‘It is nice, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose you’re bound to get pretty lonely out there, on and off, just the three of you together?’
‘It’s no worse than anywhere else,’ he said. ‘People get lonely wherever they are. A desert, or a city – it doesn’t make much difference, really. But we do have visitors, you know. You’d be surprised at the number of people who drop in from time to time. Like you, for instance. It was a great pleasure having you with us, my dear fellow.’
‘I shall never forget it,’ I said. ‘It is a rare thing to find kindness and hospitality of that order nowadays.’
I waited for him to tell me that I must come again, but he didn’t. A little silence sprang up between us, a slightly uneasy little silence. To bridge it, I said, ‘I think yours is the most thoughtful paternal gesture I’ve ever heard of in my life.’
‘Mine?’
‘Yes. Building a house right out there in the back of beyond and living in it just for your daughter’s sake, to protect her. I think it’s remarkable.’
I saw him smile, but he kept his eyes on the road and said nothing. The filling-station and the group of huts were now in sight about a mile ahead of us. The sun was high and it was getting hot inside the car.
‘Not many fathers would put themselves out to that extent,’ I went on.
Again he smiled, but somewhat bashfully this time, I thought. And then he said, ‘I don’t deserve quite as much credit as you like to give me, really I don’t. To be absolutely honest with you, that pretty daughter of mine isn’t the only reason for my living in such splendid isolation.’
‘I know that.’
‘You do?’
‘You told me. You said the other reason was the desert. You loved it, you said, as a sailor loves the sea.’
‘So I did. And it’s quite true. But there’s still a third reason.’
‘Oh, and what is that?’
He didn’t answer me. He sat quite still with his hands on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have asked the question. It’s none of my business.’
‘No, no, that’s quite all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t apologize.’
I stared out of the window at the desert. ‘I think it’s hotter than yesterday,’ I said. ‘It must be well over a hundred already.’
‘Yes.’
I saw him shifting a little in his seat, as though trying to get comfortable, and then he said, ‘I don’t really see why I shouldn’t tell you the truth about that house. You don’t strike me as being a gossip.’
‘Certainly not,’ I said.
We were close to the filling-station now, and he had slowed the car down almost to walking-speed to give himself time to say what he had to say. I could see the two Arabs standing beside my Lagonda, watching us.
‘That daughter,’ he said at length, ‘the one you met – she isn’t the only daughter I have.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘I’ve got another who is five years older than she.’
‘And just as beautiful, no doubt,’ I said. ‘Where does she live? In Beirut?’
‘No, she’s in the house.’
‘In which house? Not the one we’ve just left?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I never saw her!’
‘Well,’ he said, turning suddenly to watch my face, ‘maybe not.’
‘But why?’
‘She has leprosy.’
I jumped.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said, ‘it’s a terrible thing. She has the worst kind, too, poor girl. It’s called anaesthetic leprosy. It is highly resistant, and almost impossible to cure. If only it were the nodular variety, it would be much easier. But it isn’t, and there you are. So when a visitor comes to the house, she keeps to her own apartment, on the third floor …’
The car must have pulled into the filling-station about then because the next thing I can remember was seeing Mr Abdul Aziz sitting there looking at me with those small clever black eyes of his, and he was saying, ‘But my dear fellow, you mustn’t alarm yourself like this. Calm yourself down, Mr Cornelius, calm yourself down! There’s absolutely nothing in the world for you to worry about. It is not a very contagious disease. You have to have the most intimate contact with the person in order to catch it …’
I got out of the car very slowly and stood in the sunshine. The Arab with the diseased face was grinning at me and saying, ‘Fan-belt all fixed now. Everything fine.’ I reached into my pocket for cigarettes, but my hand was shaking so violently I dropped the packet on the ground. I bent down and retrieved it. Then I got a cigarette out and managed to light it. When I looked up again, I saw the green Rolls-Royce already half a mile down the road, and going away fast.
Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat
First published in
Nugget
(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
