Hemingway’s Chair

hear.
    Soon
Ruth and Martin found themselves engaged on a major logistical exercise.
Balancing the array of cups and saucers, plates, jugs, cake-stands and pots of
hot water on the table was difficult enough. Quite another skill was required
to transfer the profusion of delicacies from hand to mouth without them
disintegrating on the way.
    All
this concentrated their minds and offered a convenient distraction from the
real reason for their meeting. Then Sarah brought the bill, which lay a little
too long on the table before Martin claimed it, and it seemed as if they would
just get up and go and that would be that. Martin was beginning to feel a touch
of panic.
    Ruth
wasn’t sure what was going on either, or who was supposed to make the first
move. All she knew was that she desperately needed a cigarette. She leaned
across to Martin, is there a bar in here?’
     
    ‘The
spirit of Hemingway cannot be invoked in an English tea-room,’ pronounced Ruth
as a double vodka began to take effect. ‘I think we can now confirm that with
some authority.’
    ‘Have
you... have you been an admirer of his... for long?’ Martin asked her,
tentatively.
    Ruth
exhaled copiously. Though she might not admit it, his eager awkwardness was
calming her down. ‘Put it this way, Martin, I’m not a fan. I just know an awful
lot about him. And the more you know about Ernest Hemingway, the less of a fan
you become.’ She allowed herself a thick, smoky laugh.
    Martin
decided it was time to stand up and be counted. ‘I can’t agree with that,’ he
said.
    ‘Well,
good for you.’
    ‘I
think he was a great man,’ said Martin.
    ‘Men
usually do.’ She reached for the ashtray. ‘I think he wrote some good books and
even better stories. I think at his best he was a great writer, but he could
also be cruel, boorish and inconsiderate. I don’t go along with the adoration
and the sycophancy.’
    ‘Nor
me,’ Martin agreed. ‘I know his faults. But if I could write stories one-tenth
as good as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” or “The Short, Happy Life”...’
    Ruth
puckered her nose. ‘Why those two?’
    ‘Well,
I think they’re just about perfect. There’s not a word I would change.’
    ‘And The Old Man and the Sea ?'
    ‘Extraordinary.’
    ‘ A
Farewell to Arms ?'
    ‘Superb.’
    Ruth
laughed and drained her glass. ‘You are a fan.’
    ‘You
didn’t ask me about Across the River and into the Trees. That was the
one everyone hated.’
    ‘Okay.
What about Across the River and into the Trees ?'‘Outstanding!’
    This
time they both laughed. Ruth leaned forward and picked out a dressed olive from
a bowl on the bar. ‘I have to admit that if a lot of other people didn’t feel
the way you do, I wouldn’t be writing a book about the guy,’ she said.
    Neither
of them spoke for a moment.
    ‘What’s
your book about?’ asked Martin.
    Ruth
pulled the ashtray towards her. ‘Well, it’s about Ernest Hemingway.’ She saw
Martin was about to speak and she went quickly on. ‘And Grace and Hadley and
Pauline and Martha and Mary Hemingway. And Agnes Von Kurowsky and Duff Twysden
and Gertrude Stein and Jane Mason and Adriana Ivancich and all the other women
without whom he would not have written the way he did.’
    Ruth
stubbed out her cigarette and picked a tiny tobacco strand from the end of her
tongue.
    Martin
was disappointed. Since the time he left school he had dreamt of the chance to
talk about his hero with someone else who knew as much about him as he did. He
had never once entertained the possibility of meeting someone who knew him and
hated him.
    ‘Same
again?’ The barman was pointing at Martin’s glass.
    Martin
looked to Ruth. She looked unsure. ‘I have my car.’
    Martin
looked sympathetic. ‘I have my bike.’
    ‘Oh,
what the hell,’ she said, it’s Christmas. I’ll take a small one.’
    The
barman poured two more vodkas. Martin raised his glass. ‘To Ernest. And his
women.’
    Ruth
grinned ruefully. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘How many times did he crash his
car?’
    Martin
barely took breath. ‘Once in 1930, twice in the Second World War, once in 1953
and once in 1959.July. Burgos. Spain.’
    Ruth
rolled her eyes. ‘You are a fan,’ she said again.
     
    Martin
had rather understated the hopelessness of the computer training session that
had been held earlier in the day. It had been embarrassing from the start. Nick
Marshall had asked not one, but three part-timers along. Shirley Barker had
been