Hemingway’s Chair

names, dates and page references that kept her awake. It was a
delicious, shameless, wholly unintellectual feeling of rank lustfulness. She
knew, as she lay, on her back, on her side, on her other side, then on her back
again, in the silent pitch darkness of the Suffolk night, that Martin Sproale
wanted to fuck her and she wanted to fuck him and that it was going to happen
sooner or later.
    As
she lay there, enveloped in this delectable fantasy and not knowing quite how
to make the most of it, she began to laugh. Quite quietly at first, then slowly
and gradually louder and deeper and heartier until she feared she might bring
the Wellbeings hurrying down the path. And this thought made her laugh even
more. It wasn’t a warm night, but Ruth was sweating through her loose black
cotton pyjamas as she pulled herself up out of bed, wrapped a bathrobe around
her, lit a cigarette and sat down at her desk to add a PS to the letter she had
started that morning.
     
     
    ‘PS Hem-fan
update (hot off the presses!)
     
    British
men are not at all what they appear to be. Underneath every calm and quiet
exterior there lurks a beast and beneath every beastly exterior lurks someone
dying for mother’s milk and an early night. Mild Martin has today turned into a
passable impersonation of a Horseman of the Apocalypse. (An Horseman of
the Apocalypse, sorry. Anne Horseman-of-the-Apocalypse — there’s a new heroine
for you.) Mart is hopping mad and looking for ass to kick. Why? The collapse of
the monarchy? The imminent demise of the British currency? The ordination of
women? No. What has turned Martin from mouse to Minotaur (does that work?) is
that THEY HAVE MODERNISED HIS POST OFFICE. Apparently there are dark forces at
work not a half-dozen miles from where I write who will stop at nothing until
they have given him up-to-date facilities and worse still, provided them for
other people as well.
    The
country is warming up. In every way.
    Watch
this space.
    Yours
for ever and a day,
    Ruthie.

Twenty-six
     
     
     
    On
one of the first warm days of March, when the skies were blueand innocent as June, Martin Sproale could be seen cycling
through Jubilee Park and down the gentle hill that led away from the centre of
town down to the old merchants’ houses on Mulberry Green. He stopped outside
the most handsome of them. It was half past nine on a Monday morning and
Martin, fired with enthusiasm for his new role as urban guerrilla, had decided
to take a week of his annual holiday. Leaving his bicycle leaning by the hedge
he crunched his way across the gravel to a columned and porticoed front door.
He pressed a well-polished enamel doorbell on the bit where it said, helpfully,
‘Press’. He cast a quick look in the direction he’d come from and was pleased
to see his arrival appeared to have gone unnoticed.
    The
door was opened by a middle-aged woman with full grey hair only partially
concealing a strawberry mark that spread down one side of her neck. She wore an
apron and held a duster.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Is
Mrs Harvey-Wardrell in, please?’
    He
was shown into a drawing room, filled with sunshine. The lady with the duster
tut-tutted and pulled down a blind. She peered critically at the surface of a
carved oak chest.
    ‘That
sun’s a menace,’ she said, and scowled at the great clear sky outside.
    A
moment or two later, the approach of Pamela Harvey-Wardrell was heralded by the
sharp, urgent yelp of a dog and the sound of a slithery scrabbling of paws on
freshly-polished floor. A voice rang out from the hallway.
    ‘Hilda!
Caspar shouldn’t be here, and he knows that. Will you please put him in with
Benjie. Oh, and those things in the billiard room are for the deaf.’
    The
drawing room door swung open. Mrs Harvey-Wardrell saw Martin Sproale bent
double over the Turkish carpet.
    ‘Are
you all right?’ she asked.
    Martin
straightened up breathlessly. ‘Just taking my clips off.’
    ‘Not
at the post office?’
    ‘No,
I’ve taken a week’s holiday.’
    ‘Oh!’
She threw her head back dramatically. ‘How I envy you! Perry and I love to get
away at this time of year. But alas he’s frightfully busy and I’ve been roped in
to organise the Oxfam evening. Would the post office care to help out? It would
be awfully good if you could. A few packets of envelopes for the odds and ends
stall?’
    ‘Yes,
I’m sure.’
    ‘Most
kind. The police have promised stickers.’
    Mrs
Harvey-Wardrell sat herself on the edge of a chaise