Hemingway’s Chair

the floor.
    ‘Listen
madam, I don’t know who you are, or where you’ve come from, but this is my post
office and I shall choose to see who I want.’
    Stella
Holt’s tone hardened, if you go to Position Number 'I'wo you will be dealt with
and out of here much more quickly.’
    ‘What
makes you think I want to get out of here quickly?’ Mr Meredith protested. ‘I’m
not in a hurry. I like being here.’
    Stella
Holt had made dealing with Mr Meredith something of a personal crusade and she
wasn’t going to give up easily. ‘Have you seen our video?’ she asked him. She
pointed out one of the video screens which was gently burbling on about licence
renewals and commemorative issues. Harold Meredith peered up at it.
    ‘I
don’t come to the post office to watch television, thank you,’ he said. ‘I come
to the post office to get away from television.’
    ‘It
gives you suggestions for what you might want.’
    ‘Oh,
I know what I want,’ said Mr Meredith. ‘I want to ask whether or not I need to
fill in the tax district number in my application form for transfer of my war
disability pension to my brother-in-law’s building society account.’ Stella
Holt gave up. Quite soon after that, gathering together her armoury of
clipboards, calculators, compact cameras and portable telephones she left, with
encouraging words and a fast-fading smile. She missed Mrs Harvey-Wardrell by a
whisker. Which was probably just as well.
    ‘That
is quite ghastly!’ boomed Mrs Harvey-Wardrell from as far back as the remains
of the Easter egg mountain.
    What
Mrs Harvey-Wardrell saw before her was not a post office as she and generations
of Harvey-Wardrells had come to know it. It was more like a freshly landed
spacecraft. A stop-gap environment on the road to automation and eventually the
final eradication of the human element from the whole process. She said as much
to her small pale companion, a lady called Lettice Brockwell, who had a ginger
moustache and one leg slightly shorter than the other.
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell, sporting a Barbour, deerstalker and long green wellingtons,
strode across the strip of grey carpet which was studded with the Post Office
Counter Service logo, as if it had been walked on by someone with it stuck on
their foot.
    ‘Position
Number Two,' squeaked the voice. Owing to some electrical fault
the Swedish choirboy had moved up from alto to soprano.
    ‘Whatever’s
that, Lettice?’
    ‘It
said “Position Number Two”, Pamela.’
    She
spied Martin, who was desperately trying to look unconcerned, at position
Number One. ‘What’s all this Position Number Two business, Martin? This is a
post office, not the Kama Sutra.'
    ‘I’m
afraid it’s a standard feature now, Mrs Harvey-Wardrell,’ said Martin lamely.
    ‘Well,
I think it’s quite frightful. If this is the face of the future, the sooner we
get North Square back the better. Four first class stamps for Tasmania please,
Martin.’ She turned to her companion. ‘I shall have to have a word with
Marshall. Do you know Marshall?’
    ‘I
don’t think I do, no.’
    ‘He’s
in charge of all the post office rebuilding. Awfully clever chap. Far too
capable for this sort of job. Now those are air mail, aren’t they Martin?’
    ‘Forty-five
pence, yes.’
    ‘I
don’t want them traipsing round the Cape of Good Hope.’
    ‘All
foreign mail goes by air now.’
    ‘Because
it’s most frightfully important that these letters get there as soon possible.’
She turned to her companion. ‘Jonty’s developed frightful piles and my man in
Harley Street says not to let anyone in Tasmania touch them. He’s got to go to
a chap in Melbourne.’
    ‘Jonty
out in Tasmania now?’ her friend enquired. ‘He’s doing some frightfully
hush-hush work on a new reservoir. Locals are up in arms and I think Jonty’s
time in the Falklands will stand him in good stead! Mouse loves it of course,
but then she’s always been an outdoor girl. Thank you, Martin. And I do hope
you don’t have to stay in this frightful place for long.’
    Like
a large steamship with a dinghy in tow the pair of them disappeared out through
the sweetshop. For a moment the post office was empty.
    ‘Position
Number Four,' shrilled the Swedish soprano.
    Mary
Perrick looked across sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I pressed it by mistake.’
     
    Martin
had rarely been so happy to see his lunch hour. Not that it was announced any
longer by the old wall clock, but that was a minor