Hemingway’s Chair

the chair was
concentrating on something in the middle distance. His face wore an ironic,
self-mocking smile. She held out a glass of whisky.
    ‘You
want a drink?’
    For
a moment nothing moved, but when the figure slowly lifted his head, Ruth
experienced once again the uncanny sensation of being with a stranger she knew
well.
    ‘I
guess I look ridiculous,’ came a voice that was slow and heavy and yet in which
the smile remained. She said nothing.
    ‘I
don’t look like a decent fellow should look, huh?’
    He
took the whisky from her and drank it back in one. Then he held the glass out
again and watched her refill it.
    He
drank again, more slowly. This one was neat and he gasped at the after-taste.
Then all of a sudden he looked up and breathed deep and beamed around him.
    ‘Well,
I look like this because this is the way I like to look most of the time. I
look like this because, come tomorrow, I shall be in Havana and I shall be
drinking cold beers with Mrs Mason on the deck of HMS Anita .'
    Ruth
caught all the allusions. In 1933 Ernest left Pauline behind in Key West and
took a two-month fishing holiday in Havana. He met up with the beautiful,
wilful, twenty-three-year-old Jane Mason, whose husband was working and
couldn’t go with her, and they fished together off a boat called Anita ,
which belonged to Joe Russell, one of Hemingway’s Key West cronies. It was an
episode of his life she and most Hemingway scholars had always wanted to know
more about. A rare extramarital affair, known to have taken place, but still
steeped in mystery.
    Ruth
poured herself another drink and sat down opposite him, one side of her face
caught by the lamplight. ‘Why are you going away so soon?’
    ‘Because
I worked goddamn hard at that book and I need to get it out of my system.’
    ‘I
worked hard to get this house ready for you,’ she said quietly. ‘You know how
much money I spent?’ His face clouded. ‘That’s the only way you see these
things. Through the end of a bank balance. So your father bought this house.
Great. So you put in nice furniture, big curtains. Paint everything. Great. I
do no more fucking writing because I have to sit around choosing curtains when
I could be out on a boat chasing marlin with my real friends.’
    ‘You
call those bums you hang out with your friends?’
    ‘They’re
simple guys. They drink and they gamble and they live off the sea. But I love
them. Okay?’
    ‘You
love them more than me?’
    ‘Maybe
I do. Maybe they don’t keep wanting to hang on to me and tidy me up and put me
on display.’
    ‘I
just want to have you here in the house with me. I don’t care if you wear
nothing but a pair of sneakers and a leopard- skin loincloth, I’d rather I
looked after you than Mrs Mason. I’m your wife, dammit. What happened? What did
I do wrong?’
    ‘You
did too much. You tried too hard.’
    ‘You
loved me once. You loved me so much and I loved you and we went everywhere
together and we made each other very happy.’
    ‘If
you say so.’
    ‘You
don’t know?’
    ‘I do know, for Chrissake, I do know.’
    ‘You
knew for a day. You knew for a week. Then someone more interesting comes along
and I have to go along with that. I have to wait while you make your plans and
then I do what you want me to do. Isn’t that right?’
    ‘No...
no... It’s not right.’
    ‘You
do what you want to do and I’m just supposed to fit in, right?
    ‘No,
no!’
    ‘I’m
the wife who has to stay home till the master returns.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘ My writing is not worth shit.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘All
you want is a body to be there when it suits you.’
    ‘No!’
    Ruth
saw the sweat break out on his brow, but she couldn’t stop now.
    ‘Well,
I’ll tell you. You ain’t as hot as you think you are.’
    ‘Quit,
will you?’ His head swung angrily.
    ‘Don’t
want to hear the truth, huh?’
    ‘I
said quit.’
    ‘I
tell you I could walk out that door right now and find a dozen guys who’d give
me a better time!’
    ‘I
said quit !’
    A
cut glass ashtray flew towards Ruth’s head. She ducked and heard it smash
against the wall and fall in pieces to the floor behind her.
    She
straightened up.
    Martin
stood staring helplessly. ‘Are you all right?’ She nodded.
    He
looked down at his hand, moving it slowly up towards him, as if sensing it for
the first time. His voice, when it came, was small and bewildered. ‘I’m sorry,
Ruth. I’m sorry.’
    ‘You
okay?’
    Ruth
stayed where she was,