‘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 that 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.’
‘It’s not right, Pamela.’
‘It’s just as right’ – up came the finger again – ‘just as right as when you found those letters of Mary Probert’s in her purse and you read them through from beginning to end.’
‘We should never have done that.’
‘We!’
‘You read them afterwards, Pamela.’
‘It didn’t harm anyone at all. You said so yourself at the time. And this one’s no worse.’
‘How would you like it if someone did it to you?’