Hemingway’s Chair

long-backed, short-legged,
thick-shouldered Friesian bull. Martin felt a head-burning rush of appalled
excitement. He had watched bulls before. He had hung on gates and thought about
what it must take to be a matador. Uncountable times he had felt the sweat
break out on his palms as he contemplated illustration number forty-three in
Carlos Baker’s biography: ‘Ernest (in white pants) in the “amateurs”, Pamplona,
192.5.’ There was Papa, in the bullring, unprotected, skipping like a schoolboy
round the swinging, jabbing, treacherously curved horns, whilst Spaniards
rushed about and screamed and shouted and pointed. Now, in a field on the
Suffolk coast, Martin was seized with the conviction that at last the moment
had come for him to experience that thing which terrified him most. How neat,
how perfect, how absolutely right that he should perish this way.
    A
wind had freshened from the north-west and clouds were piling in — angry, grey
and low. He licked his lips and took a long, deep breath of farmy air. He began
to climb the gate. It swung as he mounted it and he noticed that it could
easily have been opened by slipping a length of loose red twine over the
gatepost. He vaulted over and dropped onto the rich springy turf. Closer-to,
the bull was a truly awesome creature. In fact it was massive. Far bigger than
it had looked from the other side of the gate. It stood about two hundred yards
away, flicking its tail and swinging its great heavy head in a gesture that
suddenly brought to mind his father trying to shake sea-water from his ear
after bathing. Martin could hear the wind now, catching at the scrappy branches
of a dead elm, rustling at the hawthorn hedge. He edged a bit closer, eyes
fixed on the bull.
    How
would it charge? Pawing the earth first or suddenly and without warning? How
would the impact be? A mighty thundering weight, living daylights smashed out
of him, followed by blackness and oblivion? Perhaps he would be tossed. He had
seen pictures of gored matadors, flung through the air like blown litter.
Perhaps he would hit the ground, his back broken, his body limp and helpless,
his eyes waiting to be gouged out by vengeful cloven hooves.
    Martin
moved closer still. Then, for a moment, his courage failed him. Perhaps it was
enough just to be in the same field as the prodigious beast. One of those that
Papa had described as being ‘afraid of nothing on earth’. Perhaps that was
enough. Just to have been there. It was certainly quite something to tell
people. A lot of people would never even have got this far. Oh, no. He could
certainly leave it at that without any fear of being thought to have let anyone
down. Certainly not. But then something took hold of him, some spectacular
madness, some final lunging desire to have done with it all. He found himself
running forward, waving his arms and screaming at the top of his voice.
    He
must have covered ten or eleven yards when out of the corner of his eye he saw
that he and the bull were not alone. In the opposite corner of the field there
were at least a dozen more huge creatures watching and waiting. Martin stopped
screaming abruptly. A chill frisson, a sudden, sharp awareness of the
possibility of real fear, pierced his alcohol-shrouded senses. But it was too
late. The bull ahead of him turned, tossed its colossal head and began to
charge.
    Martin
stood stupefied. It was charging away from him. And as it did so, all the other
bulls turned and charged away as well, thundering as fast as they could to the
furthest corner of the field. At the same time he heard a shout from the gate.
‘What you bloody think you bloody playing at?’
    Martin
turned in the direction of the voice, feeling now like the bull he had just
disturbed. A mud-streaked Land Rover had drawn up by the gate and a small,
angry man with a face the colour of a nasty wound stood there. A young,
curly-headed boy was beside him.
    The
farmer’s face was ugly with rage.
    ‘Afternoon,’
said Martin hoarsely.
    ‘What
in bloody buggeration are you bloody doing in there, you bloody bugger?’
    The
little boy, who can’t have been more than six or seven, giggled.
    ‘I...
er... I thought that one of the bulls was about to get loose. I was trying to
keep it in the field,’ tried Martin.
    ‘What
bulls?’
    Martin
indicated the cowering herd in a corner of the field.
    ‘Where
in God’s name were you brought up?’ retorted the farmer, ferociously. ‘Bulls
have bloody balls, you silly