Hemingway’s Chair

Frank had
laid plans for a property business, a two-man Mafia to revitalise Theston’s
fortunes after the collapse of the local fishing industry. Investment was
promised but all that was raised was expectation and, amidst recriminations,
Frank Rudge became a greengrocer and Padge remained a postmaster.
    From
then on expert Padge-watchers — and there were many, for the relationship
between post office and community is close and pervasive — detected the start
of a decline. He seemed to withdraw into himself, indeed on occasions to be
downright surly. He developed a constant bronchial cough. He found the new,
computerised systems no match for his voluminous memory, which he once boasted
could retain the serial number of every new pension book issued over a
six-month period. He relied more and more on Martin to get him through the last
few years until he could retire and claim a pension for himself. But he was too
proud a man ever to admit this and Martin remained in word, if not in deed,
only assistant manager.
     
    ‘They’re
sending three of them,’ announced Padge in the lunch-hour.
    ‘Three
what?’ asked Elaine, glancing up from her crossword, grateful for a respite
from 14 across, ‘Hebrew prophet (5)’.
    ‘Three
from area headquarters.’
    ‘What
for?’
    Padge
tapped the letter he was holding, impatiently.
    ‘For
the — you know — for the farewell dinner.’
    ‘Dinner
now is it, Padge?’ asked Martin between mouthfuls of bread and cold chicken.
‘I’d heard it was cheese and pickles... you know, something lean and mean and
ready for privatisation.’
    Martin
knew there was a dinner. He was the one who’d suggested it in the first place.
Head Office had only offered sherry and a presentation, and now here they were
muscling in on an occasion which was supposed to have been a surprise anyway.
Padge took another look at the letter.
    ‘Still,
three of them,’ he said, with a touch of pride. ‘Shows they must consider it an
occasion of importance.’
     
    ‘Penny?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘For
your thoughts? What’s occupying that big brain of yours?’
    Elaine
and Martin were sitting together in the beer garden of the Pheasant Inn, at
Braddenham, a modest village fifteen minutes’ drive inland from Theston. Its
thatched roof and quaintly angled half-timbered facade dated back to the late
1970s when it was rebuilt after a fire. The beer garden was little more than an
outside space, a lumpy slab of lawn confined by a quick-growing cypress hedge.
Half a dozen metal tables hugged the wall of the pub for protection. They
looked out towards swings and a climbing frame which were to Ron Oakes, the
publican, a Kiddies’ Grotto, and to most of his regulars another way of
recycling old tractor tyres.
    But
now autumn was approaching and families with young children came only at
weekends. Soon the swing would be chained and padlocked and the wind and rain
would see to the paint on the climbing frame.
    Elaine
preferred to sit in the garden if she could. In her experience, once inside a
pub it was hard to keep a man’s attention. He would find other men and they
would start to argue over things that were of very little interest to her,
generally football or fishing or cars or the inexorable decline of standards in
almost every area except pub conversation.
    Human
relationships were what interested Elaine. They were such an endlessly rich and
fascinating subject, an all-year-round phenomenon. A twenty-four-hours-a-day,
seven-days-a-week phenomenon. Men could talk about passion and elation and
despair if they happened within the confines of a league match, but for Elaine
such emotions were too important to be squandered by football commentators. She
was a romantic. She yearned and felt and sensed with an intensity which she had
never yet been able to share. She had had boyfriends and they had said that
they loved her, but she knew they loved go-karting and windsurfing just as
much, and she wanted to be more than just an exciting evening out. Martin was
different from the others. He wasn’t gregarious, and he had no interest in
sport.
    Though
he was still reserved and uncomfortable in talking about his feelings, she was
convinced that beneath it all Martin felt the same way she did, which was why
she was attracted to him, why she persevered with the relationship. At least it
was a relationship. Until the Christmas before last it had been two people
sitting beside each other behind a post office counter. Now