Hemingway’s Chair

this, but didn’t like to ask. She had
concluded that it must have been from a magazine, or one of his books. She
hadn’t liked it much, as the tips of his fingers smelt of postal adhesive.
    The
next question on the Dick Arthur Breakfast Show concerned nocturnal
animals. ‘ That's animals that only come out at night,' Dick Arthur added
helpfully, though most of the question had been obscured by the noise of Frank
Rudge’s Dormobile pulling into the yard. Through the window Elaine could see
him wince with discomfort as he slid the door open and extracted himself
gingerly from the driving seat. Thursday was market day at Norwich and he’d
been out on the road before dawn. Paul, his latest acquisition from the Youth
Training Scheme, checked his spiky blond hair in the wing mirror and by the
time he’d got down, Elaine’s father already had the back open and was reaching
for the first of the long, flat boxes of Spanish lettuce.
     
    Theston
post office was part of an uncompleted 1930s development in the centre of the
town. It was the work of Cedric Meadows, the Borough Architect, who had left
for Malaya a year later, leaving undisclosed debts. On a good day, when Martin
cycled into North Square he saw the redbrick walls, the asymmetric
stone-dressed tower, the steeply gabled roof and portentous curved steps up to
the bulky oak front door as a rather splendid mess. On a bad day he barely saw
the post office at all, his eye being drawn unwillingly to the neon-bordered,
poster-plastered window of the video store on its left and the jumble-sale
jolliness of the Save the Children shop on its right.
    As
he had done every morning, forty-eight weeks a year for the last sixteen years,
Martin cycled around two sides of the square and turned into Echo Passage. If
there were no unwelcomely parked cars he would slowly raise his right leg,
transfer his weight to the left-hand pedal and, braking as he did so, glide
balletically into Phipps’ Yard, coming to rest, precisely, alongside the back
steps of the post office. Ernie Padgett, the current Postmaster, a title he had
privately refused to relinquish when postmasters had been officially renamed
managers four years earlier, lived on the premises. He would normally have
opened up and had some tea on, but recently he had been unwell and with
retirement imminent had seemed to be losing interest in the job. Highly
irregularly, he had entrusted his assistant, Martin, with a set of keys and
these Martin had to use today.
     
    As
Elaine arrived there was already a brace of regulars waiting outside the main
door. At their head was Harold Meredith, a small, sturdy man with a walking
stick and a head of closely trimmed white hair, more often than not concealed
beneath a tweed cap. He took care over his appearance and wouldn’t dream of
leaving the house in anything less correct than a hound’s-tooth jacket and an
Army Pay Corps tie. His pale, smooth-skinned complexion showed little sign of age,
though he was known to be over eighty. Since his wife’s death five years
earlier, the post office had become his adopted home.
    ‘You’re
up with the lark, Mr Meredith,’ Elaine called jauntily, because that was the
way he liked it.
    ‘I’m
up for a lark any day,’ came the ritual reply.
    ‘I’m
too old for you, Mr Meredith,’ Elaine protested and fluttered her eyelashes as
she reached the top of the steps and pressed the doorbell for Martin to let her
in.
    Elaine
and Martin refrained from any physical contact whilst they were on post office
premises. Even when there were just the two of them in the back kitchen they
only ever touched accidentally. Elaine had begun to entertain increasingly
elaborate fantasies of coffee-break passion but Martin remained the complete professional
and, once he was inside the building, his sole relationship was with the
public. No enquiry, however fatuous or ill informed, failed to receive his full
attention, nor was any irrelevant personal information treated as less than
engrossing. Even Mrs Harvey-Wardrell, whom Elaine thought the most vile
creature imaginable, could not dislodge his mask of professional affability.
    Pamela
Harvey-Wardrell was the self-appointed queen of Theston society. She was a
snob’s snob, a woman of such epic and ineffable unselfconsciousness that, if
born poor and unwelcome, she might well have been certified mad. She was
another early riser. A keen ornithologist, she could often be seen on the
marshes at dawn, glasses