‘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 really are… the way they behave… him with his jokes and her like a sort of love-crazed sparrow…’ She hesitated, smiling slyly, and for some reason, I got the impression she was about to say a shocking thing. ‘Well – if that’s the way they behave when they’re in front of us, then what on earth must they be like when they’re alone together?’
‘Now wait a minute, Pamela –’
‘Don’t be an ass, Arthur. Let’s have some fun – some real fun for once – tonight.’ She had half raised herself up off the sofa, her face bright with a kind of sudden recklessness, the mouth slightly open, and she was looking at me with two round grey eyes, a spark dancing slowly in each.
‘Why shouldn’t we?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Why, it’s obvious. Can’t you see?’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘All we’ve got to do is put a microphone in their room.’ I admit I was expecting something pretty bad, but when she said this I was so shocked I didn’t know what to answer.
‘That’s exactly what we’ll do,’ she said.
‘Here!’ I cried. ‘No. Wait a minute. You can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s about the nastiest trick I ever heard of. It’s like – why, it’s like listening at keyholes, or reading letters, only far far worse. You don’t mean this seriously, do you?’
‘Of course I do.’
I knew how much she disliked being contradicted but there were times when I felt it necessary to assert myself, even at considerable risk. ‘Pamela,’ I said, snapping the words out sharply, ‘I forbid you to do it!’
She took her feet down from the sofa and sat up straight. ‘What in God’s name are you trying to pretend to be, Arthur? I simply don’t understand you.’
‘That shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘Tommyrot! I’ve known you do lots of worse things than this before now.’
‘Never!’
‘Oh yes I have. What makes you suddenly think you’re a so much nicer person than I am?’
‘I’ve never done things like that.’
‘All right, my boy,’ she said, pointing her finger at me like a pistol. ‘What about the time at the Milfords’ last Christmas? Remember? You nearly laughed your head off and I had to put my hand over your mouth to stop them hearing us. What about that for one?’
‘That was different,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t our house. And they weren’t our guests.’
‘It doesn’t make any difference at all.’ She was sitting very upright, staring at me with those round grey eyes, and the chin was beginning to come up high in a peculiarly contemptuous manner. ‘Don’t be such a pompous hypocrite,’ she said. ‘What on earth’s come over you?’
‘I really think it’s a pretty nasty thing, you know, Pamela. I honestly do.’
‘But listen, Arthur. I’m a nasty person. And so are you – in a secret sort of way. That’s why we get along together.’
‘I never heard such nonsense.’
‘Mind you, if you’ve suddenly decided to change your character completely, that’s another story.’
‘You’ve got to stop talking this way, Pamela.’
‘You see,’ she said, ‘if you really have decided to reform, then what on earth am I going to do?’
‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘Arthur, how could a nice person like you want to associate with a stinker?’
I sat myself down slowly in the chair opposite her, and she was watching me all the time. You understand, she was a big woman, with a big white face, and when she looked at me hard, as she was doing now, I became – how shall I say it – surrounded, almost enveloped by her, as though she were a great tub of cream and I had fallen in.
‘You don’t honestly want to do this microphone thing, do you?’
‘But of course I do. It’s time we had a bit of fun around here. Come on, Arthur. Don’t be so stuffy.’