Hemingway’s Chair

Hearing her voice
approaching from the street outside, he had swiftly turned his attention to an
illuminated display of Doulton china which occupied the corner furthest from
the door.
    ‘I’ve
a disabled person in the car,’ she announced to the hotel in general. ‘I shall
require some assistance.’ There was a pause. Her entrance seemed to have
created much the same effect as that of a lone gunman. All the staff had taken
cover.
    ‘Hello?’
    Martin
had shrunk closer to the cabinet. He had stared with extraordinary intensity at
the china display hoping that by some epic feat of concentration he might
actually be able to translocate himself into one of the soup tureens. But it
was no good.
    ‘I
say! You... You over there!’
    Martin
knew there was no escape.
    ‘You,’
she called. ‘Porter!’ He turned to see the towering, all-too-familiar figure
swathed in cascades of fur and leather.
    When
she recognised him there had been a momentary apology, but he had still ended
up having to grasp the front end of a wheelchair and carry a corpulent banker
up the two or three steps to the front door. The man, who had a kindly smile
concealed inside a strawberry-red face, had pressed a pound upon him. Martin
had slipped it quickly into the box for the blind.
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell and her party were now sitting at a window table being fussed
over by Gordon Parrish the waiter. Martin knew all about Gordon Parrish. He was
something of a legend with the below-stairs people. He was a fully paid-up
anarchist and loathed just about everybody he served. He was forever boasting
of peeing in the soup and putting sheep droppings in the muesli. He’d been had
up several times for exposure and once, it was rumoured, for interfering with
cattle, but he fawned so successfully on rich guests at the Market Hotel that
many of them regarded him as the family retainer they never had and rewarded
him generously.
    ‘Now,
Gordon,’ he could hear Mrs Harvey-Wardrell confiding from four tables away,
‘these are two of my absolutely oldest friends — Freddie was with Hambros for
many years, and there is no one in the art world Diana does not know —
so we don’t want any of your ghastly trippers’ teas. Could you find us
something a little special?’
    Gordon,
who had once slipped a condom in a cassoulet, bowed and scraped and rubbed his
hands and promised that he would find them something very special and Martin
didn’t doubt that he would.
    ‘Do
you know all these people?’ Ruth asked Martin. He nodded. ‘Most of them. They
all have to come in the post office.’
    Ruth
stole another look at the roomful of tweedy men and ample-bosomed matrons, it’s
like a scene out of The Lady Vanishes .'
    ‘It’s
city money, a lot of it. They all want to play country squires for the weekend.
Then on Mondays they go back to selling futures.’
    Ruth
leaned down and picked up her voluminous black leather bag with silver studs. A
present from a Moroccan she’d once known fleetingly. She reached inside for her
cigarettes. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
    A
look of alarm appeared on Martin’s face. He swivelled himself round in his
chair. ‘I think there’s some sort of rule in here.’
    Ruth
smiled as sweetly as she could manage and put the pack back in her bag. ‘Forget
it,’ she said. ‘We are a cursed race, the friends of nicotine.’
    Martin
smiled uncomfortably.
    Sarah,
the new waitress, came across to them. She was pink-cheeked and unhurried, with
bright, wandering eyes and a black dress drawn tight across her bottom. ‘Tea
for two?’ she asked.
    Martin
nodded and looked across to Ruth, ‘l ea?’
    ‘Could
I have coffee?’ Ruth asked.
    Sarah
scribbled ‘coffee’ on her pad and asked, ‘D’you still want the tea?’
    Ruth
looked confused.
    Sarah
heaved a sigh and repeated her question. ‘D’you want your coffee with the tea?’
    ‘I
would like my coffee with the coffee, if that’s possible.’
    Now
Sarah looked confused.
    Ruth
turned helplessly to Martin. ‘Is drinking tea a legal requirement here?’
    Martin
stepped in, explained the differences between tea you drink and tea you eat and
Ruth was grateful and Sarah went away.
    A
gleeful cry wafted across from the Harvey-Wardrell table: ‘Smoked salmon, how
perfect!’
    ‘Scottish?’
asked Freddie from his wheelchair.
    ‘Loch
Tay, southern end,’ confirmed Gordon.
    It
could have been from Mogadishu for all he knew, but in twenty years he’d learnt
to say what they wanted to