Hemingway’s Chair

smoke out
urgently and began to pace the room again. ‘I read their letters, their laundry
lists, their diaries, their notebooks, whatever, and I feel I know them better
than they know themselves. But Ernest I have a real problem with. I just don’t
like the guy very much.’
    Martin
managed a weak smile. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said, but she didn’t seem
to hear.
    ‘I
can respect his work, some of it, and I can admire his... his physical
strength, his courage. But I cannot see much that would explain why so many of
these very intelligent, attractive, sensible women would want to spend more
than a couple of days with him, let alone a lifetime.’
    She
walked across to the fire and flicked off the ash from her cigarette.
    ‘The
trouble is I’m getting all one-sided about it. I need to project myself into
that great big, bull-necked head. I need to get in there and look around. And I
can’t.’
    She
looked across at Martin. His sky-blue anorak was zipped to the throat. His
trousers were clipped. His blue knitted gloves were in place. Soon he would
slip a royal blue bobble hat over his thatch of light red hair. He was an
unlikely Hemingway.
    ‘You
know him, Martin. You know him better than I ever will. You just said that
yourself.’
    Martin
shifted uncomfortably. It was the way she had used his name. She hadn’t used it
often.
    ‘No,
I’m not playing games,’ she said. ‘I’m not being a clever American bitch trying
to score points. I’m serious.’
    Martin
was embarrassed. ‘Well I’m a thick Englishman because I don’t understand what
you want.’
    ‘Here’s
an example.’
    Martin
frowned.
    ‘Just
real quick. Please?’ She indicated the armchair. ‘Just sit down a minute,
somewhere comfortable.’
    Martin
shook his head, moved reluctantly to the chair and perched himself on one of
the arms. Ruth reached for the bottle, found his glass on the table, recharged
it and handed it to him. Her lean, light olive skin seemed to shine. Her eyes
were darker than ever. Her long, rangy body seemed light and alert.
    ‘Now,
if I were your wife Pauline and less than three weeks ago I had just delivered
you, Ernest, a son by Caesarean section after a seventeen-hour labour which I
thought I would never survive, and you, Ernest, had just planned a fishing trip
to Wyoming, how would you tell me about it?’
    ‘Well,
he might say
    ‘No.
What would you say, Ernest?’
    Martin
sat quite still for a moment. He raised the whisky glass to his lips and drank.
Then a curious thing happened. First it was a sort of physical transformation.
Martin lowered his head and when he raised it again it seemed heavier and his
narrow shoulders rose, went back and widened to accommodate it. But even more
extraordinary than this sudden illusion of bulk and substance was the way he
looked at her. Keeping the head rolled a little forward, Martin jutted out his
jaw and fixed her with a scowl which, as she was to describe it later, did not
belong to him.
    He
stood up and took a step towards her. Ruth instinctively retreated.
    ‘Listen
to me for Christ’s sake.’ His voice had dropped an octave. The accent was
robust, if not entirely accurate. The point was that whoever this was, it
wasn’t Martin.
    ‘I
ain’t gonna apologise for a crime I didn’t commit. You do your job, I do mine.
Right?’
    Then
the scowl vanished as swiftly as it had come and a smile spread across the face
like sun emerging from a cloud. He straightened his shoulders and raised his
head until he was looking down on Ruth the way she remembered her father used
to.
    ‘I’m
a writer, baby, and I love you very much, Mrs P. and I love the boy. Wyoming at
this time of the year is the only thing in the world that’s more beautiful than
you are.’
    A
slow smile spread over Ruth’s face. She shook her head slowly. The man opposite
her stopped, relaxed, smiled quickly and awkwardly, and became Martin Sproale
again. He cleared his throat and made for the door.
    ‘That’s
bullshit,’ Ruth said admiringly. ‘That’s very good bullshit.’

Nineteen
     
     
     
    The
refurbishment of Theston post office was taking longer than was expected. Meanwhile pensions, licences, benefits, packets,
parcels, recorded deliveries, visitors’ passports and the rest all had to be
dealt with in the cramped confines of a temporary area, half the size of the
old one.
    One
Thursday, with February approaching and still no escape from plaster board and
unshaded light bulbs,