"Not very much."
"It was enough," he said, smiling slightly.
"Enough for what?"
"Enough to make me want to get a little bit of my own back on her. So what would you think if I suggested you and I have a go at that thing your friend told you about at lunch?"
When he said this, I felt such a surge of excitement my stomach nearly jumped out of my mouth. I gripped the handles of the mower and started revving the engine.
"Have I said the wrong thing?" Jerry asked.
I didn't answer.
"Listen," he said. "If you think it's a lousy idea, let's just forget I ever mentioned it. You're not mad at me, are you?"
"I'm not mad at you, Jerry," I said. "It's just that it never entered my head that we should do it."
"It entered mine," he said. "The set-up is perfect. We wouldn't even have to cross the street." His face had gone suddenly bright and his eyes were shining like two stars. "So what do you say, Vic?"
"I'm thinking," I said.
"Maybe you don't fancy Samantha."
"I don't honestly know," I said.
"She's lots of fun," Jerry said. "I guarantee that."
At this point I saw Mary come out on to the front porch. "There's Mary," I said. "She's looking for the children. We'll talk some more tomorrow."
"Then it's a deal?"
"It could be, Jerry. But only on condition we don't rush it. I want to be dead sure everything is right before we start. Damn it all, this is a whole brand-new can of beans!"
"No, it's not!" he said. "Your friend said it was a gas. He said it was easy."
"Ah, yes," I said, "My friend. Of course. But each case is different." I opened the throttle on the mower and went whining away across the lawn. When I got to the far side and turned around, Jerry was already through the gap in the hedge and walking up to his front door.
The next couple of weeks was a period of high conspiracy for Jerry and me. We held secret meetings in bars and restaurants to discuss strategy, and sometimes he dropped into my office after work and we had a planning session behind the closed door. Whenever a doubtful point arose, Jerry would always say, "How did your friend do it?" And I would play for time and say, "I'll call him up and ask him about that one."
After many conferences and much talk, we agreed upon the following main points: 1. That D Day should be a Saturday.
2. That on D Day evening we should take our wives out to a good dinner, the four of us together.
3. That Jerry and I should leave our houses and cross over through the gap in the hedge at precisely one a.m. Sunday morning.
4. That instead of lying in bed in the dark until one a.m. came along, we should both, as soon as our wives were asleep, go quietly downstairs to the kitchen and drink coffee.
5. That we should use the front doorbell idea if an emergency arose.
6. That the return cross-over time was fixed for two a.m.
7. That while in the wrong bed, questions (if any) from the woman must be answered by an "Uh-uh' sounded with the lips closed tight.
8. That I myself must immediately give up cigarettes and take to a pipe so that I would "smell' the same as Jerry.
9. That we should at once start using the same brand of hair oil and after-shave lotion.
10. That as both of us normally wore our wrist-watches in bed, and they were much the same shape, it was decided not to exchange. Neither of us wore rings.
11. That each man must have something unusual about him that the woman would identify positively with her own husband. We therefore invented what became known as "The Sticking Plaster Ploy'. It worked like this: on D Day evening, when the couples arrived back in their own homes immediately after the dinner, each husband would make a point of going to the kitchen to cut himself a piece of cheese. At the same time, he would carefully stick a large piece of plaster over the tip of the forefinger of his right hand. Having done this, he would hold up the finger and say to his wife, "I cut myself. It's nothing, but it was bleeding a bit.' Thus, later on, when the men have switched beds, each woman will be made very much aware of the plaster-covered finger (the man would see to that), and will associate it directly with her own husband. An important psychological ploy, this, calculated to dissipate any tiny suspicion that might enter the mind of either female.
So much for the basic plans. Next came what we referred to in our notes as "Familiarization with the Layout'. Jerry schooled me first. He gave me three hours' training in his own house one Sunday afternoon when his wife and children were out. I had never been into their bedroom before. On the dressing table were Samantha's perfumes, her brushes, and all her other things. A pair of stockings was draped over the back of a chair. Her nightdress, white and blue, was hanging behind the door leading to the bathroom.
"Okay," Jerry said. "It'll be pitch dark when you come in. Samantha sleeps on this side, so you must tiptoe around the end of the bed and slide in on the other side, over there. I'm going to blindfold you and let you practise."
At first with the blindfold on, I wandered all over the room like a drunk. But after about an hour's work, I was able to negotiate the course pretty well. But before Jerry would finally pass me out, I had to go blindfold all the way from the front door through the hall, up the stairs, past the children's rooms, into Samantha's room and finish up in exactly the right place. And I had to do it silently, like a thief. All this took three hours of hard work, but I got it in the end.
The following Sunday morning when Mary had taken our children to church, I was able to give Jerry the same sort of work-out in my house. He learned the ropes faster than me, and within an hour he had passed the blindfold test without placing a foot wrong.
It was during this session that we decided to disconnect each woman's bedside lamp as we entered the bedroom. So Jerry practised finding the plug and pulling it out with his blindfold on, and the following week-end, I was able to do the same in Jerry's house.
Now came by far the most important part of our training. We called it "Spilling the Beans', and it was here that both of us had to describe in every detail the procedure we adopted when making love to our own wives. We agreed not to worry ourselves with any exotic variations that either of us might or might not occasionally practise. We were concerned only with teaching one another the most commonly used routine, the one least likely to arouse suspicion.
The session took place in my office at six o'clock on a Wednesday evening after the staff had gone home. At first, we were both slightly embarrassed, and neither of us wanted to begin. So I got out the bottle of whisky, and after a couple of stiff drinks, we loosened up and the teach-in started. "While Jerry talked I took notes, and vice versa. At the end of it all, it turned out that the only real difference between Jerry's routine and my own was one of tempo. But what a difference it was! He took things (if what he said was to be believed) in such a leisurely fashion and he prolonged the moments to such an extravagant degree that I wondered privately to myself whether his partner did not sometimes go to sleep in the middle of it all. My job, however, was not to criticize but to copy and I said nothing.
Jerry was not so discreet. At the end of my personal description he had the temerity to say, "Is that really what you do?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean is it all over and done with as quickly as that?"
"Look," I said. "We aren't here to give each other lessons. We're here to learn the facts."
"I know that," he said. "But I'm going to feel a bit of an ass if I copy your style exactly. My God, you go through it like an express train whizzing through a country station!"
I stared at him, mouth open.
"Don't look so surprised," he said. "The way you told it to me, anyone would think.