Hemingway’s Chair

other opportunities.
    It
would also free him from the clutches of Marshall and Devereux and enable him
to start some kind of fight back. Whatever happened, his preferred and habitual
option was no longer open. He could not do nothing.
    By
the time he had crossed the bypass and negotiated the pockmarked surface of
Marsh Lane his mind was made up. Not waiting to remove hat or coat or cycle
clips, he ran upstairs, slammed his door shut and dialled Ruth’s number. He was
still catching his breath when she answered, it’s Martin,’ he said. ‘I’ve made
a decision.’
    ‘Martin!’
cried Ruth. ‘The chair! It’s here.’

Twenty-five
     
     
     
    It
lay awkwardly against the kitchen table at Everend Farm Cottage.
A single limb jutting out at a forty-five-degree angle was wedged in a groove
between the scuffed brown quarry tiles. Its heavy wooden back leaned up against
the table-top, the corner of which stuck through the top two horizontal
supports.
    Ruth
leaned against the side of the kitchen doorway. She was wearing loose cotton
trousers and an embroidered waistcoat over a black cashmere jumper. She held a
cigarette in one hand and a glass of whisky and melting ice-cubes in the other.
‘Do I detect an aroma of Ernest on the seat?’ she asked.
    Martin
was squatting on his haunches, running his fingers slowly along the lightly
ridged wooden uprights. He ignored the question. Indeed, he’d barely looked at
her since he arrived. She drew on a cigarette and watched him poring as
intently over the rough, timber surfaces as if he were examining a newly
discovered Rembrandt. As far as Ruth was concerned the chair was a big
disappointment. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been expecting when Roger and
Kate Morton-Smith had turned up on her doorstep. They were on their way to an
antiques fair in Norwich, and they’d swapped the powder-blue Mercedes for a
rented red van. There had been a minor panic when Ruth mislaid Martin’s money.
She’d put it away behind a loose brick under the sink and forgotten which one.
    When
they had gone she had tried to raise some enthusiasm for the graceless object,
but had come to the inescapable conclusion that it was a horrid waste of
hard-earned savings. Her relief at Martin’s ecstasy on seeing it was tempered
by a genuine concern for his sanity.
    ‘Hell-o,’
she called, as Martin prowled round it yet again. ‘Anyone in there?’
    ‘Here,’
said Martin, taking hold of one of the arms, ‘help me lift this.’
    Ruth
put the cigarette in her mouth and, eyes narrowed against the rising smoke,
took the other arm of the chair.
    ‘It’s
heavy,’ she grunted.
    Following
Martin’s instructions she helped prop it up against the sofa. It was too high
at first but Martin found some bricks and laid one at each corner and together
they lifted the sofa until it rested on the bricks and this brought the seat up
to the right height to balance the chair.
    Martin
pushed it back on the sofa, as far as the central pole would allow it to go.
Then he turned and slowly and respectfully lowered himself down on to it.
    It
was big and wide and at first he looked lost in it, but once he had settled
himself, once he had hesitantly slipped the worn leather harness over his
shoulders and around his waist, once he was sitting back, palms flat against
the arm supports, spreading his back along the length of the wood, an
extraordinary change took place. The transformation Ruth had seen once before
in this room began to happen again, only much more vividly this time. Martin
became slowly and perceptibly more substantial. His face lost the earnest frown
with which he had arrived, his eyes grew wider but softer, the line of his jaw
grew stronger, his slim chest widened. Even the sight of his toes barely able
to touch the ground did not detract from the remarkable display of possession.
    For
a long time neither of them spoke.
    Then,
as slowly as it had occurred, the change began to reverse until it was Martin,
pink-faced, smoothskinned, shy apologetic eyes set wide in round, regular
features, who sat before her once again.
    ‘I’ve
done it now,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve done it now.’
     
    He
had never really told Ruth much of what happened in his other life, his life
outside Hemingway. It had been irrelevant. Once he was with her there had been
so much else to talk about. Today he told her for the first time most of what
had been happening to him these past few weeks. At the end he hung his