The Green Man Read Free

in
a quite good sort of silver dress, a glass of Tio Pepe, it was nine twenty. We were
to dine, as usual when no major function was in the book, at ten o’clock in the
apartment. I was expecting two private guests, Dr and Mrs Maybury. Jack Maybury
was the family doctor and a personal friend, or, more precisely, somebody I
could bear to talk to. Among that tiny proportion of humanity more entertaining
than very bad television, Jack stood high. Diana Maybury made television seem
irrelevant, dull; an enormous feat.
    They
arrived when I was behind the bar again, being very candid with a London museum
curator about the third most expensive claret on the list being the best value
for money. Jack, a shock-headed, bony figure in a crumpled suit of
biscuit-coloured linen, waved briefly and strode off, as usual, in the
direction of the office to tell the local telephone exchange where he was.
Diana joined my wife in the small alcove beside the fireplace. Together, they
made an impressive, rather erective sight, both of them tall, blonde and
full-breasted, but so different in other ways that they might have been chosen
for some textbook illustration showing the width of divergence among basically
similar physical types, or, more to the purpose, an X-certificate Swedish film
that would fall a long way short of sticking to straight sex. Dull would he be
of soul that would pass up the chance of taking the pair of them to bed. Their
visible differences—Diana’s slim build, light-tawny hair-colour, hazel eyes,
tanned skin and nervous demeanour alongside the strength and roundness, the
yellow and blue and pale rose, the slow, steady movements of Joyce, my wife—suggested
that there were others to be discovered, no less striking. In the past few
weeks I had made some progress towards a vital part of this objective: persuading
Diana to come to bed with me. Joyce knew nothing about this, nor about the more
ambitious plan; but as I watched them exchange a kiss of greeting in the
alcove, it was clear to me that they had always shown a subdued sexual feeling
towards each other. Or was it not really clear at all, not true, just
attractive as a fantasy?
    The
museum curator, having taken my advice and saved eleven shillings on his
claret, not quite unexpectedly ordered a half-bottle of Château d’Yquem (37/6)
to go with his sweet course. I bowed approvingly, told Fred to pass the word to
the wine-waiter, mixed Diana a gin and bitter lemon, her invariable pre-dinner
drink, and carried it over. I tried for her mouth when I kissed her, but got
the side of her chin instead. There was a pause after that. Not for the first
time, the idea of chatting to these two seemed altogether less attractive than
what I had been thinking about a minute before. Jack reappeared while I was
still exploring the topic of the heat and humidity. He kissed Joyce as
unceremoniously as he had waved to me on arrival, then moved me aside. He was
supposed to be a great hammer of his female patients, but, like most men of
whom that sort of thing is said, he had on the whole a disinclination for
female society.
    ‘Cheers,’
he said, raising for a short space the glass of Cam-pan and soda Fred would
have served him. ‘How’s everybody, then?’
    Coming
from one’s family doctor, this query went beyond mere phatic communion, and
Jack always managed to get a slight air of hostility into it. He was inclined
to be snobbish about health, implying that the lack of it sprang from some
vulgar shortcoming, to be accepted as distastefully inevitable if not actually
deplored. This probably served quite well as a form of pressure on his patients
to get better.
    ‘Oh,
all carrying on all right, I think.’
    ‘How’s
your father?’ he asked, probing one of the several weak spots in my defences,
and lighting a cigarette without taking his eyes off me.
    ‘About
the same. Very piano.’
    ‘Very
what?’ Jack just might not have heard me against the alcohol-fired roar of
other voices in