Lady Chatterley's Lover

yourself, dear?’ said Clifford.
    Through clenched teeth, lying face down on the carpet she said, ‘No, I haven’t hurt myself, darling.’
    ‘Good,’ said Clifford. ‘Only masochists hurt themselves, I’m so glad you’re not one.’
    ‘Would you mind,’ she said standing up, ‘if I killed the cat.’
    It took half an hour but he talked her out of it.
    Mrs Bolton served the dinner.
    ‘It’s chicken fricassée,’ she said lifting off the cover, ’I’m sorry to say it’s cold as the gas stove is broken.’
    Clifford stiffened in his chair and in horrified tones repeated, ‘ Cold chicken fricassée? Why, why that’s worse than pneumonia!’
    Calming, Clifford called in Rogers their wine waiter. ‘Ah, Rogers, have you got a Macon?’
    ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Why should I? It’s not raining.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’ said Clifford.
    Constance explained it was a missing understanding over the dual sounding of nomenclature.
    ‘Rubbish,’ was all he said.
    Why, oh why, did she marry him, she could have married anybody, she did, and it turned out to be him. ‘Have you read Proust?’ he said.
    ‘I’ve tried but he bores me.’
    ‘Any particular part?’
    ‘The cover. I never got any further than that.’
    ‘But he’s really extraordinary.’
    ‘Well, he bores me to death.’
    ‘Then you ought to read him,’ said Clifford with a grim smile.
    Constance put on a pretend yawn, as obvious as a knee elephant charging. It was just a coincidence that at that moment in Africa at the Londalozi Reserve Lord Charles Portal was being charged by a bull elephant, but of course there was a time difference between the United Kingdom and Africa — in our wintertime Africa was two hours ahead. Constance was yawning at eight-twenty p.m. so Sir Charles was being charged at twenty-twenty African time. Constance didn’t yawn again till she got to her bedroom at nine-thirty-two p.m., by then in Africa it was eleven thirty-two and Sir Charles Portal was dead, flattened by the elephant. He was so flat they would bury him in a large envelope.
    Clifford continued his defence of Proust. ‘I like his subtlety and his well-bred anarchy.’
    With a bitter smile and her lips screwed up like a chicken bum, she said, ‘I hope you’re both very happy together.’
    ‘All right,’ he retorted, chewing painfully on the last of i the cold chicken fricassée. 52 During this he realized that whereas cold chicken fricassée wasn’t worse than pneumonia, it was more nourishing.
    ‘Who do you admire as a man?’
    What she would say would be a coincidence in a million.
    ‘I admire’, she said, ‘Lord Charles Portal.’
    ‘Is he an author?’ puzzled Clifford.
    ‘No, he expresses himself in a different way,’ she said delicately.
    ‘How?’ pressed Clifford.
    ‘He shoots elephants.’ In England it was twenty-thirty-two, in Africa it was twenty-two-thirty-two, and Lord Charles Portal was being laid out in the mortuary. Under Balfour he was Minister for Foreign Affairs — in fact he himself was having one with a Hindu girl.
    ‘I don’t see the point of shooting elephants,’ said Clifford. ‘Proust never shot one.’
    ‘Of course not,’ she stressed. ‘Where are you going to find an elephant to shoot in Paris?’
    ‘Does Lord whats-his-name have to shoot elephants?’ queried Clifford.
    Mrs Bolton brought in the dessert, vanilla ice.
    ‘I’m afraid it’s cold as well,’ she joked.
    Colder still was Sir Charles Portal on his slab in the blacked-out Victoria district mortuary. The elephant that had flattened him was drinking peacefully from the banks of the Limpopo River.
    Constance continued the question of elephant shooting.
    ‘They shoot them to keep the numbers down.’
    ‘Are elephants numbered?’ Clifford asked.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When I first met Sir Charles he’d just shot elephant number nine.’
    Clifford looked at her disbelievingly.
    ‘Sometimes he hunted with elephant dogs,’ she said.
    ‘Dogs? Did they kill elephants?’ he said with great suspicion.
    ‘Yes,’ she said.
    ‘Wow,’ he said.
    ‘They wait,’ she explained.
    ‘Wait?’ He was totally baffled.
    ‘Yes, wait,’ she explained. ‘Elephants have to die sometime.’
    For the record, though neither party knew, the elephant that had flattened Lord Charles was number 329, so he had avenged 328 of his fellow Pachyderm.
    ‘What do they do with dead elephants?’ said Clifford, even more baffled.
    Constance