. It was fantastic. Her
whole personality had suddenly changed completely. She
looked dazzling, radiant, rich, brilliant, voluptuous, all at the
same time. And the sense of power that it gave her! In this
coat she could walk into any place she wanted and people
would come scurrying around her like rabbits. The whole
thing was just too wonderful for words!
      
Mrs Bixby picked up the envelope that was still lying in
the box. She opened it and pulled out the Colonel’s letter:

I once heard you saying you were fond of mink so I got
you this. I’m told it’s a good one. Please accept it with my
sincere good wishes as a parting gift. For my own personal
reasons I shall not be able to see you any more. Good-bye and
good luck.

      
Well!
      
Imagine that!
      
Right out of the blue, just when she was feeling so happy.
      
No more Colonel.
      
What a dreadful shock.
      
She would miss him enormously.
      
Slowly, Mrs Bixby began stroking the lovely soft black fur
of the coat.
      
What you lose on the swings you get back on the roundabouts.
      
She smiled and folded the letter, meaning to tear it up and
throw it out of the window, but in folding it she noticed that
there was something written on the-other side: