MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND?
by Graham Greene, 1967

The narrator of Graham Greene's "May We Borrow Your Husband?" is a novelist, William Harris, who is writing a biography of John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, the English Restoration poet. Using an ironic tone, William relates the events of several days in the lives of five English tourists residing at a resort hotel in Antibes. He speaks directly to his audience as though engaging them in conversation and on one occasion refers to the reader as " hypocrite lecteur, " a phrase from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal that is quoted by T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land.

"May We Borrow Your Husband?" is the title story of a collection of what Greene termed "comedies of the sexual life." The story is indeed something of a comedy of manners, since the lifestyles of a particular class of English society come under the scrutiny of the author. The narrator, as both a novelist and an authority on Rochester, who was noted not only as a poet but also for his scandalous sex life, is an appropriate observer of the events that transpire before his eyes. On one occasion he remarks, "You will notice that I play a very unheroic part in this comedy," although he does, in fact, endeavor to prevent what he sees as a potential tragedy and in the course of events falls in love as well.

William, who is staying on in Antibes after the season is over in order to finish his book, is annoyed when Stephen and Tony, two gay interior decorators, the former near 50, the latter close to 30, arrive at the hotel. It is obvious to William that they are lovers, and he is irritated by their flamboyance and their cruising of local bars. In addition, he finds interior design in general artificial and observes sarcastically that "sometimes I longed for a room which had simply grown that way like the lines on a human face." He avoids Stephen and Tony insofar as possible, but after a young honeymoon couple, Poopy and Peter Travis, arrive, all five people are drawn into a complex situation that seems to William to portend a tragic outcome.

William perceives immediately after the arrival of the honeymoon couple that Stephen and Tony are sexually attracted to Peter. On the Travises' first morning at the hotel, Poopy comes alone to the terrace for breakfast, her face drawn and dark circles around her eyes. When her husband appears, both William and the decorators note that something is amiss. On subsequent mornings the same tension is evident, and they are both lacking, William states, "the lineaments of gratified desire." Within a few days Stephen and Tony have ingratiated themselves with and befriended the young couple, and William sardonically observes that "the enemy are within the citadel; it's only a question of time." Although he wishes somehow to forestall the impending seduction of Peter by the decorators, he is powerless to prevent it.

The decorators convince Poopy that her husband should accompany the two of them on a motor trip for a day, while she remains behind in the care of William. They even suggest to William that he make love to her since she is obviously sexually frustrated and he is clearly attracted to her. When William reproaches them for their intentions, the two men cavalierly brush aside his protest, insisting that, as a product of the English public schools, Peter must have had homosexual experiences and that he has a friend, Winstanley, whom they know to be gay.

In the course of the day they spend together, William finds himself more and more attracted to Poopy, who is innocence personified. He realizes that she "belonged to the age of trust as I belonged to the age of cynicism." He recognizes that he himself is as wrong for her as is Peter, for "if he had the wrong hormones, I had the wrong age." He considers revealing the decorators' designs on her husband but thinks better of it, for he is not certain that she would even understand and can foresee no good outcome under any circumstances. She finally confides in him that the marriage was in part a result of the fact that Peter's father wanted an heir and that her husband has been unable to perform sexually. She assumes that his condition results from the fact that he finds her physically unattractive. William endeavors to reassure her that she is a beautiful woman but to no avail.

William characterizes the situation involving the young couple and the decorators as being "like a novel which hesitates on the verge between comedy and tragedy. If she recognized the situation it would be tragedy; if she were ignorant it was a comedy, even a farce…." The two of them drink a great deal, and William grows more and more enamored of her, even though he professes to be unable on some occasions to pronounce her "hated name" and wonders how she can have come by it. William believes that when "what is called 'the sexual life"' ends, one finds that "the only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship." She, he realizes, is too innocent to understand such a concept, vouchsafed to him by age and experience.

When Stephen, Tony, and Peter return in the evening, noisily exhilarated, it is clear that they have been drinking heavily. After the young married couple have retired to their room, the decorators boast to William that Tony has successfully seduced Peter, who has confided to them his fear that he may be impotent. The next morning, however, the young bride is beaming, and even the groom seems happy. Tony's seduction has, among other things, served the purpose of freeing the young man to perform with his wife, at least this one time. The poem by the Earl of Rochester that William had recited to Poopy the evening before takes on an ironic quality in view of this consummation of their marriage:

Then talk not of Inconstancy,
False Hearts, and broken Vows;
If I, by miracle, can be This live-long Minute true to thee,
'Tis all that Heav'n allows.

Despite the seeming happiness of the young couple in the morning light, William foresees no future joy, and he wonders, "Would everything have gone normally well if some conjunction of the planets had not crossed their honeymoon with that hungry pair of hunters?"

In her newfound state of joy, Poopy informs William that Tony will be visiting Peter and her often in order to redecorate their home. William realizes that her dream, her contentment, cannot last, but there is no way that he can tell her what he perceives as lying ahead. He packs his bags and moves to the only other hotel in Antibes that is open during the off-season, leaving Peter and Poopy and Stephen and Tony to whatever fate may await them. Whimsically, he comes to believe that what he has observed "was in the end a comedy and not a tragedy, a farce even, which is why I have given this scrap of reminiscence a farcical title." The tone here as elsewhere is heavily ironic and the ending indeterminate, for the reader is left to imagine what may have become of the characters subsequent to the events in Antibes.