Mortal Coils | Page 3

the vowel sounds.
Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility
of an animal regaining its burrow.
"Have I?" he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move.
"You must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long." He sat
back in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him.
"Teddy Bear..." and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head
declined on to Mr. Hutton's shoulder. Ravished, he looked down
sideways at the round, babyish face.
"Do you know, Doris, you look like the pictures of Louise de
Kerouaille." He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair.
"Who's Louise de Kera- whatever-it-is?" Doris spoke from remote
distances.
"She was, alas! Fuit. We shall all be 'was' one of these days.
Meanwhile..."
Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed
smoothly along. M'Nab's back, through the front window was stonily
impassive, the back of a statue.

"Your hands," Doris whispered. "Oh, you mustn't touch me. They give
me electric shocks,"
Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late
in one's existence one makes the discovery of one's body!
"The electricity isn't in me, it's in you." He kissed her again, whispering
her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific appellation
of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat, she offered
him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting the
sacrificial knife. The seamouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: very
peculiar. Or was Doris the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside out
in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, just
to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous, unbelievably
fantastic.
"Oh, Teddy Bear!" (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His
poor little jokes!) "Teddy Bear, I'm so happy."
"So am I," said Mr. Hutton. Was it true?
"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or
wrong?"
"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty
years."
"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right that
I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and that
it should give me electric shocks when you touch me."
"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks
rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil."
"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew
how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you
know, there is a hell, and all that. I don't know what to do. Sometimes I
think I ought to stop loving you."

"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his
seduction and his moustache.
"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could
hide from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to
you." "Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace.
"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care if
it is."
Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this
little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, they
sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it hastened
along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges towards
it devouringly.
"Good-bye, good-bye."
The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris
was left standing by the sign-post at the cross-roads, still dizzy and
weak with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of
those gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up
deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk.
She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies.
Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling
boredom.
II
MRS. HUTTON was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience.
In spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on
the hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues
of digestion, slept before the blaze.
"Phew! Isn't it rather hot in here?" Mr. Hutton asked as he entered the
room.

"You know I have to keep warm, dear." The voice seemed breaking on
the verge of tears. "I get so shivery."
"I hope you're better this evening."
"Not much, I'm afraid."
The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against
the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet,
and with the toe of his