Roald Dahl - The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl, Volume 1

"Not quite. But I'd been thinking about Ed. And that's always a bit dangerous."

"I'm glad you called."

"So am I," she said.

Anna was getting to the end of her second martini. Conrad changed the subject and began talking about his practice. She was watching him rather than listening to him. He was so damned handsome it was impossible not to watch him. She put a cigarette between her lips, then offered the pack to Conrad.

"No thanks," he said. "I don't." He picked up a book of matches from the table and gave her a light, then he blew out the match and said, "Are those cigarettes mentholated?"

"Yes, they are."

She took a deep drag, and blew the smoke slowly up into the air. "Now go ahead and tell me that they're going to shrivel up my entire reproductive system," she said.

He laughed and shook his head.

"Then why did you ask?"

"Just curious, that's all."

"You're lying. I can tell it from your face. You were about to give me the figures for the incidence of lung cancer in heavy smokers."

"Lung cancer has nothing to do with menthol, Anna," he said, and he smiled and took a tiny sip of his original martini, which he had so far hardly touched. He set the glass back carefully on the table. "You still haven't told me what work you are doing," he went on, "or why you came to Dallas."

"Tell me about menthol first. If it's even half as bad as the juice of the juniper berry, I think I ought to know about it quick."

He laughed and shook his head.

"Please!"

"No, ma'am."

"Conrad, you simply cannot start things up like this and then drop them. It's the second time in five minutes."

"I don't want to be a medical bore," he said.

"You're not being a bore. These things are fascinating. Come on! Tell! Don't be mean."

It was pleasant to be sitting there feeling moderately high on two big martinis, and making easy talk with this graceful man, this quiet, comfortable, graceful person. He was not being coy. Far from it. He was simply being his normal scrupulous self.

"Is it something shocking?" she asked.

"No. You couldn't call it that."

"Then go ahead."

He picked up the packet of cigarettes lying in front of her, and studied the label. "The point is this," he said. "If you inhale menthol, you absorb it into the bloodstream. And that isn't good, Anna. It does things to you. It has certain very definite effects upon the central nervous system. Doctors still prescribe it occasionally."

"I know that," she said. "Nose-drops and inhalations."

"That's one of its minor uses. Do you know the other?"

"You rub it on the chest when you have a cold."

"You can if you like, but it wouldn't help."

"You put it in ointment and it heals cracked lips."

"That's camphor."

"So it is."

He waited for her to have another guess.

"Go ahead and tell me," she said.

"It may surprise you a bit."

"I'm ready to be surprised."

"Menthol," Conrad said, "is a well-known anti-aphrodisiac."

"A what?"

"It suppresses sexual desire."

"Conrad, you're making these things up."

"I swear to you I'm not." uses it?"

"Very few people nowadays. It has too strong a flavour. Saltpetre is much better."

"Ah yes. I know about saltpetre."

"What do you know about saltpetre?"

"They give it to prisoners," Anna said. "They sprinkle it on their cornflakes every morning to keep them quiet."

"They also use it in cigarettes," Conrad said.

"You mean prisoners' cigarettes?"

"I mean all cigarettes."

"That's nonsense."

"Is it?"

"Of course it is."

"Why do you say that?"

"Nobody would stand for it," she said.

"They stand for cancer."

"That's quite different, Conrad. How do you know they put saltpetre in cigarettes?"

"Have you never wondered," he said, "what makes a cigarette go on burning when you lay it in the ashtray? Tobacco doesn't burn of its own accord. Any pipe smoker will tell you that."

"They use special chemicals," she said.

"Exactly; they use saltpetre."

"Does saltpetre burn?"

"Sure it burns. It used to be one of the prime ingredients of old-fashioned gunpowder. Fuses, too. It makes very good fuses. That cigarette of yours is a first-rate slow-burning fuse, is it not?"

Ann looked at her cigarette. Though she hadn't drawn on it for a couple of minutes, it was still smouldering away and the smoke was curling upward from the tip in a slim blue-grey spiral.

"So this has menthol in it and saltpetre?" she said.

"Absolutely."

"And they're both anti-aphrodisiacs?"

"Yes. You're getting a double dose."

"It's ridiculous, Conrad. It's too little to make any difference."

He smiled but didn't answer this.

"There's not enough there to inhibit a cockroach," she said.

"That's what you think, Anna. How many do you smoke a day?"

"About thirty."

"Well," he said, "I guess it's none of my business." He paused, and then he added, "But you and I would be a lot better off today if it was."

"Was what?"

"My business."

"Conrad, what do you mean?"

"I'm simply saying that if you, once upon a time, hadn't suddenly decided to drop me, none of this misery would have happened to either of us. We'd still be happily married to each other."

His face had suddenly taken on a queer sharp look.

"Drop you?"

"It was quite a shock, Anna."

"Oh dear," she said, "but everybody drops everybody else at that age, don't they?"

"I wouldn't know," Conrad said.

"You're not cross with me still, are you, for doing that?"

"Cross!" he said. "Good God, Anna! Cross is what children get when they lose a toy! I lost a wife!"

She stared at him, speechless.

"Tell me," he went on, "didn't you have any idea how I felt at the time?"

"But Conrad, we were so young."

"It destroyed me, Anna. It just about destroyed me."

"But how… "How what?"

"How, if it meant so much, could you turn right around and get engaged to somebody else a few weeks later?"

"Have you never heard of the rebound?" he asked.

She nodded, gazing at him in dismay.

"I was wildly in love with you, Anna."

She didn't answer.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was a silly outburst. Please forgive me."

There was a long silence.

Conrad was leaning back in his chair, studying her from a distance. She took another cigarette from the pack, and lit it, Then she blew out the match and placed it carefully in the ashtray. When she glanced up again, he was still watching her. There was an intent, far look in his eyes.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"Conrad," she said, "do you still hate me for doing what I did?"

"Hate you?"

"Yes, hate me. I have a queer feeling that you do. I'm sure you do, even after all these years."

"Anna," he said.

"Yes, Conrad?"

He hitched his chair closer to the table, and leaned forward. "Did it ever cross your mind.

He stopped.

She waited.

He was looking so intensely earnest all of a sudden that she leaned forward herself.

"Did what cross my mind?" she asked.

"The fact that you and I…that both of us have a bit of unfinished business."

She stared at him.

He looked back at her, his eyes as bright as two stars. "Don't be shocked," he said, "please."

"Shocked?"

"You look as though I'd just asked you to jump out of the window with me."

The room was full of people now, and it was very noisy. It was like being at a cocktail party. You had to shout to be heard.

Conrad's eyes waited on her, impatient, eager.

"I'd like another martini," she said.

"Must you?"

"Yes," she said, "I must."

In her whole life, she had been made love to by only one man-her husband, Ed.