Free The Green Man by Kingsley Amis Page A

slowly
dragging some farming implement across a large area of naked earth. From where
I was (and I dare say anyone on the spot with a magnifying-glass would have
told the same tale), this activity seemed to leave matters as they had been,
apart from the multiple ruts being made in the soil. Probably the fellow was
getting nerved up, trying to accustom himself to the idea of performing some
actual deed of tillage there the following week.
    His
machinery was making the only audible sound, apart from the song of a blackbird
with nothing better to do. I had barely started to hope I would not have time
to think about things when I heard a third sound, turned my head and saw Diana
approaching on foot—only five minutes late, quixotically early, in fact, by her
standards: a good sign. She was wearing a dark-blue shirt and a tweed skirt,
and was carrying a folded newspaper. I wondered slightly about the newspaper.
When she reached the truck, I leaned across and opened the door on that side,
but she made no move to get in.
    ‘Well,
Maurice,’ she said.
    ‘Hallo,
Diana. Let’s go, shall we?’
    ‘Maurice,
don’t you think it’s rather extraordinary of you to have decided to come along
after all this afternoon?’ She said this in full-blooded oral Chick’s Own style,
with tiny hyphens of silence between the syllables of the hard words. To say it
all while being seen to do so, she had to bend both neck and knees and also
rely on my remaining twisted round in my seat and leaning deeply over towards
her.
    ‘We can
talk about that when we’re on our way.’
    ‘But
don’t you think so? To be prepared to make advances to somebody else’s wife
less than eighteen hours after you’ve seen your father die?’
    The
lack of hesitancy about the number of hours, evincing previous calculation, had
a point to it. I understood now why I had been so sure earlier that she would
appear as asked: I had sensed that she would not have been able to resist the
chance of such a meaty interrogation-session. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘If
you’ll get in I’ll see if I can explain.’
    ‘I
mean, most men who’ve had that happen to them wouldn’t even contemplate that
sort of thing. What makes you so different?’
    ‘I’ll
be giving you a full demonstration of it shortly. Come on.’
    As if
only then making up her mind, she settled herself beside me. I took her in my
arms and kissed her forcefully. She remained passive until I put my hand on her
breast, when she promptly removed it. Nevertheless, I was sure she was going to
yield that afternoon when she was ready to, and this time understood at the
same moment why I was sure. By opening her legs to me today of all days, she
would be being strangely responsive to my strange need, finding herself
strangely in tune with this strange man—in other words, she could represent
herself as an interesting person. But before she got on to being strangely
responsive, she was going to exact her full toll by making me put up with her
questioning patiently enough, and long enough, for it to seem that I agreed she
was an interesting person. Seeming, luckily for me, was all that was going to
be required, since she needed no real confirmation of her view of herself.
True, but why, then, was there any need for me even to do any seeming? Most
likely she was just looking forward to the simple pleasure of watching my
antics as I battled to master my impatience.
    Diana
had opened her newspaper—The Guardian, of course —but was evidently not
reading it. When, as we approached a corner, an old man sitting in his garden
came into view, she hid her face in the middle pages. Good security, and a
further good sign, had one been needed, but if she wanted to avoid being seen
in my car why had she just now stood by it in the open for a full minute? Other
people’s priorities are endlessly odd.
    ‘Where
are you taking me?’ she asked.
    ‘Well,
I’m afraid there’s nothing in the love-nest line available, but