Hemingway’s Chair

asked E H if he
had not blown his brains out in ’61. We’ll see. But it is exciting and is
making me think that perhaps Admiring Ernest could be a bit of a
ground-breaker. On the other hand it may all be the onset of premature
senility.
    Your
loving exile,
    Ruthie.

Twenty-two
     
     
     
    Theston
was coming out of a dour flat winter and into brisk andbusinesslike
March winds. Winds of change, thought Martin unhappily as he parked his bicycle
against the railings beside the church and walked through to the High Street.
His heart was heavy. This particular morning was not one he had been looking
forward to. It was the first working Monday for sixteen and a half years that
he had not cycled into North Square, turned down Echo Passage and come to rest,
balletically, at the foot of the steps in Phipps’ Yard. He couldn’t. Over the
weekend Phipps’ Yard had been boarded up.
     
    Above
the doorway of Randall’s, High Class Confectioner and Newsagent, a man on a
ladder was fixing the red and gold lozenge-shaped sign of the Post Office. The
same sign that could be seen above Wilkinson’s sports goods shop in Atcham, the
Koppi-Rite stationery centre in Alford and jostling for space with cigarette
and soft-drinks displays outside shops all across the country. It was a vision
of the beginning of the end of something, Martin was sure of that.
    He
felt uncomfortably self-conscious as he entered Randall’s. Under his anorak he
wore his old brown check shirt, green corduroy jacket and not quite matching
trousers and his oldest pair of sandals, which he’d put on at the last minute,
as a silent protest. He ran the gauntlet of curious shop assistants. He knew
most of them, for this was where he bought Christmas, Easter and birthday
presents and occasional treats for himself. He had always felt effortlessly
superior in Randall’s. He was Number Two man from the post office in North
Square. A man of some influence. No mere shop assistant he. But that was
yesterday. Now he was nearly one of them.
    Joyce,
a thin, garrulous woman whose husband looked after the golf course, examined
him carefully from behind the newspaper counter which occupied one side of the
front of the shop. Rita, a single parent of Czech extraction, stood opposite,
in front of shelves of boiled sweets and mint chews and humbugs. She had only
just arrived and was still buttoning up the front of her pink nylon sales coat.
    ‘Morning,
Martin,’ she said as he passed, followed by a suppressed giggle, as if the
whole thing were a great new game.
    Amanda,
a small, defiant girl, fresh out of university with a good degree in Social
Studies, was wiping the outside of a long perspex screen which curved up along
the length of the confectionery counter and behind which was displayed
Randall’s famous selection of hand-made chocolates and toffees. The centre of
the shop widened out into an area dotted with freestanding displays. Mills and
Boon stories on a rack, cheap plastic toys, books about the Royal Family. Here
>t was that Alan Randall, the manager and grandson of the man who had
founded the shop, was fussing about, attending to the construction of an Easter
egg mountain. Alan Randall was dapper, artificially tanned and lived alone. He
greeted Martin, who did not like him, with a professional smile.
    ‘They’re
all at the back,’ he said, stretching out his arm like a butler at a dinner
table. ‘Mind the step.’ Martin chose instead to descend the six or seven inches
by means of a newly-erected wheelchair ramp. The back of the shop smelt of wet
plaster and newly-laid carpet. Halogen lamplight reflected off a line of
free-standing chrome posts set across the carpet. Through them ran a
thick-coiled rope which led from a sign reading ‘Queue Here’ to a sort of
no-man’s-land some few feet back from the counters.
    The
positions lay behind shaded glass, which rose from an expanse of grey
panelling. At each one was a powder-grey computer terminal. From the side walls
video monitors jutted out on stubby grey arms.
    The
overall effect was discreet, anonymous, characterless. He could as easily have
been in a building society, an airline office or a funeral parlour. What caused
his heart to sink further was that it looked anything but temporary.
    ‘Is
Marshall in yet?’ he asked Mary Perrick, who was clutching a thick knitted
cardigan to her and looking around in awe. isn’t it wonderful,’ she said, is Mr
Marshall in?’ Martin repeated more sharply. As he