Hemingway’s Chair

One
     
     
     
    Marsh
Cottage stood a little way back from a road that led to a cliff top and then
stopped. It had once run out to a headland where there had been a small
village, but the sea had clawed away the soft sandy cliff and the houses had
long since disappeared. Now, apart from Marsh Cottage itself, the road served
only a pair of holiday chalets. It was neglected and full of potholes.
    On
either side of the cottage lay flat countryside, tufty grassland on the
landward side and on the other grazing marsh running a half-mile down to the
sea. The house had been flooded several times since it was built in the early
1930s but more recently the local council had raised the sea defences in an
attempt to create an extra beach or two, and since then it had been safe from
the spring tides.
    Marsh
Cottage looked what it was. The unsuccessful prototype for an abandoned housing
estate. Redbrick walls two storeys high ran up to a pitched slate roof. A
suburban bay window faced on to the road with the front door to one side.
Beside the house was a detached garage alongside which a passage led round to
the back. In the seventies a white-painted wood and glass extension had been
added to the rear of the house and framed the old back door.
    On
this Thursday morning in early September Marsh Cottage looked particularly
vulnerable as it took a westerly wind full in the face. An unhealthy yellow sky
offered worse to come as a bobble-hatted figure emerged from the garage,
wheeling a bicycle. He secured the door of the garage behind him, patted the
pockets of a sky-blue anorak, checked the fastenings on a pannier basket and,
mounting the bicycle with care, negotiated the short, bumpy driveway and turned
southwards in the direction of the town of Theston, two miles away. Martin
Sproale had made this journey, on various bicycles, for most of his adult life.
He was now thirty-six, a little over six feet tall, with a round, soft face and
light reddish hair. His skin was pale and prone to rashes, and his hands were
long and fine.
     
    Elaine
Rudge, who worked at the post office alongside Martin, was still at home. She
lived in the centre of town and could walk to work, and in any case she didn’t
have the responsibility of opening up, which brought Martin in on the dot of
half past eight. Hairgrip between clenched teeth, she was standing before the
kitchen mirror, concentrating on herself and a vital quiz question on the Dick
Arthur Breakfast Show.
    'The
capital of Indonesia is Jakarta, Mombasa or Rio de Janeiro? The capital of
Indonesia ...’
    As
the voice from the radio came again, Joan Rudge, a trim, energetic woman in a
padded nylon housecoat, gave a short dismissive laugh. ‘Well, it’s not going to
be Rio de Janeiro, is it. That’s in Brazil.’ Elaine took the grip from her
teeth and thrust it into the back of her head. ‘Mum, I’m trying to listen.’
    ‘Soft,
these questions.’
    ‘You’ve
still got to work out if it’s Mombasa or — what was the other one?’ Elaine
said, reaching for a piece of paper.
    ' Jakarta , Mombasa or Rio de Janeiro?' repeated Dick Arthur obligingly.
    ‘Must
be Jakarta.’
    ‘Well
it’ll not be Rio de Janeiro,’ her mother said again. ‘That’s definitely in
Brazil. That’s where Uncle Howard ended up.’
    Elaine
bit her lower lip for some time and then wrote down ‘Mombasa’.
    She
returned to the mirror and stood a little back from it. She’d chosen her
clothes with more care than usual this morning, as it was a Thursday and she
and Martin always had a drink at the Pheasant on Thursdays. The pink cotton
blouse was simple but sophisticated, not figure-hugging but very feminine. She
looked in the mirror and flicked the collar up. Then she flicked it down. She
wasn’t pretty, she knew that. She was a hefty, well-proportioned young woman,
but on some days she could look oddly beautiful, the way Ingrid Bergman did
when they photographed her nose right. Her thick head of copper-brown hair
needed work but repaid the effort. She’d woken up with an ominous tenderness on
her lower lip and was relieved to find on closer examination that it was
nothing more than the tiniest of pimples which she would have no trouble in
disguising. Unless of course Martin was in one of his touching moods. The other
evening they’d been together down by the beach huts and he’d run his fingers
very gently over her face, paying special attention to her lips. Elaine was
curious to know where he’d learnt