Hemingway’s Chair

he asked.
    Geraldine
grinned. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m just the maid. I do as I’m told.’
    Martin
nodded slowly. ‘Well I did ask you. Did I do the right thing?’
    ‘What
do you think?’ She reached forward to the dashboard, pulled back the heavy
sleeves of her overcoat and pressed in the automatic lighter.
    ‘How
did you get involved with Nick?’ Martin asked.
    ‘Agency,’
she replied. ‘Employment, not dating. They advertised. I was,’ she smiled to
herself, ‘between jobs, as we say in the theatre.’
    ‘Who’s
they?’
    ‘Nick’s
company. Shelflife. Nick and John Devereux are the directors. I’m the
workforce.’
    She
flicked open the glove compartment. ‘Want one of these?’
    ‘No,
I don’t smoke.’
    ‘There’s
not much tobacco in them.’
    Martin
looked again.
    ‘Are
they...?’
    ‘My
life-savers,’ she said and chose the longest and thickest of half a dozen
carefully prepared joints. The dashboard lighter, having heated up, clicked
out, and she took it and carefully applied the glowing filament to the loose
paper. It smouldered and a piquant aroma filled the car. Geraldine took in the
smoke unhurriedly. For a moment she was quite preoccupied. Then she let it
drift slowly out again. She rolled the window open a crack. The smoke was
snatched out by the cold night air.
    ‘Just
so you know the game, Martin,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘Nick, Devereux and
me have our salaries paid through an offshore subsidiary of Nordkom. They pay
bloody well. Whatever we get from the Post Office is a bonus.’
    ‘Oh
my God,’ said Martin, not bitterly or even angrily.
    ‘Don’t
feel bad,’ said Geraldine, it’s the way things get done nowadays.’ She offered
him the joint. ‘Welcome to the real world.’

Twenty-one
     
     
     
    The
sound of an alarm, emitted from a 1932 Ingersoll traveller’sclock, had been drilling into Martin’s consciousness for quite some time before
he was awake enough to deal with it. He turned off the alarm and lay for a
moment trying to think if there was any other man-made mechanism which was
designed to be stopped as soon as it started working, when, quite suddenly, the
extraordinary events of the night before flooded his memory like a wall of
water from a newly breached dam.
    He
sat up sharply in bed as if to anchor himself against the torrent of names and
faces and places and plans and feelings. Though draughts of cold air were
squeezing in from around the window he felt a sudden flush of nervous warmth.
    He
thought he remembered where he’d put the money but when he looked over to the
chair on which his jacket lay draped there was no sign of the buff envelope. He
hadn’t imagined it, surely he hadn’t imagined it. Maybe it would be better if
he had. He jumped out of bed and grabbed the jacket and went through every
pocket. All were empty.
    Then
he saw the door of the medicine cupboard was open and he remembered putting it
in there, behind his most precious bottles, after a long talk with Papa.
    He
took it out, turned it over in his hand, regarded it for a moment with fearful
fascination and replaced it carefully. He locked the cupboard and, barely aware
of the inhospitable darkness outside, began to dress.
     
    He
passed a restless day at work, left punctually at five and cycled furiously
back to Marsh Cottage. Ten hours after he had left it he was back in his room
changing swiftly and purposefully from his work clothes to his visiting
clothes, which were exactly the same but newer. Van Heusen cotton shirt,
Viyella sweater, creaseproof cotton and polyester trousers. When he’d finished
he took the envelope in and out of the medical cabinet several times before
finally removing five of the fifty-pound notes from it and replacing them
behind the bottles.
    Hemingway’s
chair had not been far from his thoughts all day long. Now the lightly bulging
envelope he held in his hand began to take on a mystical significance. It was
surely a sign that he had been predestined to have the chair. Could there be
anyone else in the country who deserved it more than he did, who would look
after it with more tender care?
    Possessing
the chair would be enough. He would never ask for more.
    As
he combed his hair he avoided Papa’s eye. Today, for the first time, he had
seen something in the Master’s expression that he had not been aware of before.
Rather than watching him, thanking him for being there, sharing the moment,
there was, behind the big sad eyes, a look of