Difficulties With Girls by Kingsley Amis

Author:Kingsley Amis [Amis Kingsley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141961781
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

‘No, you go,’ said Patrick. ‘You know you’re dying to see the inside of their place.’

‘Not dying exactly. Just naturally curious after all this time.’

‘All what time? You’re not in the outgoing North now, you know. Down here they let you cool your heels for a couple of weeks before they give you a chance to run your neighbourly eye over their curtains and wallpaper and china and think shit to them.’

‘I expect I’ll get used to it.’ Jenny had unpinned the invitation card from the new cork notice-board on the kitchen wall and brought it to the breakfast table. ‘I realise already it’s normal to say At Home like that, but why does it say Harold Porter-King Esquire OBE and Mrs Harold Porter-King like that?’

‘Well, because she’s not the one with the OBE, that’s him, and because he can’t leave it out because then he’d be missing impressing some people, and because he’s a pompous buffoon.’

‘No, or rather yes, but why does it say Mrs Harold Porter-King like that? Because he’s worried some people might think he means his mother?’

‘No, that’s because he’s a pompous buffoon, you see. Have you accepted?’

‘Yes. In the third person.’

‘Actually,’ said Patrick, picking up the card, ‘this does evoke him quite powerfully. Especially his voice. When I wash I use soap, uh-boy, which you must have heard of, surely. I’d like to see him up against Simon. Which I’ve got to be myself in – Christ – slightly over four minutes’ time.’ He threw the card down again. ‘I don’t think I can resist a refresher course of our Harold after all. Don’t hang about for me, I’ll probably be a bit late, but I’ll do my best to get there.’

‘Oh, can’t we go along together? First time.’

‘No. It’ll do you good to brave it on your own. Tank up on the vodka first.’

He was looking at his best that morning, really lovely, Jenny thought, tall and handsome with almost nothing left of the slight sissy look she had noticed the first time she saw him, quite dashing too in the light-green man-made-fibre suit, which though off the peg fitted perfectly after minor surgery to cuffs and trouser-bottoms. They kissed warmly and with a lot of fondness. Stepping brief-case in hand and without much fuss over the stretched-out form of Frankie, who looked up at him in wonderment, he departed.

Anybody could have told that that day he was not going anywhere he ought not to be going. As long as Jenny had known him, he had been a bad actor and a terrible liar. People usually said such things in a kind of admiring way or at least with a touch of respect, to be fair, you had to grant him this much, and so on. She sometimes wondered how many women admired their men for that. If a husband decided he was only going to behave himself as long as it suited him, the least he could do was be a fabulous actor and a fantastic liar to go with it.

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