Hemingway’s Chair

him of
the rituals of life outside. ‘I’ve put it in the kitchen, Martin!’
    Martin
shook his head sadly. Tea-drinkers, mothers, post office administrators,
would-be fiancées. Little people with little minds. When would they realise
that only through confrontation with danger could life be lived to the full? On
the other hand he was thirsty after all that salt and vinegar.
    He
finished the grappa, slammed down the glass, threw a punch at the light switch
and went out.
    ‘Coming,’
he called.

Three
     
     
     
    Mr
Padgett’s ‘occasion of importance’ came round on a Friday, a dark day of storm
warnings and squally showers that set the bowlines cracking against the masts
of bobbing yachts and the north cone swinging in the wind outside the
coastguard station. More than two hundred people squeezed into Theston church
hall. It was mid-September by now and the town had been reclaimed from the
summer visitors. The season had been a good one and the shopkeepers and
landladies had grumbled at the hours of work, but quietly put away a bit of
money, though they would never admit it to each other. So there were a few
smiling faces beneath the balloons and the bunting, and conversation was
excited by the weather.
    A
rich voice boomed out behind him. ‘Grand turn-out, Sproale.’
    It
was Lord Muncaster, who didn’t often come into the post office, but always
turned out at town do’s like this, dispensing feudal benevolence though it was
no secret that only three months ago he had done a markedly un-feudal business
deal, selling his Jacobean house to an Anglo-Saudi insurance company and
renting it back from them, right under the nose of English Heritage.
    ‘I
must say these are the most damned decent set of people. I mean this is the
backbone of England, I honestly think...’ He gazed out over the throng, his
warm and generous eyes watering with the kind of hazy sentimentality that
affects only the truly out of touch.
    Martin
muttered something deferential and moved swiftly away. His main aim was to
remain in visual contact with the three visitors from Head Office. He
recognised two of them, his local boss and his area boss, but not the third.
They stayed in a group together, all three in sober suits, blending uneasily
with the heterogeneous town crowd. They were currently making heavy weather of
a conversation with Padge, who was coughing badly in the hot smoky atmosphere.
It was clear from their faces that none of them knew, or probably cared, what
their retiring Manager was saying. Elaine came up and squeezed Martin’s hand.
    ‘Ooh,
you’re hot.’
    Martin
pulled away sharply.
    ‘Sorry,
I didn’t mean to surprise you.’ She leaned in close. He could smell something
on her breath. Something stronger than Bulgarian red or white.
    ‘There’s
gin in the kitchen,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had some of it. Oh, help! I’m sorry.’
Stepping back to gauge the effect of her information she’d snagged her heel in
a trouser turn-up and a freshly filled glass of Balkan Cabernet had splashed
Alan Randall, the newsagent and confectioner. Randall gave a short angry cry.
He was a dapper middle-aged bachelor who looked younger than he was, thanks to
hard work and a sun-bed. Appearances were important to him and, though the
well-pressed navy blue blazer took the brunt of the spill, a small wine slick
was spreading visibly across the dove-grey Terylene on his left thigh.
    ‘I’ll
fetch a cloth.’
    ‘Salt!’
hissed Randall.
    Elaine
made for the kitchen, hot with embarrassment.
    Martin
was aware of a throat loudly cleared, followed by a general hushing and
shushing. As usually happens in the presence of a large unruly crowd, the
message took a while to reach the peripheries of the room. By that time the
current Mayor, a builder called Ken Stopping, had heaved back his broad
shoulders, adjusted a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and embarked, with the help
of an ominous stack of index cards, on a thorough and ponderous eulogy.
    ‘...for
many years...’
    ‘Sssh!’
Someone hissed loudly in at the door of the kitchen from which fragments of
Elaine’s plangent ; account of the wine incident emerged to vie with Stopping’s
barely audible bass rumble.
    ‘...and
I dare say Padge would agree...’
    ‘Hear!
Hear!’ from those who heard, and a little later from those who didn’t.
    As
Stopping carefully picked his way through the career of the retiring
Postmaster, a certain restlessness I could be observed around the room.