Hemingway’s Chair

d’you know France at all?’
    Martin
shook his head. ‘I’ll need the test certificate,’ he said.
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell rummaged in her bag. ‘We’re terribly fond of the Ardeche,
always nipping off there if Perry can be spared from the City, and the post
offices there are frightfully good. Cats on the counter, glorious smell of
cooking from the back, ragout simmering for the lunch hour. Everything
quite wonderfully relaxed.’
    A
small furtive man in a tight brown suit whom Martin had not seen before came
briskly up to the counter. ‘Excuse me — ’
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell’s head flicked down. ‘Excuse me -'
    The
man appealed to Martin. ‘I’m looking for — ’ But he got no further.
    ‘I
don’t care who you’re looking for, it is the absolute height of bad manners to
intrude upon a private transaction.’
    ‘Can’t
we just get on with it,’ suggested an increasingly aggressive nursing mother
who had been queuing for nearly twenty minutes.
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell swivelled round to deal with the new threat, and the furtive
man took his chance. He leaned towards Martin. His eyes were set well back in a
narrow, pinched face. ‘I’m looking for Mr Marshall, please.’
    Before
Martin could say anything, Nick Marshall, looking none too pleased, came up
behind him and ushered the man rapidly to the door at the end of the counter.
    Martin
checked the test certificate and the certificate of car insurance and wrote
down the registration details of Mrs Harvey-Wardrell’s nine-year-old Daimler on
the new licence.
    She
looked around the office proprietorially. ‘And when is the grand transformation
to take place?’
    ‘The
end of January.’
    ‘Well,
I can’t wait.’
    ‘ We all have to,’ muttered the increasingly militant nursing mother.
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell chose to ignore this.
     
    *
     
    Elaine
was in the outer office when Martin went through for his lunch. He reached up
on to the shelf, took down the plastic container, peeled off the lid and
removed a foil-wrapped package, wedged in beside an apple and an overripe
tomato.
    Elaine
was reading a magazine and marking the page every now and then with a
ball-point. Her wide, strong face wore a preoccupied frown.
    Martin
had not been alone with her since that day on the sea front. Despite what she
had said to him then, he had half-expected Elaine to ring and reinstate the
Christmas invitation. But she hadn’t and for the first time in many years
Martin and his mother had spent Christmas alone together at Marsh Cottage.
They’d had a chicken from the deep freeze.
    A
howl of laughter came from Echo Passage. Schoolchildren used it as a short cut
into the town. Martin peeled back the foil and took out a shapeless bread roll.
‘How are you, then?’ he asked, with unconvincing nonchalance.
    ‘All
right.’
    He
nodded at the paper. ‘Quiz?’
    ‘Passes
the time.’
    ‘You
must know every answer in the world by now.’ Having examined his roll for
optimum point of entry he bit carefully into the combination of ham and cheddar
cheese. It was predictable but comforting. Elaine laid her biro down and rubbed
her eyes. ‘What is going on, Martin?’
    ‘Mm?’
Martin grunted, his mouth full.
    ‘I
wish you’d tell me. I just wish you’d tell me.’
    ‘What
do you want me to tell you?’
    ‘Well,
what’s going on here? I suppose I’m meant to have got used to the fact that my
workmates get sacked. Now I’m supposed to jump up in the air because we’re
being modernised.’
    ‘Look,
Elaine.’
    ‘Don’t
“Look, Elaine” me, I’m not one of your hired today, fired tomorrow part-timers
that Marshall’s screwing in the evening, I am a salaried postal officer with
six years’ experience and I expect to be told what is going on in this office!’
    ‘Who’s
he screwing in the evening?’ asked Martin with genuine bewilderment.
    ‘God,
I thought I knew nothing. Geraldine, of course. It’s obvious, isn’t it.
She picks him up after work you know.’
    ‘Well,
I didn’t know they were — ’
    ‘You
mean to say he doesn’t tell you everything over your three-course dinners at
the Market Hotel?’ Martin was aggrieved. ‘We only talk about work.’
    ‘Really?’
    It
was almost true. ‘Yes, that’s about it.’
    Elaine
looked at him and thrust out her chin. ‘Well, I wish he’d invite me. I might
learn a thing or two.’ Martin tried, unsuccessfully, to catch a shower of
crumbs that fell as he took another mouthful. ‘He told us before