Hemingway’s Chair

on the inside of the windscreen in order to see the road
ahead. She was excited at the thought of taking Martin by surprise. She would
tell him as much as she could of the evening. It would be easy to tell him what
Marshall had said about them and their relationship. It would be easy to tell
him about Marshall’s health obsession and how he had asked for the sauce to be
removed from the salmon and the potatoes to be boiled without salt, and it would
be easy to tell him how angry he’d been with the new waiter when he poured the
wine, but it would be less easy to talk about the rest. Because it wasn’t
really what he had said, so much as how he’d said it, and how he’d looked at
her when he was saying it.
    She
hit the brake pedal hard as the road shook and a massive truck cannoned past
her heading south. T he heavy lorries that used to have to crawl through
Theston stopping for schoolchildren were happier now they had the bypass. They
thundered down it with relish, avenging thirty years of delays.
    She
pulled across into the turning lane then over the road, up a short landscaped
rise and down along past the ragged silhouettes of gorse and hawthorn until
after a mile or so she could see, with some relief, the lights of Marsh
Cottage.
    As
she got out of the car the intense cold took her breath away. The wind was hard
and grating out here. Straight from Siberia they were saying in the post office
that day. The winds they talked about always came from places like that.
Siberia, the North Pole, the Sahara. They never seemed to start in
Middlesbrough or Falmouth or Preston. As she approached the house she could see
the flickering blue glow of a television on the curtains. When she rang the
doorbell, there was a long pause, and she was about to ring again when she
heard Kathleen call out from the other side of the door.
    ‘Who’s
there?’
    ‘It’s
Elaine!’
    A
key turned and the door opened. ‘Elaine? What a lovely surprise.’
    ‘I’m
sorry it’s so late.’
    ‘Come
in, girl. You’ll be freezing.’
    Kathleen
Sproale switched a light on and fussed her into the sitting room. Martin wasn’t
in there. On the television there was some unhappiness. Rows of gaunt,
expressionless faces, gathered at a border crossing. In the bay window was
Kathleen’s worktable, from which hung a length of curtain, and a folded square
of lining. ‘I was doing some stitching,’ she said. ‘But I can’t see so well at
this time of night. Wait while I switch that off.’
    Mrs
Sproale felt around in an armchair and produced a remote control. On the screen
a camera zoomed in. An amorphous crowd of people became a young boy’s face. The
zoom continued until only a pair of listless eyes filled the screen. Mrs
Sproale pointed the control at the face and it disappeared. ‘Tea, Elaine?’
    ‘Well,
I’ve really come to see Martin. Is it too late?’ Mrs Sproale shook her head
apologetically. ‘I’m afraid you’re too early. He’s still with his American

Eighteen
     
     
     
    ‘Hemingway’s
nickname for Mary?’
    ‘Kitten.’
    Martin
nodded. ‘Correct. Her name for him?’
    ‘Lamb?’
    ‘Name
of his dog at the Finca Vigia?’
    ‘Black
Dog.’
    ‘Name
of his cat?’
    ‘Which
one? There were fifty-two of them.’
    ‘His
favourite.’
    ‘Christopher
Columbus.’
    The
first frost of the winter was making its mark around the metal frames on the
windows of Everend Farm Cottage, but it was still just possible to catch a
glimpse of two figures sitting close by the red and gold glow of an open fire.
It burned beneath a copper hood which drew the air and the smoke up an ageing
brick chimney stack. The cottage itself was one of those modest, unambitious
constructions which have a knack of surviving longer than their more palatial
counterparts. Parts of the building were a hundred and fifty years old. A tiled
roof had replaced thatch, metal frames had replaced wood on the windows and the
lavatory had been brought indoors. Otherwise it remained much as it was built.
Single storey, with a latch door that gave straight on to a parlour. An alcove
window faced out to the west and on either side of the fireplace two smaller
windows faced due south.
    From
the parlour a doorway led through to a low-ceilinged bedroom from which two
other doors led off, one to a tiny space into which Ted Wellbeing had managed
to squeeze a lavatory, a wash basin and a shower and the other to the kitchen.
    Martin
sat to one side of the fireplace, in a fat,